Moved to a new location, still unable to connect to people

No, I don't watch many movies, I don't even watch TV. I've probably watched less movies than anyone else I know. I didn't even pick up reading until last year. Thus, I'm pretty sure I'm not quite as heavily influenced by media drama as I might be otherwise. This might be your problem. It's potentially problematic in two ways: 1. It sounds like you've cut yourself off from easy topics of conversation--because books, movies, television, and sports really are easy topics of conversation with people you don't know well. I've completely relied on similar television viewing habits to forge friendships in places I wouldn't have otherwise (office jobs). "Did you see last night's episode of LOST?" is a great way to draw someone out of their shell and find a common ground. And 2. It sounds like you're not really interested in the inner workings of the lives of people. And talking about people is interesting. If you look at the clip of the conversation you provided, your friend was interested in talking about her interaction with another person--and you were interested in probing her about what she likes about a cafe. The key is gossip. Gossip--that is, talking about the interactions and the personal lives of others--is where you'll forge deeper friendships, because gossiping not only exchanges information and provides conversation fodder but also makes it clear where alliances lie. You're willing to gossip with someone, which means that you trust them and they trust you. I've known few people who didn't gossip who maintained deep, enduring friendship; those who did had to work extra hard to forge alliances about other things (shared interests), but I also noticed that people around them often seemed a bit uncomfortable. If someone won't gossip with you (and it doesn't need to be vicious or judgmental gossip--just conversation about the lives of other people works), it's often seen as them not liking or trusting you. Also, hating things is a good way to forge deeper friendships. Really, I mean it! I've made lasting friendships over holding strong opinions about, say, disliking a band or TV show or book. People love to talk about what they don't like, and why. It says at least as much as it does about holding interests in common, if not more.

I agree with asking the other person a question. My father once gave me some really valuable advice with regard to making friends. The gist of it was that most people really enjoy talking about themselves and a solid way to engage them and help instill feelings of goodwill from them to you is to ask them questions about themselves. Think about how it feels when someone shows interest in you-- do you tend to have warmer feelings towards the asker? A good silence-breaker is to ask some thoughtful questions that are tailored to the individual with whom you are speaking, and then really listen to the response, and then show that you were listening by asking more questions that go deeper into their original response.

Other people have addressed other things, I just wanted to address this: I also tend to take things too literally and have killed innumerable jokes before or reacted in a manner too casual or self-conscious whenever I was the butt of them. A very noticeable pattern to me throughout every social group I've been in is that people generally stop being playful with me very quickly as soon as they get to know me a little, even if they were initially. I'm pretty sure that tells me that I probably don't connect well with them. If you were to actively work on improving one thing, I think it would serve you well to react better in these situations -- not just when making friends, but in all aspects of life. Being the touchy one in a social situation is never a positive, for you or other people. If someone seems touchy, people are disinclined to get to know them better. If someone is reaching out to you by being playful, and then you make them feel bad/guilty/what-have-you -- not because you mean to, but because your reaction is to be self-conscious or kill the humor -- then it's a really uncomfortable feeling for them, especially because most people are not expecting that reaction in the least. No one likes to feel like everything was fine, they were doing everything they normally do, and then suddenly they've bothered someone they wanted to get to know better. It makes people stop and ask themselves things like, "Do I come across as mean to other people and I haven't noticed it? Do other people not think I'm funny? Does he just not like me? Did I do something?" and the 180-change in mood is unpleasant. Then you get a situation where people feel self-conscious in their behavior toward you. They're not going to act as genuine as they would otherwise. They won't interact with you as much as they would otherwise for fear of it going poorly. None of this means they don't like you or that you don't connect with them, you've just inadvertently created an obstacle to interacting with them. You recognize already that if people can't joke around with you, then there's not a lot left they can do with you. You mention that you're a good listener when people have problems, but if people don't feel comfortable enough with you to joke around with you, and they associate unexpected negative feelings with their interactions with you, they're definitely not going to approach you when they're feeling emotionally troubled; they're going to go to someone who feels safer, whose reactions to their mundane behaviors don't make them feel off-kilter and self-conscious. On top of all this, humor and teasing (not mean-spirited) is a prominent and important part of the way people grow closer and express affection for each other. It seems like you recognize that it plays a part in friendship but maybe you underestimate the part it plays. I'm not saying you have to be funny yourself -- you don't have to be funny to have friends -- but if people try to grow closer to you and express affection for you through humor and they get shut down, then it kills a connection before it can form. The optimal response to good-natured teasing is to laugh; people who are willing to laugh at themselves come across as unthreatening, friendly, and generally more mature, and their reactions make other people feel safer and closer to them. One could also tease back after laughing, but I wouldn't recommend it if it's not your thing. I would examine what it is that makes you feel self-conscious in those situations -- is it that you're sensitive about not having any close friends, so when you're in a social situation and trying your best and someone teases you, you worry they might not be joking? Do you simply feel uncomfortable with having the attention turned toward you? Do you feel as if you're being put on the spot to react? It could be any number of things, but it should be worth thinking about. Could you use your newfound sense of peace to feel less self-conscious in those situations?

