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Entry tags:
social dynamics
Tonight Dani and I went to a party that was being held by some friends of mine from my congregation. It ended up being awkward. I'm really not very good at these kinds of parties, I guess.
It was a nice affair with catered food (very tasty, and I knew I could trust the kashrut for once) and a band. There were probably 75 people there, maybe more. (They have a large house and a huge yard, and most of the party was outside.) The hosts did a great job of setting things up.
But I'm not very good at "mingling"; I don't have a good handle on the dynamic of when to continue talking with someone, when to wander off because you're supposed to mingle, how to react to the comings and goings of other people in a conversational group, and so on. When the food was served I thought this would get easier, as there were tables to sit at and you'd naturally find yourself talking with the other people at your table -- except that the music, while not "loud" objectively, was just loud enough that I found this nearly impossible. I also felt guilty because Dani doesn't know many of the people who were there -- though I wasn't faring that much better, as many of the people were professional associates and I didn't know them either.
We ended up ducking out a little earlier than we had planned on (and probably earlier than we were "supposed" to), but I didn't really know what else to do. It's nobody's fault; it's just frustrating.
(I felt pretty much the same way at the big shindig that Dani's father and his wife held for their 25th anniversary last fall -- except that the music was much louder and we didn't have the option to duck out early. The situation was reversed in one way: Dani knew many (but not most) of the people there, and I knew very few.)
I've been trying to figure out what makes a large social occasion work for me and what makes it not work. I've certainly been to larger parties that have been great; a unifying theme is that I knew a larger proportion of the people at those parties. But I don't think it's just shyness around people I don't know, because I've met and gotten to know new people at these kinds of gatherings. Maybe there's a critical percentage -- no more than X% (or N people?) can be unknown to me. I wish I knew.
It was a nice affair with catered food (very tasty, and I knew I could trust the kashrut for once) and a band. There were probably 75 people there, maybe more. (They have a large house and a huge yard, and most of the party was outside.) The hosts did a great job of setting things up.
But I'm not very good at "mingling"; I don't have a good handle on the dynamic of when to continue talking with someone, when to wander off because you're supposed to mingle, how to react to the comings and goings of other people in a conversational group, and so on. When the food was served I thought this would get easier, as there were tables to sit at and you'd naturally find yourself talking with the other people at your table -- except that the music, while not "loud" objectively, was just loud enough that I found this nearly impossible. I also felt guilty because Dani doesn't know many of the people who were there -- though I wasn't faring that much better, as many of the people were professional associates and I didn't know them either.
We ended up ducking out a little earlier than we had planned on (and probably earlier than we were "supposed" to), but I didn't really know what else to do. It's nobody's fault; it's just frustrating.
(I felt pretty much the same way at the big shindig that Dani's father and his wife held for their 25th anniversary last fall -- except that the music was much louder and we didn't have the option to duck out early. The situation was reversed in one way: Dani knew many (but not most) of the people there, and I knew very few.)
I've been trying to figure out what makes a large social occasion work for me and what makes it not work. I've certainly been to larger parties that have been great; a unifying theme is that I knew a larger proportion of the people at those parties. But I don't think it's just shyness around people I don't know, because I've met and gotten to know new people at these kinds of gatherings. Maybe there's a critical percentage -- no more than X% (or N people?) can be unknown to me. I wish I knew.
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