Pretty much everyone figures out how to actually socialize, maintain relationships, have new relationships, improve them, and date at high school, MAYBE college at the latest. I'm 30, almost 31. Did I miss the boat on learning that and having a semblance of happiness in my life, and there's no going back.
I've tried it all. I've tried social hobbies, I've tried going out, I've tried putting myself out there. The basics of social skills elude me. I am, at best, a filler friend. I can't see myself being any more than that, and I think it's too late for me to get better.
I think I doomed myself to a life of loneliness, all because of the bad choices I made. The only possible hope I can have is maybe reincarnation is real and I can suck less in the next life.
I might be too doomer but you should try to find ND people. From my experience, most NTs don't want to talk about their interests or opinions that much, but instead prefer empty conversations which make me feel that I want to disappear, so I don't enjoy their company either. I am not roasting them, they have hidden depths, but you have to get closer to them first. ND's are much more interesting to me, and our communication styles match more neatly so the "awkwardness" isn't there.
You don't lack social skills, you just lack the necessary tools to communicate with neurotypicals (body language, passive social norm absorption etc). If you try to mask and create an NT-compatible personality you will suffer in the long run, that kind of acting everyday takes its toll on you
Seconding this. I found my S.O. and current friend group in my mid 30s and part of why I adore them all so much is that diagnosed or undiagnosed we all have recognized we're ND in some capacity and it makes us all so much more able to understand each others communication and social ticks. Its seriously wild when you're with a group of people who match your wavelength and you realize your weird social behavior is just kinda the norm.
What the hell is a filler friend?
Yo we’re grouping up to go clubbing. Already got dps for picking people up, tank for the drugs and booze and a healer if someone accidentally starts feeling stuff, just need a fourth for the last Uber seat?
Who are we inviting to the dinner party? Oh, you know, a bunch of people we like and want to hang out with and one person no one really cares about.
No one does this!
You are not a filler friend or a filler person for that matter.
To quote a post:
"Does anyone else feel like a 'filler friend'?friend's? Like, you just sit there, never contributing to the conversation, and when you do, no one notices. You don't really have a purpose or do anything and just kinda sit there existing. No one ever invites you or asks to do anything with you, and people even make group plans in front of you and neglect your presence. It's not that anyone means for this to happen, it just kinda does?"
I want to preface this by saying explicitly that your experiences are not “all in your head”.
First: That’s your post from six months ago. I’m glad you quoted it, because it makes how you feel much clearer, but I’m putting the name to it in service of building a point, so please don’t mistake this for an attempt at a call out.
Looking up the idea of a “filler friend” on several search engines turns up a bunch of Reddit threads and a book with two pairs of sunglasses on the cover. Nothing I could find before 2010.
So the idea comes from either Reddit or a paperback novel and there aren’t many people talking about it.
When I read both your descriptions and the descriptions of others, a filler friend seems to be just a quiet person or someone who doesn’t actively reach out to people in order to socialize. That’s always been a social type and it doesn’t make someone “filler”.
Just because someone put a negative spin on something doesn’t make it true or different.
Second: you’re not destined to be anything. The whole point of communism is that people can exert control over their environments and themselves. When someone says all your decisions are pre-determined by either your surroundings or your biology just walk away from them. You’ll never convince them otherwise, they invented a mechanistic understanding of the entire world around them in order to hold that position.
You’re not stuck on some path forever because you can make choices.
So no one is a filler friend and you’re not destined for anything.
Now: when people make plans in front of you, invite yourself. The world isn’t an episode of mean girls. This isn’t high school. Say “room for one more?” Like Igor if it makes it easier. When someone makes a comment like “look who decided to come out of their cave!” Say “yeah, gotta make sure not to forget what daylight feels like. What’s good here?”
I’m not sure this is you, but don’t expect to be able to make a bunch of friends based on your hobby interests either. Your friends are the people you work with, play basketball with, your neighbors, the postman you see every day, the regulars at your local bar and all the other everyday people.
We go through school thinking that friends are the groups of people you try to be a part of, but once you’re not literally locked in a room with thirty other people eight hours a day five days a week, your friends are the people you just are a part of because you see them everyday.
people even make group plans in front of you and neglect your presence
anyone who did this would be my acquaintance, not a friend. When I make group plans everyone who hears about it directly is invited.
I don't want to totally invalidate your experience, because there are different levels of friends. I have some people that I get along well enough to invite to a small party and be happy to see them and hear what they've been up to. I have some people that I am happy to spend 8 hours with just me and them. A lot of your friends may very well be in this first group. Ideally this is a mutually-understood relationship. I also understand that I'm not close friends with these people, and I'm not offended when they do stuff without me (showing that I am not their close friend) just like they're not offended when I do stuff without them.
If you feel like all your friends are in this first group, there's probably a mismatch. Maybe your friends erroneously think you want to be loose friends; maybe you have a pattern of not showing up to events or not organizing hangouts of your own or accidentally sending some other signal. Maybe you're the one receiving signals they don't intend to send, and they'd happily come to something you organized or otherwise reciprocate.
The thing that I try to remember (and it's harder for men, we're poorly socialized and all seem to be bad at this) is that it takes two to tango. I should be organizing about half of all 1-on-1s, and about 1/n of n-person hangouts. If I want to deepen my friendships with people by seeing them more, I need to be taking the lead on more than "my share". If they reciprocate they'll match the effort.
I think you're getting bogged down by what I call narrativistic inertia (there's probably a better term for it). We exist in a complex world, inundated by a constant stream of data, and we make sense of it through associations and patterns and selections that coalesce into a sort of narrative that we use to understand everything and ourselves. These narratives are both useful and limiting. Useful in that they allow us to make some sort of sense out of chaos, but limiting in that we're necessarily ignoring or de-emphasizing a large portion of the data presented to us, or arbitrarily associating some data points to other data points. It's tremendously helpful to identify when an emphasis or association isn't serving us so we can attempt to adjust the narrative we're using to understand ourselves. Psychedelics may be useful here.
