What does it feel like when you can't read someone?

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You don't always notice and it feels like everyone is playing games with you and expecting you to read their minds. Other people around you seem to be pretending they are psychic because they claim this other person feels this way or that you are bothering other people. I used to be like this until I realized social cues and body language and body language is more than just seeing people smile and cry and laugh and yell. Now I know I have some troubles with this so I just accept what other people say and what my husband tells me. My therapist made me realize it and I didn't believe him for a while. I didn't want to have more Asperger's after all.

You are not sure why someone's facial expression changed. You may sense you did something wrong but you don't know what you did. You can't tell if someone is fighting or playing. Your co worker on the elevator says "wow" after you were talking and you don't know if she is saying wow as in "I can't believe she said that" or "wow" as in "This is amazing" and you wonder if you had offended her or said something wrong. Someone walks away while you are talking, you wonder did you say something wrong or were they just done with the discussion. Shall you follow them or stay. You decide to stay just in case they did walk away from you because they are done talking and you don't want to cause a conflict.

But with random strangers you just go "ah f**k it" and don't care because they are not your concern and you will never see them again so no need to obsess about what they could be thinking or feeling and if you did something wrong. Some of this could just be anxiety. My mom will tell me to not worry about what other people think and worry about their faces and what they mean. Sadly I do the same with people I know but we are not friends and we don't work together.

Don't you hate when you do that and then you realised you've tuned out for a second so you lost track of what they were saying? Then you have to ask something like "Sorry, what was the last thing you said?".
That hurts because if it was a subtle bit of subtext directed at us, we're showing that it got to us. And that's what they want. If they didn't really mean anything by it, we still look like space cadets.

I really do. It happens for lots of reasons, something will catch my mind, and I have to process it. But I can't really reconcile it because I'm also trying to listen to the person, and I can't do both. So, I could interrupt them, and ask for clarification, but that usually doesn't get a good reaction. So I try to take care of it on my own, but I don't know what they really meant, so no matter how many times I turn it over, I'm not really getting anywhere. And I feel like I can't really say anything without being rude.

It's hard because I feel like "that's just how I think" isn't a valid excuse, so I'm left with nothing.

And, to be completely honest, this happens the most with my Wife, since we have the most conversations. With other people, it's more occasional. But with her it's like... a few times a day, that i can't keep up.

I never really realised I had a problem with this but now when I think of it I tend to get panic feelings in certain situations when this is happening. Mostly when I don't know if someone is being sarcastic or is actually angry and I have a super hard time when someone makes a general statement that only applies to certain members of a group for example if my boss is saying to everybody that certain people did something wrong (but not pointing anyone out) I have no idea if I am included in the 'doing wrong' group and get panic that I did something wrong and don't realise. But generally it seems that others have a harder time reading me because the psychologist told me that my body language and facial expressions are not as expressive as a NT.