Do you want to be social or do you feel like you have to.

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I would like to know how many people feel as though they genuinely desire to be sociable, or whether they have just been conditioned to feel badly because they should want to.

Last edited by comawhite on 01 Feb 2012, 11:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe both. Most of the time just my family is a handful for me, but there are times when I do want to reach out to other people. There are times when I see others chatting, and I feel bad for not joining in because I know I seem unfriendly and aloof to them. Just not a black or white problem I guess.

I'm on the fence about it. One one hand I want to be around other people, on the other once I actually am around other people I realize how unpleasant it is and I want to get away.
"I want to be anti-social with other people" would be a better way of putting it. Camaraderie in solitude.

I want to be social because I feel like I have to.

I like it but I wasn't bullied and I was dragged into pubs as a child. I skipped socalising with kids and got a head start on adult.
cant stand clubs though.

When I was little, I was forced to learn the social skills of an NT (not fun). But all the hard work that was forced onto me made me what I am today: a functional high-school student. My life kind of depends on my social life too haha. Because of all that OT as a little kid, my aspiness is almost 100% unnoticable

I like this

I crave being around other people after being alone for a while, but I don't ever crave the type of interaction I know it will be. I'd love to hang around other people like me. This type of interaction would involve chatting if we feel like it, sitting in silence if we don't (e.g. reading a book or whatever). Maybe playing some boardgames or similar activity. It wouldn't involve constantly chatting about meaningless, confusing stuff. But that's what being social typically means.

My interest in sociability comes from an interest in mastering skills, or, as another thread title suggested, an interest in neurotypicality. When I get excited about a person because I like them and want to be with them, it does happen, but it's never planned. I don't have a median of saying to myself 'I might develop a good relationship with that person, let's try'.

I am an outgoing introvert. I enjoy being social when I'm in the mood for it, but I have to have my hibernating times for regenerating and getting my mind back to calm. For me it's not a matter of need or want, as much as the social introvert is simply who I am.

What I feel bad about is when I am negatively affecting others or others are negatively affecting me. Either they are being too obtuse or I am being too extreme, but either way, there is a disconnect there and I don't like it. If I were a heartless person, then I wouldn't care one way or the other, but I do care, and I want to minimize discomfort as much as possible. If this means distancing myself from someone, then so be it. This is not a mentality I came by easily. I think it was more a matter of my mind come in kicking and screaming, because I never wanted to accept that I might be better off not having someone in my life or them being better off not having me in theirs.

As for finding friends and people you respect, that takes time and patience. Even once you find a person you think will fit the bill, it will still take more time and patience and effort to get to know the other person and for them to get to know you. I have 4 adult roommates and a nice group of friends that come to visit about every other weekend. It's wonderful just hanging out playing a game, eating food, going to a movie. No wild parties, if we have drinks it's just a couple drinks for the taste, no egos, no showmanship, no pressure to "fit in." This is a level of maturity that exists and may be hard to find at first, but it does exist.

Same here. Professionally, I need to be social to succeed in my career. Personally, having connections and relationships with people is satisfying. But it's tough...

At the moment I feel like if people don't like how I am they can f**k off.

That's how I feel too. Not talking seems like a novel concept to NTs, but it's pleasant to just sit there quietly in the presence of someone else without the need to keep them entertained.

I like putting together jigsaw puzzles, and I always love it when someone is willing to come over and help with that, but most people get bored with it pretty quickly, or at least quicker than I do, and then I feel sad that they have to go so soon.

The sad part is if I notice the other person looking at a particular section of the puzzle or trying to fit a certain piece, my attention shifts from the section/pieces I'm working on to solving theirs - I REALLY have to stifle solving their section of the puzzle as well.

I guess it'd be both. For me, obviously I have some care of human interaction and validation and all those fancy words, or else I wouldn't even spend time posting here, you know?

Anyway, as far as how I like socializing, it's different than how other people like doing it. I find it very hard to like, spend like 3-4 hours at someone's house playing Call of Duty 4, and would much rather like, do something else with that 3-4 hours, as that's not fun. So in that sense alone, I don't like socializing. But in the other sense, if a friend legitimately wants to do stuff with me, then I do like that. I mean obviously, there's give and take, and I can't always have things my way, etc. But at the same time, with a lot of my old acquaintances and circle of friends, it'd be much more of me giving, imo. A lot more of "hey let's play Call of Duty" rather than like "let's go for a hike!"