Unnecessarily long-winded intro aside, the idea that it's "too late" to do something or become someone is a restrictive, self-producing narrative. People develop new skills and relationships throughout their entire life. A person who wasn't able to follow a mythical narrative of social interaction throughout early life isn't just done, there's no actual ship that's sailed, no barrier for entry that only allows 20-somethings to socialize.
That's not to ignore the underlying material factors that make forming relationships difficult. Capitalist alienation, consumerization of identities, enclosure of public spaces, interpersonal difficulties all increase the energy required to form connections with people. But a defeatist ideal has no chance of influencing the material conditions for the better.
The reality is no one actually has it "figured out" by high school, college, or any age. We all strive towards an unachievable pure connection with others, never quite succeeding but potentially having some cool experiences along the way.
This is all abstract and big-picture, the little every-day strategies and skills are something that must also be examined. But in my personal experience at least, a defeatist self-narrative is a difficult foundation to build from.
You sound like you have a really low opinion of yourself and that sucks. You're obviously informed, you have opinions and you've got the ability to get yourself out there. I'm not saying you need to socially pull yourself up by the social bootstraps, just that you have all the pieces and sometimes it's not up to us whether they fall where they need. And as ND people I do think we get less chances, especially early in life when we're already busy dealing with being different and all the fun that comes from that.
I don't know your situation or anything but you do remind me of myself, and the advice I'd give to me is to please not despair, to continue to put yourself out there and express yourself whenever you can, you're not filler you're a person and you have a lot to bring to people's lives. Keep rolling the dice
to continue to put yourself out there
i'm so goddamn tired
For a while I thought it was my personal choices that brought me here too, but it's more complicated than that.
Covid and my fucked up family derailed my social life. If you're made to feel ashamed of honest communication and events like a pandemic make you insular, it's gonna suck making new friends and maintaining connections.
Under capitalism it feels like the direct sincerity a lot of ND people express is met with doubt or opportunism. People are made desperate to get ahead and are skeptical of anyone who just wants to cut the bullshit and talk.
Capitalism forces us to spend money to socialize. It takes away our time and energy with unnecessary work and then underpays us. Something as cool as the internet has been commodified to the point where we can't meet people with aligning interests.
It all comes back to the mistrust and personal responsibility narratives. Friends and relationships are treated like investments you need to research and vet.
I don't know how to solve this exactly, but I just wanted to emphasize it's not down to your bad choices when you live in a society that wasn't built for you.
Edited to add - you found a community here, for example, but external societal factors have made it unsafe. Reactionary people, scammers, trolls, doxxing, and just anti-capitalist sentiments make it hard to connect even here. It's not a you problem because this shit happens offline too.
choices
i'm in a similar situation and feel like we never actually had a choice, or a chance. the social conditions for prosperity and companionship are denied to us both by capitalism atomizing everyone and the ableism of social norms.
and before anyone says any bullshit about finding ways to feel fulfilled despite being alone as though i haven't heard that before: my hobbies and online acquaintances don't hug me at night.
same here except I'm 33.
gg will never have any friends much less a sexual/romantic partner
I feel this.
I haven't spoken a word directly to another human in a week
if youre lgbt get involved in community work. if not, just say youre an ally and still get involved in community work but now you can be everyone's token straight.
I'm 31, I'm not as social as I was in my 20s but I was using booze and drugs as a crutch for social interaction anyway. I have some friends, i just don't always remember to reach out and talk to them. Now, I've socially kneecapped myself since I don't drive or have my own place, but I'm working on myself via my IT studies and obtaining my learners permit so that I can get back out in the world by 32, 33 at the latest. My main hobbies are e-skating and video games. Luckily there's a large e-skating community in my city, I'm just not in a position to go on group rides with them yet.
I guess I'm trying to say that it's not over for you at 30 or even later.
Nah, you didn't miss the boat. Or, you can still catch it anyways. I was agoraphobic for most of my 20s, was pretty bad socially before that too. I didn't figure out any of that stuff when I was young either. But I'm figuring it out now. I'm 33, went on my first date earlier this year, now have two great poly relationships (plus casual dates with other people), lots of friends, etc. My social life is pretty great. I even learned how to small talk decently well. It isn't easy, but it's possible! You can do it!
I will say that the majority of my friends and people I date are also queer ND people, it's so much easier to connect with other ND people.
I'm 33, went on my first date earlier this year, now have two great poly relationships (plus casual dates with other people)
how did you meet those people?
how did you get a social life and learn to small talk?
Basically dating apps for all of that. I learned to small talk and make good conversation through practice, just talking to a million people on apps and then meeting some of them. And the people I date and my friends are either people I met on the apps, or people I met through those people. I had up to 8 of them installed at one point (I've cut back now) and spent a couple hours a day on them.
This is some validation for my short-term lifeplan and I'm glad you took the time to write it.
yes you did and so did i lmao are you an alt i made in a dissociative state or what
at least i managed to hold onto like 1 high school friend but all the rest became toxic and/or drifted away. never really had a romantic partner except once for like 3 weeks.
you only get better at doing something by doing more of it
get out there and embarrass yourself
everyone did this before they were the life of the party
Others here are being helpful, so I'll just throw my 2 cents that friendships and social life are overrated. I have lots of what I call "close acquaintances" and they're fine people but I always wish they were fine email bots instead. Some people can definitely be happy without friends, dating and all that stuff.