Thank you for the replies! I didn't expect so many so quickly. First off, I'm not depressed. Not anymore. No, I don't watch many movies, I don't even watch TV. I've probably watched less movies than anyone else I know. I didn't even pick up reading until last year. Thus, I'm pretty sure I'm not quite as heavily influenced by media drama as I might be otherwise. Perhaps I'm sounding a bit desperate for a really deep relationship, but this is the case: I do NOT like hanging out with my friends. I've had certain friends for years back in the US, and I really feel that I did try to work at the relationship. I think when I hang out with someone several times a week in group settings, try to talk with them as much as I feel I can, and find 2 years later that I feel like I did with them when I met them, then I feel like something is wrong. Especially when it happens for half of my life with most of the people that I think are enjoyable people, but that I personally don't enjoy hanging out with because all I ever do is sit around trying to think of something to talk about. Yes, I am quiet. And I have every right to be. But I don't WANT to be quiet. Sitting around observing people for years gets boring and lonely. I want to at least be able to say to ask someone to coffee without a group setting without us finding out after we meet 1 on 1 that we just kind of sit there for an hour sipping coffee and not really saying anything. There really is no pressure on me to direct a conversation anymore. That's what the first half of my post was about. I hang out with these people that I mentioned. I don't really talk much. I'm cool with that. But I can't really see them as friends either. I enjoy the company, but I don't really have fun with them. It's still better than being alone though, so hey, take what I can get, yah? Anyways, please take into consideration that I am NOT quite the same person as in my previous post and I am not desperate. But I think it'd be cool to get some answers more quickly if I can, and I think you all might have some useful advice. So please, keep replying, but don't give me advice about depression, I don't really need it. I just want to know your opinion about the issue at hand.

jbenben: [em]Did you know science has proved the same cells in our brains are in our hearts? It's TRUE![/em] Given that they're also http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19783483?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=4, I don't think that proves anything about human nature. Except that we're pretty well-innervated.

I just want someone that's fun to hang out with. I don't want someone that I can tell all my problems to over and over and that will give me hugs and stuff. I mean, that'd be nice, but I have people who care about me and would listen to my problems already. What those same people cannot do though is just kind of chill with me and have fun. People who are fun to hang out with are people who care about you. Conversely, you are fun to hang out with when you care about people. It's tip of the iceberg when people chill out and have fun. What's observed is based on emotional sharing. Meanwhile, what you say you want is: 1. NOT someone you want to tell your problems to 2. NOT someone you want a hug from 3. NOT someone that cares about you 4. Someone to ONLY chill with, nothing else Sounds like you want a situation that contains no emotional sharing, yet contains companionship and fun. The situation has been unobtainable because it doesn't exist. Companionship and fun depend on emotional sharing. In terms of concrete advice, I recommend you work on problematic idea #3 first. The people you've been hanging out with DO care about you... it's too late, you can't stop them. If they didn't care, they wouldn't have sat through so many awkward conversations and uncomfortable silences without calling you out. So you need to decide what you want to do about it. Do you want to ditch those people, because you were NOT looking-for-someone-to-care-about-you, you were looking-for-someone-to-CHILL-OUT-with-ONLY-dammit? Or do you want to revise the way you're thinking about this whole thing?

"it is difficult to invite them to a one-on-one to get to know them." Try this: Near the end of the group event, or by e-mail afterwards, say to Person X, "Hey, I was really interested in hearing more about your scuba vacation/your experience training dogs/your really interesting course of study, but I didn't want to derail the whole conversation -- would you like to get coffee next week and chat about it?" Of course said however feels natural to you. That lets you tie together the group and one-on-one experiences and have both, and is a very natural segue into a more individual relationship with someone.

