asked friend for help & he got mad cuz I didn't understand

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Oh...I'm so happy for you, Eisbaer [and slightly jealous]!
Gah, we're really off-topic! Sorry, LP!

I agree about trees versus concrete.

I Dont know Hoosick Falls, NY I don't think, but if it's near Vermont that is why - I haven't been to that part of my state hardly at all, of at all (I have to check a map to be sure because I'm very bad with geography/directions, and get lost a lot and stuff). Also never been out of the country so not familiar with other places mentioned in the thread, but I kind of like NYC when I go there to visit but require a guide at all times or I'd get lost instantly. I'm often surprised that when I travel around my state, I get so bored of all the small towns so easily. I wouldn't think I'd long for a city but once in awhile it's invigorating for a day trip with a guide, like I said.

I will share my question here in a little bit, once I'm ready to feel stupid again, which I'm very sensitive about, which I know is a character flaw I have to work on.

Some people said things I would like to quote and address directly, so I'll do that now, but just wanted to thank everyone who has read my post, and who has commented (as well as those who haven't). It's nice to feel as though I'm being heard. If I don't quote someone right away to respond to them, it's because I have to go out very soon and might have to split up my replies - some now, some later.

But I can say here, since it applies to more than one response I have gotten so far, that you're right - I won't lose the friendship over it, in large part because he IS so much like me, and we've been friends for about 8-9 years now so I hope it will endure a lot bigger blow up than this one. It already has in the past in fact. I always just need to suck it up and turn the program back on that we use to communicate and it all ends up okay soon enough. But I find it hard to drop something sometimes and had to just sign off because I knew I'd harp on it and didn't want to annoy him any longer.

Last edited by LivingInParentheses on 04 Nov 2015, 11:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hoosick Falls is very near Bennington, Vermont.

And probably not too far from Glens Falls, NY

Random fact: The word 'harp' as in 'harping on' comes from the Greek Harpies.

I had to quote this one to respond to straight away because it made me get defensive and then a little bit like a dog with it's tail between it's legs, which means that ther is probably some bit of truth to it. I feel inclined to reply by saying "yes, but...." to your post, which of course I realize is what I did to him instantly when he tried to explain it to me. But the reason isn't that I'm not getting what either of you is saying, it's that I get what you're saying, and feel that there is something else to the situation which I must now explain to you as a follow up. But I can see how it might come across as just skipping over what you have to say, ignoring it even, and re-asserting my position.

I simply mean it as "yes, your point is understood and noted. Now it's my turn to say something. Then you get another turn." in a very basic sort of way. But I guess it doesn't come off like that. I did even follow his explanation up with a question meant to clarify whether I was understanding him correctly but at that point he said he gave up. *sigh*

Its hard to say from what you said. Maybe you were taking something too literally.

Depends on what the thing is that you didnt understand.

Could be that he was being argumenitive (like Quill said), could be that you were being argumenative like someone else said, could be that he thought that you were being argumentative when you werent.

I have had similar experiences. I also have it happen often that when I don't understand something and keep asking questions to try to understand or keep trying to explain how it is making sense to me, people just automatically assign a "You're being argumentative and combative" attitude to me. That is usually not the case at all. I am just very confused and my brain won't stop spinning until it understands. But I think that some people don't understand how I can possibly be confused about the thing I am confused about because it's not something that would confuse them or anyone else they know. So their only thought is that I must be arguing. They don't understand that my thought perspective and process about the thing is very different from theirs so I have a very different way of understanding. They can't conceptualize that because they only understand their way of understanding. So the only option left for them is to assume that I am displaying argumentative behavior.

And sometimes the person does not know the answer to your question and rather than admit that because the ego won't let them admit they don't know, it's just easier for them to shut you down. Of course I don't know your friend so I don't know if he is doing any of these two things, but these are just possible reasons why it could be happening.

Would it help if we had a crack at explaining what you don't understand? I am curious as well as to what it might be. But sorry you are going through that. I know it is very frustrating.

