Member-only story
First date advice for introverts
Yes, you have to actually meet!
I was a painfully shy, geeky child. Being Indian and a girl didn’t help matters when I was in grade school. It’s bad enough being a nerdy boy, but it’s even harder, I think, as a minority girl. I was a social pariah.
I had two, count ’em, two, friends.
It’s not that I didn’t want to interact with people. I just had no idea how. And it didn’t help that my brain never shut off.
Before any social interaction, I’d be rehearsing possible conversational gambits in my head. Afterwards, I’d be analyzing all the stuff I’d done wrong.
Looking back, the problem I had is painfully clear — I was so focused on my own inferiority I didn’t pay attention to the other person. No wonder I missed social cues. I was too inwardly focused.
High school changed things. Partly because I went to a magnet school filled with other nerds. That made the other kids more relatable. Part of it was that I finally decided I’d had enough of being a social outcast, and whatever it took, I was going to change things.
So I confronted my fears. I forced myself to talk to people. I forced myself to make eye contact, to smile. Sometimes I shivered inside from fear, but I did it anyway.
