How close you can be to other people? This is a perpetually troubling question to me. I am an asocial person (or in plain English a complete jerk). I do not have social skills to interact with others. When people come and visit me at my home I have no clue what to talk to them. When I go and meet people (which happens rarely), I do not know what to speak to them. I have very few friends, something that I can count on one hand fingers, even with them I am not in touch for a long time. My wife tells me that I should be more active listener in order to be more socially conscious. My brother advised me to take interest in others lives. I find that simply boring, I realize this appears almost selfish but it is not. I mean I am not that interested in my life too! (perhaps it is too short for my taste :-)).
I realized this inability (of being asocial) very early in my life. In school I would befriend with only those people who would follow me or listen to me. Thus I had very small group of friends. They are very loyal but I did not follow-up with them in my later life. It continued in the college life. Although I think we had a good group in the college.
The experience of socializing with opposite sex has always been a disaster, first the girls that would befriend me would be either little light in the head or primarily interested in getting some work done out of me. There were some exceptions who had crush or too many hormones (in either case that would still count as category of light-in-head). The fact is even at this age, I do not have a friend of opposite sex other than my wife.
My social circle is too small, and I think I am primarily responsible for it. I can never figure out how to develop the social relationship. If I remain too distant and meet occasionally then I think I am not being nice. If I am too close, I almost feel as if the other person is getting uncomfortable with my kind of closeness – and frankly I am uncomfortable in close relationships too! It almost feels like invasion of privacy – when all people are asking is what you had for dinner. I think there is some unwritten social rule about how close you can get to people, just like on the road, if you can not see the rear wheels of the car in front, maybe you are just too close. On the other hand if you can not read the number of the car, may be you are too far off.
It is same thing in social life, if you don't remember the name of an acquaintance then you are far off, you are discussing deoderants and coffee habits you are practically tailgating!
