Having gone from a college student who spent many Friday nights in the library studying, listening to others partying not because I preferred the library to partying on Friday nights (though I love learning) but because I didn't know how to get invited to a grown-up who gets invited to so many awesome events friends call me the most social person they know, I find developing social skills one of the most important areas anyone can improve their life.

Commenting on the article, I would not call loneliness lethal. Everybody gets lonely sometimes. I would call not having skills to handle loneliness lethal.

My starting point for combating loneliness is to start by looking inward -- What skills can I develop, how am I holding myself back -- before looking outward, like what resources are out there. Family, hobbies, travel, sites to connect with others... they all help only if I know how to interact. If I don't, they may make me feel more lonely. By contrast, if I know how to interact and attract people to me, those external resources work without intentional effort.

I wrote up my social skills exercises -- http://joshuaspodek.com/communication-skills-exercises-6 -- as a resource for other geeky people to use because I think they'll help others like they helped me. They won't completely transform ones life, but they create internal resources no one can take away.

I also posted about how I believe social skills are among the most important skills to develop http://joshuaspodek.com/model-direction-leadership-personal.

Loneliness is about not feeling connected to other people. Start with your neighbors, if you have any, or any people you meet. Talk to just anybody whom you meet around your place. If you can't talk to them, develop a sense of love for and connectedness with them. Your brain will then believe that you already are in the center of the "herd", and you will feel better, I'm certain. I've known loneliness most of the time between age 8 and 20, then finally opened up (with that came anger at people because they don't work the way I want them to, but that's gone too now). Ask yourself why you have the need to feel lonely when everybody around you finds it easy to connect, and break that bad thinking/feeling habit bit by bit.

We need more comments like this :-)

Family. Religious groups. Neighbors. Sports (participation or fandom). Volunteer at a nearby school, shelter, or community center. I've even done a meetup group that was pretty successful.

"We try things. Occasionally they even work." - Parson Gotti, http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F109.jpg

"Sports (participation"

Note that only team sports get the press coverage, which I pretty much can't stomach, but the world is full of non-team sports group activities. Plenty of "we're hiking this nature/park trail as a group" and please join us in training for the 2/5/26 mile run next month, etc etc.

There are too many meetup groups (locally) that revolve around drinking booze and/or eating donuts and not enough that revolve around taking a 2 mile nature hike together to a picnic or whatever.

Also there's a huge difference socially between "I'm taking calc 223 because its an engineering prereq" all serious and often completely non-social especially if grading on a curve, and "We're all here to learn intro to Japanese because we love Japan and Anime just like you and ... " Another good one is cooking class, really pretty much any non-credit vo-tech classes. Do you know how to TIG weld from the local vo-tec yet? If not, why not? Welding is pretty cool and one way or another I'm going to learn how. I have no interest in doing it 40 hours a week for someone else, but I would be up for a couple hours a month for myself.

FTA: Loneliness isn't necessarily about social interaction or spending time by oneself or with other people. It's the desire for intimacy.

With respect to finding intimacy, I can't be much help. I've never had much luck when I've searched it out. The more meaningful relationships of my life outside of family have been ones I've serendipitously stumbled into.

you need a shared project, mission, experience, goal, or whatever to bond with people.

Meetup is not that - you drink a beer, then just leave after an hour or two. If you work on a project together, though, even on github, you will probably become good friends

Volunteer, get a job you believe in, work on an open source project with someone.

This is a great point, I agree completely.

Sometimes, with Omegle and clones, you get a good, intimate, one to one connection with a basically-anonymous complete stranger. And it's great, a real mood lifter.

It just doesn't happen at all often. Perhaps there's a way to adjust that kind of site design to make them more successful at that kind of connection?

Do you meet good people on Omegle?

Subjectively, yes.

I tend to find echoes of myself, so perhaps no good if you're looking for a life-of-the-party person.

The time investment to return ratio is abysmal, but the good connections happen. This week I had a 3-4 hour conversation (text) with someone. That affects my mood for a day or two afterwards; it's the kind of social interaction I ought to get in real life, but actually don't.

I would recommend the events posted in the CouchSurfing.org forums. Or, if you prefer, can also contact people directly on CS and suggest meeting up.

I joined a weekly hiking group.

I'm considering this myself. Did you find you needed prior experience before partaking?

This is like warning bells that someone is about to buy new boots and then go on their first hike.

Three simple hiking rules:

1) Never wear new boots on a trail. Sittin in the office, sure. Walking around the grocery store, sure. Walk around the block at home, sure. A day of yard work, sure. But never wear new boots on a trail. Many groups will kick you out and send you home if your boots aren't looking old and scruffy enough, nothing personal they just don't want to have to do wilderness rescue on you.

2) Bring more water than you think you'll need. Newbies always guess low. If you're feeling thirsty you've already failed. If you don't end the hike with water leftover you've failed.

3) It's considered very poor form to have to ask someone else for first aid stuff, although its considered even worse form not to help someone who needs it, and the cheapest lightest smallest kit is probably about right. Doesn't have to be some giant backpack a little pocket sized thing is fine.

