Why do social interactions wear you out?

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I like to plan (generally) my conversations with others (you know, topics, updates to common interests etc.). When those brief plans are accomplished, or the location is thick with people, I exhaust much more easily and quickly because I am planning my conversational comments on the fly. Yes, I can mask conversationally (I call it autopilot), but that is exhausting, too. None of my adaptations involve my interests, anyway, so I end up bored.

Fresh experience on social interaction:

I just got cornered by 2 fellow employees downstairs who wanted to chat. I know them well enough to not feel too uncomfortable talking to them but:

(a) I wasn't interested in what they were talking about;
(b) I had nothing much to contribute to the conversation;
(c) I had other things I'd rather be doing;

This started getting a bit nerve wracking. The whole time I was stuck there, there was this constant feeling of "I just want to get away and go back to my desk!"

That's when I realized, a lot of the time, it's not (just) nerves. A lot of it's boredom! Most of the time I get cornered, I'm thinking, "I don't want to listen to this. I don't care. I'd rather be doing what I want to do"

So, not all bad social experiences involve nerves. Sometimes it's just boredom.

P.S.

I know a good way I've used on many occasions to end a conversation (I sometimes find ending conversations harder than starting them). Start edging away and make a (tasteful) joke of what's being said and while they're laughing continue to turn and walk away. It works.

Social interaction wears me out the same way any difficult mental task wears me out.

I used to get very burnt out by it & remember it well enough to describe:

It's because the Autistic mind has to intellectually process & calculate everything in a social situation - e v e r y t h i n g. For NT's most social interactions are entirely intuitive. ASD brains have to constantly process every detail in order to figure out how to act/react and it's very very draining.

Try to imagine it as other brain functions.. like autonomous things like breathing and blinking and swallowing etc. Now imagine you didn't automatically do those things naturally. You can do them, but you have to focus intently on them and think and calculate every move.. but you also have to split your attention and processing power over dozens of different brain functions that you have to manually consciously process in order to get all of those typically automatic things to happen.

That's sort of what it's like for those on the autism spectrum when it comes to social interactions. They're not intuitive and require a tremendous amount of energy to make happen. In addition there's also social anxiety likely at play & potentially other symptoms taking their toll on you.

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

They wear me out because they're haaaaaard
When I feel socially tired/overwhelmed I just avoid people for some time - except for my sister, because I can count on her not to talk too much if not to say something I'm thinking as well - varying from a few hours to a few weeks (depending on lab and school). Most of my acquaintances and friends don't mind it if I disappear for a while. Some of them do, and I've lost (what I thought to be) friendships because of it.

"Normal" people do much of the "work" of social interaction on a subconscious level.

Autistic people have to do most all the work on a cognitive level. This means where a normal person just thinks about what they want to talk about, we have to analyze a myriad of environmental factors on top of what we want to communicate and how to properly convey it to another person. It's like translating between two diplomats at a cease fire summit while juggling fish.

After so much time, depending on how much we can do based on learned skills and how involved we become in an event, we are just burned out from all the mental effort to "fit in."

Then, consider the emotional stress we might be under just being forced into a social situation in which we might be uncomfortable.

It's not the accommodations, it's the nervousness in spite of the accommodations. Any exposure to stressful situations can tire someone out. In my case, even if people are friendly and we seem to be talking without problems my body may be reacting as if we're not. My heart races and my brain starts to fumble. Other times, there's just a lot to keep track of with energetic people.

Reading your replies makes me happy that I don't have Social Anxiety co morbid...
Social interaction wears me of due to boredom, sensory issues and general information overload but at least I don't spend every moment of the talk wondering about social rules. I just act as I feel like. Sometimes I pass, sometimes I make a mistake - but neither of those is intentional, I don't care either way.
The only moments when I am actually aware of social cues is then something is not right: someone uses different tone of voice than I learned is supposed to in such situation or people say I said something I didn't say at all (because my body language apparently "said" otherwise) and I wonder what made them think this way. Other times - I just act my own way even if it is not normal way of acting. And I don't realize I did something weird till other people point it out.

Social interactions wear me out usually because I never know what to say. I'm always thinking about the unspoken implicit rules of socializing, the social contexts, the slang. I become hyper-vigilant about every little social detail in my head. It just makes me uncomfortable.

Most of the time when I get into a conversation I feel like a deer-in-headlights. And it seems like everyone else has a script and knows exactly what to say and when to say it, and I just wasn't given one.

Life's a play and I don't know my lines.

Staying in the same room instead of finding somewhere to hide.

I had to stop going to school since people started to noticing me. I have no idea why people enjoy lying to each other to gain social ground, however, I find it unnerving and draining. Hence, I had an emotional break down since I could not handle being observed.

I can't mask out background noise, so unless the environment is quiet, the mixed auditory signals wear me out very quickly, and the background noise distracts me from being able to focus on the conversation. It is a strain that gets worse as I get older, and the other thing that I find very wearying is being asked one question after another and another in a group of more than 2 or 3. Sometimes different people are asking different questions at the same time and it overloads me quite quickly unless I am feeling particularly energised and well rested. Which isn't very often. Even the clatter of plates in a restaurant kitchen can keep breaking the thread of my concentration as can a waitperson butting into the conversation while we are in mid-sentence. Ugh.

This is all such crap. None of us like humans. They've put us through the shitiest crap!

I'm really surprised I'm not a misanthrope. I am sometimes.
Why do we put up with their sh***y ways?