Intellectual vs Real Life Comprehension

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Do you ever feel as if you've come to comprehend things about people intellectually, theoretically, as an idea, but fail to apply these things in real life? In my experience, whenever something goes wrong in a social interaction, after-the-fact, I tell myself, "I should have known better, I knew these things about human behavior."

In another thread regarding deceptive behavior (viewtopic.php?t=367640), IrisIndigo mentioned, "Knowledge that people can be deceptive and understanding why they might be deceptive doesn't give me the ability to read past the deception [in real time]."

I find this scenario true not just with decetpion, but other social gaffs I make when dealing with NTs. After-the-fact, I tell myself "I've ruminated on NT behavior before and should have seen it coming." I understand what happened as an idea, as I've thought about it before. Yet, I still make mistakes when I'm "in the field."

This is something I've been thinking about recently and just wanted to post. I hope I'm making sense and not babbling. I guess when I was a child, I didn't comprehend these things intuitively like most people. As an adult, I think I do understand them intellectually, but it does little to change real-life interaction with NTs. Can anyone relate? Has anyone found a way to practice theory in the real world?

Yep. It's the classic Aspergian battle.

We sometimes get things "intellectually," but do not comprehend things "emotionally," or "experientially."

Thank you, sir. Glad to see these things are at the root of Asperger's. I'm undiagnosed, but have suspected I had Asperger's for over 10 years when I first read about it. So, this is fairly typical? It's amazing how many times I've thought about human behavior, understand it in the abstract sense, but can't apply it in real life.

This happens all the time with me. As I live life, it happens less often. It's because I use my cognition, and make sure I learn things.

It's because, in Asperger's, things which come "naturally" to most people must be "learned" by people with Asperger's.

Working things out intellectually takes conscious brain-power, and in a quick-fire conversation, there isn't always time for that. A non-autistic person can use their intuition, which isn't always accurate, but is a lot faster and much less effort. That's also why autistic people quite often find socialising more tiring than other people; it's all that thinking we have to do!

Yes, that applies to me.