Fitting in with big groups

Autistic_girl said:

Today, it was such a struggle to be part of the group and get involved and communicate. I kind of just sat by myself in the corner and I had no idea how to join in.

My approach is to usually approach someone I know in the group and start a conversation with them, then see if we can break off to somewhere less noisy.

This gets me interacting with at least some of them (often others will join in as they are not big into the noisy group thing)  and we can lower the overall volume by spacing the smaller groups.

I did use to study group dynamics many years ago and there is quite an interesting change in how people behave as the group size grows - it slowly becomes its own identity rather than just a bunch of individuals.

There is some background to understanding group dynamics here:

https://psychology.town/social/group-dynamics-impact-individual-behavior/

Group behaviours are quite predictable and it is this trait that is often exploited by the police at rallies / protests to control the groups. The trick there is to know what they expect and have a smaller group do things contrary to this which then changes the dynamic and confuses the heck out of them.

Ah, the fun I had at student protests back at uni LOL

Back to the point - understanding what is going on and how to break it into a managable sized group is often the key - small groups are much more pleasant and accommodating so it is beneficial for us typically. The techniques of teasing the group apart will depend on the people you want to separate so a little headology helps a lot.

How does that approach go down with the rest of the group? It would be easy to be seen as trying to keep certain people to yourself or not wanting to join in. Or maybe thats just me?

How does that approach go down with the rest of the group? It would be easy to be seen as trying to keep certain people to yourself or not wanting to join in. Or maybe thats just me?

You just shut triggered an info dump there but I'm too tired at the moment as we had visitors.

TheCatWoman said:

I wonder if its a basic difference in the way men and women socialise

I think it is - partly because of social conditioning.

I know when I was at school any mention of periods was something girls kept very private and were quite defensive about which led to all sorts of speculation by the males (all pre internet days so finding out was not straightforward).

Even my girlfriends kept an air of mystery around it and wouldn't talk about it in spite of us being sexually active.

My parents were worse than the girls at school and it was a subject we didn't talk about (parents and 3 boys in the household).

It was only at uni that I had a girlfriend who was much more open to educating me on the subject which I was most grateful for.

I think the taboo around it is slowly slipping away but generations like ours will never really see it the same way that more enlightened youngsters will.

Hopefully better education and social values around the subject will help and this will be less of a divisive issue in the decades to come.

Its probably why so many men have a female best friend, who they can talk too, a big sister figure, it's also interesting how many men will read womens magazines unitl guiltily putting them down when someone else comes in the room.

Of course men can't understand the experience of periods and stuff, but they could try basic empathy, like, 'sounds horrible', or 'would you like a hot water bottle?' Many run screaming in the opostie direction, which amuses many women.

I wonder if its a basic difference in the way men and women socialise, there will often be a "pack leader", this is often more clearly defined for men than it is for women and splitting into an established group and taking other memebers away will be seen by the female pack leader as an act of aggression, seeking to form a new and rival pack. It's all very complicated and I really can't be bothered with it all, it's like most people never left the play gound.

TheCatWoman said:

women have periods every month for 40 odd years and is a common experience as is childbirth rarely seems to satisfy them. Women don't really understand why men don't talk about such things as relating to being male.

I think that is because there is not much of a parrall subject with being male.

We are mostly one mood all the time, don't have our bodies messing with out heads every month, don't have to endure the trauma of something like childbirth and all the post partum issues.

Basically we have it easy that way so there is nothing to discuss.

We are conditioned by our peers not to talk about emotions or show weakness and as such this leaves us with absolutely nothing even close to the issues that women talk about, and which we feel excluded from (women rarely want to talk about these issues with men in my experience because "you couldn't possibly understand" to quote more than one woman).

This is all a generalisation of course - I have taken care to learn about such things in as much as they intersect with my life and those I care about, I try to keep tabs on the hormone cycles and adapt my behavior to survive and do my best to listen when someone wants to talk about these issues.

I can never really "understand" it as a lived experience of course and this seems to be the crux of the issue Men generally have it way easier, don't talk about "soft" issues and thus have a fairly limited conversational range instead.

I think groups of men and groups of women comunicate very differently, even in mixed groups, if a woman is seen to be interested in more "male" subjects and goes off to talk with a group of men, she will often be viewed with hostility by other women. Men and womens conversation is often totaly different, what you see in nursery still hold in the adult world, boy's/men talk about things and women/girls talk about thier relationships to things. Women will also share a lot of personal stuff to deepen friendship links, men tend to find this weird and gross and run away, they will also question a woman associated with them about why this happens? The answer that women have periods every month for 40 odd years and is a common experience as is childbirth rarely seems to satisfy them. Women don't really understand why men don't talk about such things as relating to being male.

TheCatWoman said:

How does that approach go down with the rest of the group? It would be easy to be seen as trying to keep certain people to yourself or not wanting to join in. Or maybe thats just me?

It will vary greatly on the stronger personalities in the group.

Some may take exception if they think it is "their" group and want everyone to listen to them. That is about the only situation I can think of where your concern would be valid.

It is much more meaningful I think to have smaller groups of 3-4 where everyone gets a chance to talk and the individuals will probably appreciate you initiating it.

I used to have to initiate a lot of social interactions at company events as people would get very cliquey and stick in their own department groups so I used to use my knowledge of the different staff and their interests and get people together by saying "you have to meet Mark, he loves jetskis too" or whatever and get people talking outside of their groups.

A bit of matchmaking sometimes went on as I would keep an ear open for who was looking, find out what sort of person they likes and arrange for them to be brought together.

The way I could get away with this was I used to walk the floors in the office twice a day to pick up on any IT issues that people were having and make sure they got resolved. I would take time to speak to everyone at least every few days if they looked available and could find out what they needed training wise as well and line that up fo them.

Hence I got to keep tabs on people and their interests. Exhausting but made my department the best rated in the company and earned us a lot of bonuses.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent there.