Lot of people do not have the patience to explain things they already understand or that most people would understand. I don't know how many times I have gotten "never mind" and "just forget it" when I would point something out. I wouldn't try to push it because they decided it was a never mind so I knew that meant they didn't want to talk about it. I just didn't realize then they didn't want to bother explaining it if I didn't get it. I tie that down to laziness. But if something is beyond your comprehension, it's something they wouldn't be able to explain because it would be like trying to explain a 3rd grade math problem to a kindergartener or trying to explain algebra to me so it's not always laziness.

What I would do instead is go to a different person and ask. If they can't explain it or don't want to, go to someone else and see if they will. That way you avoid annoying people and getting them mad.

I keep thinking sometimes this is what happened between this other person and I on fanfiction.net when we were talking. We were having a great conversation and she seemed to be like me but then she did the 180 on me and said all she saw were arguments and said I didn't seem to get there were different perspectives and it was like she had read another post instead of mine so it was confusing. I do not understand why someone would lead me on if they didn't like the topic we were on, why respond to it and talk about it with me if they don't like it. Someone will also say something to you and then write that they are done talking now as if they wanted the last word. I did apologize for making her uncomfortable and then told her what my intentions were but I never heard back so I moved on. Maybe she didn't read my last reply or maybe she did and she just didn't care. Sometimes when people say they are done talking, they really mean it and won't change their mind even if they do realize they were wrong.

You all give such good advice. I really appreciate it. It''s very constructive and thoughtful and sensible/logical ,which is perfect for me and the way my brain works. But My brain has the added "fun" habit of going back over and over and over things that don't sit right with me for whatever reason (not understanding a concept, feeling unsure about an encounter, etc) plus I tend towards always being hard on myself and thinking people are displaying negativity towards me (even when they're not), so as soon as someone departs from logic and gets into emotional territory with me, I tend to start to put my defenses up (if I get a hold of myself in time) or else I just short-circuit pretty quickly and need to remove myself (like this morning when talking to him).

I will lay out the entire conversation/thing I didnt' understand in a separate post so it doesn't get too confusing with too much info in one place.

But I do want to re-iterate (because I really like or even love him as a very good or even probably my best friend, and I know he feels the same way about me) that I know he's probably aspie like me (he's even said before that he is more like me than I probably realize, and that all of my diagnoses in my psychiatrist's report would likely apply to him too, but he wasn't saying it like some NT's do to trivialize your feelings, he was being honest - which I know for a fact because he's way more geeky/sci fi/ people-shy/ outdoors-avoidant/etc than I am, plus he's got some mad skills with music and computers I can only dream of.. so for sure his attitude isn't coming from a place of superiority or NT-ness, so much as probably truly not believing that I really didn't get it, and wasn't just harping on why the actual answer wasn't the one I wanted to hear. He's a good guy, and there are very few of those in the world, compared to how many "bad guys" there are. So I have to give credit where credit is due.

(PS - I think probably it's very accurate what Quill and others have said - I think he took me as being argumentative/difficult about my understanding making more sense than the real answer, when I was only trying to figure it out in a way that made my brain stop asking the same thing over and over. I just wanted my brain to shut up! But that happens to me sometimes. I often feel like the best conversations are a little bit of a debate, so will sometimes take the opposite point of view of the other person just for the fun of a good debate but this was not the case today. They always know when I'm doing that anyway though, I make it obvious.)

I know what you mean about ruminating! I am the gold medal champion of that. I actually had a really good talk with another Aspie friend about it. Turns out it's a very Aspie thing to do. I know that for me it is very important for things to make some kind of logical sense. If they don't my brain will keep going over them over and over until they make sense. It needs the problem to "add up" in order to move on or it will just keep looking for it to "add up." My brain needs resolution and that is how it goes about seeking it. You and I are probably very similar in that regard.

I can tell from your posts that you are very close to this person. I have similar conversations like you had with him with my husband. It's possible that we tend to go there with the people we are closest to. I guess that is just human nature. Hopefully we will be able to figure out how to understand the question you are having issues with. It might be hilarious if we all see it from the same point of view that you do.

Yeah, I ruminate, too. I think that's why I like most of my conversations to come to some kind of conclusion -- otherwise I'll keep going over it again and again in my head.

