Apparently I make my coworker feel inept?

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I try to fit in to my work environment by complimenting my coworkers and being nice to them. I'm a generally nice person anyways, so it's not too difficult, but sometimes it's hard to compliment someone who isn't the smartest bulb in the tool shed (one coworker in particular).

I'm fairly smart, and self-taught on basically everything, but I've recently taken some work-sponsored classes to up my game for the good of our department. But I was hired because I already had most of the skills they were looking for and were impressed by my ability to self-teach.

Any time I accomplish something that I would consider a major victory, or something that took me a very long time to figure out on my own that was really frustrating, I would get REALLY excited. I mean REALLY EXCITED. So naturally I wanted to tell my two coworkers about it, because I was REALLY excited! And while conversing with them about stuff that I was excited about, they would generally seem interested or say "hey that's great" and all that good, mushy stuff. I thought they were being supportive.

Then, during a performance review, it was brought to my attention that I make my coworker (one in particular) feel inept. What?? I compliment her all the time, and tell her she's awesome, and I thank her profusely every time she helps me with something (she's been here for forever, and I'm new, at the time this happened I was at the company less than a year).

I don't understand? Is this something that people are just generally weird about? Do people not like to celebrate other peoples' accomplishments? I wasn't TRYING to make her feel inept. But apparently she's brought it up to my supervisor (without even going to me first!) more than once. Ugh! Maybe I just needed to rant or something to get this off my chest, but I find it very frustrating. What am I supposed to talk about? Everyone else in the department has kids except me, and I don't like kids, so I don't want to talk about kids. I have cats, but they always look at my funny if I try to talk about my cats. I've taken to just generally avoiding trying to make conversation because I don't want to make anyone feel inept, but at the same time, their topics of conversation are yawn-worthy and I'd rather cry in a corner than participate.

Ignore her. What kind of a person goes and complains to the manager that you are making her feel inept? If you try to accomodate her you will be making the situation worse. This is not your problem, unless the manager is also feeling inept around you. That could be a problem.

What exactly did your manager say about the situation? Did they have any suggestions?

Don't let this stop you from being social - that might be the point of the whole exercise, because the whole thing is so vague that it is impossible to do anything constructive about it.

Dimes to donuts, it's the tone of your voice and body language. How you think you are saying the information may be very very different from how that coworker perceives it.

My husband (Aspie) can make the best compliment sound like a put down. It took me years to not take his compliments as a very subtle, mean, well thought out jab that I was a ret*d and whatever I was doing wasn't on par.

One time I blew up at him and said, "It must be wonderful to be so perfect, being able to critique everyone as if you are God yourself. Give me 5 minutes in your world. Must be heaven. And keep your f*cking opinions of me to yourself."

Which trigger a full bore meltdown, because that came on the tail end of a horrific work review. His colleagues couldn't stand him. He also found out some clients were actively avoiding him, because they thought he was a hyper critical doughe bag.

He thought he was a team player.
He thought he was being kind and helpful.
It was his horrible lack of social skills and no theatre of the mind. (He wasn't diagnosed when this all went down.)

Women (especially) will NEVER tell what is pissing them off about you to your face. I'm not surprised no one told you. Women just ignore and marginalize.

No one wants to rock the boat at work. People will put up with off putting behavior, and if someone is an ass, just hope Karma will pay them back with three big measures of awful. For me to pipe up about anyone at work, I have to be so angry, it will be a murder suicide if something doesn't change. I worked with some real maniacs, and have never said boo.

I'm telling you it is a huge deal for a person to crab to a boss about a coworker and for it to wind up on your review.

Maybe this coworker is a hyper sensitive baby, and you are doing nothing wrong.
It could be. It could be your body language and socialization skills are really off. My husband's are most of the time.

About small talk conversations...People with kids don't equate pets=kids. When I am with my childfree friends, I never bring up my kid and we all talk about our fur babies. I would not do that around my friends with kids. For them, pets are not on the same level of importance. It's a lot of crap like that I learned the hard way, and I am an NT.
No one tells you, and you figure it out on your own.

Curious, have you always had issues dealing with groups/coworkers/acquaintances? If everything has been great, and this is a first, it will be interesting what your evaluation shows. It may be the coworkers are the problem, not you.

Did the boss tell you how to address this issue?

Hope your evaluation goes well.