As someone so intelligent how did you find friends? I'm finding myself at a loss bc even in uni most people are. Well. Idiots. I come across as too intense, or too serious or not serious enough about classwork, and I find constantly trying to calibrate how I come across difficult after the lonely teenage years. Someone I thought was pretty cool and that they could be a close friend told me, like half admiring that my knowledge was intimidating. Like. How do I take that? I don't want to be intimidating or aloof or seem arrogant but it's all I seem to come across as. My parents tell me I should be more gracious and just let things go and I try, but it's never enough or I remember too late and then people don't want to be with me. What do I do?
You seem like you have a good net outside this hellsite, and I admire you a lot so I thought to ask. But if it's too much of course I understand and I apologize for putting you in this situation ><
I have been extremely fortunate to get to know several people who enrich my life with their presence, knowledge, kindness, and who seem to find my eccentricities and aloofness endearing much in the same way cat owners proudly show off videos of their cats knocking items off countertops.
Making friends is in many ways like dating. Lots of trial and error. Plenty of people you hang out with and get to know, only to discover later that you didn't have much in common except a shared context (school, uni, mutual friends etc). And then sometimes you meet people you just know will be in your life until death parts you.
The way your ask is written, I can relate to a good number of the things you mention. Teenage loneliness. Disconnection from peers due to being intensely knowledgeable about topics about which the average person knows very little. Expecting things to get better in uni and discovering that no, they don't really. As a side note, I was on good terms with most people in my medical school class, but I have no enduring friendships from that class after graduation. The friends I have from medical school were in different years from me and I met them in other contexts than class.
The issue is twofold. On one hand, being above average in general knowledge/intelligence and having a desire for intellectual friendships automatically limits the pool of potential friends. You will meet so many people who will not and cannot match the intensity of your interest in the world around you. It's not a personal failing of yours if some acquaintances fizzle out because you just don't have enough in common to keep a friendship going.
On the other hand, there is the matter of how you approach the idea of friendship and your interactions with other people. "Most people are idiots," you say, and believe me, I've thought the same thing many times. Some people are idiots. Some people are especially idiotic in uni. Most people are just people, though.
I want to challenge you to a bit here: Is your feeling of alienation from your peers contributing to a blanket dismissal of the value of other people's contributions? Are you able to stay curious about what might be going on in other people's lives, or are you mainly looking for friends who will validate you in your own interests? How much of your social behaviour is a defense mechanism against the possibility of social rejection? Do you ever let your guard down? Do you laugh at yourself? Do you worry that others will laugh at you?
I am not saying this to be cruel. I am saying this based on personal experience. I have come across as arrogant, aloof, intimidating to others, at times when my own perception of the situation was that I was worried I wasn't cool or interesting enough for my friends to stay friends with me, and therefore felt like had to prove my worth to them. Insecurity can read as arrogance. Self-consciousness can read as aloofness. Being too preoccupied with coming across the right way in a social setting can, paradoxically, make you seem less open and approachable. This really sucks.
So. How does one unlearn this? Not in isolation. Not by beating yourself up for not being good enough at social skills. But by inviting people into your life. By daring to be vulnerable. That person you thought was cool; have you told them? I think that would be the perfect response to them admitting that they found your knowledge intimidating: "Oh, and here I felt like you were the one who was too cool for me". That immediately puts you on more equal footing in the situation.
Look for people who share your interests and invite them to activities related to that interest. I found out a coworker also liked fibre arts and after we'd talked about it several times at work, I told her "I think we should go to a café and knit together someday" and she texted me a couple of days later "hey, if you were serious about that suggestion, I'd love to do it" and we've been friends ever since. I bonded with someone at a party over our shared interest in reading and now we trade book recommendations and talk about anything and everything. I recently reconnected with someone from high school over our shared interest in strategy board games and ice skating. Do things together. That takes a lot of pressure off your conversational abilities.
And sometimes you're just lucky. Sometimes someone will see you, socially awkward, ill at ease in crowds, weirdly knowledgeable about obscure topics, and decide "yes, I want to be friends with this one". People will come into your life and set up camp there and refuse to leave and keep caring about you until you start believing that you're worth caring about. It's not a one person job.
