What are NT social rules?

Post Reply New Topic

Read Temple Grandin's Understanding the Rules of Social Relationship. Read the back of the book and it tells you what you need to know about social relationships.

The NT social rules aren't like chemistry or math or any other intellectual sphere. As strange as it sounds, these rules can only be learned. They cannot be "taught," per se. I have better much social skills than a lot of spectrum people I've come across, but I'd be at a total loss if someone said, "Teach them what you know!"

I'm almost thirty years old and I've spent my entire life painfully learning these social rules. It has not been easy and I do not mean to boast.

Experience, trial & error, determination, and the desire to learn.

That's what I recommend.

But I've been very fortunate with the amount of suppot & understanding I received.

Being exceptionally stubborn and cantankerous about receiving instruction from others is a definite liability. Some Aspies are simply too pigheaded to learn.

l like that, Chameleons! That is very true!
However, most NTs are not like Chameleons and tend to stick with a familiar and similar crowd.
The ones who are Chameleons are called connectors (Social networking theory) and they connect these different circles of people.
Point being just be yourself unless you want to be a connector - then you need to digest all the body language which differs in different:
Class of people (Social class - hate that word but these rules exist in every class!)
Types of people: Myers Briggs would be something to relate to
Personal interests: Fashion (Love how everyone hates it here!:), Science, Travel, Family (yes, most imp thing to most people ) etc
The list goes on...Empathy, innate desire to make others happy (desire to making many people happy), Knowing own boundaries - not to being exploited by others

Why juggle so many balls. There are very few "connectors" NT and they do it naturally and it is not all that great - they get a buzz from it, but it only lasts as long as the social interaction. Even for hyper-active extroverts this in the long run (years well may be decades) is quite tiring! They are vicitims of their brains wiring and it is hard even when it is instinctive.

Wouldn't recommend Chameleon like behaviour unless it comes nautrally to you - or you really want to. That link "Pinkbowtiepumps" posted here looks great.

One rule, be yourself - and true friends will naturally gravitate towards you. Ok, sound like bull**** but what I mean is in conjuction with the link, ultimately whoever will be a true friend will accept you as you are and will actually love you for the very person you are!

If interaction doesn't come naturally anyway. The extra "cost" to adapt to a new type of people is small.

No idea!

I did not know that you were supposed to do that until I read that here and won't do that.

Copying people around me has never been something I was interested in. I remember when I was 14 I had a friend going to college and my therapist seemed to think it would be a "good influence" on me. I was baffled at this. Why would my friend doing something make me want to do it? I do things because I want to do them, not because I copy others I see doing them.

^^^^^ This. Omg, this. Lol. But I would also like to add that everyone has their different ideas of how they like you to scratch their back, so to speak, so even if they all think this way you still have to deal with people on an individual basis and learn their own rules.
So complicated, when it doesn't really need to be.
I'm so thankful not every NT has weird unspoken social rules that they hold you responsible to as well. Because I don't have any RL aspie friends lol.

i have never understood that saying.
i have tried to reason it through but i can not make any sense of it.

i have never had an itchy back, and i can not recall anyone else i know ever having had an itchy back. it is such a rare occurrence (i would think) in the general population that people have itchy backs, that the saying seems to be impotent if i consider that they are scratching each others backs because they are mutually itchy.

so it must mean something else. maybe it is an hostile thing to say. like "if you scratch my car i will scratch yours", but i have not seen it used in an hostile way to my knowledge.

i think it means "if you do a favor for me, i will do a favor for you" because that is what i have been told it means, but i could never have reasoned that from that phrase by myself.

if i do not need my back scratched and you do not need yours scratched, how is the saying in any way relevant?

whatever.

That is a saying I understand. It basically mean "you do something for me and I'll do something for you".

Maybe it's a cultural, climate or gender difference. Where I grew up it was very common for girls to scratch each other's backs although I never saw boys scratch each other's backs. Now that I'm married, I scratch my husband's back a lot and he does the same for me. So the saying always made sense to me because I had literally traded back scratches with other people since about age 8. Maybe that's just not done in Australia or just not done by boys and men so much.

so was your back itchy? did you have lice or fleas? or is there some social element to scratching backs like there is in kissing (which i also never understood).

No lice or fleas, just an itchy back. You are lucky if you've never had an itchy back. It can be very annoying and difficult to self-scratch unless you own a back scratcher (which I do). Also there is a social element. When I was a kid, girls in my school did this as part of social ritual.

i have never had an itchy back so i do not know about that.

tammy likes me to write words on her back with my fingers when she is going to sleep, and she tries to work out what i wrote. it tickles her in a comfortable way and she likes it very much. i also like it.
is that what people mean about scratching backs? i would think not. anyway, it is almost 6am now and i have to depart and go to sleep. take your time to answer because it will be many hours before i come back here.

Talk about stuff relevant to situation but analyzing if it's appropriate or not, paying attention to small things like how interested somebody's face looks when you talk about stuff. Small things like that. NTs talk way too damn much and love to hear themselves. From what I've noticed, they tend to wear their personal information on their shoulders freely giving it out like it's no big deal.

Idk if it's me or not but people I hardly know tell me half their life story when they don't even know me. Has anyone else experienced this?

Blah blah blah .