"socializing has too many rules."

Post Reply New Topic

I think I want someone I can call whenever I want and talk about how I'm feeling, but on the rare occasion I actually have someone like that (It's happened twice in my life, and by no effort on my part), I tend to shut down and run away. Is that weird? Do I really want what I think I want?

Yeah. I don't know that I've ever had that (a friend I knew I could call whenever) but I know that if I did I would be overwhelmed and feel like it was a branch that I needed to cut off my tree so that I could remain just a solitary stalk. If that makes sense. Probably not.

I have this same problem. I want friends in theory and want someone I can connect to, but then in practice it's just so overwhelming and so anxiety-producing that I want to run away. Still, I think I do want what I think I want, as challenging as it is.

Well I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who experiences that. It feels like crazy dissonance, wanting friends so much but having it be so overwhelming. I suppose I really do want it too. I just wish it was easier.

I actually have a HUGE number of people I call friends BUT I do not ever just call them up just to chit chat. The ones I am closest to will call me and make me come out of the house regularly. The others, I will occasionally see at events that are in my special interest (and theirs). All of them know that they cannot have me like their other friends and that I need my "alone" time in order to survive. They think I am weird but they all seem to love me despite or maybe because of it.

For example I have a number of friends who play guitar and when there is a good concert in town, if I go to the Guitar Society meeting I will see these people. Every now and then I will open my house for a concert or a party and see them there or go to one of their house concerts. My guitar teacher also enjoys my company so he calls me a few times a month and makes a date now and then to see me for dinner or drinks. WE talk about a lot of stuff on these occasions but we do not "chit chat".

I am also involved in sports so have 40 or so "sisters" on my football team who are my friends. They invite me to parties and stuff all the time but I rarely go. I see them 2-3 times a week at football practices and spend some time talking and laughing with them then. I cannot hang out with them too much because their banter often goes over my head and makes me tired. Outside of that I have a neighbor who lives very close to me and we go out to eat 1-2 times a week. She and I discuss primarily deep issues though.

I have a group of bodybuilding/fitness friends. I met many of them online and we get together physically 1-2 times a year in Kansas or LA area. I also occasionally hop a plane to see one or two of them in whatever state they happen to live.

Since being DX'd with ASD, I have joined in the Asperger Adult support and ASAN groups here in town. Several of the Aspies hang out 1-2 times a week. Sometimes I will make the trip to go hang out with them but mostly I just see them at the once a month meetings. Still I see them 2-3 times a month that way and have them as people to talk to about things.

I work a very intense full time job at the largest chipset manufacturer in the world. I have a team of people that I take care of and consider my friends as well. I also have peers that are in the lab with me. We go out occasionally for dinner or to race karts or some sort of stupid thing as well as all the social/work events (like we had a group St Patties party last week for example).

My daughers are my best friends and I know they love me and I them. I still never call them up just to chit chat or tell them how I feel.

I socialize WAY, WAY more than I ever want to and I keep my friends and all people a bit more distant than NTs seem to do. Still they are my friends and of all the people I mentioned above, I feel that if I needed anything, all of them would be by my side to help me even though we do not have a "typical" sort of friendship.

I think we may be differing only in our definition of what constitutes chit chat. When I talk to my few friends on the phone, I can talk about what I did that day, or what I saw on the news. Sometimes we will discuss a book, essay or article that one of us has been reading. With one of my friends, he does all the talking and I mostly just acknowledge what he has said. I consider these interactions to be "chit chat."

I certainly don't have the number of friends that you have, and would consider it a minor miracle if someone invited me out to lunch. And if they did, I would be at a loss as to what to talk about, other than what I mentioned above.

You seem to have overcome the difficulties that are brought up in this thread, namely of making the transition from friendly acquaintance to someone who you can talk to and go out to lunch or other events with.

No. I really don't do "chit chat" even by your definintion. If the topic is not about some deeper thing, I am not "in" it. That is why I am in social skills training.

It seems I have somehow achieved the "friendship" thing without knowing it. I don't know what I do except I put myself out there in a very "giving" sort of way. I always look for ways that I can pitch in and "help" people and things. I have learned in this life that if you give more than you take in any relationship that things are always better. That isn't to say that you should allow people to take advantage of you or that you should give money per say, but if you can volunteer your time or muscles to another person, you will likely have a friend for life.