Another thing too, with friendships, honestly economically it's a bit hard. I don't have like any friends within walking distance anymore. At my old apartment complex, I had more friends, I guess, since more people there had common interest of cars, and were slightly similar to me. Now I live in more or less, "the hood" and while people have interests with cars, me being white and NVLD/Aspie makes me stand out like a sore thumb here, and people think I'm strange as hell, compared to "oh a little bit strange but still nice" at my old apartment complex. So most of my friends are out of town now, so it'd be like 13-14 miles roundtrip to get to their houses, sometimes more. I used to "hang out" with a lot of people at my old church in that other town, a lotta times a week, and the gas added up to a lot of money, and I weighed the cost and it wasn't worth it for the fun of feeling awkward at other people's houses while getting the opportunity to take turns playing COD. Even for my friends I want to hang out with, it's a little hard to get over to their house, just due to gas costing money and me not having a car of my own (that works) anymore. Another other thing, time. Time is sorta money in a way. Today, for example, I could have possibly hung out with some of my friends. Possibly exercising... I didn't wanna exercise really, as I had giant blisters on the back of my feet from a hike I took yesterday. So it likely wouldn't be fun. That, and I had church at 6, possibly to 9PM (got out at like 7:30, though, so misbudgetted the time) and my friends were planning to start hanging out at like 3-4PM, so I'd "hang out" with them for like an hour and a half at the most, before leaving for church, about 20 more miles out of the way.

Going with time, there's just things I need done sometimes. Today before and after church, I spent a ton of time trying to get belts onto my Buick LeSabre wagon (with the Olds 307 motor, what a ridiculous belt setup) and tonight finally got it running. If I spent my time and energy hanging out with my friends, I wouldn't have got it done today, and it likely would have sat longer, as the weather has been...winter, and today was a rare good day. As great fun as hanging out with friends is sometimes, I learned I need to balance it more toward getting stuff done. If you spend so much time socializing, you can't get anything done and all your projects remain uncompleted.

Last thing, though, I'm just sorta good at...doing stuff for myself? Like self reliance I guess? Like, at my old church where it was like "everyone has to be social all the time!" let's say people were planning to go for a hike, right. They'd like, tell people days in advance, and plan for a group outing. Me, my thought process for going for a hike is "Oh wow, the weather is nice out today, let me grab my bag and get going." Like, at my "peak" of socialness, I'd call up all my friends to invite them, most would care less about any of my activities like hiking, and then I'd just go myself. I wanna go for a hike, so I'm going for a hike, friends or not. No offense to the women, but I really feel like women have a tendency to do this with their friends. A lot of women never seem to wanna do anything alone, they either need a boyfriend or a female friend to go with them to seemingly any place they go, and I'm sort of the opposite. I feel like friends prevent me from getting what I want done, or we go on a gazillion detours from what I originally planned to do, etc. Plus I always feel like one of my friends will embarrass me somehow, or it's just weird being in a huge group in public for some reason. Either way, I'm just not one of those people that needs a friend to be with me out in public, as a lot of people do. My "default" is do stuff alone, and my "exception" is do stuff with others, whereas most people it seems to be the opposite.

Really, to sum the situation with friends up, my friends mostly don't wanna do the things I wanna do, and I mostly don't wanna do the things they wish to do, so I've just learned over time to not include my friends in my plans, and they've learned to mostly not include me in theirs. When our plans coincide or whatever, it's nice, but usually they don't. That, and I am probably an introvert. I'm outgoing, but probably an introvert. I also have a hard time even identifying my own feelings, so what happened a while ago, again, at church with all the socializing stuff, I got so burnt out from all the socializing, it turned into a crash, and for a while I was like "I DONT WANNA SEE ANYONE!!11" So I guess my main thing I need to learn socializing, is finding the middle ground so to speak. Not being a hermit recluse (or maybe just do that...) but also not just doing every social thing put in front of me.

To go with the original question again, with the paragraphs above in mind, yeah, part of me wants to be around people, cares what people think of me, etc, then the other part of me is utterly oblivious to it, and will spend like 10 hours working on a bicycle, just because he feels like it and wants it done. So I don't terribly know how to answer your question really, it's something I somewhat ponder myself. Oh well.

I feel the 2nd part of this question is... wrong. The only reason I see why people don't want social interaction is because it has hurt their feelings. It's a valid reason, but not wanting does not mean not needing it.

The desire to interact, be recognized and loved is natural for any life form it seems. You can deny this, be very poor at it, but you can't shut it down.

But I guess a proper definition of "sociable" is needed for a direct answer.

I don't understand your comment. Not wanting something doesn't have to have a valid reason to exist. A person can simply not want to be social, and some people do exist that simply do not want to be social. It has nothing to do with hurt feelings.

You're correct in that "wanting" and "needing" are not mutually exclusive, but you are making it sound as though if they are not mutually exclusive then they must be mutually inclusive, which is incorrect.

I take it you have never met someone that simply does not wish to be social, or dealt with a cat that never wanted anyone to touch it, ever.