Social Skills for Gay Men

Social Skill

‘Social Skill’ means no more than the art of getting along with other people - not necessarily being the life and soul of the party, but being and feeling at ease in social environments of all sorts. In the gay context this will often be at the pub, at the club, at parties and at other gay functions. In these early days of the twenty first century these may be strictly gay venues and they may also be where gay and straight people mix comfortably together.

A high level of social skill will make it easy for you to start talking to a stranger. This means that you can let a guy know that you find him interesting, without embarrassing him, and at the same time let him know that you are also worth getting to know. Strong social skills will also make it easy for you to respond to strangers who take the trouble to say 'hello' to you.

It’s worth remembering that the sooner you make new friends, the sooner you’ll have old friends.

Social skills are made up of a number of separate, and overlapping, different sets of quite specific communication skills such as body language, eye contact and use, the expression on your face, using your voice, your posture, touching and the gestures you use.

We’ll explore each of these in some detail in the following pages of this series.

Body Language

"... to speak without speaking any particular language ...."

Body language is the way you stand, move, look at each other and react to those looks. At the beginning of a new friendship and relationship body language is used a lot even though you may not be conscious of it. If you want to get a better idea of what body language is, have a look at two dogs or cats getting to know each other. Humans behave in much the same way even if rather more subtly and often with rather more regard for what we (well, some of us anyway) call 'being polite'.

The stronger emotions are usually fairly easy to identify - delight, interest, anger and fear, for instance. The subtler aspects of body language can be harder to identify correctly. What in one person may indicate curiosity in another person may be 'thinking' or irritation. The only way anyone can be sure of correctly identifying another person's body language is to know that person very well over a long period of time. If that is not the case, as it won't be if you want to get to know a stranger, be very careful not to assume you know what the stranger's body language means.

At one level, of course, if his face is jutting forward towards you, his lips pulled back to bare his teeth, and his arm pulled back with his fist clenched, its almost certainly a good idea to get out of the way - fast (this hardly ever happens in real life). On the other hand, if someone's standing alone looking bored and a little irritated, he's probably waiting for someone who's late - or perhaps wondering why on earth no one has struck up a conversation with him. The only way to find out is to say 'hi' or 'hello' and see where that takes the two of you.

So what about your body language? Is it going to attract other guys or put them off? A starting point is to become aware of what your body's doing and a full-length mirror is valuable for that. On the other hand, it's a lot more fun to work with a friend (for goodness sake, you must have one you're relaxed with) and give each other feedback on the impression you're each giving the other in different stances, positions and attitudes. A further refinement of this could be to join the local repertory group and get into acting seriously. Another approach, if you feel anxious or ill at ease in social situations, is to work on building your self esteem so you'll be more relaxed.

Anyway, body language is a natural response to different life situations and the people who brought us up also influence it. If they were naturally relaxed and you can be comfortably natural that will be fine. Bear in mind, though, that you can pick up odd habits and mannerisms that can confuse or put off others. And if you're more than usually shy or self-conscious, you may give an impression of being bored, uninterested or even hostile when that is actually far from the case.

Generally, however, if you're feeling relaxed and someone's looking more or less neutral and also relaxed you'll be safe in saying 'hello'. You may not get back more than a grunt, but at least you'll have made the effort and you wont spend the next week wondering how he might have responded if you had taken the initiative and said 'hi'.

Eye Contact and Use

"The eyes have one language everywhere."

Brown, blue or green, eyes are a major feature of all our faces. If we use them effectively our social skills will be much more powerful than otherwise. So how do we do that?

When one guy is interested in someone else and would like to get to know him, on and off eye contact is often the first sign of that interest - over a period of a few minutes to over an hour or more, deliberately / by chance meeting the other's gaze for up to about ten seconds at a time.

Once you've established contact and started talking, you'll find the comfortable level of eye contact will be something like five seconds of directly looking into the other's eyes every half minute or so.

It's accepted in western cultures that eye contact, when each looks into the other's eyes, is very important between people who are talking together. Good eye contact while chatting leads to mutual trust and confidence as well as making the growth of friendship, acceptance and affection faster and smoother.

However, continuous staring at someone else's eyes quickly becomes embarrassing for both of you. The normal reaction to this is to look away, so if the other guy drops his eyes its likely to be because you're overdoing the eye contact. On the other hand no eye contact, because you're looking over the other's shoulder, gives an impression of a total lack of interest in what the other is saying. And looking down at the floor or at your shoes can make people think you're a pretty shifty or fickle guy. Neither of these will lead quickly and easily to a comfortable social chat and developing friendship.

Part 2: Making Friends