The "social skills" dellusion

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Sounds like someone I used to share an apartment with. He was a post -graduate psychologist. Calculated and boring and always concerned about acting and saying the "right" thing. Constantly upset with my inapropriateness.

I have become more aware of the rules but it doesn't come natural at all. It drains me and I think I'm done trying for a while. The past week I've had a social engagement every night (dn't know how that happened ) and I haven't enjoyed it much. It seems like my choice is either to become a robot, like that guy, or having people think I'm weird when I show some "personality", nervously laughing in order to be accommodating.

I consider abandoning all efforts to be social and rather focus my energy on my interests.

I used to use social skills a lot as learned from Dale Carnegie, but it made me feel like a robot a lot of the time. And my true feelings kept escaping like trying to keep a whole lot of snakes in a box.

I think now I will use the social skills I have learned as sort of damage control- a tool to use to not make the biggest mistakes I could make. But apart from that, I think I would like to go back to my natural personality for most part. It's easier and more fun.

The hard part has been trying to figure out which situations I will switch into Dale Carnegie 101 and which situations I will be myself.

I think one thing it has taught me is to try and cultivate friends who have a great sense of humour and are more difficult to offend and shock!

All the social skills we may learn will never compensate for the lack of social intuition we lack. It's like dieting to achieve blond hair or blue eyes. Now if there was a way to learn social intuition, that'd be a solution. But there isn't.

I agree--bingo--to the previous poster.

"social intuition" is what's lacking. I believe even the emotion can be added along with the prompts and cues, but the intuition, the gut feeling that I should say this or that, is missing.

I agree too.

My gut feeling is that usually I have said something wrong and missed the cues

The clues are the annoyed other person

oh, I sooo know what you mean about the only clue being the other's annoyed face!

I was remembering today how I once was touring the south of France, and alas! to my dismay I booked a room at an amazingly beautiful hotel house, BUT where it was customary for the guests to form a bond between them and with the owners of the hotel. All of them lovely, interesting, high level people, but I went from one social blunder to the other there. One of them announced they'd bought a house, and everyone was showing interest by asking questions about the house, so I wanted to follow the lead and ask a question about the house. My choice of a question was probably awfully wrong, judging by the woman's look of offense on her face. I had asked how many rooms the house had, and she answered: "Well, I don't know, it didn't occur to me to ask!" Obviously, Europeans don't mind so much the number of rooms in a huge house they buy. That's a huge, central concern where I live (tiny country with tiny homes), but I had translated my "social skills" wrong - this is why I say having social skills is worth NOTHING. It's the intuition about how to use them where we flunk miserably. LOL, nowadays it just makes me laugh!

I was at a meeting years ago and afterwards we went onto a social function with some bigwigs as there are called. I got talking to one bigwig at the buffet table, I had been told he was the owner of a large egg production company. Now I don't always connect things together and when he asked if I would like an egg sandwich, I told him, no, I was not eating eggs at the moment because of the Salmonella scare at the time. Oh dear, he had supplied the eggs for the function and it never occurred to me that I had said anything wrong until weeks later when someone mentioned it. I wondered why he walked off.

Even when I found out, I felt no embarrassment, all I thought was that maybe I shouldn't have said that. I forgive myself, I was a very young woman at the time.

I think social skills are useful, I think the most useful things a person can do is try and figure out what would be the most offensive and try not to say those things.

Also, trying to manage emotions and potential meltdowns is also very useful. Especially trying to pay attention to our sensory comfort levels.

But, I think on the whole if we try and focus on our own happiness and just be ourselves people sooner or later will realise we are just clueless, not malicious.

So for this reason I prefer not to use social skills, I want people to know my intentions are pure and if people see me trying to please someone else or steer the situation in some direction, then they wont believe I am clueless at all. If a person has a sort of innocence they can get a sort of diplomatic immunity, as long as they don't screw up in a really offensive way.

The thing is also, NTs appreciate social faux pas. They find them interesting, amusing, give them something to talk about, and sometimes I think people who have good social skills secretly wish they were as candid as we are.

I agree in principle but it depends on the type of people you are among. There are some very unforgiving people we share this world with.

Kaleido, the thing with the egg man is exactly what I do. I don't connect the dots. I lack that ability / intuition. In my example above, I should've known better than ask a British person how many rooms they had bought.

I am puzzled by this since we describe our homes by the number of bedrooms it has, so we sell a three-bedroomed townhouse or a studio flat or a two-bedroomed cottage as an example.

Still no good asking me, my track record is dreadful

The people who choose to read all sorts of shite into things we say that are accidentally a bit wrong or whatever, are not really people that we should put effort into being friends with.

Even the person with the best social skills will encounter people who find stuff wrong with them and things they say. So it makes more sense to work on getting along with people who are kind, and pay less attention to the opinions of those who aren't.

I agree entirely only we don't always have the choice, say in a work situation. I have also found that where I live now there is a certain type of person who doesn't seem to be able to get along that well with others, let alone anyone who has social difficulties.

The other problem is all of the political correctness these days. I fear to mix with people I don't know well in case I say the wrong thing. People have no tolerance for genuine mistakes and far too much tolerance for things that seem to me to be blatant violations of things.

Yes this is true, it is a difficulty. It something that worries me, I have a remarkable ability to offend others, or say something about a sensitive issue that can be misconstrued.

Around work people it is a sort of delicate balancing act. I seem to have to measure every idea or opinion before I express it. I could swear it is like the Gestapo in some workplaces... I think everyone feels they have to put up a front there.

I try and be blunt and honest at work about the less controversial things because I find if I use too many social niceties I feel sick!

Yes dishonesty is not my strong point either

Thank goodness!

At my work it's become so Gestapo anymore that when we all lunch together there's either total silence or the most inane of inane conversation. People don't know what to say anymore without the risk of it being taken against them or twisted by someone to their own convenience.