Competitiveness...or lack of. Who else gets it...or not?

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Does anyone else have a complete lack of competitive spirit? In anything? I've never been a fan of sports and whatnot, but I have a lack of interest in any activity that involves going against other people, to the point at which it's almost an aversion.

First: I don't own a games console. I had an Amiga PC back in the day but only dabbled in a few games. Similarly I now own a PSP but the same pattern emerges: after getting through the really easy early levels I get bored/frustrated and give up. I don't 'get' stuff like Rock Band or Guitar Hero either...learning a real instrument is fun for me, but that isn't. Computers are interesting, but almost all games seem like a waste of time to me. It takes A LOT of pursuasion for me to join in on multiplayer games, and gaming is an everyday source of socialising and discussion that's alien to me.

Second: I hate sports. I know that's normal for aspies but even watching them doesn't often interest me much. I enjoy MotoGP and the Rugby World Cup on TV, but it's mostly in order to join in with the rest of my family. Football - even people discussing it at length - bores me to death. I can go for a jog sometimes when the weather's nice but that's more concerned with setting personal goals to aim for.

Third: I have an attitude in general that can be summed up with "if I can't win, I won't play." Board games, 'fun' and light-hearted arguments...I have no interest whatsoever. My parents used to go on at me for having a 'defeatist' attitude, but I simply felt that these sorts of things were pointless. Generally speaking, I rarely have anything to prove to anyone else...and even when I do, it feels like more trouble than it's worth so don't bother. When I am faced with a hostile situation or difference of opinion, my first reaction is to smooth things over, please as many people as possible and find some neutral ground.

I probably come across as the most boring person in the world here, but I do find plenty of other things to occupy my time. Even so, I really feel 'abnormal' and I have no idea where the root cause is. Is it crippling lack of self-confidence? The old aspie clumsiness that makes some physical activities frustrating? A take-it-or-leave-it stance on certain social stuff? A combination of all those things? I just feel as though I don't really know anyone who is as "anti-competitive" as I am, and I'm missing out on a lot of important life experiences. Psychologically, I don't know if it's healthy either.

I'm not really competitive. That's probably part of the reason I hate pvp in the mmorpg I play. I don't play to compete with others. I play to train my skills to level up and get more experience and to collect items. I'd play even if it was a single player game and most games I play are single player.

Ditto. I like runing, climbing ect. but have zero interest in competive stuff. when i was forced to play in school even if I scored and we won I didn't care. Guys in particulare get really weird about it, it can actualy creep me out.

I'm a competitive Street Fighter 4 player so I definitely get it.

I have zero compatative spirit. I hate games of all kinds, chess, checkers, cards, team sports. Never watch sports except that I like a few Olympic sports like gymnastics. But I don't care who gets what metal. They should all get gold metals, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, compared to what the average person can do, like who cares if A was 1/100th of a second faster than B. It's only interesting to me as an expression of human capability.

I like to make my point in a spirited discussion, and I have a way of talking that some have told me sounds argumentative, but I don't want to win or loose. I just like to be emphaticly clear and sequential about what I have to say and the words are very important to me.

I have also been called "defetest". If I am cornered into some kind of board game or something, I will loose on purpose and feel and act happy about it. It's to make a point: That competition does not interest or excite me.

I do like to challenge myself however, but other people noticing is not very important to me.

I believe this is part of the Aspie wiring diagram.

Concretebadger, I may be just as anti-competitive as you are, and always was, even when I was a kid. I'd play games and run races and so on when the teachers or whoever wanted me to, but I never won, because my heart wasn't in it (besides, if it was anything physical, might as well forget it anyway!) I had this high IQ, and I was good at school stuff, and my twin cousins probably shared one person's IQ between them, but either of them could beat me at checkers, or any "intelligence" game, because they _wanted_ to win. I tried: I just never could figure out how to _want_ it that much.

My NT daughter seemed to have gotten all the competitiveness that was my share, PLUS her own share, the exact opposite from me. If anything involved competition, from coloring pages with crayons, to kid pageants, to math competitions, to cheerleader tryouts and drama tryouts, she entered and she won, most of the time, a whole lot more than her share.

Anyway, I think you'll be okay. I haven't had a bad life, a whole lot more relaxed than it might otherwise have been, and the classic underachiever.

I'm competitive but only in games where I participate, I don't understand football fanaticism. I also enjoy single player and cooperative games. Sometimes I'm competitive when I shouldn't, for example dance classes(I left because I was comparing my self with the others all the time and I suck) or school (I have to mentally tie myself to stop trying to answer all questions)

I haven't figured out my own competitiveness. I'm not competitive when people think I should be but I will get competitive sometimes, obsessively competitive, maybe it has something to do with being vindictive. Or maybe it's about being contrary. I used to play a lot of Halo, and if someone on the other team was really good I'd get focused on screwing them up. If someone was a Godly sniper I'd try to get to that sniper rifle first with reckless abandon to simply just shoot all the rounds out of it really quickly (I was no good at sniping and if somebody killed me I didn't want them getting the sniper rifle) and change it to my secondary weapon (so it wouldn't respawn) and go hide somewhere. Just so he couldn't snipe. I'd spend entire games of MW2 shooting down choppers just so somebody wouldn't get a nuke. Or I'd camp somewhere and let everybody in an entire team walk by just to shoot the guy who was working on getting a nuke.

