Asklemmy

There's a saying that goes "A burden shared is a burden halved. A joy shared is a joy doubled."

Having a few close friends makes bad times suck less and good times even better.

Hard agree. But I’m autistic, and as far back as I can remember, I’ve avoided social interactions. My mom talks about how I happily played by myself as a toddler. I also remember a neighbor kid who seemed to call constantly to ask to play, and I turned her down over and again. (She eventually back-stabbed me, so don’t feel too bad for her.)

Some people legit like to be around others. Some people can’t stand the thought of spending time alone at all. Everyone’s built differently. For me, it takes a special kind of person to make me want to socialize with them (almost always other neuro-divergent folks, where I can “remove the mask” so to speak.)

Human beings are social animals. They need social interaction to survive. Being isolated is recognized as a form of torture. Interactions being draining is often a consequence of contingent societal factors rather than an essential property of interaction itself.

Social interaction is enjoyable and a requirement for a social species. The fact that so many people in this thread are depressed, dejected and lonely is really sad. Despair is not a sustainable life strategy. Please if you are unable to find joy in social interaction find a community you do enjoy and start to be a part of that because the alternative is withering and death.

ITT: introverts (I'm one too)

People who are extroverted genuinely feel exactly the opposite of what you're describing, being in a social situation is relaxing/easy for them, and being alone is what's draining. I could go on and on about capitalist alienation and modern isolation and those are definitely factors but IMO the introvert/extrovert split predates the economic system, the main thing now is that if you don't like dealing with people instead of being a hermit you spend ages on the Internet.

You may want to get tested for autism, speaking from experience, I always found this weird and I thought everyone must be experiencing the same they just won't say anything about it but nope lol they enjoy that shit

Be free and allow yourself to not do things by pure obligation, we have all different preferences, be kind to yourself first.

You will feel like this until you do two things:

• Understand what you like, only you. Not your parents, not your siblings, not your friends, just you. It could be things considered unusual where you live, such as "salmon fishing in the Yemen."
• Find people who enjoy the same things as you.

You do not have to dedicate your time to people you neither like nor have anything in common with.

+1 for socially required

Maybe I am missing something but I do not see the beautiful part everyone talks about.

You gotta find people who "speak your language". It's a massive fucking bummer to always be second guessing myself around some neurotypical people but with my partner or friends I just love being with them?

I can actually be myself with my partner, and my friends are way more understanding of the way I communicate than the general public. That's why we are friends, because we enjoy spending time with each other!

Most of my friends are through shared interests. Those come with the built-in bonus of generally being task oriented and time limited so I can try and avoid over extending myself. It's also okay to head out when you aren't feeling it anymore. No one wants to feel like an obligation.

I need a lot of time by myself, especially now that I am turbo burnt out. But I do think it's important to have some kind of connection just so one doesn't become too disconnected. If something comes up and you need to do a socializing it's a lot easier if you've been socializing on your own terms.

Plus, it's nice to take care of each other.

To me it feels like pure obligation.

it is if you don't enjoy it.

i find it draining & depressing so i don't do it outside of work and it makes people angry at me for not engaging.

it also makes collectivizing next to impossible for me.

Some forms of social interaction are fun for me, others aren't. I usually do better in smaller groups.

Even if you have bad mental health consequences interacting with ppl (in all or just select ways, eg groups above 3), you also get bad mental health consequences without socialising (that works over longer periods and can be bad), it's just how our bodies function. So if longevity is something of interest, then socializing is a must afaik.

Regarding all forms of communication - they are all limited at all times, only you have the context & pov of you. And still speech is one of humanity's greatest achievements simply bcs it's so much better at quick or detailed conveying of shitposts.

Performing and masking is just part of the interaction bcs regardless of socializing need we are very individual creatures (tho that could be part of society/culture), ie I might be motivated into you liking me so I filter, preform, mimic, etc what I think will get me that result - not as a manipulation necessarily, but as a limitation of how individuals can interact with each other.

I enjoy many social interactions.

Went to a concert this weekend. Chatted with the person running the merch table. Briefly chatted with a rando at the bar. Was nice.

Went to a party this weekend. Had a nice chat with some people I'd met before. Maybe came on kind of strong to the socialists in one conversation, but it was fun.

Lemmy probably isn't going to get you a representative sample of people.

I am with you 100% on this.

I have very few friends with whom I can interact with effortlessly and enjoy myself. And when I see other people talking about "socialising", it feels fake. Maybe it is fine for them, but to me, as you said, it is draining.

I've been reading some of these other replies and my input is that to me you sound depressed / burnt out. I do not say that as a psychologist or therapist, if you want that diagnosis you'd have to talk to a certified one; however, the times in my life I have been more depressed the more I agree with this sentiment and the less I've been depressed the less I agree.

I'd also like to remind you that you are asking this on Lemmy, which means a lot of responses you'll get here are from a certain nerdy, shut-in type. I say this because people here are likely to agree already, which is good for sympathies but not for answering your actual question.

When people say they enjoy being social, they are not lying (with caveats). Most healthy people have at least a couple of relationships they deeply value, and if you're missing that I think it's worth continuing to meet people even if it's a lot of effort.

Work-wise though, yeah people are mostly lying there. There's a much stronger insentive structure to lie.

I want to reiterate you should look into whether you've got burnout or depression, especially given the current climate. Those both have a way of draining enjoyment from seemingly unrelated things, relationships usually being one of the first.

I find it draining but rewarding.

