Dear Saggad:

“We in our family don’t have real connections with each other. My father is always silent (absolutely silent..) and my mother have her own world”-

Most of who we become as teenagers and adults is determined not by the time we are born, but through the years of our earlier childhood, the years that are called Formative Years, because our brains are formed during those years. I don’t know the numbers, but I am guessing that hundreds of thousands of neuropathways are Formed during our childhood. The formation of these neuropathways, or connections between neurons in our brain, happens as a result of our interactions with the people in our childhood- our parents.

– as a child you experienced no connections (or too few, too little of) in the context of your family, this means there were very few interactions between you and your parents.  As a teenager and adult, you experience  no connections with anyone in the context of the world, few interactions, too little of.

Being social means interacting with others. You didn’t have social experience as a child, while you were forming, so you were.. inexperienced that way. No social experience and no social skills were Formed in your brain, no.. social neuropathways formed.

– as a child you experienced your father as absolutely silent, his silence became a sort of silence in your own brain, in that a silence, or absence of social neuropathways was the result of growing up with your silent father.

– as a child, your mother had her own world, which means she wasn’t involved in your world, didn’t interact with you, and so you grew up alone, not interacting with your father or your mother.

Growing up and currently, at 23. you experience difficulties “understanding some social stuff”, you “could not understand how those social stuff are going”, “didn’t know “How I should act in particular situation” because you had too little social experience and skills Formed in your brain during your childhood. too few social neuropathways.

You read a lot, “created my own world”, studied in schools, read a lot of books, “instead of being with my friends”, “didn’t have friends in university and school at all”.

But we are social animals, born to be social, like other social animals. A social animal without connections feels unwell, lonely, depressed, “without any hope and desire and energy”, and so, you’ve been looking for a relationship with a woman and had three:

First- you were 19, she was 32, it lasted 3 years, and it was all about her and her problems. When she was upset and had problems she looked for your company, when she felt okay, she “left me suddenly over and over”. You were her “helper and then a garbage”.

Second- you were 21, she talked a lot you were silent a lot. You had nothing in common, she “could not understand even what I’m thinking about”, wanted to change the way you dressed, the way you talked.. so there was a lot of talk on her part and no connection.

Third- you, 23, she 35, never met, all long distance, it was “everything that I could imagine”, she understood you and accepted you as you are, the two of you “shared good moments”, something you “never experienced before”, but she ended the long distance relationship after a trip to see her last April was cancelled because of finances, saying she shouldn’t wait anymore.

Otherwise, you believe that you are not a typical man in your society and have little to nothing in common with almost all people, exceptions possible.

More of my input: I believe you are correct in that you are different from the great majority of people in the area/ country where you live because you expressed it perfectly here: “Our vocabulary was essentially different because I always was at home and reading books and I was not (and still I’m not) with other people in my country so my world is really different”.

While your peers interacted with their parent or parents, and later they interacted with people of their own age at school and in the neighborhood after school, you didn’t. And now, they have the vocabulary they learned during their Formative Years and you have the vocabulary you learned, that of great thinkers you read about in books.

Please notice this important point: it is not that you are lacking social skills and experience and all or most people in your country, or anywhere in the world, have good social experience and skills. Your second relationship, she talked a whole lot and you were silent a whole lot- she didn’t notice it was a problem, she didn’t listen to your silence because she was lacking social skill, so she kept talking and talking. A person observing the two of you from the outside would see a girl that talks a lot and a guy who is silent, and that person will say: she is social, he is not. But it is the girl and the boy in this case lacking social skill, it is just that from the outside it appears that the one who is talking is the one with the social skills.

It is clear to me and I have no doubt that it is true that you do need social interactions and cannot be okay without. I am sure of it because you are a human being, a social animal and all social animals need to interact, otherwise they are very unwell. Question is how to make it happen-

I think it will take you learning social skills and gaining social experience. You already have some social skills, you just need more, and you need to practice those skills. You already have some social experience, you need more. What you didn’t learn as a child, during those Formative Years, you can learn now. Only it will not be as easy as it is for a young child, and you don’t have the context of a young child, that is going to school every day and going out into the neighborhood to play with other kids who are also eager to play with others.

You mentioned a difficulty understanding jokes. I have a similar difficulty, and almost always, I do not know if a person is joking unless they use a different accent than their own, for example an American from New York using an accent of an American from the South, then I know humor is taking place. And I was not diagnoses with Autism. And so, the people you interact with, again, they have their own social difficulties.

My suggestion: use every opportunity you have to interact with others so to gain that much needed experience, learn and practice social skills. Expect little as far as others understanding your world, that is, your book world because they didn’t read those books. So interact about other things, whatever may be of a bit of an interest for you. Listen to people, ask them little questions about what they meant when they said this or that. Don’t bring up your books unless you know that who you are talking to also reads books of the kind you do. Use the little you do have in common with others so to start and carry on a conversation.

Notice when you talk to a person who keeps talking and will not listen to you- that it is not your lack of social skill that is responsible for that behavior by the other person, it is the other person’s lack of social skill to be talking and talking as if they were alone. Find people to talk to who do take a break from talking, wanting to hear what you think.

I hope to read your thoughts about what I wrote, when you are ready to let me know.

anita