Considering the impact of ‘social deprivation’ & social rejection.

I came across this article recently with a woman seeking advice about whether she should socialise more, even though she found socialising awkward and exhausting.  The agony aunt suggested this may be because she’d been “deprived of the habit” of socialising when she was younger. Because she had few friends and wasn’t allowed to take part in typical teenage activities, the woman now found herself lacking in confidence when it came to socialising as an adult. 

This struck a chord with me. I too was deprived of the habit of socialising when I was younger, and I think this can at least partly explain why, as I head towards my 40th birthday, I remain so shy and chronically reserved.                    

Weak social muscle, lack of social capital

From around the age of 11, the friends I’d had all through primary school began to ostracise me. I became a social pariah. This meant I had no friends, no social life to speak of during my early teenage years. And although I managed to pick up a couple of pals during my final years at secondary school, we only hung out at school.   

This means I never got to be a ‘normal’ teenager. I never went to the school discos or any birthday parties, I never had a sleepover, I never hung out in town, I never got pissed on cider in the park. 

The first time I really ‘went out’ and socialised with people my own age was at university. And my lack of experience meant I was on the backfoot immediately.

My peers were familiar with drinking, and clubbing, and ‘getting off’ with people; they were used to hanging out in groups, going out at night. Whereas I had no friggin’ clue, it was all so new, so alien to me. I had barely ordered a burger at McDonald’s before, never mind a beer at a bar. And I was never able to catch up, get comfortable. I always felt insecure, awkward, inadequate. I never gelled with anyone, I was still the outsider, the weird one. By my third and final year I found myself alone again, with no friends, no social life. 

And so it’s been ever since. I’ve never made any mates as an adult. The only socialising I’ve done, apart from that with family (and does that even count?), has been at work, team lunches and the like. I think there’s only been one occasion when I was out after dark with colleagues, and I remember that being… boring, as well as awkward. 

The complete void that has been my social life for well over 20 years, means my social muscle is weak. It’s not been worked out enough, it cannot bear the weight of most of the interactions I take part in, of the dealings I have with people. 

I also lack ‘social capital’ –  the stories, anecdotes, experiences one builds up from doing things and going places with other people, and which can then be drawn on in order to be able to take part in most conversations, which often centre around what-you-did-and- where-you went-and-what-was-said-with-whom.

This is why I dread chit-chat with co-workers, why I remain so shy, even with members of my own family, because I cannot chip in with my own tales of nights out, holidays with mates, he-said-she-said-and-what-not. 

My weak social muscle, my lack of social capital, are certainly somewhat the products of having been deprived of the habit of socialising from a relatively young age. If I’d had a normal teenage life, maybe I wouldn’t struggle as I do today, perpetually, incessantly, to socialise, and get comfortable, not only around others, but also within myself.  

Or maybe I would still struggle. I say that because even though I believe my scant experience of socialising does have something to do with my social retardation, I don’t think it’s the only – or even the main – explanation for it. 

Default setting = silent                                                                          

I was deprived of the habit of socialising when I was younger.

But why? Why did my childhood friends cast me out once we hit puberty? Why wasn’t I invited to my classmates’ houses, to their birthday parties, to their weekend hang-outs? 

Because I was ‘too quiet’, that’s why. No one wanted to be friends with the girl who never spoke, who lingered on the periphery of playground games, never really joining in, whose silence screamed ‘not cool enough, not fun enough’ to hang out with.  

So, even before I was denied a social life, I was already lacking sufficient social muscle / clout / ability. That’s why my peers rejected me. 

This then begs the question: even if I had kept my friends, hadn’t been cast out, hadn’t been deprived of opportunities to socialise (be ‘normal’) in my youth, would I really have turned out any less shy, any less severely introverted? Would I now be a much more socially confident adult? 

I wrote here about the horrible time I had at a work lunch earlier this year. At large social gatherings like these, my default setting is to just stay silent, to sit back and listen in on other people’s conversations, rather than participating much myself. I simply have no drive, no desire, to pipe up, to connect with others in such situations. This is how I was at school, too. I was always much more content watching, rather than joining in, listening, rather than talking. 

I think this is just who-I-am. Someone who doesn’t ‘do’ socialising in groups. A non-pack animal. And I reckon so much of my anxiety and insecurity about my ‘performance’ at the work lunch came from all the bullshit I imbibed when I was a young teenager – not only from my peers, but parents and teachers too – that to be quiet/introverted/socially reserved is weird and wrong, something that needs to be ‘sorted’. 

Lack of acceptance 

All of which is to say that I think the biggest issue for me was not that I was deprived of the habit of socialising when I was younger, but that I was deprived of being accepted for who I was. 

If I’d had more opportunities to exercise my social muscle in my teens and twenties, I might find socialising easier than I do, although I’m not convinced I would have emerged into adulthood a social butterfly.

What would have made the bigger difference, I believe, was to have been accepted for the shy and slightly asocial kid that I just so happened to be. (I say ‘slightly’ because I did have a group of friends at primary school, it was just I preferred to hang back and didn’t talk very much. I never played on my own.)

If I’d been allowed to be who I was, and not ridiculed, not rejected for being ‘too quiet’, I’d probably still have turned out pretty much the same as I am today: hanging back, keeping to myself, not saying very much in social situations. But maybe I would be less awkward, less anxious, less self-conscious in my socially distant skin.