How To Learn Social Awareness

About 8 years ago, a girl gave me a fake phone number when I asked her out on a date. We were both riding on a city bus in my then-home of Santa Barbara, and after a brief - and surely awful - conversation, I asked her for her number.

I’d been given fake phone numbers before, and I was feeling pretty suspicious as she put herself into my contacts. As soon as she handed my phone back, I immediately sent her a text message to “check if she got her number right”.

She saw it coming, though - she had just turned off her phone “so she could save battery”, at which point I understood what she’d done. I was MAD about it, even though I had absolutely no right to be. Thankfully, I kept that to myself and left her alone for the rest of the ride.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can look back and realize how incredibly messed up that was. I didn’t really understand it at the time, but looking back I was basically intimidating her into forking over her number.