I have sense of entitlement issues.

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My wife posts on another forum and has a friend who is a psychologist (does not specialize in autism unfortunately), but he tells us what he can in regards to us, and according to him I have something called a sense of entitlement. It means I just expect good things to happen to me no matter if I'm working towards them or not.

I kind of agree with him, but after almost 40 years of having reality punch me in the face, I feel a lot more humble than I used to. I never saw myself as a brat, but maybe I was. Maybe I still am, I don't know. I don't think so.

Can anyone relate to this?

When I was younger I was told that the best way to get friends was to be a nice person, always tell the truth, keep my promises, and work hard and good things would come to me.

That was perhaps the most damaging collection of advice anyone ever gave me.

Here is what they should have said.

1. If you are mean people will not want to be your friend. If you are nice they still might not want to be your friend.

2. If you aren't truthful, it might make people feel like they can't trust you, or could get you in legal trouble, depending on the situation. If you are truthful, you might alienate people or put yourself in a compromising situation, depending on the situation.

3. Always keep your promises unless it's not feasible to do so. In which case explain the situation to the person you made the promise to.

4. Work hard to increase your chances of achieving success, but realize you could still fail. Also realize, sometimes people get things without much work at all, and sometimes they achieve this by illegal or unethical means but they take a big risk by doing so. Additionally, sometimes they are not prosecuted for such things even when they are found out. Life isn't fair.

So do you really have a sense of entitlement for things you haven't worked for or are you working for them the best way you know how, and it is apparently not the right way? It seems to be a frequent phenomena amongst those on the spectrum that there are ways to do things elude us that others assume we are aware of because it's second nature to them, such as making friends.

Yeah I definitely had a "good guys win" mentality when I was a kid. That worked out ok for me until around the age of ten, and that's when things started to go really bad. I think I felt cheated, and to a certain degree, lost my faith in the benefits of goodness. As you mentioned, I most likely misinterpreted the rules and had unrealistic expectations because of that. And then, having felt cheated, I felt perhaps in some way that the universe should compensate me for my loss. It turned into a sort of vicious cycle.

I'm much wiser now, but I had to learn on my own, and that took a very very long time.

I doubt you misunderstood the rules. You likely just had a pure interpretation of them. This is the NT ideal. However the NT reality is that they view rules as a collection of risks. As is it is presented in "Tragedy of the Commons" you may park where you want but some parking places are going to cost more than others. A person with AS will not park in a "no parking" zone because we are told not to park there. That is the rule...perhaps even the law, and additionally we are generally ill adept at dealing with the potential fall out from breaking rules or laws. However an NT who doesn't park in a "no parking" zone does not do so because they reason that the benefit of parking there does not outweigh the risk of getting a big fine.

I think you really hit it on the head there. I know I have a tendency to take things literally. My problem is I don't know when I am. To me, it simply is as it is. I DID take the rules literally. Thank you for helping me realize that! Maybe I'm not such an arrogant jerk after all! I have learned to like myself a little bit more today!