Do your friends not "get" you?

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a lot of times, my friends and other folks caution me not to do certain things--or request I do certain things--that they respectively either( at this point you'd think) would know I wouldn't do anyway, or would be most likely to.

It's almost after so many years of knowing them, they don't even realize who I am, and the things I am and am not likely to do.

Personally, I find it kind of insulting for whatever reason.

But maybe I'm not alone in this...anyone else go thru this?

My few friends get me..that's why they are my friends...

Oh God, my own PARENTS don't get me most of the time.....sometimes I am normal to them, but other times I'm just weird and out of place....they completely insult my intelligence by telling me to do this, or not to do that....when...DUH why would I do that!? But then they say b/c I'm so unpredictable and they don't know what to expect from me, they should caution me anyway....bleh.

I feel like NO one offline "gets" me & it's one of the rezones I have almost no offline friends. The two friends I do have offline; I've known from work & they don't have many friends either.
My mom warns me quite a lot when we go to to any kind of social functions or when I'm going to a job interview. I suspect she thinks that I'm unstable & believes that she's helping but all she's doing is frustrating me because she can not accept me. She makes me feel flawed so I usually avoid going to social things. She gets mad at me because I don't want to go but when I do I go; I have to hear a big speech on the way there. I cant win

Of course my friends do not "get" me. I try not to take it personally because I know they do not experience things in the way I do. While it does seem like they should understand me better after the years we have been acquainted, I realize the only reason I possess the superficial understanding of them that I do, is because I have expended a great amount of time and energy on understanding the non-autistic mind and the individual minds of those with whom I socialize. The people I socialize with simply do not have a mind to do what I have done, and they do not have to for most people. For my friends and acquaintances, thinking "When I do X it is because I feel Y, so when s/he does X s/he must feel Y." or "I like it, so s/he likes it too." is usually close enough to the truth for them to get by.
Perhaps they could realize this does not work with me and make an exception in the way they usually think for me, but that would complicate things for them. In order to do that, they would have to adjust their views of people in general in addition to accepting that they can not truly understand me. For some of them, I think holding the idea that my thoughts and emotions are close to their own gives them a sense of closeness to me. Accepting that I am very different from them and that they can only understand me in theory, the way I do them, would make them feel distant from me. Additionally, for those with whom I am closest, I suspect accepting that I am very different from the original idea they conceived of me and saw me as through the time we grew to be friends, would cause them to experience a loss similar to the one parents experience when they finally accept that their child will not have the life they dreamed they would at their birth (they accept their child has no interest in taking up the family business, getting married and being a homemaker, they find their child is gay, etc.). For the ones closest to me, I think, encouraging me to engage in things they enjoy and wanting me to have the things they want is their way of trying to include me.

The only suggestion I have is to tell your friends how you feel and expose them to more people with autism/asperger’s through readings and videos/documentaries. Perhaps if they realize there is a large group of people like you, they will form a new people-category of sorts and put you in it, instead of trying to force you into their category. I have found this to work to some degree with a few people I know.

mutatis mutandis - it is a matter of circles. The innermost [pretty much sprectrum people - get me, I think, as much as anybody gets anybody. The next layer out gets a bit less. By the fourth layer of this onion they are really not friends except by courtesy.

Of course my friends don't get me; I'm autistic. Oh yeah, and I don't have any friends.

I have to put a word in for your mother here. Feminists will hate me, but...

Your mother most likely warns you a lot, not because she thinks you're unstable, but because women tend to have a strong sense of intuition, and are fairly hard wired to voice concerns on perceived points of danger. In other words, they are super vigilant. This is an evolutionary advntage for us, as it is usually women who must serve as the judgment of young children who have none. So they will not only spot the most subtle dangers, they will extrapolate to "forsee" potentially dangerous situations.

Men, on the other hand, tend to be more over sure of themselves and more daring, and this is one reason that males tend to die sooner than females.

It works out quite nicely though because if society were too cautious we'd make few great and potentially advantageous discoveries, and if society were too daring we'd make too many lethal mistakes.

So with overconfident men and overcautious women humanity exists at a point of maximum survivability.

Yes it's rather insulting, because they haven't taken your differences into consideration, and assume that you're like everyone else when evidence points to the contrary.

I had a fake friend, who would say, please don't do this, when you're with me, or please don't do that, when you're with me. Do this, do that. She's the devil who called the ambulance on me, because I'm obsessed with The Kinks. Thank God, she hasn't told me, not to dress like The Kinks, around her. If she ever does, that will be the first time that I strike somebody, as an adult.

I say there, does theory of mind only affect aspies ????????????


Its patronizing ,doc.


Story of my life

That ball of confusion is no longer my friend.

+1. Quality is better than quantity.

its the ones that get me that are my friends

Friends???

Yes and no, I have been skydiving for the last 9 years and dancing the last 2.5 years. At both of these places they have learned to deal with my quirks better than I sometimes realise and at other times they get really angry.