"Wow, you can't get along with anyone!"

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I've been told this all my life. And it's true, I don't get along with anyone. It took me decades of working on myself and therapies to discover that the reason is what Ana explains. People see me argue and kicked out, but they don't make an effort to look at how it all started - by me being bullied and standing up for myself. Even the sweetest of people have done to me things that they'd never dream of doing to anyone else.

That makes sense, but these people all become victims. I guess I don't feel like a victim because I always feel the need to fight back, so in the end I'm just as bad as the people I'm fighting with... except they usually have friends and partners and steady jobs, so I'm the loser after all.
Also when I was younger I would never fight back but now I'm sick of feeling helpless all the time.

I'm a male NT but my partner is an AS female. IMO some AS people just seem to lack that tiny bit of diplomacy that it takes to get through life with the least amount of angst.

Rather than let little things go they "go to war" over the tinest of issues. Some seem to continually have a chip on their shoulders or always seem to think "they know better" than everyone else. They are quick to jump on someone elses faults or shortcomings but then are confused when eveyone doesn't have the same understanding towards them.

I think these behaviours are mainly just poor coping mechanisims that they've developed over the years. Whatever the reason, yes, often people w/AS do seem to have a hard time getting along with others.

That isn't probably what anyone wanted to hear but that has been my limited experience. And look at mosts of the replies to this topic. Many do come off as confrontational or holier than thou.

Once my partner was dxd things have gotten much better. She never meant to "not get along" It never made her happy to get in a confrontation. It only caused stress. Now when she sees a potential "situation" starting to develop she tries to handle it in a slightly different way.

Life is hard enough already. Why stress out or pick a fight if there is a different way it could be handled?

Mods please feel to delete this if you feel it is overly harsh or out of line.

^ I think what you say is correct. My daughter is AS, and she has gotten fired from so many jobs, because of the behavior described here; coming across as arrogant or know it all, or brusque. She has also had many living situations end badly, especially when rooming with others.

I can relate with you Zee. I have done some things in my past I am not proud of. Though I am normally the quieter type, I have had some vocal moments in the past, and recently. I will give you one. I used to belong to a southern gospel quartet. I played synthesizers. Our bass singer was the owner of the group, and he was a little overbearing---and he was old. He was financing the group out of his savings---we didn't have to pay anything. But, we in the group often got mad at him because of his irritable ways---and due to his health and age he didn't sing bass the best. One time at practice I grabbed the microphone and said, "let me have the mic, and let me show you how you are supposed to sing bass!! !" I had the pianist and singers begin the song again and I sang bass. I was quite young then, and my voice was quite in tune with a lot of volume---which the old bass singer didn't have. I sounded pretty good. Then, I handed the mic back to him and went back to my synths. I feel bad about that now. He has since died, and I never apologized about doing that to him. I tried to humiliate him. I don't know how badly I may have hurt his feelings. Hopefully he just shrugged it off as me being a mouthy teenager type (I was in my early 20s then). But---I was generally always polite and quiet---but there were times that I wasn't.

I say, listen to hartzofspace

dp

My partner used to say (still does sometimes) "You don't understand! I can't let it go! I have to say something!"

It really, really bothered her that someone would try & bend the rules a bit or try to do something in a way other than what she perceived to be the "best" way to do something.

What I think she is starting to get now is that while it may be hard for her to see someone elses point of view or accept that there may be more than one way of doing things that, in the end, it may be easier for her to "give" a little and let small things go rather than fight to the death over minor issues.

On one hand she would fight like a pitbull to get her way. While she may get what she wanted in the end, it did not really seem to bring her any happyness or satisfaction. It just created a lot of stress and hard feelings all the way around.

Letting the small stuff go may make her a little uncomfortable at times, but I think she's starting to understand that the small initial discomfort is more than offset by the give & take goodwill it creates in the end. I guess she's starting to get that most people will be fairly reasonable and accomodating if you will work with them, but if you come straight out of the gate with an attitude & the claws out they will get defensive & aggressive as well.

“Of course we must fear evil men, but there is another evil that we must fear more… and that is the indifference of good men.”

Most aspies know this in their flesh, having been the victims of bullying while others stood by...

granatelli - your comments got my hackles up a little... and I would have to say that maybe there is a bit of transference going on, when you say about aspies, "Many do come off as confrontational or holier than thou." ...to me you come off as very self-righteous and yet cowardly... But I don't want to respond to your comments, that come to me as a spit in the face, with global thermal nuclear war. Yes - I do have a tendency for vindictive overkill...

What you see as confrontation, I call earnestness. What you see as "holier than thou", I call hurt and anger. Aspies call a spade a spade. NT's prefer to lie and be lied to - allowing the truth to filter through in subtext. Unfortunately, we aspies suck at subtext and so we let loose the ugly truth to the light of day... to the horror of the NT world...

