The only person I am really around is my boyfriend whom I met online. I’ve “hung out” with online friends but I never would have anyone in person to hangout with. I was homeschooled growing up and only really played with others under the age of 10/11. Had a friend but she become my sister’s friend by time I was 13 so I didn’t really hangout with her, she was also homophobic towards me at the time and extremely religious which pushed me away.
In high school(only went for two years and was lightly bullied by others) I “hung out” with one girl after homecoming and all she did was sit on her phone instead of talking to me while I stayed the night on a tiny couch in her cigarette smell infused house. Outside of that I have only really socialized at jobs.
My last job I was at I met a girl who I was alone with for hours just building boxes for the remodel, talked for a while. After that we would talk some but nothing crazy. I left the job a while ago and she quit shortly after, talked to her on and off on Snapchat, would feel annoying and then wouldn’t talk to her for weeks.
Recently she asked to hangout soon out of the blue.. I haven’t been able to/lied about working today. I’m so anxious because she’s such a cool person and seems to have friends and so much more life experience than I do. I’ve stalked her on all her socials which is bad but her Twitter she seems to like similar things to me and even likes this one more obscure song by a popular artist that I used to love years ago. I’m worried that I’m going to be too off putting or weird, too high strung on anxiety and awkwardness. After so many years of not really hanging out with others besides my partner it is very hard. I also have trouble getting things right away at times and feel like others think I’m an idiot.
2 comments
Best tip for conversing: ask questions. Use each thing she says as a springboard.
Don’t be afraid to be anxious either, it’s okay to just say you’re feeling weird and it’s nobody’s fault.
One thing to consider is that it can be difficult to hang out with someone and just talk. It works for skilled conversationalists or people who are familiar with each other. But with people you worked with, it’s hard to predict how the chemistry will be. So with that in mind, try to do something while hanging out, like an activity. A sport for instance. This enables the “dead time” of no talk to not create awkwardness and discomfort. The next tip I have is that you should prepare like 5 questions in advance and memorize them, and use them if conversation starts to lag. They should be questions that can generate conversations, not questions like, “do you like turtles?”.