do salamanders get lonely?

[thanate]

So as I occasinally whine about but never actually make a sufficient effort to change, I never actually talk to my friends when they're not around. Except for sometimes over e-mail, but not even so much then, and I've given up on most of them unless I have something actual to say (and when does that happen?) because they don't answer e-mails any better than real letters. Or, at times, any better than I answer e-mails...

Anyway, I even when I do see people and therefore talk to them and stuff, there are extremely few people with whom I have a physical relationship. I mean, I hug people if they hug me and stuff like that (and with people I actually get on with I don't have a problem with this, although then there was the time I'm still convinced I horribly offended dominyk by giving him the worst hug ever because I wasn't paying attention and then felt too dumb about it to apologize or anything...) but it doesn't occur to me to touch most people most of the time. It's possibly just lack of practice, really, and I'm a lot better about this than I used to be.

But then there are too many people who are friends of friends, who appear to think they're my friends too, when as far as I'm concerned I kind of know them and am not interested in being petted merely because our mutual friends are very physical people. And then one has to decide exactly where the line is that it's appropriate to say "hey, do you mind not touching me" versus just attempting to be polite about it.

And of course then the few people I do actually touch voluntarily I end up clinging to, not that that's necessarily a problem either, I guess. But still. And that's when they're actually there, that is... (sigh)

It's also possible that I'm just testy because there are getting to be too many people in my social circle who are very nice people and who I really don't like. Which makes me disinclined to spend time with the people I do like because I have to put up with them, too. And there was far too much sugar in the tea (since people kept adding it to the teapot) so now my head hurts, and I miss the grauwulf, who is still far away and not here. Whine, whine. And I should be asleep because I have to get up early tomorrow, but my brain was too full of whining to shut off.

I go away & try that sleep thing again now. Maybe it will work better this time.

Comments

[scraun23.livejournal.com]

So you're complaining that you don't really have anything to complain about?
That is what Livejournal is for, I suppose...

Hmmm. We should all get together to write a "universal manners for the (post)modern world" book at some point. I've yet to find a manners book that will tell you it's polite to leer at people at a party where clothes are being removed, for example.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

I'm complaining about the cumulative effect of something that I can't really do anything about because the causes all feel too small to address individually. The possible solutions appear to be being someone else, or not going to parties.

I think the concept of ettiquete in general starts with not being in such situations, or if necessary "politely" ignoring their existence. This would be your first problem... the roots of our current social code came in with the concept of ignoring things outside of it, not to mention "propriety" and the Regency or so crack down on sexual freedom in polite society. (look, we're not godless pleasure seekers like the french were, no need to get all revolutionary about it...)

[scraun23.livejournal.com]

actually, I think there are body-language things that tell people not to attempt snuggles that often work(not always, but) also, sitting in an individual chair rather than the couch that often gets turned into a snuggle pile.

Precisely why the etiquette needs to be written. As a godless pleasure-seeker, my society is not being addressed. *g*