reading social cues

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Um I'm not sure if I'm being all that clear either. In case it isn't,

I meant this quoted part about how I feel people in general should communicate, not directed at your post.

Sigh. It's been a long day here.

I understood you. I was just frustrated that I messed up my poll.

I have a hard time with them. They have never been my forte. I can read some but lot I have troubles with. In fact I don't even notice so I can't say if I have given up or not. In certain situations I will try and look for them like when I am on the phone and I am thinking in my head when do I hang up, when do I speak. If I am in a conversation I am looking for when to speak so I am waiting for the person to pause for a few second so I can say something. If my boss is talking to me, I am thinking when I can walk away so I am waiting when he isn't talking anymore or when he walks away. I rely on other people.

I gave up years ago trying to master phone conversations. I do it sparingly and only when necessary.

For me it's the opposite. I'm overly sensitive to a lot of nonverbal signals, intimidated by them, and quite weary of them indeed. You bet I wish for simple, clean information exchanges.

It's part of what repulses me about society... the undercurrent of threatening, silent signals that I just can't respond to, because I can't make them myself without conscious effort. Most of the time it feels like I have mental blinders on...

LOL, I was about to vote, but then I started reading how everyone voted incorrectly by accident, and then I was like "wait a minute, did I click the right one?" sure enough, I didn't... But to answer your question... No, you are NOT the only one getting sick and tired of it.

My problem isn't so much that I don't pick up on them and they get mad at me for it, but rather I get misinterpreted ALL THE DAMN TIME. Whenever I open my mouth and say anything, there's always some kind of ulterior motive behind it. Of course, said ulterior motive is news to me, but hey, who needs to make sense, right? People take everything I say wrong and get pissed at me no matter what I say. Especially in forums, it gets ridiculous cuz then I get flamed to death. I thought that was about to happen in a thread on here, but then once I explained myself, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE nobody bothered me about it anymore... I really AM on the wrong planet... BEST FORUM TITLE EVER. It really hits home like nothing else ever has. Usually the more I try to explain to get them to understand what it is I really meant, the more pissed they get... Maybe they become even more pissed because I told them something they thought was wrong? "oh s**t, first he insults me, now he's calling me stupid?!?!?!? WHAT AN as*hole, LET'S FLAME HIM!! ! YEAH!! !! !" Yeah, I don't know wtf goes on in their heads, and I don't want to know. But it must be something like that...

Oh, I so know what you mean about ulterior motives. I'm misunderstood all the time as well. I think a lot of people have a hard time believing someone could really be as blunt as I am.

Ah, ulterior motives. My sister said this to me only a few months ago:

"It doesn't matter what you were thinking or intended when you said. All that matters is what I heard."

What I said was: "I didn't hook up the router incorrectly, I'm still setting it up."

What she heard was: "I've got internet working on my computer, I don't care if the people on wireless have no signal. Die in a fire for all I care."

Ouch, your sister sounds mean.

Oh, that she is. I could go on all day. I think that misinterpretation was not simply a matter of people misreading me because I am autistic, but also because when she gets angry about something, someone has to be blamed for it, even if she's responsible for what she's angry about.

My family is like this, too. It's exhausting trying to communicate with them on any level.

I spent three days last week trying to explain to my mother that her answers to comments I make are confusing and make no sense to me. I say three days, but I really mean about 2 minutes per day because of the other thing I tried to talk to her about - that she tends to just turn her back on me and walk away in the middle of a conversation. When I repeat back to her what she said and ask her what it means she says "You're hearing things that aren't there" which is confusing going both ways, as she's reading things into my question and then telling me the things she's reading in my question aren't in her statements.

And then on Friday, I get last minute warning that I have to make room for stuff I have in storage and after working through the extreme frustration with not having enough warning for a significant change, I ask her "Why did you wait until the last minute to tell me this?" and she yells at me. I just needed to know why I couldn't have had enough warning that my brain wouldn't seize up from the stress, and the response was anger. I mean, she apologized afterward, but I feel like nothing I say is right unless I talk about absolutely nothing at all, and talking about nothing is just too hard and pointless to bother with.

Wow dude, I thought my family was bad... I still feel like nothing I do is ever good enough or right to them, but holy s**t, none of them have ever told me to go die in a fire... That just isn't right.

And I would REALLY love to know how the hell an NT goes thru life, constantly finding things within the language that aren't there, and attaching extra meaning all the time. Well I can pretty much guarantee that art and dream interpretation is practiced almost exclusively by NTs because they're the ones who always find some deep hidden meaning(which is usually a crock... If a dream or painting DOES mean something more than what it appears on the surface, then the only person who could really say what it means is the painter/dreamer) in EVERYTHING.

My relationship to my mother is similar. Very often she is not able to see facts, so she thinks I try to influence her in some way with my words. Very often she thinks I critisize her as a person. She either leaves, starts singing (ignoring me obviously, demonstrating that I have a problem), answers with a definition of me (you are, you think.. etc.), which is an agressive response to what she thinks was an agressive message in the first place -> she thinks she answers with the same "reason" as me, which means that I would be offensive in her opinion. I tell her that I dont meen to, but it is impossible to explain myself. It hurts to have that place in her imagination, and Im working on not being affected by it because its her problem and I know Im not attacking her.

As an Aspie, I don't have much trouble with social cues.