Getting To Know You

I'm not a people person; for most people reading this, that won't come as much of a surprise, or at least it shouldn't if you know me at all.  If you don't know me that well or at all, then you can be forgiven.  Whilst I am not a people person, I can be personal.  By that I mean, I do much better when I interact with people one-on-one, where what we talk about and what we think or feel stays between us in that moment; there aren't other people adding in their opinions and warping the conversation or twisting the narrative.  I'm not a people person, but I do like getting to know people, one-on-one.

I am an incredibly curious person, I always have been, ever since I was a child.  I liked to take things apart and look inside, then put them back together - that didn't always work out so well in the end.  Some things I would take apart, and put back together the way it was to begin with and it wouldn't work anymore, in hindsight that was sometimes because I did something wrong, or didn't fully understand what I was doing, but more often than not, the reason things didn't work when you put them back together was because they were never designed to be taken apart in the first place.

People have always fascinated me, but from a distance.  I was an extroverted wild child until a very traumatic experience that left me distrusting of anyone and everyone.  That happened at a young age, during a time when my social skills should have been developing.  I missed out on much of that normal stage of social development because of what happened to me.  To this day I still have difficulty interacting with people in general, and engaging in group situations because I am still uncomfortable.  It's not that I think what happened to me could or would happen again - although there have been two instances where things came dangerously close which understandably destroyed much of the progress I had made and sent me almost back to square one to start over again.

The reason above all else that I prefer one-on-one interaction is because it's harder for people to lie to you - that might seem counter intuitive, you might be thinking the more people someone lies to the more likely they will be to trip up and make a mistake but I would actually argue in large groups of people, the metaphorical water they decant from their bottle of lies dribbles out in tiny bits, everyone gets a bit but no-one gets enough to take a gulp and notice the taste.  When you're one-on-one, you've got the bottle to yourself and you get to drink it all, and when you do that it's much easier to spot that it doesn't taste right. 

I am an incredibly curious person, and I like to get to know people, because I like to see how things work, the three go together perfectly.  When you meet someone for the first time and you know nothing about one another, there is nothing untoward or discourteous about asking questions, if anything, it is encouraged.  Moreover, the one thing that most people feel comfortable talking about with authority is their own life, because no-one can know your life as well as you do and no-one can correct you when you relate your experience because it is your experience you are relating.  The only real discomfort in these situations that arises is when you ask someone to tell you about themselves because that question is so open ended the other person doesn't know where to begin.  To get around that I never ask questions so generalised, instead I ask specifics and see where they want to lead the conversation.

When I spent years as a loner kid I sat and watched other people and took everything in.  During the time I spent watching everyone else I began to see what others didn't; I could see the moments when the people who smiled all the time would crack their faces when they thought no-one was looking, I would see the moments people would look worried or nervous, the unconscious impulses people had, and I would read their body language, I would notice the way they sat, who they faced, whether they were open or closed off or unconsciously defending themselves with protective postures.

I like to get to know people because most of the time the conversations you have are completely irrelevant when it comes to the subject matter; what is relevant however is the way they talk, their inflections, what they focus on, what excites them and what despairs them.  Even when your interaction is limited only to being via text based communication, instant messages, text messages, emails, social media et al, you can tell a lot about a person by what they choose to share, and what they choose not to share.  If anything, what the other person chooses not to say, can tell you much more about them than what they do.  Much more than this, most people feel more empowered behind a keyboard to write things that don't come so easily to them when they have to say it out loud - that has its merits and also its detriment as I am sure you will already know first hand, if you're reading this post you've used the internet and if you've used the internet then you've seen unadulterated hate at some point, it's almost inescapable now.

When I talk about this love I have with other people, one of the questions they ask the most is quite simply what do I talk about?  They want to know what I talk to people about or what I ask them that can reveal so much.  The starting point for most people is to identify an interest, that can be easy for some and hard for others.  There are generics, of music, movies, games, books, and TV shows, those all can uncover some clues as to what a person really has an interest in, but they are generic, it's like asking someone about the weather it doesn't get you far.  I tend to avoid politics until I am very comfortable with a person, you can usually get an inkling of their leaning anyway through general conversation.  It can be tempting to talk about what someone does for work or as a job, but truth be told, in my experience most people hate their jobs and they often have little bearing on what they are actually interested in; this doesn't hold true for everyone, that's a given, but it holds true for the vast majority in my experience.  Those who actually like their jobs, or who work in fields that relate to their interests are quite rare; of those that do fit that description, most will be people who spent half their life in unrelated careers before they give it up to pursue what they really wanted to - again that doesn't apply to everyone in that group but in my experience it covers the majority.

The more people you get to know, the more you begin to realise that we are not that different.  You are not as unique as you would like to think, and for some people that can be very hard to accept because they want to hold onto that mantra "But I'm different" or "I'm not like other guys/girls/people" etc, whilst for others it can be a comfort to know they're not as far removed from society as they thought they were.  Getting to know people gets much easier the more you do it, but conversely, the more you do it the less motivation there can be to get to know more people.  You really can get to a point where you feel like you've heard it all before, and that you're just meeting the same person over and over again.  Trying to overcome that exhaustion can be difficult, especially if you don't feel as connected to the world as other people appear to be.  My only advice if you feel that way is to say that you don't actually have to do it.  There is a perception that you need to have large groups of friends or know many people to be happy but in my view and my experience, the depth of the connection you make with people is what matters.  I'd rather be alone with no-one than be surrounded by people who don't actually care about me, or that I have shallow connections with who I know when push comes to shove they'd sacrifice any semblance of a friendship with me.

So I guess the only real advice I can give based on that, is to try not to worry about how many people you know or how many people you connect with; instead take the time to really get to know people when you do meet them, and make the judgement call of whether you think you can really connect, and if the answer is no, then don't feel bad about stepping back, no healthy friendship or relationship was ever borne of guilt or obligation, that will only lead to resentment, don't force a connection if it isn't there.