I love interacting with people, it fills me with joy making someone else smile or laugh, or helping them feel supported and accepted when times are tough, or lifting them up so they feel clever or helpful or kind. But I also require a lot of solo time to recharge.

I have made several friends in life who I can be in silence with - that really helps me not feel as drained. Being in nature or exerting myself while interacting also makes it less draining (hiking or working out), probably because I can focus more on my own body and experience and less on the social contract and thus be my natural self more.

My colleagues are very understanding of my need to recharge, so we can have a lot of fun together but I can also let them know that I'm socially burnt out and need to work from home or alone with my tunes.

Sometimes burnout takes a long time to recharge, and then i need to force myself with baby steps to get back into socialising, but it is always worth it in the long run.

Are you not interacting with us socially here? If you don't enjoy it why are you here.

I think a LOT of people require external validation to feel good about themselves. Its why we see places like Facebook and Reddit fracture into echo chambers, and why humans separate themselves into social groups based on similarities. Groups then can outcast the "others" which creates a social floor. As long as you're within Group, you know you aren't as bad as those Others over there. At the same time, the people within Group build each other uo and reinforce their common behaviors. Dissimilar behaviors within the group leads to either note fracturing within the group, or leads to people changing their behaviors and homogenizing.

When I was last in a band, I noticed the pattern. The 3 of us would each write things on our own that sounded unique, like our individual selves. When we brought the pieces together, or wrote songs together, the result was bland and generic stuff. All of our respective rough edges that made us interesting were rubbed smooth to make room for each other. And the songs that seemed to do the best with crowds were the smoothest ones (not that we had a ton of success- we played a handful of gigs before the pandemic hit and they ended up moving away).

I've noticed a lot lately that introverts in media are often portrayed as broken. Evangelion is one of my favorite anime, but its guilty of this. Shinji is often used in memes and internet culture to represent an introvert, but pretty much every scene where we see him alone he is miserable and craving some external validation. When I'm alone I usually just feel at peace.

I think a lot of people fear themselves, their own thoughts. They consider "being in your own head" a bad thing, like your own thoughts are scary.

My older sister is autistic and we were recently talking about traveling. She said that she prefers to travel alone so she can just wander around a new city at her own pace without having to consider the needs of her husband or children or friends kr anyone else, and I related to that a lot. I may also be autistic- I'm waiting for my assessment results lol.

People say there's certain vibes but I define that as an intersection of hobbies interests life stages culture religion politics family dynamics etc past experiences

The beautiful part to me are the parts that are most memorable, the rest are just a blur. Maybe like a house party you stayed up the whole night or where your group did an impromptu trip etc. or had a major detour where everyone was stressed beyond repair.

Rare but they stick out as memories. The rest feels like social obligations that build up to those moments. We're talking like 90:10 rarity. Also it factors in everyone's mental state. It's similar to how a team wins a game, the practice builds up to a moment.

Social interaction is enjoyable (for the most part) for me. But your feelings about it are relatively common.

What would you be risking if you were honest? There's a reason you believe you shouldn't be authentic when you're around others.

When you are dealing with people or institutions which hold power over you, it is an exhausting obligation to put on the performance that they want. No getting around it unless you find a different situation.

When you are with people who don't hold power over you, masking is only a benefit if you are seeking to run confidence schemes. Unless you are seeking to deliberately defraud your peers, the best thing you can get from masking is that you will have to continue to perform the character they like and keep yourself suppressed to keep knowing them. If you are authentic around your peers, they will like or dislike you based on who you actually are, no acting required.

If you are suddenly authentic around the people who are exhausting you because they need you to play the character, they will not react well. You may be afraid of that. I promise you that losing your ability to connect to others because you believe you must always suppress yourself should scare you much more. It is a good thing to lose people who require you to not be yourself.

People want connexion. What they (tend to) get is a thin facsimile. Real connexion feels wonderful to me. Superficial, forced social performance feels awful to me. For example, I get nothing from small talk. Either talk about something real with me or go about your day.

I’m an introvert, both shy and socially anxious. Not the talkative type either. And I probably have ADHD, focusing on conversations, especially when it’s not a one on one discussion can be extremely hard for me.

My personal experience is that social interactions can be a nightmare but they can also be very rewarding, if only because it often takes my focus away from the demons in my head.

It really depends on what kind of social interaction, who I’m having them with and how often/how long.

Probably hard to find real connection with people who can tell you’re talking to them out of what you think is an obligation instead of enjoying their company

Idk. Individuals are all different and if it makes the happy juices flow then I guess it’s enjoyable for them. For me there are a handful of people that’s true for but for most other interactions I feel similar to you.

That said: Humans developed a brain that could invent languages to make it easier to communicate and coordinate with each other. It’s probably up there with tool usage for advantages we had. So I don’t think it should be that surprising that our brains usually reward us for it if everything is going right.

Noup, 99,99% of the interactions aren't beautiful or magical. Overwhelming majority are different degrees of exhausting navigation on a minefield with no reward.

Yeah, majority of interactions are just obligations. Just running an automatic script curated for that situation or person. Those are draining, but make up the majority of day to day interactions. Aka at work or store. Though thanks to the automation those are kinda low risk.

Then there are the neutral ones, that doesn't drain as much and are under better circumstances or just basic exchange of information. Aka with a family or here. Those are higher risk usually.

And then there are the once in a blue moon aka 0,01% of interactions under good conditions, in limited exposure, good subject, that are kinda good even. Though these are bordering a statistical anomaly and do not make the rule.