I really don't know what you are trying to do. What is your intention? At the end of your post you say,"Mods please feel to delete this if you feel it is overly harsh or out of line." (this is why I think your post is somewhat cowardly) Is this how you hide the hand after throwing the stone? I am a little hurt and confused by your posts. Not that I want you to stop posting... I just would like to get some useful information. That is, useful to an aspie. I am sure you have ready advice that is quite readily useful to an NT. I don't want that.

I will grant you that, in many cases, it is easier to let the small stuff slide. But - I guess I don't want to take the easy way out. No actually - I do. But here's the thing, the easy way out for you as an NT, is incredibly hard for me as an aspie. Maybe "confrontation" is the easy way for an aspie - and our challenge is to become skillful enough at it that we can deal with the issue without making how-we-deal with the issue a bigger issue.

There are some people whom aggression works on. If you question them as if you were a prosecuting attorney and they the defendants. Of course, it's often more effective to use these provocative questions in a tone of voice that is slightly aggressive but not too threatening on the whole (slightly raised voice but not yelling ect). Make sure you are displaying passion yet are at the same time projecting an aura of rationality. State your case in the form of questions. Answer your own questions calmly and rationally if there is a need for further clarification.

Last edited by timeisdead on 19 May 2009, 12:53 pm, edited 3 times in total.

solinoure, I love you.

"Diplomacy is the art of sucking up both to God and the Devil and get away with neither of them noticing." - Greentea

delete

Last edited by timeisdead on 19 May 2009, 2:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's all well & good but then you have to deal with the wreckage you've created along the way (by what you call being earnest). You can't really act like a bull in a china shop & then be shocked that people are bothered or offended by it.

Everyone has to deal with jerks sometimes. Even NT's. We all have to deal with people sometime who are unfair, rude, unthoughtful, that have ego's and are just plain unpleasant. It's how we deal with them that makes the difference.

The bottom line is this. If you're faced with a uncomfortable work or social situation does being confrontational and blunt usually help the situation or make it worse? I've always found that a little tact will go a long way.

A little tact will go a long way - if you put it in the right place. It's like a log jam. In a log jam, there are usually just one or two logs causing the congestion. Pull those logs out of the way, and the logs start flowing down the river.

NT's instinctively know how to find the key-logs in a social log jam. Aspies don't - so, we use dynamite. We can learn to find the key logs - but we need instruction. Instruction that works with our learning style.

The ironic tendency of being an aspie is that either we avoid human contact all together, or we get into confrontations over subjects that are important to us. Like for me, politics is my personal narrow interest. So I'll tend to argue with anyone who holds a contrary point of view. And since I'm a Democrat, in a family of Republicans, this can be often. I think that the best thing for us to learn is when to disengage ourselves from a potential altercation. Speaking for myself, I am a passionate debator, and speak emphaticly, if not dramaticly. This fierce tone of voice seems to arouse blood lust in the neuro-typical mind. After ending up getting choked once, following a heated verbal exchange, I've noticed this.

It sometimes helps to ask yourself, before engaging in confrontation, 'Are they worth it? Is this person worth my time and energy?' By arguing with people who are unfair, unreasonable, etc you're designating them as important enough to be worth the trouble. If it's in self-defence, or to protect others, it's another matter, obviously.

I've recently found an approach that might be better: two girls (separately) acted, out of the blue (and certainly not as a result of me arguing with them), rudely and deliberately insultingly (they have normal social skills) towards me. I reacted by acting as coldly (coldly, not angrily) and aloofly towards them as I possible could; not actively avoiding them but not greeting them unless they greet me first (I like to think I put on a 'you're not important enough for me to forget my manners' face) without engaging in actual conversation, doing my best to put a 'can't you see I'm busy?' face when they talked to me, answering in monosyllables while continuing to work when they talk to me, etc. If I had engaged in a shouting match, it would just have added to their daily dose of drama; had I continued to be nice to them, they would probably have seen me as weak and contemptible. However, they couldn't cope with this contemptuous indifference; they can dish it out, but they can't take it. One of them not just switched back to talking nicely to me, but even invited me to her birthday (I didn't go and didn't even acknowledge the invitation - I had better things to do, like cleaning the bathroom), the other one also switched back to talking nicely to me, and has several times completely out of the blue tried to strike up a friendly conversation (met with a 'Can't you see I'm busy?' attitude). It helps that as far as I'm concerned, they've had their chance and proved to me that they are indeed not worth the trouble. I've also had similar results with a third girl, but with her my attitude is more hostile (I have far more reason to dislike her than the other two) and, in the past, confrontation did work with her as well (but then she's particularly cowardly). My aloofness approach has also resulted in one of her friends also being nicer to me than she ever was when I was nice or confrontational.

I've been practising the passive-aggressive style to replace the direct one and I've improved a bit. But it goes against my Aspie essence and therefore it's quite unnatural both to me and to the listener. I'll never master their level of covert, subtext poison.