Fake it until you make it.

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For most of my life I have done my best to “act” normal. At work I make small talk, I ask questions, I talk sports etc. To my co-workers I seem like a fairly normal person. Of course they find me a little odd but not too much out of the ordinary. The truth is I am mostly faking it. I don’t really care how their weekend went, or why they hate their job, but I prevent to.

If I had my way I would have a job where I didn’t have to communicate with people, I would be isolated and left only, but I don’t. I work with the public; I have a lot of interactions with people. I have too, and you know what, I am good at it. It takes me out of my comfort zone, I hate it sometimes, but at the end of the day I think it makes me a better person. Not that having Asperger’s makes me a bad person, but challenging myself emotionally and socially I believe makes me stronger as a person.

My wife is very understanding and accepts me for who I am. I don’t have to “fake” it and I can be myself. But that could be the problem. Like I stated earlier, I spend my day playing the part of the “normal” co-worker, listening to problems, pretending to care, etc. etc. I do that for people at work but not my wife. When I come home I am me. I don’t want to talk, I want to do my thing and I don’t want to pretend to care about people’s problems.

My wife acts like it doesn’t bother her when she comes home and starts telling me about something that happens at work and she can tell I am not really listening. I want too but I don’t. I guess I feel obligated at work because it is part of my job, but at home since my wife allows me to be me, in a way she enables me. If left to my own devices I will slowly drift away. I need that obligation to pretend.

It’s easy to fake at work because I don’t really care about those people, but my wife means everything to me and I don’t want to pretend. For the first couple years we were together I did but now that she lets me be me I don’t. Should I pretend just to make her happen? If I pretend long enough will one day I not have to? I feel like a bad husband, but we I bring this up to her she says that she doesn’t want me have to pretend, that I should care about her day. I should let her vent about her co-workers and friends and life in general. I don’t know what to do. She wants me to be genuine but that is something that doesn’t come natural to me.

Yeah... I do this too. I ask people how they are and I'm just doing it because I know that it's what's expected of me. When they have a story to tell, I drift off very quickly and don't pay attention, but then I parrot back the last thing they said so they think I am listening.

If I can offer some general posting advice: I (and perhaps other people too) have a hard time reading posts that are done as one long, continuous paragraph. If you could try to break posts into chunks (similar to what I have done here) they would be easier to process.

(Trust me... I am guilty of lengthy posts myself )

Thanks for the advice. Sorry about that. I am new to this.

No problem! That is WAY easier to read!! !

what if you can't fake it?

"Faking it" burns up a LOT of mental (and physical) energy for someone with our neurological configuration. The truth is we simply aren't equipped for it and though we can manage to paste on a fake smile and walk our way through it for brief periods of time, at the end of that act, we are DRAINED and require solitude and quiet personal down time to recuperate and recharge. For me, the recovery time takes at least as long (and usually twice as long) as the social performance did in the first place.

I think of it like this: When it comes to the brain's ability to interpret incoming sensory stimuli, including sound, light, voices, music, facial expressions, body language, etc, etc, we were shipped out with slightly substandard social processing chips. Our brains can process the data, but its being shoved through a smaller funnel than a normal brain's social filter has, so we're always a bit behind, and trying to play mental catch-up, so some details get missed, forcing us to fill in the gaps with guesswork - and its very exhausting.

Which is to say, by the end of the work day, you just don't have the mental energy left to keep listening and processing and reacting appropriately. You should probably explain to her that this is a common problem for Autistic people.

If you can't find a job that allows for more solitary working conditions, then you may need to set aside part of your weekend, just to do things with your partner. If you have a two day weekend, spend one just relaxing, or doing whatever needs to be done to maintain the household and set the other aside for things you enjoy doing together.

Faking it is a marriage killer. Trying to care will be the best you can do. Caring, no doubt, is what your partner wants -- and will eventually get one way or another. There are the options.

Technically, you really couldn't "fake it".

You can use scripts for certain things, especially repetitive tasks that go with jobs, but social interaction? Nope. I bet any "faked" small talk would just be repeating the same things over and over each time. That's rote.

I don't understand the need to talk just to talk. I talk when I have something to say or am genuinely curious. I go into work and don't say hi to anyone or ask how they are, etc. Do bosses really expect their employers to visit each other and chat and do small talk?


I always thought people were talking because they were interested and enjoy what they are talking about and had something in common to share. That was until I joined autism forums and came on here. I had no idea it was all fake and people faked interests. I always find faking interests hard. It's a chore and takes energy out of me. It's like a game and I am not interested. It's hard to do things you have no interest in and you're bored doing it. But what I have found is sometimes when people are talking and sometimes they do bring up interesting topics and I enjoy what I am hearing and join in if it's family.

Yeah. People seem to just talk for the sake of making noise I've found.

They also think it's "friendly" and "positive". If you don't do it, you're often seen as something negative.

If you really do care about your wife then you should try to be there for her and listen to her when she needs you (of course this is done within certain parameters so as not to neglect taking care of yourself and your own needs). And doing this should give you pleasure because it is helping her. if it does not, then you need to develop this capacity within yourself to be able to want to nurture her--and why not at work, also? They are people, too. Do it not just for her, but for yourself, as it will enrich your life and the lives of those around you..

hate people that talk for the sake of it

i'll talk to anybody who is nice to me and/or is vulnerable and lonely and welcoming.

Thanks for all the comments.

Willard your comments really hit home with me. Thanks

Yes, I fake it as well. Really, I am not interested in anything or anyone at work and am just talking to appear normal. If I were being completely real, I just wouldn't talk to anyone really and would just be on my phone all day looking at stuff, but then I'd be far too low in the social hierarchy and that's not good for business is it? But I feel somehow that at least half of the others fake it too. I get the sense that they talk just to talk, when really they don't give a s**t what they are even talking about.

You say she means everything to you -- I understand, I feel the same way about my wife.

So, explore that, logically. What would you give up for that relationship? How far would you go out of your comfort zone? Do you actually care about her happiness, or is she mostly a support system/carer for you?

Most of the time, I don't understand what my wife is feeling. If I can pick up on her general mood, I don't know the cause. Is she happy because we are together or because of something I did? Is she sad or angry because of something I did--or something I failed to do?

So I ask and I observe very closely. I understand that she will tell me about events in sequence, I tend to think about the events, but she is actually telling me about her experiential reality. If her narrative was a story, I would say it's not about the plot, it's the tone and theme.

So I try really hard to read through what she is saying, and frequently ask what she felt in the situation she is discussing. I use a set of techniques I learned in a class called active listening, mirroring back what I think she has said to verify the accuracy of my perceptions or guesses. The thing I have to remind myself is that the point is to understand her state of mind-- what the experiences she is relating mean to her, rather then the experiences themselves.

When I get it right, and she knows that I have understood her feelings, we have moments of a closeness that is one of the best things I have known in life.

I agree with the comment above that you may need to find a way to modify your job, or a different job, so you can get the energy to focus on your wife. At least, that's how it seems from my perspective, based on my relationship. Maybe it can work in some different way for you.