List one NT thing you do not understand.

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I have been with my NT partner for 18 years, and there are still things that baffle me:

1) When he invites people over, he always wants everybody together in one room doing the same thing. Why does it have to be a board game for eight people? Why can't it be one for six and one for two? Or four people playing a game in one room and four people talking about things in the other? What's wrong with each person doing their own thing with the person/people that they are comfortable with?

2) When he asks me, "Why didn't you tell me about _____?" You didn't ask!

and while I'm on the topic

3) What's wrong with sitting quietly in a room together? I'll read my book (or whatever), you do your thing. Why does that make him uncomfortable?

Encouraging people to do/say things that play into keeping the pecking order intact instead of mentioning the brutal truth, especially if it is for the good of all concerned

Why do N.T's spend so much time looking at pictures of their friends on trips/ and or just looking at pictures in general on facebook?

Why do people like shows like E.T and celebrity gossip so much? In the same vain why do people get so obsessed with those awards shows...the grammy etc? I find them so boring, I never understood the appeal!
!

Why do NT feel they have to stare (eye contact) at you when talking, and if you don't stare back, you are either not listening or are just rude. so frusterating. grrrrr.

daydreamer84,
I like looking at photos. I have AS. I rather look at photos of anything but people though.

We are having an interesting debate about something, and all of a sudden he will say, "I don't want to talk about this any more."

What! Why?

And what's even worse is that I'm left frustrated because we have this unfinished discussion.

Good example... and yes, the irony hits me too.

I find it very difficult to say, though one of the NT traits which has given me a great amount of anxiety more than likely has to be in the area of social relationships both platonic & romanic. I can't tell you how it becomes a struggle to not merely properly interpret body language and non-verbal communication for, that along with being able to see any underlying meanings in what people say or do.Actually, I've often felt very inferior for not being able to get things right one could say yet, I try neverless with all my heart. These days, if there is something I don't seemingly understand I'll make it priority to address such problem(s) within a reasonable and sensible manner..

fashion, and this odd tendency most nt's seem to have of laughing at another beings sufferring . Also what the hell difference does it make what label or category a person falls into?

One thing I don't get is the automaticity of social cues.

Fashion is nuts. It's impossible for me to predict what's fashionable and not, even though art is my main game. I've been watching those fashion design shows.. I think I'm slooowly learning what makes something good or bad. I think a TON of it has to do with context, which is probably why I'm having such problems. XD;;

There are many things I find frustrating. But the most frustrating is the entire concept of asking questions, particularly rhetorical questions and questions that I don't see as having a purpose.
Do not ask a question if you do not want me to answer it. I will not be able to tell if you want an answer or not, so I will give you one. How do you tell if a question is rhetorical?
A few weeks ago I baked something and brought it to class for people to eat. I was hoping not to be found out, as to avoid people doing that whole awkward trying-to-talk-to-me thing, but my professor found out and broadcast it to the class. Not his fault, he was just being polite. So of course a classmate came up to me and asked: "How did you make those?". I stared at her in silence for a good 15 seconds. Did she want me to tell her the process of mixing, rolling, and baking? What was the purpose of this question? She kept looking at me, so I said, "I followed the recipe". I still don't know what she wanted to know. Is asking questions like that a social niceity, like when people ask "how are you?" and they don't really want to know how you are? Because I still have no idea.

That's interesting you mentioned this unchaineddaura, as I've noticed that as well at times even from the context I've had some personal experiences in this area which, shall we say makes me feel most unpleasant .Upon your 2nd point raised, your very right as, there needs not to be any sort of box to put all sorts of people in cause, it just tends to create more separation of all individuals..Yes, I can understand why society does it but, it seems unpleasant to me neverless..

Just for the record, I don't think your classmate was asking a rhetorical question. I think she was asking an informational question. When somebody asks a question which would take about 15 minutes to fully answer (such as describing the process of mixing, rolling and baking) they are asking for the information which they are unlikely to already have, which is not common knowledge. How to mix, roll and bake is common knowledge. That one needs to follow a recipe is common knowledge. What is not common knowledge? Where you got the recipe and its unique specifics. For instance you might say, "this is the Tollhouse Cookie recipe off the back of the Tollhouse Chocolate Chips bag and I take the cookies out of the oven the very minute the recipe says to or they get too hard, you can't let them overbake". Or maybe, I have my mom's carrot bread recipe memorized because she used to make this all the time when I was a kid and I always helped her. The trick is to use carrots you just bought, not ones that have been sitting in the fridge for a long time".

I'm guessing that the part that makes Aspies say $%%$#@@%$ is trying to figure out what is common knowledge that need not be reiterated to the asker and what part is something they probably don't already know. Because they aren't going to say, "what recipe did you use and what little trick from that recipe would help me recreate this in my own apartment?" Nope. They figure you can just jump there from "how did you make those?". In the future when somebody asks a question that would take 15 minutes to fully answer so you aren't sure which 15 seconds of those 15 minutes they actually want to hear, ask them a return question to narrow it down. In this case, ask "do you want to know what recipe I used?" That will either get a "yes" and then you tell her which recipe or it will get a "no, I wanted to know...(how long it took to bake them) (how did you find the space to do it in the tiny little dorm kitchens we have) (I don't recognize what kind of filling this is, what is it?)"

And therefore, they have that aspie trait too.

Janissy,
Thank you for your advice regarding questions people ask. The only thing I know about "common knowledge" is that it is something within a paper that you do not have to cite because at least three other sources have said the same thing (I really wish I was kidding). It is very difficult to tell what people mean by what they say!
I did not intend for the paragraph about my classmate to extend the concept of rhetorical questions. It was meant to be a separate, but related, entity. The relationship being questions in general, the separation being different types of questions-- if that makes sense.
Thank you again for your advice.

Laney