BTW, I got this technique of going from group to one-on-one from my quietest friend. She's also very upfront, if people ask her if she's okay, or having a good time, or mute, about just saying, "Oh, I'm just very quiet in groups, they make me feel shy, but I always enjoy hanging out and listening." I know that kind of openness isn't for everyone, but it really helped me understand her when I was getting to know her, although she probably said it four or five times before I believed her and started to get her! I feel like it took me longer to get to know her than a lot of people, because she is very quiet and earnest, she doesn't small-talk a lot, she likes to have real conversations, and she is pretty shy, but she's one of the nicest people I know and the effort to get to know her was worth it. (She also laments her difficulty in making friends because she's so shy and quiet.) She also isn't a particularly witty-funny person, and when she finds something amusing she usually just smiles rather than laughs, but she's still fun/pleasant to be with. She's always willing to keep me company or try a new thing with me, even if it's a crazy thing, and she's genuinely interested in my life. I will say I do sometimes hesitate to call her because she seems so self-contained that I don't want to intrude on her and feel like I might be imposing, and I know that's just because she's so quiet, but I sometimes feel that way anyway. (With her, I get around it by e-mailing, I feel less intrusive that way and she can ignore me if she's feeling super-quiet!) But hopefully knowing there's someone else out there who's like you in some ways who is a very valued friend, without having to change a thing about herself, is helpful.

You remind me of a friend of mine who I strongly suspect is somewhere on the Aspergers spectrum. Here are the bits that stood out to me in your post and follow-ups:Lily: ...so, I go to Starbucks all the time, and there's always this guy...*tells story, finishes*Me: (Genuinely entertained) *Laughs* That's cute. Why did you talk to him anyways?I also tend to take things too literally and have killed innumerable jokes before or reacted in a manner too casual or self-conscious whenever I was the butt of them. A very noticeable pattern to me throughout every social group I've been in is that people generally stop being playful with me very quickly as soon as they get to know me a little, even if they were initially.Perhaps I'm not asking the right kinds of questions, and thus I'm not getting enough information about people. Without the right information, I can't ask further questions more tailored to the individual.I think I kill jokes not because I look like a deer in headlights or a confused child, but because I'm so literal and technical about things.Me: (Realizes that the situation was supposed to be humorous and that I killed it, but that it's too late to do much about it)I thought to myself, hey, if she spends a lot of her time at Starbucks, it's something important to her. Maybe I should dig deeper on the topic. Too bad that was the wrong idea, I should have talked about the kitty like PhoBWan said. Unfortunately even after going through situations like this for years on years I seem to STILL have a really bad sense of understanding what people want to talk about.I actually made an effort to study about celebrities and cars a bit, I say study because I really found it boring and I couldn't figure out why the hell my friends had an interest in things they could not buy and about people who they would probably never really know. [SNIP] So...this route didn't really work for me, in fact it frustrated me because I practically felt like I was doing chores.My friend who is like this is a nice person, but it's hard work for me to hang out with her because she doesn't get a lot of social cues: body language, inference, facial expressions, hints. I can't say to her "So, I'm really busy," and expect her to realise that we need to wrap things up. I need to say "I need to work right now." Once I realised that, I also realised that while it would be rude to say things so directly to other people, it was required with her and she didn't perceive it as rude. But I need to switch modes with her. I can't playfully tease her because she gets confused or hurt. So I don't. I think our discussions are difficult for her too, because she knows that she's missing a lot of information and she doesn't understand why it's hard for people to talk to her. She keeps trying to do conversations 'right', but she's missing a lot of the social cues, so she's in the dark. It's not that she's not interesting (she totally is), but she doesn't follow conversational norms. She doesn't do small talk. She doesn't do http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel. She doesn't get sarcasm or implications. She says everything very directly and therefore can seem very rude. She doesn't have a great sense of things you can ask about versus things that are private. And, to top it all off, I don't think she's very aware of this. She just knows she has to work hard at conversations and seems to be doing them wrong. With your question to Starbucks girl, I see you trying to figure out why she would interact with another person, rather than understanding that and laughing about the interaction's weirdness. I see you studying gossip and celebrities and not getting it at all. Not "Yeah, not really up my alley" but "what the hell is this? I don't get it." I see you realising too late that there was a joke somewhere in the conversation but you missed the indirect meaning of your friend's statement and therefore missed the joke. Happily, even if you don't 'have' Aspergers, you can still take advantage of the tools they use for picking up on these mysterious social cues. Have you tried looking into that and seeing if it helps?