this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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From meeting a lot of these people and being one when I was younger (I was a CS major and work in software) I do think the main reason is just really poor social skills.
Like everything else socialization is a skill that can be learned, even later in life, and like all skills the important thing is that you get a lot of exposure & practice (not online). Unfortunately there's a feedback loop where if you're bad at it people will want to socialize with you less and you'll get less practice. Transcending this loop is one of the great challenges of growing up.
For me I managed to get out of it by making female friends. Women for whatever reason have much more advanced social skills than men at most ages in our society, and are much more accepting of people without highly developed social skills as friends. Women also tend to organize many more social events & hangouts than men. Here's the thing though, women can also detect any secret horniness behind your actions like a shark can smell blood in water from a mile away. You are 100% not being subtle no matter how much you think you are. So if you as a hetero man want to make female friends you have to, from the very start, make a deal with yourself to never ever sexualize them in your mind. Dispel all such thoughts of this type. Incidentally this is a useful skill in itself, as the :reddit-logo: style "just sexualize everything, it's natural and everybody does it" attitude is so fucking off-putting to almost all adults of any gender. So it's important to realize you can actually control, in your mind, whether you sexualize someone, and make the choice not to do that when you're friends with them. This is not to say these thoughts never occur, everybody has intrusive thoughts about everything even truly unhinged things, but it's a conscious choice whether you want to take that thought and run with it when it happens.
So basically after a few years of just hanging out with women using this method my social skills had developed enough through sheer quantity of training data that I could take flight and make other friends myself, plus of course the friends I had while I was learning were real friends, and this is also coincidentally around the time women started finding me attractive in a more-than-friends way.
A bit of a tangent but women, and AFAB people in general, are probably better socialised because they have to have a good sense of solidarity to survive under patriarchy, similar to queer people. Women growing up generally form more emotionally open bonds with each other than men do with men. Women will walk each other home on nights out, ensure that their friends are safe, give each other a tampon and are generally more willing to help each other out than men are to help men out. Men don't fear being assaulted when they walk home to the same extent or for the same reasons women do, and are expected by other men to be able to defend themselves. So women form bonds out of necessity, for their safety under patriarchy (and obviously because they want friends), so they have more practice socialising. And of course, toxic masculinity plays a massive part in why men are not as good at making connections as women.
This is generalised and theoretical, and just comes from my experiences in life, but I think it definitely plays a part in why men struggle to socialise compared to women
Being vulnerable is seen as a feminine trait in society. It’s why people don’t bother girls or women when they’re close to each other and share their concerns and thoughts. But if a boy or man does it, he’ll be accused of “being in his feelings” or a pussy. I think statistically, most females have a richer support network compared to most males.
I’ve had a few close friends and several friend groups growing up, and I honestly cannot tell you anything about my make friends’ personal lives, but pretty much all the girls I’ve been friends with tell me everything about them and I can reciprocate without the fear of being judged or mocked. In my experience, guys tend to try to turn uncomfortable or personal topics with other guys into banter, myself included. It’s not malicious, but we’ve never been taught or experience intimacy and vulnerability with each other the same way we do with girls.
how old were you when this happened?
Around 23 maybe but honestly I don't think I really got good with people until age 27 or so.