Shy people, when you meet someone new, what would make it easiest to feel comfortable talking to them?

@wundayatta I’m not shy at all, so I don’t have an answer. I just wanted to say great question!

That they would smile, ask friendly questions and share something about themselves.

I start small and usually talk about the weather as it is something universally common. That breaks the ice.

When I tell people today that I’m shy they laugh at me because they don’t believe it. I’ve worked really hard to gather a bunch of conversation starters and I push myself to start conversations.

I also observe the person I want to talk to and ask questions about those observations.

@tranquilsea I think @wundayatta was asking what do you want us not shy people to do when you meeting you to make you, the shy person, more comfortable.

@JLeslie oops. My internet connection is really patchy today so I’ve been racing through questions.

Sorry about that @wundayatta.

@tranquilsea I’m still interested in what your answer might be. I think the question is great. What I wonder is do you want us to take the lead and approach you with all our questions? Like what @wunday touched on in his description, or is that overwhelming?

I don’t know how I did it… I have a lot shy friends and all of them talk [with confidence] with me. I don’t really know what I said/done but they were really open .. maybe because one shy saw another shy person talking to me and builded his/her own confidence. I dunno.

@JLeslie I would say that it is incumbent upon me to get over the fears I have and not the other way around. I’m sure I looked silly when I first started dealing with this as I had a fairly red face as I conversed. But no one ever said anything about it.

Some of my best learning experiences happened when people gave me a strange and bothered look and walked away. At first I felt hurt and it confirmed why I didn’t want to talk to people. But after some processing I realized that those reactions are all about the other person and not about me.

I guess the only thing that would be nice is if people could have patience as we stumbled, stuttered, hummed and hawed. It does get better.

Conversations like this are painful to me, and i used to use the most mundane boring questions, and watch people walk away politely but firmly.

But one question I like to use is “what brought you here/how do you know these people?”. I have to remember that if I don’t know someone then they don’t know everyone either, and it can be interesting to learn the connection.

Ask direct questions that have simple answers. Do not ask open-ended questions because I am not going to elaborate or ask you any questions, at first. Talk about yourself. Once/If I find something interesting about you then I’ll start to ask you questions. Whatever you do, do not ask me about me. I hate talking about myself and would rather you talk about yourself.

@tinyfaery That is very interesting. Usually we are taught to beinterested in the other person and not talk about ourselves too much.

@tranquilsea Is that why you are shy, because you have some sort of physical reaction going on, and then you get overly self conscious? I would think no is very aware of the things that are happening inside of your body, whether it be pounding heart or even a flush on your face.

It’s interesting what @tinyfaery says, because it is exactly that attitude that makes me shy. I don’t want to ask anyone questions because I feel like they will have that reaction. Like they are thinking, ‘who the fuck are you to think I’ll answer any question from you?’ At the same time, I assume no one would be interested in my simply because hardly anyone ever asks me questions and if they do, they are very vague questions that I am really bad at answering, like, “what do you like to do?”

In any case, ideally I would ask any question I wanted, as intimate as I wanted, and no one would be offended and maybe they’d enjoy the questions. And they would also ask me questions, as they would also be as interested in my as I was in them.

But in general, I ask people a few questions and that’s that. I’ve gotten used to it. Most people don’t seem interested in having more than a one minute conversation with me. I don’t know how others do it. There are people who can be engaging and people seem to want to keep on talking to them. I’m not like that, except in more formal situations where people have to listen to me. But they listen to me, and perhaps they enjoy themselves, but they don’t seem interested in me privately. Not in real life, anyway.

Online life is different, which is probably why I feel so much more comfortable. While most conversations via pm last a very short time, every once in a while there are people who approach me who want a more extended conversation.

My fantasy is that I could ask all the questions I want, and no one would be offended. As it is, I tend to interview people, at least for as long as I think I can get away with it. But once I stop asking questions, it seems like it ends, and I have no idea if the person is not interested in me or if it would have gone on had I asked more questions

As a shy person . . .
-You should talk a lot, especially if we’re meeting for the first time. I hate talking to strangers because I’m so self-conscious, so don’t worry about monopolizing the conversation. I’ll talk when I can muster the courage, which will be after we’ve been in a relationship for 20 years.
-It helps if you seem really uncomfortable, that makes me more relaxed for some reason. Either that or seem really comfortable, anywhere in the middle is just awkwardness.
-@wundayatta – yeah, a lot of my conversational hangups come from being afraid of asking the wrong question. I’m sure it’s just in my head though.

I think that I am not representative of shy or of outgoing people! Here is why-I really hate small talk, life is too short for small talk, yeah, yeah, it’s cold as a bitch out there today, I guess that’s good for about 1 minute of conversation, but if it doesn’t lead to something more interesting I am going to have this internal struggle to move on to something more. Something that means something. I need to see or sense that the person I’m talking to can be real with me. Hey, they don’t need to divulge their innermost secrets, that takes time and trust (or alternatively anonymity, lol) but I always want them to drop the mask. It is so frustrating to me that people keep up this facade. I understand the need for it but it is so counter to making a connection.

I don’t need to have a lot of acquaintences or facebook friends. I am sort of shy in one way but strangely, when I warm to someone and feel they are being real with me, I open up and share myself and my thoughts as easily as if I were the most outgoing person in the world. Wundayatta I know what you mean by the questions you want to ask but feel are inappropriate. It is sad to think of all the great conversations you might have had if there wasn’t this social convention of questions that are improper and indiscreet. Of course, you don’t want to make someone feel uncomfortable and awkward, but sometimes I think people are dying for you to ask! They want someone to care what they think! They are sad that no one ever bothered to ask what they think and feel about this or about that. This is an area in which I suppose you need to sense openness by how someone responds to you. I think I feel intuitively if someone could become a friend or not. It almost doesn’t matter how you open the conversation or what you talk about. You can feel this aura of warmth and receptivity.

How would my ideal conversation go? I think it’s less what you talk about than the receptivity. When someone is open to you they forgive many stumbles on the path to making that connection. Once I met a guy in the subway who came up to me and said “I like your bookbag? Do you have a lunchbox that goes with it?” My bag really did look like a bookbag and it was funny. We ended up dating for 3 years.

@Earthgirl Let me play devil’s advocate against myself for a moment. Small talk does allow you to warm up to someone. Just in talking about the weather or sports you can get an idea of some people’s attitudes about things unrelated to those topics. Also it lets you make the jump to what the person does, or to family or, increasingly at my age, health.

But I don’t know. Could I ask someone, “are you a cool hunter,” right off the bat? Maybe I could, now that I think about it. It’s not a totally offensive question and I suppose it gives someone an opening they can choose to enter or not. Or they could ask what a cool hunter is.

What’s the coolest thing you saw today? Why is it cool?

I don’t know. I want to know what people are passionate about, but I guess they have to trust me to be willing to get into that conversation. Especially if it’s something not necessarily socially acceptable. It’s like, how can I decide if a person if safe to tell that I am bipolar? Most people hide this stuff, and may never tell someone about it, even if they are in a serious relationship.

I’d love to tell people right away, not to shock them, but because it is important to me and has taught me a lot and it allows me to get into conversations about a lot of things that mean something to me. But people make all these judgments about it. They think I talk too much about it. Or whatever.

Life is too short to waste it on things I don’t care about really, but it seems like, unless some miracle occurs, I’m going to have to put up with that.