My social journey

One day I got fed up with Tinder and abandoned it. That lead me to finally loving to be a college student. No kidding.

Let’s start from the beginning.

My family moved a lot through my formative years. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Sure I never had a lot of friends, and soon I stopped having any friends, but that didn’t matter. I’m an introvert. I got into writing and reading and gaming. Plus I spent a lot of time talking to my parents and playing with my younger brother, so I was social… ish.

Honestly, my life felt perfect. Sure I didn’t enjoy going to college very much, but studying is boring anyway, right? It’s perfectly normal to hate those boring classes. Or so I thought. But we’ll get to that.

For my past self, there was only one major problem in my life: I couldn’t get a date without Tinder. Which was embarrassing, yes, but also it wasn't working very well for me. I don’t know what I was doing wrong with my profile, but I used to only get about three matches a week, and then only ten percent of my matches would message me back, which lead to me getting maybe one date every two months if I was lucky.

That wasn’t horrible. I hooked up a few times, even got two girlfriends doing that, but they didn’t last. After a while, enough was enough and I decided to quit Tinder.

My horrible realization.

Without Tinder, it quickly became clear that I had zero social skills.

You see, I didn’t know where to start without Tinder, so I turned to Google. Cringing, I did some very embarrassing searches such as “How to seduce women” and “Pickup basics” and “Help me, I’m chronically single!”. I felt fairly pathetic doing that, but hey, I was ready to try anything to get out of Tinder and online dating.

I even ran into a very cool article over on Anivda.com, which made me think about what emotional intelligence is and how I had none of it.

As soon as I started reading, I realize I’d lost some crucial tools growing up as a nomad. I couldn’t approach people, I would stutter when I tried to talk, I couldn’t look people in the eyes, or introduce myself, I hadn’t been to a party or any social event in over five years, and I definitely didn’t have any friends I could talk with to help me.

I mean, of course I didn’t. The only thing that got me out of my bedroom every day was college, and I used to sit in the back with a book and avoid contact with everyone.

The results of my isolationism became clear. I was a 22-year-old suffering from severe atrophy of my social muscles. I couldn’t even order something at a restaurant without feeling embarrassed and shy — every single interaction with another human was a pain.

What came after.

Here’s where we get to the college part. I decided I had to improve and the best way was to capitalize on the opportunities right in front of me, so I started interacting with people in my classroom. Learning their names, their stories, their goals, what they liked and disliked. I started bonding with people for the first time since I was a little kid.

After I got less shy about talking inside the class, I started taking long walks around campus, slowly working up the courage to start talking to people on the hallways, people sitting in public spaces, making friends, making connections. Slowly, bit by bit, I started improving as a social creature, becoming more skilled and more present in general.

The first result was something I did not expect, something I didn’t even think was possible: I started looking forward to going to class. I started loving it, especially since I also started talking to the professors and getting closer to some of them. After a semester of being more social, I actually enjoyed class enough that I missed college during the holiday break, and found myself hoping that classes would start again.

I eventually hooked up with a classmate and we are now dating, which is wonderful, but it kinda feels secondary now. What’s truly priceless is that I now enjoy college. I never thought that was possible.