Reply #41: I am socially awkward. I have no doubt many people over the years have considered me "creepy."

[Withywindle]

And looking back on it, I think, well, what can you do? If someone found me offputting, what that means is that we just weren't compatible.

It depends on what you mean by "social skills." The skills I'm looking for in a friend or lover aren't something that can be learned out of a book. It's not really even a skill at all - it's just, basically, at the heart of it: "do I enjoy this person's company and do they sincerely enjoy mine?" Do we interact in a compatible style, do we have similar senses of humor, some common interests, a similar sense of when to nuzzle close and when to be independent, etcetera?

Someone who's wildly different from me in these areas might ping me as "creepy", or s/he might just have totally different, incompatible styles of relating.

Toward the end of your post, a lot of passive-aggressive "fuck the people who judged me" stuff is starting to come out, and you sound very angry. Which is justifiable--but is also offputting. Chances are, the people who think were making judgments on you weren't judging you at all--they just didn't feel the "click" and moved on. That's not necessarily judgmental, just a fact that all of us have limited time on Earth to find "our people."

I'm awkward. All my friends are awkward too in one way or another, that's part of why we're friends. (But a small part. The bigger part is that we crack each other up and stick together over years and understand and forgive each other's bullshit.)