I used to call my mother on the phone and talk to her about my day and what I have been doing or when I am upset or having problems and I just wanted to whine to her about it. Now I don't do that anymore. I rarely call her now. Now I will only call when I want to know about my brother's baby they are expecting. I'm just so happy they are going to have one because then my son will have a cousin his own age than cousins who are 8, 12, and 14 years older than him. I am always wanting to know the baby is still alive and she hasn't lost it yet. Sometimes I worry about it even though it's not my child. But then I end up talking about my day too and what I have been doing in my life or what my baby can do now and what they have been doing now just to see how closer they are getting to selling their house and other one my brother lives in and doing work on them so they can move out here.

And my mom has told me twice I should call my brother than them about the baby. For some reason I don't feel comfortable calling my brothers or my other relatives for a talk. I feel more comfortable doing it to my parents but I prefer mom more.

My social rules book has pages torn out of it and sometimes the pages are a bit soggy so it's hard to read. Perhaps I accidently dropped it in the toilet or there was a hole in my roof and it rained and I neglected to put it away.
What was I talking about again?
Oh yeah. Social rules. Bah! Just when I think I'm getting better I don't read into situations properly and probably end up getting yelled at or laughed at.

I don't desire social interaction. It is confusing, exhausting and at times down right humiliating. I have a friend and I like hanging out with them but in really small doses. I've not found one person on Earth that I've not become annoyed with, including that person.

There are more rules about socializing that anything else. The rules are mostly implied, inconsistent, and some times change arbitrarily. But if you follow the first rule of socializing, all the rest become a whole lot easier.

The first rule of socializing is to reciprocate.
re·cip·ro·cate/riˈsiprəˌkāt/Verb
1. Respond to (a gesture or action) by making a corresponding one: "the favor was reciprocated";

It means to simply do or say something similar what someone has said to you or done for you.
If you get a compliment,try to find an nice way of complimenting the person back.
If someone does something nice for you, exchange the favor by doing something nice for them.

and if someone says something bad to you, or treat you mean, you may very well do they same to them. They are not your friend.

socializing is the art of repeating what you've heard and doing what you've seen done, but making it look like you're spontaneously doing it for the person you are with. after a while, it becomes natural, and you just know what to say and when to say it. Follow the feedback from how the person reacts to what you say or do. If they do something similar or talk about something similar, then that means that the conversation is flowing well. If the conversation abruptly changes, it means the person is no longer interested in that particular line of thought and is either getting bored or annoyed.

And you know you have a friend when someone breaks the social rules for you. When people are no longer formal and rigid, it means they accept you a friend.

That is a very admirable quality, and I know from your other posts that you are a very positive person and are always striving to learn and improve. I greatly respect that. I also think, though, that there is just a personality issue at work. It seems that you are able to not only be giving but to also appear giving. In other words, of letting your generosity shine through. I tend to be scared and wary. I have been in situations in which I was very generous with my time, like when I was volunteering at a community center, but still people didn't warm to me or extend their friendship. (I ended up being bullied out of there, actually.) I think there is an ineffable quality that makes someone personable and likeable, and I don't know how to achieve it.

Yeah, this is something I really do not understand at any "articulating" level and it even sort of weirds me out. Not only do I project "giving" but I am described as "lighting up a room" when I enter it. It is the case that people actually strive to be near me and that fact has always freaked me out. If there is a Summit or a group get away, you will find that I am in nearly all the pictures. In that way, I am very much an "anti-aspie" Trust me that I used that argument in my quest to prove my DX wrong in the first weeks. My psychologist just says I am super, super smart so have been able to dance around things, either because people admire my IQ or because I can out-talk my mistakes. I have recently been speaking with people who are close to me RE this topic in light of my DX. It is funny because not one person is surprised RE my DX and all agree with it in that they have all seen me be very strange socially. They all call me "brutally honest" but they also all just forgive me and say stuff like, "Oh that's just Karla". Now they also say, "Oh that's right... Aspergers" when I shock them with one of my "honest" observations. Several people say that it is because I do not subscribe to social norms, and because I have no fear to say things that I am fun to be around. They call me fearless and crazy but almost always fun. A few people here at work have actually said that they are a little dissappointed to find out that I have Aspergers as it makes my "risky" statements to upper management and others in authority seem less risky since it is the case I don't know I am being risky.

idk... If I could bottle it up and teach it, you know I would. As it is, I would like to be able to tone all this down a little bit and hopefully with my social training and social awareness that will actually happen when I want it to.

It wouldn't be a better place for people like me.

