How often is this really happening -- whenever I'm forced into a social situation.
I'm one of those people who is always 'around' and sometimes even considered 'competent' but people don't know me at all. I don't talk to them unless it's absolutely necessary. Now, this is fine in a work or task-based environment but whenever it's more relaxed and more 'social' people try to get me 'involved.' So you're sitting there, probably with food in front of you so you can't leave, and there are these people asking you questions... and you're trying to eat and you're trying to figure out what tastes good and what doesn't, how to ration out the beverage so you'll have enough, and yet, these people are STILL trying to get you to talk, thinking that that's more important than the food, and they're asking questions of things you either don't think about or don't want to think about or don't know about or just plain don't want to tell them, and it's impossible to tune it all out...
It turns into an obligation that they get to know me, so it's much, much more difficult to just decide, "Oh, they don't want to talk," when you ask somebody how's your day when you're passing them in the hallway. As much as I like food at restaurants, I almost dread going because I know that the other person will be interrogating me over the meal. It's like they can't stand any silence.
And what's worse is when they're relatives, because coworkers and peers may eventually figure that "oh, they think they're too good for me," and stop pestering, but for family it's even more of an obligation because, hell, they're you're family, you're supposed to know about them and everything about them and keep up with them because that's just the RIGHT thing to do.
Essentially, you're in a social-convention catch-22. You're trapped by the convention that you just can't walk out on people, but you find you have to fight because of your own fear of being trapped. And there's nothing you can do about it, because it's absolutely normal.
Oh, I'm well aware that my expectations are entirely unreasonable -- there's a reason social convention is there, so that people know how to act without others getting mad at them, and yet, when they approach me, all of the sudden something that doesn't get people angry has made me morose and ill-tempered, and they have absolutely no idea why. There is no way of knowing this until you know somebody in depth, and according to convention, you can't get to the 'deep talk' without talking the 'light talk' first.