I am a 30 year old female, and I have come to the realization that I simply don’t know how to make friends as an adult. We all know it’s harder to do it as you get older but that is not what I mean. I mean, the last time I ever made friends – people I connected with on a deeper level than just casual friendly basis, I was 14. I have a couple of friends I see every now and again, and we’re pretty open in terms of sharing our lives and thoughts, but I still feel like we’re not really friends. We’re more friendly people who have things in common who happen to get along who meet every once in a while.
What I mean, again (sorry, I’m not well read as you can probably guess, and I have ADHD so it’s hard to say what I’m thinking or write it wo getting distracted mi sentence) is: my friend broke up with her boyfriend. I didn’t know it. We’re 5 women, and the other 4 knew. Only I didn’t. I don’t even know how. I never asked. She didn’t wanna talk about it either, I guess they had talked about it. I missed one outing and basically missed this entire event in my friend’s life. This would have never happened with my highschool friends. I hope I’m explaining it well enough? Being excluded like that just feels odd for some reason. It wasn’t malicious, I just happened to have work that day they met up.
But aside from this, I suck at communication in general – I just don’t know why or how I should be. I was never taught it either. Growing up in an Eastern culture/family, you learn one thing: shut up, keep your head down and never speak up because you might piss the wrong person off. This hasn’t worked for me so far. But when I do try to speak up, I come off aggressive or rude or demanding or even as if I’m blaming the other person. Even worse, English is not my first language so a lot of the times I will sound too casual when trying to be tactful.
I hate self help books. I think they’re BS through and through. but I’m fine with books written by actual experts (not life coaches or motivational speakers, and no offense to life coaches) like psychologists and MDs and PHDs in the fields. Books that might even be used in an academic setting. Books that offer actual guide that makes it almost pointless to have to go to therapy to learn these skills.
I wanna be able to say what I mean, what I want, say if a situation is unfair, praise people without sounding phoney, and cultivate closer more meaningful friendships with diverse groups of people. I wanna have a higher EQ. I wanna have better people skills.
by Regular_Durian_1750