Navigating with a new "reasonable"

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I grew up exclusively with NTs, and something that drives me up a wall is the idea that there are "reasonable" expectations and that everyone knows what they are. I know my brain doesn't work like theirs, so I often wonder if "reasonable" is something I can even pick out or if it's like color-blindness. What NTs consider to be reasonable often sounds impossible or highly uncomfortable to me, but bringing up the fact that I might need a different metric tends to flummox people.

It's strange: in a way I'm glad I might have a name for what I am because it's a kind of proof that when I said that something hurt me, or that I really didn't know how to do what they were asking me to do, I was telling the truth. I don't know if it's common to want rules and boundaries, but it feels like my whole life I've been trying to drive through a foreign country with an out-of-date map. I would kill for some clearly-defined edges, is it "reasonable" to think that I'll find them now?

They use words like "reasonable" because you can't clearly define them by rules--or you could say that the rules are constantly changing depending on the circumstances. Or, to put it another way, they can say exactly the same thing twice and totally change what they mean via body language.

What may help is to pay more attention to how NTs interact--they tend to think everyone is the same, so the expections for you are likely to be the same as the expectations for others.

If the world consisted of just one uniform culture, I think the word "reasonable" would be a lot more valid than it is, because everybody would agree on the rules. I think it's safer to stick to heterogenous (e.g. multicultural) groups where each individual has rather different ideas, that way they're unlikely to invoke this supposed consensus or gang up on me, and thankfully the world is getting more multicultural and heterogenous all the time. I also tend not to see people as a group at all, I more address individuals on a one-to-one basis, and I don't much care about the opinions of the rest of the world on the issue of how another person and myself interact. So I basically sidestep the problem of getting to grips with this "unwritten rulebook of right and wrong" that so many people still use as a bargaining chip or lever when they're trying to get their way. If there's a problem between me and another person, it's about me and that person, it's not about me and the rest of the world. I'm not saying that the other way is entirely without merit, I just prefer my own method, possibly because I'm autistic and have problems obeying apparently senseless, cumbersome rules from some unwritten manual.

I don't understand how this can be fair. I acknowledge that I may not be thinking clearly about things, but if no one tells me how am I supposed to know? I'm supposed to be an adult and self-determining, but if I can't see "reasonable" how can I act on it unless someone tell me?

I think you're correct, it's not fair, you can't second-guess their definition of "reasonable" but a lot of them will expect you to. Same thing happens to immigrants sometimes, they do something that's fine in their own culture but not fine in their new locale, and the indigenous population hasn't the wit or inclination to find out what's really going on, they just judge them by their own narrow standards. That's why I steer clear of the homogenous mainstream, I'm sure they just wouldn't give me a chance and we'd end up hating each other. Though the picture's not entirely bleak. Some folks aren't judgemental, some folks are very kind and civil.