I'm going to post this here, because I am still working through all these impressions about my friend Joy and would not want her to chance across them at this point.

Joy honestly does not seem to connect well on any kind of emotional level. I know she tries. I've wondered a time or two if she has undiagnosed Asperger's, but that doesn't quite fit the bill, either, when I look into it. My husband, who has known her for a lot longer than I have, thinks her problems mainly stem from her family. I don't know them well, but they never talk to me when I come over; they keep to themselves. However, her father said something to Joy that did not sit well with me once.

The last time I was over at Joy's house, she informed me that we would be sent to the office to watch a movie because her dad was doing his office work in the living room. There was only one chair in there, so we went out to the living room to find another. There were two fold-up chairs in there; one, her dad was using, and the other had a giant popcorn bowl on it with some old kernels in it.

After asking her dad if she could use the chair, Joy attempted to pick up the chair. Realizing she'd have to get rid of the popcorn bowl, she picked it up off the chair and held it out toward her dad.

Her dad raised his arms out to the side and back and said abruptly, "What do you want me to do with it?"

Joy, seemingly almost surprised by this reaction as I was, kind of laughed insecurely and attempted to pick up the chair and hold the bowl at the same time. Suddenly recovering from my surprise enough to help, I took the chair from her and brought it into the office so she could return the bowl to the kitchen.

What kind of father would say that?

Her brother also seems to be socially behind and reminds me of some of the male Computer Science majors at my college.

Anyway. Her neediness scared me off in the first place, but I knew I'd have to get past that, so I tried to get to know her and hang out with her and stuff. I honestly don't think I would mind hanging out with her if she did not regularly ask me to come up with the what, the when, and the where. (And also sometimes to supply the transportation.) I wouldn't mind if she knew how to lead conversation. But instead I'm left to control everything, and though I make every effort to teach her by example how to lead a conversation, it hasn't worked yet. It's utterly frustrating to me. The worst part is that she doesn't seem to see the reasons why she needs to make an effort to do all these things, too--to come up with the when, the where, the what; to lead the conversation.

She doesn't like small talk. Again, something she doesn't understand--small talk does serve a purpose. One very interesting article called small talk "tribescanning." Basically, it's finding out where your common ground lies with people. He said it's a way of finding out who is "One of Us" and who is "Not One of Us." As I thought about it more, I realized that for me, it's not so much about deciding who to talk to and who not to talk to. It's deciding what to talk to about with whom--according to the level of trust you currently have with that person. When your relationship reaches a deeper level of trust, you can talk about things you disagree on with more assurance that that person will not reject you because of the disagreement.

Joy is not mentally behind. She writes very articulate blogs about her observations on the world through the lens of her faith, which I usually enjoy reading. It's only the conversational, everyday, social aspect of things that she has trouble with, and that puts a lot of stumbling blocks in the way of relationships. I want very badly to teach her how to do these things--but how do you tell somebody that they need to change in order to make a relationship work? :/

Sigh. So I'm still here, trying to figure it out. I feel better, though, now that I have more adequately articulated my concerns about Joy. They are not unfounded and unfair, I promise. I am not dismissing her like an unwanted bug; I am simply working through very real frustrations of trying to make this relationship work. :P

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