If-then statements and similar kinds of thinking are totally foreign to the way my mind works. My mind works in terms of sense impressions layered on top of each other. It works by feel, tonality, rhythm, and movement. It works in the total absence of language, concept, category, formal logic, and all that. "Cat" is more abstract than my mind in its normal state can handle.

And I like it this way. I would never want to change for you or anyone like you. Not any more than I would like to change for nonautistic people and their way of thought. My way of thinking has benefits that can barely be conceived by people who think in what they consider to be logic. (Can barely be conceived because it's so far underneath the way most of them perceive the world. Not unless they were like me as a child, and even then that doesn't give them a glimpse of what it means to spend 30 years like this instead of 3-5 years.)

One thing I've observed about autistic people who believe their thinking to be ultra-logical, though. It really isn't. They have emotions. They have instincts, desires, and motivations that come up from below in ways they tend not to notice. They have the same cognitive biases the rest of us have, with usually an additional bias that doesn't allow themselves the possibility of noticing most of their biases (they're "logical", after all). They pick up at least some of the same values through the societies they live in, that we all do, whether we notice or not. That's why many of them are so utterly predictable in what they do and do not think is logical.

I mean, some of them know this somewhere in their minds, but many of them refuse to see this for what it is. They refuse to see that they are really just as illogical as the rest of the world, they just have this veneer of "logic" on top of all the values everyone else has. I would, for what it's worth, far rather deal with people who know they're prone to being illogical, than people who have the illusion that they are logical.

I do have my favorite sorts of people to interact with, too. They're of course other people who get by with sensing rather than conceptualizing. And yet, I don't wish the whole world were like us. That would be complete folly. The world needs people like us, surely. It also needs people like you. It also needs people like the "illogical" nonautistic people that you wish thought the way you did. People like you, or people like me, we're needed, but we're not needed in overwhelming amounts. If the whole world were like either of us, it would lose something vital that existsin the many and varied kinds of autistic people who aren't like you or aren't like me, in the people with Williams syndrome, Down's syndrome, dyslexia, intellectual disabilities, and all the other kinds of neurological atypicality, in the huge number of different kinds of people who are all called "neurotypical" because they aren't diagnosed with anything neurological, etc. The world needs all of us, not just people who work just like you want them to.

Maybe you know this, I don't know, but I just get really upset when people talk about how they wish the whole world worked just like the way they do (or the way they think or wish they did). It shouldn't ever be like that. There are so many important differences in the world that making us all the same is just a disturbing thought. It's like expecting to build a complex working machine with nothing but screws.

My husband is a take it or leave it kind of Aspie. He has some skills that he uses at work and around my family (sometimes) but otherwise he does not care much. He found me just being himself. I found him interesting because he was a complete open book. He talked about random deep things and about his life and I just listened. He does not do small talk and everyone else I knew did. We clicked right away. His friends were obnoxious goofy geeks like him. They do not have social rules. I came in with the social expectations and was very shocked in the beginning. They seemed to have no consideration for others at first. I have been the one to call them on it. Over time they seemed to catch on. Having kids have changed everyone more. But we are still a group of mostly odd people. My husband is know to talk non-stop about Star Wars and computers when he is drunk and everyone chuckles. The guys fun Friday nights in the past were networking the computers and playing video games while us girls wondered why we were even there. But we tolerated it because they were great guys.

So my advice is to look for people who are different than the norm and accepting of differences. I have not made any friends in 17 years other than them and one couple 9 years ago. I avoid talking to strangers for the most part so I understand what I am asking is difficult. But if you find someone special, social rules should not apply to true friendship.

I don't know. Something tells me that socializing doesn't have ENOUGH rules.

Social rules change within almost every group or clique or family. The dynamics are different, constantly shifting, changing evolving... I would think if socializing actually HAD rules that everyone followed consistently across the board, we'd all be pretty damn good at it. It's like travelling through a sandstorm... stand still too long and you'll get buried by the ever shifting sands.

Yeah it really does but to NTs its not so much "rules", they dont really think about it unless their awkward themselves and/or super self-conscious of themselves. They just do thinks mostly instinctively. Humans are social creatures afterall. Sometimes when you point out to NTs what there doing, they dont really realize it cause it comes naturally after doing it for years.

For me: ive probably got the social intuition of a 10 year old with a billion social rules crammed in my head which is how I get by. Its like learned knowledge as opposed to intuitive knowledge. Even tho I memorized so many social rules, I dont execute them very well at times. I know so much that Ive been able to give decent advice to my NT friends at times however they execute the advice better then I could.