In a comment on my post “Things not to say….” , Michelle asked
So really how did you get from not having any friends or dates to having a wife and 2 kids ?
Well, the short answer is …. “my peers grew up and so did I (a little)”. But a longer answer is perhaps warranted. When I was a teen I had no friends (either romantic or otherwise). Things got a lot better in college, where I actually had a couple dates, and made friends with a couple people. There are, I think, a few reasons for this. First, as I said, both I and my peers grew up. Second, there’s a big shift from high school to colllege – from adolescence to young adulthood. Adolescence is about fitting in. Young adulthood is about standing out. In adolescence, many people define themselves by the crowd they hang out with – their clique. Even if you’re in one of the less popular cliques, you’re likely in one. I wasn’t. I went to a small high school, and there weren’t others like me. But I went to a huge university (NYU). At a big school there’s someone like almost anybody. So it was easier to find cliques. But, also, young adulthood is about differentiating yourself from others.
But even in college, I wasn’t a huge success socially (I’m STILL not a huge success socially). Post college, things got better slowly. I had a couple of reasonably successful romantic relationships (that is, they lasted many months of regular dating). Then I met my wife, and things just happened. But I didn’t get married until I was 30. And most of my first dates ended quickly and not well.
Thanks for sharing. I thought it might be that. I studied Mathematics and Computer Science at McGill and found that most of my peers were all weird…in some way…
Any of course mature people have different standards and expectations than little ones.
My daughter is 6 and is quite social but still she doesn’t pick up on some queues like when she is hugging a friend and they try to move away. She just doesn’t get why someone wouldn’t want a hug. She is frequently hurt and the other kids are starting to “notice” that her responses are not the same as theirs.
I said to her tutor yesterday that I am not worried about her in the future. She can be whatever she wants and live by her rules. (rich, poor, entrepreneur, artist, mom, athlete…whatever) it is the next 10 years or more of schooling that worry me. The kids and the teachers and of course the “system”.