Published on 12, July, 2020
At least 2 people recently have asked about this, and I didn't get round to responding, so here goes:
Step 1: Always be open and honest with the person you're trying to make friends with.
Step 2: Give each other a detailed description of your personalities. In theory, you instantly know each other well enough to know whether you like each other then.
Step 3: Ask questions about each other. I've got into trouble before for asking too many questions; I think 3 per e-mail should be about the right number though.
It's worked 2 out of 2 times for me when I've tried this method with people I've been in touch with by private message on here. We got on so well that I made friends with each of them in less than 2 weeks! So it seems to work.
I hope that's helpful for people.
I struggle with making friends. Even when I'm honest about myself and my diagnosis people don't want to get to know me.
I've tried masking, listening to better music everyone else likes, wearing more trendy clothes.
Still no one wants to be friends.
I even tried being myself and because I can't talk normally a girl I want to be friends with called me retarded.
Ninj,
I'm raging that someone called you that! I think they deserve a kick up the ar**. I hope this doesn't get removed so you can see that I'd for sure fight your corner if that were to happen when I was there - not literally, as tempting as that would be.
I do wonder if people who are like that have experienced so much bullying themselves that they communicate that way and see nothing wrong with it? Whatever the reason, that's disgusting behaviour and makes me raging inside. I used to make friends with people who were picked on at school because I felt it was so unjust. I'm sure there are people out there all with similar struggles who would love to be friends with each other.
I do wonder if people who are like that have experienced so much bullying themselves that they communicate that way and see nothing wrong with it?
You make an excellent point, but I don't think it's the whole story. I certainly fit that profile once. I even had a spate of trying it myself, but I really didnt enjoy the way it felt.
I concluded that these people are fundamentally different in their makeup, to real people . A sort of emotional vampire, but instead of blood they like th tatste of ones misery, and indeed are "fair game" for a bit of misfortune at my hands, if I can manage it. (Workplace hint, NEVER bully the bloke who makes your tea...)
As a young and powerless private in the army, how well you treated me, had a direct influence on how much you enjoyed your coffee...
If you really had hacked me off on the day, I coudl serve you a cup of coffe that LOOKED like "nato standard" but was completely undrinkable, and then feign complete surprise when you complained, offer to make you another one with profuse apologies, and it'd taste exactly the same...
I didn't do anyting too reprehensible, but the military (for obvious reasons) use powered milk or coffee mate to whiten their coffee. After soem experiementation I discovered that one could use up to 2.5 teaspoons of coffee then whiten it back to the correct colour. Since it was a bit thicker now than it should be, I used to moke sure that I stirred in the sugar at the point of delivery to preserve the element of surprise.
It was surprisingly effective at conditioning them to not casually bully me for being myself.
On excercises It was ME who connected up the generator (they found my efforts to drive in the earth spikes with the bloody big hammer amusing) ME who set up the "kitchen" and ME who made the first cup of tea people got to drink after driiving to location and setting up the camo nets and tent.
I wasn't completely obsessed with controlling their behaviour with the quality of my tea production, on excerise crusader 80 (the one wehere we pretended that Britain had receievd a survivabale strategic nuclear strike from the USSR, and we were sent to set up continuation of government communications and control YOUR acess to the motroways etc. It got very slow at one point, so I revealed at the point of peak boredom that my left ammo pouch did not infact contain ammunition but was harbouring a Sinclair microvision TV set.. After giving me a right bollocking for my lack of military bearing, we ended up wioth a tent full of soldiers sitting in a semi circle watching T.V,. on my one and a bit inch TV screen...
GIve and take, that's what it's all about.
You're very funny - workplace joke. :-)