People Actually Like Me

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I've been kind of asocial for a while because it has seemed to me for several years that I have to choose between being myself and being liked, but a couple weeks ago I decided that I'd try making friends again (with an eye for a girlfriend), and I have found that I am able to get random people I talk to to like me almost without effort!

This has never happened to me before and I think it is very strange. By random people I mean that I can chat to pretty cashier ladies, and book-store managers, and classmates (I usually only bother talking to attractive girls), and almost all the time they seem to like me immediately. Actually the book-store lady seemed to like me so much so quickly that it scared me and I stopped the conversation short by saying, "nice to meet you" and I left the store. I realized after I left the store that quickly developed intimacy scares me and that I should notice that feeling and suppress it in the future.

I am thinking that maybe that I have unconsciously been learning social skills in the past couple years without realizing it, even though I wasn't trying to practice. I have never unconsciously learned a skill like this before and I think it is very strange. But it seems to make sense because I am still very awkward if I am distracted by something that keeps me from focusing my attention continuously on the person to whom I am talking, as if a deep train of thought had been disrupted, although I am not consciously aware of thinking hard about anything when I am in the interaction.

Also, I just got accepted to be a research assistant by a professor, and he actually seemed to like me too. I was afraid that I'd never be able to do anything like this because that requires making somebody like you.

I haven't tried to show any romantic interest in a girl yet, but there is a list growing larger by the day of girls who seemed friendly when I introduced myself to them and chatted briefly, and who I will likely see repeatedly this semester. I think meeting many people and showing real interest in few is how NT do it.

I hope this unusual friendliness isn't a fluke.

Great post! Good luck mate.

Getting people to like you in the real world is vastly different than getting people to like you in high school.

Also, finding the right crowds does help.

If you want to make friends then why are you only talking to attractive women? You seem to have a good thing going right now so perhaps you should expand your horizons!

Sometimes people will like you because they sense you are a genuine, kind, and interesting person, even if you seem awkward and not socially skilled.
Some people can see behind the social facade and see the real person. Autistic people are very lovable.

I've lived so long without good friends that it doesn't feel as though I need any. I usually make a few male acquaintances every once in a while by accident anyway.

So what do you do when a person in the group moves towards your direction and faces you? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to make conversation with this person?

If by "trick" you mean some sort of routine, then no I don't. NT usually begin conversations about something that was/is in their immediate vicinity, or sometimes about things that you talked about previously, so having a set conversation topic does not work. Since a lot of the people I talk to are in class, it is not very hard to ask them about homework or something like that. Also once you have a few acquaintances, it is easy to meet their acquaintances through them.

For instance I started a conversation with a girl while she was talking to somebody who I met about an hour before, which allowed for an easy introduction, and during the conversation I asked her what her major was. It was electrical engineering, and I found out during class that apparently the electrical engineering majors have to take a class about the electro-magnetic force, and that the way they teach the class is different than how physicists are taught it (which is how I took the class), so I told her that I was curious about how electrical engineers learn about the subject (which is true), so I asked her if she could tell me about it when she learns it. So I think I did several things right in that I started the conversation in a spontaneous way, I showed interest in her (girls like that), and I set up an excuse (which I am sincerely interested in) for us to talk again. Using the class as an excuse to talk again leaves open the possibility that I am not actually that interested in her, which is something that NT actually seem to like because it seems like they think that you're stupid if you emotionally commit yourself to a person too quickly. At the end of the conversation she said, "It was nice talking to you," and "I'll be sure to tell you about that class," (approximate quotes), so it sounds like she was telling me that she appreciated the interaction and that she is interested in having more.

I initiate about 2/3 of the interactions I have. I actually forget about eye contact a lot, but I do look at people sometimes, and the topic of conversation is often abstract, so maybe there is not as much of an expectation to maintain eye contact in less personal topics, or maybe the people I've talked to recently are just more accepting than usual.