Joe90 wrote:
I regret not befriending nice girls at school who showed interest in becoming friends with me, instead of sticking to the girls who didn't want me around. If I had made friends with the right girls I might have lived a normal teenage life without all the horrible social isolation. But each time a nice girl showed willing in being my friend, I backed away like I was scared to branch out, and I ran back to the (familiar) girls in my class who just pushed me away and excluded me. It was just immaturity. As an adult I'll befriend anyone who is nice, but back then I only wanted to be friends with those who were cool and popular. The nice girls who wanted to be friends with me weren't as cool or popular, but they probably would have been decent friends for me.
Sometimes it is important to make friends with the right people when you're a teenager, because your teenage years can haunt you for the rest of your life. When you have good memories to look back on during your teenage days, it can make you feel good.
Oh, what was the matter with me back then?!
It's not like I didn't understand the signs of whether people liked me or not, it was just I didn't seem to want to branch out. I was just so foolish.
As a guy, it's interesting. There were two groups of girls in my school. The nice, sensible, quiet girls who were my only friends, and the girls who I was scared to talk to because I was attracted to them.... I wish I'd known that the girls I liked talking to were the sort of girls I was likely to enjoy dating. In fact, the sort of girls I've gone out with in my adult life (although not many, I've been married twice, second time 28 years, and only dated one other women, last year, because we were briefly open at her request)