Acknowledging emotional signs

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Here's a bit of a conundrum for you - along the lines of "making progress, but at a possible price."

I'm an Aspie man, and since being diagnosed at the age of 27, I made more of a concerted effort to point out people's negative or distressing emotional signals (mostly females) asking them why they exhibited those signs. Because earlier in my twenties, I received a lot of second-hand feedback that so-and-so girls were scared or put off by me. So here's the paradox - when I began applying those tactics to point out troubling signs, e.g. "Why are you looking all down with sad eyes" or "why are you walking with your arms crossed" - I never got an honest answer anyway - I KNEW that it was the way I came off, or something I said, that troubled the woman that I was with. While they *may* have appreciated that I picked up their signs, I suspect many times they might have thought of me as a psychopath, because a common tactic a psychopath will use is to divorce themselves from their target's emotions, i.e. make it look like their target is crazy and *they're* the one with the problem, they're the ones who are irrational for reacting negatively around the psychopath. So, ironically, in showing concern for their signs, I was sort of saying to them "you're overreacting, your reactions are not my fault, snap out of it, I'm perfect, there's no way I could have this sort of negative effect on you and it must be something else that's bothering you..." almost like I was tormenting them or adding insult to injury.

Of course, I sure as heck wasn't gonna ask them "is it something I did??" or "are you acting like that because of me??" because women being women, you're not going to get an honest answer!! ! and you'll just be seen as wishy-washy and lacking self-esteem. It's almost one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situations. However, I'm lucky now to have a good woman - and wife - who will tell me directly if I've upset her and I can recognize her signs more from experience.

It's probably not that they thought of it as a tactic that psychopaths use, but rather it's a tactic young men, or players of any age might use when they don't want a commitment, to start devaluing any emotional attachment or expectations the woman might have. These are the same guys who later will get together with their friends and talk about how every woman they've been with was a "crazy b***h" or a "stalker" or something like that. Some young women get very sensitized to that, I certainly was, and it would always send a red flag up for me if a guy started questioning why I had a certain look on my face or whatever. It was rarely out of genuine concern for my feelings, it was more like they were just gauging how much of a jerk they could get away with being towards me.




I think when you have a situation where you know you can trust each other, like you have with your wife, then you will get an honest answer, but otherwise it can really bring a woman's guard up.