Everything else you can learn from the group. Leave No Trace philosophy and orienteering and all that stuff. Which is an excellent conversation starter, where did you learn to read topo maps, what kind of plant is that, etc.

Depends very much on the group. Some are super hard core and love nothing more than hiking 30-40 miles at a quick pace over mountainous terrains before building a bivouac and eating a freeze dried meal, while others are super relaxed and love nothing more than taking a leisurely 7 mile walk and ending up at a nice pub. Ask around and try to find a group that fits you.

I'd been biking around 10 miles daily prior to it, but was still hit hard by my first hike. It was about 8 miles with a 2,000 foot climb, and I could barely walk for three days after. A few more hikes, however, and I was reasonably well conditioned. Well worth it, but could even be avoided somewhat with a more reasonable few starting hikes.

it's hiking, not lsd :)

Get a pet.

You are 100% correct in that before my dog died of stomach cancer some years back, I could not walk him down the street without massive attention from pretty much everyone. Note this was a cute Sheltie essentially a miniature hyperactive "Lassie" not a raging pit bull, which might be relevant to discussion.

Aside from street encounters there's a whole "dog subculture" of agility training, which my dog was completely hopeless at although its fun to watch and try and get cheered on.

Depending where you live, "dog parks" where weird as it sounds dog owners go to hang out at and meet other dog owners. Most city parks ban dogs other than at the official dog parks.

Then there's dog shows which are a whole nother almost separate subculture.

Now that I think about it coworkers who were dog people hung out with us socially too, simply because we all had dogs. Very much like how the sports fans hang out.

Most people treat their dogs exactly like they treat their children, interpret that as you may, for better or worse.

Please discontinue the stereotype that pitbulls are raging. :(

Up until they became a favorite in a bad scene, they were known as nanny dogs. If you get them young and from a non-abusive context and train them well, they're absolutely adoring.

In 2013 the percentage with a proper upbringing appears to be very low in the general population. Stereotype stands. This is very relevant to the "trying to socialize" topic in that trying to convince the general populace that your demonized dog breed is an angel kind of misses the point that a cute miniature lassie is a ridiculous effective people magnet.

twitter

stop being a pussy and listen to Roth-era Van Halen.

or...

2 chicks at the same time, man. ;)

don't you need a million dollars for that?

Temporary jollies don't get rid of the great chasm of loneliness. When they're gone, it remains.

It's a reference to a similar topic of conversation in the movie Office Space.

I get the reference, with the PUA suggestions elsewhere in the thread, I couldn't tell if it was sincere or not!

You could try getting married and / or having children.

You should do neither of those until you've built a solid, lasting, stable, intimate and trusting relationship with someone.

Most of the people I know with this problem have trouble even meeting people, which tends to be a prerequisite for making friends and forming relationships - let alone successful long-term ones that could become marriages.

As is my case. it's hard enough just greeting someone let alone forming a lasting bond that eventuates into some situation allowing for intimacy.

I recommend a fitness related hobby that will bring you into regular contact with people. Then yes, you have to do the hard work of talking to the humans. Start small - you aren't looking for your soul mate you just want to make small talk for 3 minutes.

I'm in the same boat. I'm also have attracted a lot of, how to put this, people who use other people, since I'm not good at standing up for myself, so that, therefore, makes wary of people.

My belief is being social is a skill and I have to learn to get better at that skill in order to attract more normal people. I've been trying the following recently, although I haven't had enough time with any of it to know how well it will work, but just to give you some ideas:

lang-8.com - this site allows you to correct English of people trying to learn it. You can post a journal as well in another language you're trying to learn. My hope is that speaking another language might change the way I interact with people in my native language. But also, people there are very friendly, since you're helping them.

mmo games - trying to get into eve online. Maybe learn to establish relationships that way.

teamspeak - this has an online chat I've been using to practice smalltalk.

I tried a psychologist as well, but his philosophy of life and the way he related to me seemed so goofy that I quit. Also, it was quite expensive for what I got out of it.

Being social in the real world is a different skill than being social online. You might want to practice both (although, from experience, I'm going to say being social in real life is more important.)

Try a different psychologist, maybe you got the wrong one. But be a little more open to different philosophies of life and goofiness.

I've found EVE to be a double-edged sword in that regard. The game is exponentially more fun when played socially. On the other hand it's easy to hide in it and avoid socializing at all.

EVE takes effort to play "the right way". Make sure you get in a nice corp.

Dude, I'm assuming you're desi, in which case you may avail yourself of the aunti-network that always seems to be a matchmaking service on overdrive. I know quite a few geeks who, while having spent more time staring at a computer than bars, have had quite a bit of success with.

Based on heuristic evidence, I've seen some happy families emerge for guys who may not otherwise have done so well if left to their own communication/social skills. I think there's actual statistical evidence which points to longer lasting marriage thru the somewhat more traditional method of desi matchmaking.

Well yes I am 'desi' but I had to actually look that up. I don't know any language other than English and I've found that doesn't help much.

> Dude, I'm assuming you're desi...

Now I'm curious as to how you arrived at that assumption.

[EDIT] on second thought, probably not a great idea to go into details about how I looked him but, but it wasn't terribly difficult.