Hi
@Victor Krumph, welcome!
I’m someone who knows a lot of people but at the same time, am someone whom those same people I know don’t know. I have the same conversations with them, usually along the lines of ‘hi/how’s your day/how’s so-n-so/what did you do this week/plans for the weekend’. Nobody seems to notice. I do have some more interesting conversations at times with these people but I’ve come to realize that this is all they want from me. They’re happy in their lives and they don’t see me as a friend prospect.
(Now, not to be too hard on them—they’re terrific people and I am welcome to join in their activities. But the timing doesn’t work for me and it’s always in a fairly large group, and I always end up being the fly on the wall in a large group, so pursuing that further hasn’t been something I’ve wanted to do.)
I’ve also come to realize that when people expect a certain presentation from you, and you try to alter your relationship, they’re not necessarily going to reciprocate. That’s not on you—that’s them. For example, there is a nice couple associated with my husband’s job who have always been very welcoming and supportive. I was facing a decision concerning managing my time and visiting my niece who was about to have surgery and thought I’d reach out to the lady—because she’s really good with kids and managing life in general. So I did—and her response didn’t seem to fit my scenario. “Oh I don’t know anything about that, I can’t advise you.” Okay, that’s fine. But the way in which it was done—and maybe this will include some of the difficulty you face—made me think that the openness of asking her a personal question had just crossed some social boundary. It has changed our conversations. She still asks me how I’m doing but now I understand she’s only expecting an “I’m fine” or some short, positive report. In return, I only ask her about her family. It makes for a very artificial feeling conversation for me, but I realize that to her it’s quite engaging and deep. (I think.)
The take-away from this for you might be, if you want better friendships than you have, you might have to look elsewhere. It’s hard to retrain the ones you have because it can be too great a paradigm shift for them. But don’t shortchange them, either. First see if you can start those better friendships from among those you know, just be aware that if it doesn’t work out, it may not be you. It might be them.
I, too, am not good at finding quality friendships either. Recently, I made the very conscientious decision to allow in one of those many acquaintances I’ve known for years. She’s amazing. She’s also better at managing friendships than I am. But something has come to light recently (involving a host of other parties) and despite her assurance that we will still be friends when all the pieces fall back down, I am deeply concerned over something I said in confidence to someone in a position over us —months before opening up to her as a friend & learning more about her as a person —will negatively affect this thing she loves doing. Actions have consequences. My aunt says it’s obvious those other people were looking for an excuse & I’m not to blame, but I am distraught about those consequences nonetheless. There is nothing I can do. So even though I found an exceptional friend, it sort of has turned out that I’m not quite the same caliber of person I thought I was.
What I’m trying to say that might (or might not) be useful to you is to consider your actions as a friend before seeking out the sort of friend you’re looking for. Are there areas you can change is? Nonverbals are just a wee small part of communication. Maybe you have some strong points you can emphasize instead?
Here’s a further example. My brother is like you in that he’s the life of the party, the comedian, the one everyone likes to have a good time with. But when someone needs the snow shoveled off their roof, he might or might not show up. He’s a bit unreliable. He’s a computer genius but people have told me they won’t let him solve their tech issues because he doesn’t finish what he starts—often leaving their computer in a sadder state than before. (He knows this, too.) So he’s not only not reliable, his word isn’t good, either. This causes people to not trust him—but they’re happy to have a superficially good time with him.
Now, I am not all implying anything about yourself with this illustration; I’m only saying that friendships have other components than nonverbal elements. Neither example I’ve shared depended on nonverbals, but rather on trustworthiness, honesty, and dealing with consequences. These are bigger picture ideas than nonverbals.
In fact, with my friend, maybe only 3% of my friendship with her is in person. Instead, we’re either on the phone, we share articles to read & ‘talk’ about over text, I send emails with photos I’ve taken or things I’ve written. Her preferred method of talking is by text, so we have these great, extended conversations on one topic that last several days. (I really wasn’t interested in having text based conversations before this.) Very little of our friendship relies on using nonverbal language. Which is probably a good thing—she’s very concerned about saying, as she puts it, unfortunate things, and I tend to either let the other have the floor all the time or I don’t pick up on when the other person has lost interest or moved on in the conversation, so being able to read our conversations in text has been a great help for both of us.
I hope something here has been helpful & that you can find ideas to help you work around your disability. Someone who accepts you as a friend will accept that part of you as well. Only, we can’t forget to accept other people where they’re at, either. Sometimes the friendships we have can’t be deep, and while we must take responsibility for our own actions, we also have to realize it’s not always on us. Or at least these are the things I’ve learned.
.
