I'm 30 and horrible at keeping friends. I don't know if it's the unschooling or the autism, but I'm told I come across as hostile when I think I'm being nice.
I know the basics. I make eye contact but not too much, I ask people about themselves and their interests to show I'm interested, I don't dominate conversations with myself and my own interests. I try to be a nice person people might want to keep around, too— I give money when someone's in a pinch, I remember birthdays, I help move, et cetera.
Eventually people either people tell me I'm being a dick in ways I never realized, or more likely, they just eventually stop messaging me back.
The one thing I'm sure I struggle with is body language. I've read a lot that you need to mirror the other person's body language, but I don't know how to do that. Especially since I normally meet people at work and we're usually pushing big carts around and moving products and I'm just not thinking about my body as something expressive, just practical.
I'm sure I have many more blind spots that I'm not even aware of.
So like... are there classes for this? Some kind of specialized therapy? I don't really want to try anymore unless I can stop being a dick
Oh yeah I know, I wasn't thinking about dating. I'm hideous. I just want to meet someone who doesn't loathe me. I think it would be nice
ETA I do think being straight is easier even if dating is hard. None of the straight people I know have families trying to cast demons out of them, none of them make friends only to later hear them talking about how their demographic are secretly trying to corrupt America and kill the Jewish people, et cetera.