Okay, so, my friend and I were talking via online text messenger this morning like we often do. We're in different countries and sometimes talk about differences in our languages, customs, traditions, stereotypes, whatever the case may be. We often joke around about our pet peeves as well, and talk about tv shows, etc. We had been talking about Twilight Zone episodes this morning for a bit, then later he commented on a frustrating thing he was dealing with in his computer work/hobby. Then a bit later I complained randomly about some grammatical and spelling errors I saw online on a different forum that came up in a web search result, and he was sympathizing with my frustration at a couple of my pet peeve words that were misspelled. Typical kind of day/exchanges that we have.

Then I was quiet for awhile, researching something or other about autism that I don't even remember right now, because as usual I followed links and more links until I wasn't even researching the same subject anymore, I was just reading an older google books result and ended up reading many of the free pages in the book because I found it interesting.

In that older book about autism and some other associated syndromes, I read several statistical statements which were generally set up like "a prevalence of 4-5 in 10,000 children," or "One in every 2000 people,". But one statistical statement was set up differently/broke the pattern, so it caught my attention.. it said "Rett's syndrome and Child Disintegrative Disorder are rarer, each occurring in fewer than one per 10,000 live births".

So, I brought up the text messenger box and commented:

"what a dumb way of stating something. they're talking about a disorder that has to do with speech and communication and motor movements, yet they make a point to say it affects about x in 10000 "Live Births". HOW CAN THIS AFFECT A DEAD BABY?"

him: It can't. they must be excluding still births or something.
me: yeah stillborn babies are dead babies and have no chance of developing a disintegrative disorder
him: which is why they're excluded from the statistic
me: they don't need to be. common sense says they are.
me: this affects about x in 100000 live births, and about x in 10000 dead births.
me: something wrong there?
him: i think you're missing the point
him: there is no data on the death births
him: so they're excluded
me: you can't have a disintegrative disorder if you're never alive, so there is no point in splitting the statistics between live births and stillbirths
him: they have to be excluded BECAUSE you can't tell on them one way or another
him: so it might skew the statistic
him: and i expect that kind of precision from a statistic
me: I don't understand. nobody is going to count the number of miscarriages or stillbirths when determining how many CHILDREN have something, because those don't ever become children
him: exactly
him: so they're not counted
him: they're excluded
me: so if we're not even counting them, why split into two groups
me: to not count them
me: they're simply ignored out of common sense
him: they're ignored by stating that they're ignored
me: only live children can even have this so we do not need to specify that this number is out of the live children
him: otherwise they're included in a statistic and makes it wrong
him: you're missing the point
me: they aren't included in the statistic though because they can't be because they don't exist anyway
him: i give up
me: i'm sorry, i'm trying
him: they're right to specify

me: this is one of those times that my brain just doesn't understand
me: i'm not arguing because I think i'm right, it's because it's not clicking
me: but thank you for trying and sorry its annoying
him:: they can't say 1 out of 1000 births has something, if they can't tell conclusively from one subset of those 1000, ie the dead ones
him:: so it would be a wrong figure
him:: because you can't tell whether or not the dead ones would have it
me: I just feel like the statement "child disintegrative disorder occurs in fewer than 1 in 10,000 children" would be as accurate as saying "live births" because OBVIOUSLY dead children cannot have this, it's stupid to even say that. neither can egg and sperm that didn't meet at all.
him:: so they have to exclude them to give a reliable figure from the ones they can get a figure from
him:: again, i give up
me: yeah I don't blame you. some things will never make sense to me
me: this must be about math instead of about communication
me: kinda like saying 1 in 10000 live births will end up contracting the flu someday. dead babies don't. dur.
me: nope. i give up
me: don't need to exclude the impossible conditions, otherwise where do we draw the line?
me: sigh brain doesn't brain some s**t
me: if they were counting blue eyed humans i'd understand the importance
him: stop
-----

So, okay your heads all hurt by now and so does mine because I know he's right, and I am not questioning it, I only wanted to understand why the author chose to use this wording for this statement he was communicating to the reader when the other statistics did NOT specify "live births", they said things like "children" and "people" instead, which are of course live births but aren't specified in such a way as to so specifically and blatantly call into attention the fact that some births are not live births, which I feel implies that the non-live-birth numbers have something to do with the statement which the author was making, whereas those numbers did NOT apparently apply to his previous statements, based on his word choice being so different this time.

