Older aspies and social cues

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Do people with AS inevitably get better at picking up on social cues as they get older? Is there anyone on here who is of a mature age (ie 30 or above) and yet really bad at this?

I am probably somewhat better now in my early 50s, but not that good, since I don't socialize much--don't get enough practice. But I am an introvert, so I don't want to socialize much.

I'm better than I used to be, but not what I'd call good at it.

edit: Also, apparently I count as " older" and "mature" now. That's depressing.

Last edited by mds_02 on 28 Mar 2012, 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As far as I can tell I'm not that bad at picking up social cues. I occasionally drop a clanger but not often enough to cause any problems. I'm utterly useless at telling if a girl is interested in me but I don't know if that is the Aspie part of me or the asexual part or both!

Ditto here.

It depends on lots of things. Also, some social cues change as you get older. People are also more willing to cut you some slack if you are older than them, or past a certain age or have authority.

It may sometimes appear that a person has an easier time picking up on them, but it can be that others are giving them more obvious cues.

I believe I'm pretty bad at this. If it was a choice of good, medium, medium bad or bad, I'd be at the medium bad level. but I've improved over the years a bit. I may be wrong (lol) but it seems like the reverse is true as well: I get misunderstood more often than not.

What exactly is a social cue? can somebody give some examples please

I think that's why I started this thread, in the hope that people might give some concrete examples of how they do/do not read social cues. The books always say that AS people fail to pick up on social cues so it would be interesting if some older aspies could give some actual examples of what that could be, from their personal experience. What KIND of social cues does a child, teenager, adult, mature person fail to pick up on and does it get better with age?

Still notorously challenged by this.

It just doesn't work for me - either I'm completely oblivious or I'm stressed to the gills trying to guess what's going on. Neither presents a face that anyone would want to know. And yes, I'm past thirty. A few more weeks and I'll be past sixty.

Social cues, what social cues?

Some examples

Nowadays I can tell when someone is bored or annoyed by me. Or perhaps I'm more paranoid about that, and am seeing it when it's not the case. Either way, I've gotten better at casual conversation. I know when and how to shut up and let the other person speak, and people seem to like me better for it whereas, in the past, I'd just go on and on about whatever until I'd thoroughly aggravated the other person. I used to compensate for it by avoiding conversation entirely, I no longer feel the need to do that.

I'm still terrible at knowing when a woman is interested in me or flirting with me. Normally I get around that by just being very straightforward about my interest; "Hey, you're really cool. Wanna hang out sometime, just the two of us?" With my current gf, we were pretty close friends first. I actually feared being rejected, so I was unwilling to do that. I needed to be told by a mutual friend that she was interested before I was willing to make a move. That's some middle school s**t right there.

Even being in a relationship, it still causes problems. She'll see me continue to interact with, and be friendly toward, women who are showing obvious (to her) interest in me. For instance: A female friend invites me to go out to the bar. Turns out it's just the two of us and not a group like I'd expected. She's very "touchy-feely" that night, hands on my shoulders or my arms or my knees all night. We're drunk and out of money so we go back to my house. I sit on the couch and she lays down with her head in my lap. The whole time, I think of this as nothing but friendliness (though, on later reflection, I realize it is excessively friendly for someone I've known for just a month or two) until my gf gets angry and points out how inappropriate the whole thing was.

Thankfully, now she realizes that I'm just completely clueless. Reminding her of how I didn't pick up on her signals either helped with that. Being together as long as we have, and her seeing I have no interest in cheating helped even more. So we set a couple of ground rules. The first being that I don't hang out alone with girls I haven't known for very long. The second being that she has to tell me what I'm doing wrong and give me a chance to stop before she gets mad at me.

OMG same here! When I met both my current and my ex-wife, I had no clue they were showing interest. I still can't tell when someone's flirting with me. Kinda like this...

Wow, that thing got me.

Somehow the concept of "social cues" is incredibly broad.

As far as women go (this topic was mentioned by someone a few posts back) I could never read ANY signals at all so I never had the faintest idea if a girl liked me or not. This had a disastrous effect on getting a girlfriend because it was like finding your way around in the dark. I think that when I was young the only way I could have got a girlfriend would have been if someone had come up to me and said "Hello, my name's ....... and I really fancy you.", then I might have been able to tell they liked me enough to go on a date with me. My current girlfriend I dated because I told my boss I was looking for a girlfriend and the boss said that the receptionist liked me and would be pleased to be asked for a date. Had I not been TOLD by a third party I would never have known. That was at 48 years old. Today in a bookshop I was looking at a book on body language and couldn't identify any of the positive/negative signs of flirting/rejecting at all. Until recently I'd never really thought of this as a learning disability but I suppose it is.