People Like You More Than You Know

I had an affair in my twenties with a man whose life could have been absolutely ruined because of it. He wasn't especially good looking, but he had beautiful blue eyes and I had a thing for blue eyes and told him how much I liked his blue eyes. We were not sleeping together at the time and it wasn't an unreasonable thing to say, given circumstances. This was a huge turning point in the relationship and he ended up nutcase levels of obsessed with me.

This man is the reason I did not use my first and last name online for many years -- because it is a fairly unique combination and I didn't want to be easily and readily found by him. Five years after I ditched him, he hired a fucking detective to track me down and called my house where I answered the goddamned phone in front of my children, like that isn't awkward as all hell.

No, he hadn't filed for divorce from his alcoholic wife. No, he hadn't left his incredibly conservative career. No, he absolutely was not in any position whatsoever to say "Oops, sorry. You can move in with me." if his phone call outed me to my husband and resulted in a divorce.

I'm not exaggerating when I say psycho asshole monster. It's only not been more of a debacle because avoiding drama is one of my skills, thankfully.

You make that sound like it's some kind of deliberate manipulation or something, some of us were just brought up with the idea that doing helpful things for people is expected and not really that big a deal, and it makes us uncomfortable when people make a big deal of it.

Pecking order nonsense.

People who are big believers in pecking order see you as "beneath" them if you compliment them. They then feel owed and like you are permanently required to kowtow to them and aren't allowed to quit.

Prosody and tone matching.

My son probably is incapable of these two things. He gets very negative social reactions from people all the time. Tone matching signals pecking order at a subconscious level. People aren't consciously aware of it.

I apparently tone match by default, which gets me read as deferential and servile. It works quite well when dealing with, for example, wait staff who routinely get mistreated. I get excellent service anywhere that I am a regular.

But people who do not perceive themselves as "below" me conclude I'm a doormat and they can wipe their boots on me.

Value signaling.

People get this idea that they are irreplaceable and I am being so nice because they are so incredibly amazingly rare and wonderful. I have found it works vastly better for me to be kind of indifferent and make sure they realize "there can be another you in a minute." Which annoys the fool out of me.

Slightly tangential, but my favorite post on this topic: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-unc...

I have a very long story from a peer's experiences about how taking mentoring a little far and becoming an advocate for a young engineer can create someone who is both entitled and incredibly lazy in a way that, I think, permanently damaged his career by training him exactly the wrong lessons about value and effort at exactly the wrong time.

Umm..I'm pretty sure men complementing women have it a lot worse.

I was in this position a few years ago and interpreted her complements as a romantic interest in me. I explored the situation by asking her out to lunch, inquiring as to whether she was dating, etc. I learned she had a boyfriend and that she was happy in the relationship so I backed off.

Admittedly it's anecdotal but I believe that there are simple and effective ways for both sexes to communicate interest, availability (or lack thereof) while still managing to remain respectful of yourself and others.

It's a numbers game.

We'd still be struggling with the positive and negative aspects of open source software if Linus hadn't existed, just as the first world war would probably have happened anyway if Gavrilo Princip hadn't precipitated it. Bear in mind that however good a coder Linus might be, RMS is still an influential figure for political reasons despite checking out of the coding business years ago. Politics, charisma of one sort or another, celebrity...

Like Stack Overflow. They got to where they are though encouraging ruthless curation and moderation via earning points and badges. And having won the Q&A industry, now they want to shed that image.

"Torvalds’s decision to step aside came after The New Yorker asked him a series of questions about his conduct for a story on complaints about his abusive behavior discouraging women from working as Linux-kernel programmers."

He is in disgrace.

I wonder if you (and I) sometimes fail to recognize when the person asking those questions is actually communicating something different (e.g., they want to become more friendly with you). But we fail to recognize that they're using a cultural idiom to do so.

A neuro-psychologist has told me that based on some testing I've had done, there's a decent chance I'd also test positive for Asperger's. And this kind of focusing on the literal without noticing that it pattern-matches a different, idiomatic interpretation would make sense for a person with Asperger's.

It reminds me of that line from the song What a Wonderful World, "I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do They're really saying I love you."

If that's what's really going on, perhaps the number of questions you're getting can seem less onerous?

Us nerds usually don't, but most people LOVE it.

(And even us, nerds etc, it's until we got a bond/trust with someone. Then you can't stop us from talking either -- e.g. in any sci-fi or tech convention where some nerds are gathered...).

I've started observing some upward trend over the past 2 months, so maybe I could offer some food for thought that doesn't cue the "Gee thanks" in your head.

- I felt rather apathetic about life for some time. I felt less uncomfortable around people and my mind felt less blank after caring about more things. I don't have a simple answer to "How do you care about things more?", but I can say more if you're interested.

- I feel like an outsider pretty often, which makes it hard to be myself around others. For example, I like to learn math, but I feel too embarrassed to answer that to "What do you like to do for fun?" Now I tell people about the more "acceptable" pasttimes that I've picked up recently, like some tidbits I've learned from cooking + asking for their cooking and taste advice. I don't find these cooking conversations as engrossing as when I can talk to someone else about math, but it's a medium between "don't have any interest in the other person" and "really want to be their best friend".

- I often fall into a state where I see most people around me as "NPCs". A game that helped me shift out of this was people-watching and story-telling. When passing people on sidewalks, I would take an extra second to watch their face and body language and guess what they were thinking or feeling.

- I sometimes come off as nervous, closed-off, or unengaging in conversation. Recording a couple of my conversations + listening to them helped me hear myself from 3rd person, and be more aware of when I interrupted people or when I sounded disengaged. There are a ton of hacks I learned for having more socially-acceptable body language. This helps me feel less nervous, so I spend fewer cycles worrying and a little bit more engaged in the conversation. Examples:

* I tend to not make eye contact because people's stares made me nervous; making eye contact with one of their eyes is much easier than both.

* I talk somewhat quietly and find it hard to raise my volume; I talked from a deeper part of my voice (which incidentally also calms me down).

* I would either cross my arms, put them behind my back, fidget with my hands, fidget with items, or put my hands in my pocket, all of which send a closed-off signal; when I don't have an item to hold, I try to leave my hands at my side and focus on touching my thumbs and index fingers as lightly as possible, which also calms me.

- I found myself pushing off responding to friends on Messenger/text because sometimes I didn't know what to say or because it takes too much effort to think of something to say. I found it helpful to practice responding immediately whenever possible.

- I had to keep reminding myself that even the most socially fluid people probably only click with at most 20% of people, so having "failed interactions" is very acceptable.

Ultimately, I think it's about being less distracted and more alert during conversations. My thoughts wander a fair amount, and I still have a long way to go before I'm fully present in these conversations. Feel free to email me if you want to share some thoughts privately; I'm still figuring this out and could use some other perspectives. :)

Whatever they say, just follow with something on subject. There's no "correct" answer in small talk.

Even straying off topic is OK -- see it as opening a new "sub-thread".

It is apt that you mention the military. I have heard from a few sources that the military is a really effective at teaching people to BS, but mainly due to long periods of sitting around waiting with little to do except goof off or shoot the breeze.