So my question was - it seems obvious that the author thinks this particular statement requires pointing out that not all of the statistics in question are about live births, and I want to know why the heck is he making a point to draw our attention to disintegrative disorder in stillborn children, when there doesn't seem to possibly be such a thing?

So instead of type all THAT to him at this point, I just said "this must be about math instead of about communication" because I figured, a-HA, this is worded like this because of mathematical accuracy being desired in the sentence the author wrote, perhaps that's required with statistical statements (though then why weren't the previous ones worded similarly?).... so I thought "ah, I'm worried about the comunication the author is trying to engage the reader in, an I'm focusing on what his word choice means communication-wise, but maybe really it's a math word and statistics dictate saying it that way so even though it sounds weird he had to say it because STATISTICS! what do I know about statistics? math is where my report cards went from "gifted" to "what the heck? she's not working up to her potential!! lazy errors!!" (I really tried I swear).

bleh. anyone reads all that I apologize for making you and thank you for your time. I know it's my fault for going on and on about it, but ... WHY did the author specify "live births" like that?? Maybe his thesaurus ran out of words for "children", "people", etc and that was all he could think of.

What a dumb thing to make me crazy.

They're ALWAYS things like this, too.

I know what you mean. I love fanfiction.net, but I often feel like I'm on the outskirts of my (tiny) fandom. People will reply to my PMs and reviews, but it seems like everyone else talks to each other all the time and knows so much more about each other than I do (and I'm not new) -- you see all over their fics that this is dedicated to person x, and this is for the x holiday challenge, and this is a birthday fic for x, etc. I have no idea how you move from being on the outskirts to being actually in the "club" where you can be included in this kind of stuff. I'd love to be included more!

I mean, I've had a few longer conversations with people, but most of them end up going the same way as you described, where they don't reply after a while. In some ways, having someone ignore your message makes you feel worse than if they got in a big argument with you (in my case, anyway). I hate not knowing what I did wrong or why the person doesn't want to talk to me anymore. I think I may sometimes have an issue with info-dumping, so I try to slow myself down as far as that goes. I have had a few successful conversations with people, one person in particular who PMs me from time to time and seems to like me, but there still just seems to be so much distance between me and the rest of the people in my fandom, and as much fun as I have reading their work, I still feel left out.

Last edited by Quill on 04 Nov 2015, 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi Kuraudo. Thanks, I feel better now that I've had all day to read everyone's replies, and especially to read over the actual conversation again in the messenger program, before posting it here. I never noticed before how good that is to have to refer to at times like this. Usually when I worry about a conversation, I have to rely on memory, and I seem to make things much more contentious than they really were a lot of the time in my mind. I think I need to work on that. *sigh*

I think he did his best to explain it to me, too. and reading back now he really did display a lot of patience with me. I was just too worked up to have any hope of understanding what he was trying to say at the time. I don't even know why I was like that, I had no personal stake in the conversation or anything - I mean, it wasn't about me or whatever. But sometimes I get like that and dig in my heels and just need to be right, I think. When I read it back that's how it reads to me now, after the fact. But I wasn't feeling/thinking that at the time, I was just riding the waves of thought and emotion that were coming with reading the book an trying to process it. It felt like it threw my brain into an infinite loop and then I crashed or something, LOL. Poor guy. I need to apologize to him I guess. He really did try.

I think that's the best answer, but really he doesn't get angry or upset, it's always me that has a little mini-meltdown and ends up quitting a conversation and avoiding him for some hours or a day or two until I feel better. I took some hours off today and now will apologize to him tonight or in the morning, whenever we see one another online again (completely different hemispheres, I'm in NY he's in Australia). I need to be able to just let things go sometimes, hard as it is. I think I should've switched over to writing a blog post or thread here sooner just to get it off my chest rather than keep sending it all his way.