I'm not sure that I do, although I should do, being better able to understand it, and if there's any truth in the idea of getting feeling of camaradery from knowing we're in the same boat. I think there's been some improvement since I was diagnosed, but I still get this weird thing where they'll do something that annoys me, and I'll try to eradicate the same behaviour from myself, if it's there in me too, which it often is. It doesn't annoy me enough to get rid of them, which is maybe my saving grace, but it's the initial annoyance that concerns me here, and I'm wondering if it ever goes away. It's weird to think back to when I'd just been diagnosed, and would want to correct anybody who took offense from / wanted to exclude anybody for anything that could be explained in terms of AS traits.
A complicating factor in my case is that during my childhood I would witness my mother repeatedly railing at Dad for what I now know to be Aspie behaviour......she seemed to feel that he didn't really love her because he had no emotional vocabulary, he came over to her as aloof, unromantic, over-practical, unreasuring, and insensitive. He never got his "talking past the point" under control, and in those days couldn't even understand that people weren't as fascinated with his stuff as he was, so he'd get resentful when they couldn't listen any longer.....we were all quite wary of getting "trapped" by him like that.
So I'd have grown up with a negative gut reaction to a number of Aspie traits. I think there could be something in this, because mostly the traits and behaviours that annoy me the most are the ones that make me feel kind of unloved, like if somebody I'm close to does something that's pretty obviously going to hurt me but they seem to have no idea of the emotional impact of what they're doing. At such times it feels almost demeaning to explain the problem, and I feel that they should "just know." Is it normal for an Aspie (particularly a male) to feel like that, or have I just soaked up Mum's angst?