I'm competitive in team-based multiplayer games, but not PvP. I don't play to get the most kills or score the most points myself, but to support others. I'll do anything for my team's sucess - even if it means cooking a grenade in my hands and running into the center of a firefight. People tend not to expect a suicidal kamikaze running towards them, that's for sure.

Old hippie/socialist values still operating here - co-operation not competition. I hate it when ad men talk about competitive prices, to inexorably link competition with good value, in the mind, when in truth good value can be had by other ways, and competition doesn't always cut prices.

I think the noncompetitive ethic can run against human nature to some extent.......I suspect that games are a good outlet for that part of us.....I think that if we try to be 100% noncompetitive, we will probably fail. Sadly, I still haven't found any interesting competitive games to play with the people I know. I was thinking of pool.

But apart from games where the result doesn't matter materially, I don't see any good way of bringing competition into my life. If it's about trading or anything else important, all I want to do is arrive at a square deal.......even trying to get the best price for a house sale, I felt guilty, because I couldn't judge what the house was really worth, so didn't know if I was taking too much. I can't feel comfortable with people who compete against me if it's not a declared competition. If it's a relationship, I think that when it gets competitive it gets bad. I can't see how people can draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable competitive behaviour. If you're trying to do somebody down, you're trying to do them down, and I don't see how that can be acceptable if it's not been agreed beforehand that it's a competition. I suppose that's the rub - NTs just seem to know where the competition is going to come from, and they don't have a problem with shoving back. So if say a GP is reluctant to give you a referral for AS, the NT would expect this, and will simply argue and pile up the evidence until the GP buckles, while we are freshly shocked every time we discover that the GP doesn't seem to be as helpful as we'd hoped, and we take no for an answer straight away, though we may be infuriated....and by the time we realise what's going on, there's no time left for arguing, even if we were good at communicating verbally, and we get fobbed off with nothing. It's an extreme portrait, but I think that's roughy how it happens to a lot of us. Shy NTs probably have similar problems.

it's this same lack of competitive ness and lack of self confidence that after alot of study and thousands of hours practice, years of my life, that caused me to never attempt or want do any magic gigs, never do a single birthday party, never enter any magic competitions, and undermined every effort I put in for perfection in my magic.it's this same lack that caused me to deny or ignore, or most often, dismiss any praise or compliments, no matter how great, it got to the point of me denying it from everyone, even world class professionals in the field.no compliment was ever good enough, no matter how good I got.eventually I got to doing extremely advanced coin magic, most people, other magicians in the field couldn't do.there comes a line we need to draw between ourselves and others.if this line blurred, it may be difficult to see ourselves and talents for what they really are, and, more importantly, appreciate and accept them as what they truly are.

I am no good at some competitiveness, but I am in other ways. When I was a child I always used to get upset if I lost in any sort of game, because I wanted to win and feel ''special''. But letting winning be an important thing is common in a lot of kids.

I am no very good at social competing, however. I do like to go out looking nice and presentable, but I only do it for myself, I don't do it to impress other strangers. That is just a waste of time and I can't understand why a lot of women do this. It seems that people have forgotten that going out in the street is only a way of getting from point A to point B, and instead have turned it into a ''I'm better than you'' compitition, and anybody who is a little bit different is straight away considered weird and people (especially women) start talking about them. I'm not sure how men are with other men, but women can be firey towards eachother. It's all too much compitition now.

Interesting.never had such awareness of social cliches.I'm a man

Interesting.never had such awareness of social cliches.I'm a man

I've noticed men get competitive with me, not with clothes very much, they're more likely to brag, flirt with my partner, undermine the authority of other men (haven't had that first hand because I've never felt I had authority in the first place, but I've seen it), and some of them can be quite bossy and opinionated. I see a lot of stubbornness too.....I do that as well if I feel oppressed. I don't brag (though I sometimes accidentally drop out stuff that makes others jealous of what I've got), I'm not usually bossy, or opinionated unless goaded by another aggressive person, but I used to try to take over a lot of shared stuff because I didn't understand sharing very well. I still struggle in calling the right percentage of shots in a shared venture, I tend to keep polite and take a back seat too much, I'm nervous about calling shots because I feel I could become overbearing. I have been known to undermine authority. And often I've just wanted to undermine it, but not been strong enough.

instead of articulating needs & trying to meet them, our society treats these issues with game logic: you must enter the game & succeed at it, just to get what you need. then, even though there's enough of everything to go around, it continues to reward winners & punish the losers, because nothing else exists beyond the rules of the game.

competition is causality for fools.