It’s official. I’ve become an elder gay. I’m now giving advice to a guy in his late 20s that became my roommate and I’m in no way prepared and really need to help this guy acclimate.
He’s nice. He’s kind. He has history of drug abuse or criminal record. But I’m pretty sure he’s on the spectrum. He has poor social skills and he’s trying very very hard to meet people and make friends and just function. But he’s picking up that he makes people uncomfortable at the bar and at his job and he’s so upset.
I’m probably on the spectrum myself too. I see so much of myself in that kid it’s frightening. But I’m not exactly a huge success story myself. I’ve improved with time and repeated exposure to social situations over the years. I’ve made major improvements but I’m still quite off myself so I’m certainly no role model.
I really want to help this guy but am having Tori or explaining things like “if you go to the bars and don’t buy drinks, you are kind of fucking over the people that work there” or “when people say no to your advances, that’s okay” or “that guy that was the bartenders boyfriend yesterday is in fact still his boyfriend today”.
He hovers and watches people but never seems to initiate conversations. He just kind of circles like a vulture waiting for someone else to start the conversation. He’s just fine once it starts but his inability to introduce himself and just hovering around people he wants to talk to makes people think he’s creepy. He’s just neurodivergent. Absolutely harmless. Just getting a super late start with developing this social skills.
I dunno. I want to help this guy and am not super sure how to do this without risking upsetting him more. He’s super frustrated and confused but he’s not violent or loud or threatening or anything. He just needs help and for whatever reason he values my opinion.
How can I help this guy develop better social skills?
Hell, this isn’t just a gay thing tbh. It’s a human thing, but also a guy thing.
Otherwise I wouldn’t poke my nose in.
But the key is that there’s no single lesson or piece of advice. The road from where someone starts in life to being a relatively capable adult human trying to find romance and/or sex is not linear or easy.
When someone, particularly a guy, gets off the path, it’s a process getting back on the good path where they can strike a balance between being self forward and being aggressive, or weird, or creepy, or however their approach gets perceived.
It’s a gradual mentorship. There’s really no other way to come at the problem. There’s almost infinite ways for an individual to approach approaching others. So everyone has to learn not only what works for them but to read when it isn’t working. That takes after-action debriefing. Which takes some commitment from the mentor.
I don’t know if that’s something you want to do, much less have the time, energy, and resources to do it. But that’s what it takes to help a guy that hasn’t nailed social skills yet. Women without those skills are a little easier to guide just because people don’t react the same to women, but they can get off the rails too.
Me? When I’ve taken a crack at it, my main method was to play wingman. Go into social situations, introduce them (even to strangers we would both be meeting for the first time) and lead by example for a while. In the right settings, you can sometimes even be up front about it. Just roll up and say, “hey, I’m southsamurai, this is my homie Spider, he’s a tad socially awkward, but a good dude. Can we join y’all for a bit?” It won’t be an option often, but you’d be amazed how open a group of people that feel safe in saying no will actually say yes instead.
And them saying no is a good thing when it happens, because you also get to show how to politely accept rejection and that’s a more important skill for a young man to develop.
For now, the best thing you can give him without that kind of attention is honesty. Tell him that you’ve struggled too, that it isn’t some kind of automatic thing that everyone knows and can do. Tell him it isn’t just the two of you either, everyone deals with some degree of confusion and anxiety at some point, even if it’s minor.
Shit, send him here, to lemmy. Tell him to ask people questions about social situations over at the no stupid questions or other ask communities. Crowd sourcing social skills is actually doable. If he pings me, and I can say anything useful, I’ll chime in for sure.
I’ve done the wingman thing and it’s been very successful in diffusing some situations he didn’t realize how bad they were. But I’m not always there to introduce him to people. Like today he was really upset and texting me from work that he overheard some coworker he knew for a few years say he was awkward and made him uncomfortable.
For me, that’s nothing. I’m used to people disliking me and I accept that they have no obligation to like me. But he’s still younger and upset by that. He hasn’t quite reached the “fuck it” stage of dismissiveness I have and that hurts him.
He also came into my room this afternoon to talk for a bit and I was just sleeping in. We talked and I figured he would go off and do other things but he got on his phone and just sat in my room while I kept trying to go back to sleep. I didn’t bother pointing out that was rude and unusual behavior as I needed to get up anyway but it’s just an example of what I’m dealing with.
He’s shockingly booksmart, certainly more so than I. But he misses social queues and situational/contextual things. I’ve never been mad at him but he’s so hard on himself and insecure that he doesn’t really seem to learn from the experience. He just kind of scolds himself and treats it as a failure to get upset about rather than saying “okay, now I know this.”
I have a different energy about this that came from getting older and calloused. He’s learning things now most people learned when they were children and he’s getting very upset. I feel bad and need to help the guy but I’m REALLY insensitive and crass and sarcastic. These are things he isn’t always able to decode with me. Like, he can’t process sarcasm without some explicit confirmation that a statement is sarcastic. So my natural way of speaking can make things worse if his confidence is low and he’s frustrated.
Yeah, it ain’t easy.
Have you had the boundaries talk with him? Not everyone understands what they are, and how to both respect and accept them as not being a personal attack. Sometimes, you gotta give them the talk, explain stuff that isn’t as obvious as it seems.
Yea I’m going to have to talk to him about that.