I’m not sure if this is the right goal for this entry, but I decided to write about this topic here because it does involve “faking” in a sense but without the “making it” part. I’ve been thinking a lot about a recent post by CrunchyBread where she wrote about the problems of not understanding the social boundaries with regard to revealing too much of oneself. I relate to a lot of what she wrote, and I realize that I have my own (albeit not highly successful) way of coping with these issues. I’m so afraid of offending anyone that I keep quiet most of the time. I don’t approach people or initiate conversations. If I wait for them to approach me then I can be sure that I’m not imposing myself on them or boring them. I’m not sure, but I think this may give the impression that I’m aloof or uninterested, but maybe that’s better than giving the impression of being overbearing. I also prefer to let the other person steer the direction of the conversations unless I’m totally sure they have an interest in what I’m about to say.

I’m very careful about getting all that close to anyone both because then they will realize I don’t quite understand all the social rules (i.e. they would know I was faking it) and because people’s intentions can’t be taken at face value (which I figured out through some bad experiences) and I’m not always good about discerning when people are genuine. That said, when I do find someone that I don’t have to “fake it” with, I have the tendency to unload too much on that one person and to misinterpret the level of depth or closeness of the relationship. I’m trying very hard to be careful about this, but I find that the way I’ve been doing that is just by keeping more distance which doesn’t seem to give the most satisfying result.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this entry other that to express that I’ve been doing a type of “faking” but not getting the best results…