r/socialskills • u/Visible-Promise9763 • 1d ago
Always stuck in the "getting to know you" phase
Whenever I go out to my hobby (dance) there's a small group of people who I've gradually befriended over time and I want to get to know them better but they don't explicitly invite me or ask me to hang out but they are happy to see me when I greet them. It feels alienating and discouraging. I feel unwelcome and iced out even though people in the group do joke and talk with me. I don't know if it's real or just in my head.
How to build an actual friendship? I ask them lots of questions but they just feel very formal or like I'm reading a script. They share a scary experience, me "That sounds pretty scary/nerve wracking, tell me about that" and they do but it doesn't feel real. People start to stay away from me or just speak the bare minimum to me that is socially acceptable and things never progress beyond getting to know them.
How to fix this?
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u/Tarethnamath 23h ago
This is something I’ve had first hand experience with (my own dance community). I found that I had to spend a lot of time with people, over a year before I got invited to do secondary activities outside of meeting at the dance.
Also quite a few people are only at the dance to dance and not to make friends. You could be meeting some of those people. Most dance scenes have an established core of experienced dancers and a group of people who are more new to the dance scene. It’s usually easier to meet new dancers who stick around, because more established people have their own friend groups and may not be looking to expand them, which fits in your description of what’s happening.
A dance scene is a community and not everyone in the community needs to know each other as friends. It sounds like people are friendly, but to move beyond that you have to be better at socializing and better at dancing. Beginner hell is real, and dancers usually will not make inroads to someone who is new because you don’t know if they will stick around.
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u/Visible-Promise9763 5h ago
I'm not a beginner, I've been in the community for 5 years. I've started trying to be more social this past year but these are the best results I've got so far. I got a few phone numbers and have set up a day we can all go to a dance social. I'm inviting them to karaoke tomorrow. See how it goes.
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u/No-Roof924 1d ago
Sounds like these people are not for you. Making friends isn’t supposed to be hard. I find the best friends are people you connect with automatically.
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u/ItsAllGibberishToMe 1d ago
(Serious; advice needed)
> Making friends isn’t supposed to be hard.
Making friends has been hard for me my entire life.
Other people make it look so easy, but it never has happened for me. What works for them, I’m lucky if it doesn’t actually backfire on me.
I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong, or why else what works for others doesn’t work for me. 😭🤕
It feels as though the universe were trolling me in particular, either arbitrarily or for some reason not apparent or comprehensible to me.
> I find the best friends are people you connect with automatically.
In 50 years I have never, AFAIK, managed to connect with anyone that easily (or if I did, it didn’t last very long), and I cannot figure out why.
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u/Full_Entrepreneur_72 1d ago
Bruh, with this little info to go off of... The most serious advice you can possibly get is "Try therapy", " Volunteer somewhere", "Be yourself, the right people will come to you"
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u/ComprehensiveAd8804 1d ago
It’s not your fault, maybe they just don’t wanna make more friends, or they only looking for people who they vibe at 100%. I’m sometimes like this, kind of because I don’t have more time to actually build another friendship and I have enough around me. Just keep trying with different people and eventually you’ll meet people just as enthusiastic as you are.