attracting comment; not selecting your friends

I) Somehow in my childhood, I was this foolish little kid who did not know how exactly to behave in front of so many other children at school.

This led to people commenting on me -- see how bad this guy is, see how foolish this guy is, etc.

Then I tried to suppress myself to do things which will yield only positive comments from others -- I tried to show that I am good, I am smart, I am able.

But this never worked out consistently -- I was able to get positive comments, but could not prevent many negative comments either.

Then I got in love with all those comments -- whether positive or negative. In fact, I started liking that people notice me and comment on me. Because there were not many other ways that I could seek their attention -- I was never a mature, responsible, street-smart, kind of guy.

So then my power of empathy increased, because I needed to think what other people are thinking of me, and thus what comments are they thinking, or will make. Because I had to monitor them, control them.

When they started making a lot of negative comments, I will try and do something to get a positive comment; and vice-versa.

In essence, I only loved that somebody was making comments about me.

(This took me closer and closer to narcissism.)

(Hence these three blogs I write)

II) Due to my inability to communicate with others, and make mature communication; I used to do mostly thought-up conversation, rather than original one directly coming out of me. Due to this, I was not confident that anybody will become friends with me. So, if anybody used to talk with me, I used to feel privileged. I never used to reply well to them, because I was never as mature as them. So I used to make my best effort. I used to make them feel good about me; and when they contacted back, I used to feel priveleged that I was accepted.

So my friends were not selected by me; but they got selected automatically, when some people managed to bear my immaturity for a longer time, and didnt mind communicating with me.

This continues until today. I didnt much select my existing friends -- I didnt try to stay only with people who I felt comfortably close, and with whom frequencies matched. I made friends with whomever came along, and showed patience to be with me.

III) This is also coming from my family setup. I have a joint family, and in my family sub-culture, having friends is not so much encouraged, but most companionship is assumed to be with family cousins etc. With most people in our older generations having many number of children, the number of our cousin families was large.
This setup required me to like all of my cousins, and their families (that is what many used to do), and hence "choosing" people for companionship was a concept that never really got imbibed into me. And I tried to make everybody happy, since thats what we were supposed to do in a large family.

IV) These effects mentioned till now are a large responsible factor for my today's behavior. I try to make everybody happy, dont choose people, dont express my likings among people, try to make a bigger social group where everybody is happy and likes each other and is friend with each other.


V) These behaviors are causing some issues that I am noticing these days. First of all, I have observed that people have an easier and more comfortable life when they have actually chosen their companionship mates. Secondly, this model fits in well the current US professional and personal mental framework of most people. Thirdly, my model is difficult to incorporate among large groups of people here, since even the Indians who I hang out with are from cultural backgrounds so different to mine. Fourthly, managing my model causes more inconvenience to self as well.

VI) Hence now I have to choose between
(a) using empathy, understand everybody as the same generic person; have a liking for all people; dont "select" people for friendships; love everybody; take care of everybody..
(b) selecting people for friendships, seeking like-minded people, get it into the general behavior that everybody behaves for his own benefit, and it is courteous to assume this, dont use so much empathy, behave from one's own benefit perspective,..