First experience of love advice (M25yo)

I've received some good advice in these forums before so I hope you don't mind me posting again, good people of TFP.

In High School, when other people were "going out with x" I neither understood nor was interested in the whole concept of this. Unfortunately I believe this has led me to become inexperienced socially and not confident. I am 25 now.
I do not get pleasure out of talking, so I do not participate in it. If people ask me a question I do reply (don't want to be seen as impolite) but do not initiate conversation with anyone. Although my mum has trained me to say “Hello, how are you?” I do not really converse much beyond the niceties or what is expected when meeting her friends/new people. My job as a customer service advisor (I blame the economy) means I am forced to do something, namely talk which I absolutely detest so I see little point nor incentive to talk after hours. I have been managing doing the job I do now for about 2.5 years.

For about 2 years, I have been going to the same fast food establishment near where I work for lunch. I seem to have preferred the same person serving me, for the sole reason she was the nicest of them. Makes me feel more comfortable and remembers my order so I do not stress over saying it.

One of my colleagues caught me with a dumbfounded look on my face one day I was about to leave. I explained the situation. We concluded to my shock and amazement that perhaps I have got a “crush” with the said person. On another day after showing the colleague a copy of the letter and after sharing my thoughts and feelings we concluded that I have perhaps “fallen in love” with the said person.

It turns out over time, throughout the period of 2 years getting to know her I got the ‘courage’ to write a letter to her. I gave this to her last week. Today exactly 7 days after I asked what she thought about it and she mentioned that she enjoyed our conversations but she already has a boyfriend.

Now I feel like a complete idiot for several reasons.

I even allowed myself to like this person and for me to give a stupid letter thus making myself look like a complete idiot.
My failure to get a satisfying job, I am entry-level despite having a degree and studying part-time in college. I've had 4 job interviews send probably 100s applications.
I have no friends.
I still live with my parents.
Right now I feel like a fucking failure.


Unfortunately on this occasion I won’t be driving off into the sunset. Fuck my life.

 

You had the courage to reach out. It didn't work out. Dating, like life, can be tough.

Right now your life situation might be your bigger problem (I don't mean that as negatively as it looks in writing). My time at the moment is limited, so I'll mention a couple of basic things.

Practice speaking to people. It'll be tough, but will get easier the more you practice.

I have a lot of experience being in a job that I didn't like, which involved speaking with people on the phone at least 80% of my time. Start looking for a different job that is less CSR oriented.

I'll add more later, FWIW .

 

Do you not like conversations at all! Or just small talk?

I tend to be yes or no, short answer when someone is talking to me, if they aren't asking me questions about important topics, and/or I feel they are interested in my response.

When talking to others, I have a tendency to observe quietly for a time, and then I'll talk to them about the things that are important to them.

The reason I ask this is - I've recently become interested in personality theory. After taking the MBTI test, I found I was INTJ.

All of those years of thinking I was strange, and trying to fit in, I find out I'm just me - and can now accept me for who I am. (Fwiw - I do have to remind myself that just because I am INTJ, and have a "standoffish" personality, it does not give me the right to be rude or bitchy to others.)

 

I was a lot like you in high school; it doesn't mean you can't improve your social skills now. When I was in college, I revealed my feelings to someone who didn't reciprocate and, like you, I felt like an idiot, but I reassured myself that what I did was honest, reasonable, and well-meaning, and I moved on, never letting it bother me again. Don't be upset that you "allowed yourself to like this person"; there's no reason why you shouldn't have felt that way before she told you that she had a committed relationship.
If you want to find a new job, I'd recommend you not to bother with online applications. Contact a recruiter or staffing agency who gets paid by your prospective employer when s/he gets you a job working for them. I have worked with several recruiters to find jobs related to what I studied in school, and they can get you interviews much more effectively than responding to public postings, which get an unbelievable amount of noise from unqualified people across the web (leading many companies to go to these recruiters who weed it out for them).

 

Good points, thanks. Tomorrow I am meeting a personal trainer. I will see if this 'life' thing will get more interesting.

Again good points. I like the top quote. In fact on Saturday at work my colleagues sent me home because I was upset. I fancied a drive and ended up 3 hours later at my aunties house, radio blasting, naturally.

To further expand and to paraphrase greatly my auntie said at least this girl did not exploit me by taking her to nice places for the lulz.

Agree with your first 2 points.

However, when I talk to others. I observe them also, I do know what is important to them but I feel no need what so ever to talk about those things if it does not interest me. Sometimes if it does interest me and my mind has been made up, I don't feel the desire nor need to justify my views. I feel it is a waste of time. It is unlikely I will meet them in the future and fruitless trying to convince them otherwise, so what's the point? I stay silent.

You've intrigued me. I took a test on 16personalities.com and my result: LOGICIAN (INTP-T)

Thanks for the support and suggestions!

 

I like the test on humanmetrics best. The major difference in the Judger and Perceiver is the way we plan. I have backup plans for my backup plans. My understanding is that the Perceiver is more able to just be spontaneous. I can spontaneously improvise my plan. Lol.

 

I can go either way when it comes to talking about things that interest them when they don't interest me. If I'm making an effort, I talk to them. If not...

 

I did the test on that website: 97% introvert, no wonder why I hate talking, LOL.

INTJ​

Introvert(97%) iNtuitive(41%) Thinking(88%) Judging(25%)​

• You have strong preference of Introversion over Extraversion (97%)​
• You have moderate preference of Intuition over Sensing (41%)​
• You have strong preference of Thinking over Feeling (88%)​
• You have moderate preference of Judging over Perceiving (25%)​

 

While the MBTI does have some sociological merit perhaps responsible for reassuring you that your quirks are acceptable and that there are others like you, I would be wary of its results suggesting that you can't do something, as the test was not designed from empirical data. Myers and Briggs had no formal background in social science and created their four-scale system based entirely on supposition inspired by the Jungian pop-psychology of the time. Modern psychological research does not offer any evidence of personality types but instead indicates that variation in personality traits statistically falls under normal distributions centered at an expectancy value. From the most critical perspective, this makes the MBTI hardly more scientific than the daily horoscopes in tabloid newspapers.

 

I think it's more credible than a horoscope...


And knowing what your type, and knowing someone else's type can help you in interacting with them.

Particularly true with a sales position. You are going to appeal to a thinker by giving them stats on effectiveness, appeal to their brain. A feeler, their emotions.

Am I going to act like a textbook INTJ 100% of the time? No. I'm 70% Introvert, and every once in awhile someone will tell me I'm an extrovert. But put me near too much stimulus, loud noises, and I'm going to be very uncomfortable...

 

Yes, it's helpful to base the content of a sales pitch on your judgement of a prospective customer's character, but the concept of personality types does not fit the data from any scientific (cross-sectional) studies. A more meaningful trait descriptor would be expressed as the number of standard deviations away the average of a certain value across a population, say the mean score on an introversion scale. This is the kind of reference used to compute scores for scientific personality assessments such as the MMPI-2 and NEO PI-R. An MBTI score of 70% introverted is merely based on the number of questions you answered one way or another, which is an arbitrary metric on its own because you're not being compared with other people to determine how introverted you actually are, against the norm.