NT´s have their needs, just like we have. If their needs are not fulfilled, their lifes are unhappy, so they seek to live their life, according to their needs, just like we do. But both needs simply often dont match.
Its not about understanding, because you can understand much, but that doesnt help your needs. There was a thread around here, where an Aspie questioned if she shall go to events with coworkers, when she is not interested in the event. Most of us agreed with her, that its complete senseless to go to an event, when you are not interested in it. Thats how we feel: We have the need to be interested in the event, because else its a complete boring and wasted evening.
For the NT its otherwise: The event is only a background for meeting the coworkers and it gives them a background topic to chat with each other during the evening. They have the need to socialize, and liking the coworkers they meet and having fun by socializing with them is much more important for them, then the background event. You can compare it with an NT woman, visiting a football match she is absolutly not interested in, but still having fun because of cheering with friends, spending time with her husband and kids and so on.
These differences also often leads to misunderstandings, so often when I was invited to events, I said I was not interested. I didnt know then, that for NT-people that usually meant: "No, I am not interested in meeting and spending time with you." So for NTs you often seem to be rude, even when its only based on misunderstanding.
Its the same with eating dinner together. I hated it, when people asked me every 30 seconds "Do you want more... do you like...how does xyz taste ...." I was annoyed by that, because I wanted to eat, and not always get disturbed by being forced to answer. So the more you are asked, the more annoyed you are. For the NT its the opposite way: He sees you sitting there silently, not involved in the chatting. He wants to be friendly and involve you, so instinctivly he is asking you general questions, to show you that you are appreciated at the table. When you respond now in a negative way, for the NT its as if you would say: "I dont want your friendlyness. I am not interested in socialiszing with you = I am not interested in you and now leave me alone god damn it!"
To match that different needs can be very complicated. So as example my partner needs to be socializing with me, but for me socializing around topics I am not interested in is horror. Doing that for some minutes or even some hours a week to be polite to someone like a coworker is hard but ok. But doing that some hours a day, simply is too much for me, specially when I already was forced to do so at work. So we need topics that I am really interested in, so that I dont have to force myself to socialize. I am also happy, that for my partner doing stuff together is a form of socializing. He loves computer games very much, so playing games together makes him happy to do stuff together with me, and also is ok for me because of doing stuff I like for socializing. Also you are not forced to talk all the time with each other to show, that you think of your partner, but you can simply "technical" work for each other. If I go grinding some stuff I need, and automtical grinding stuff for my friend also, without asking him, he knows that I was thinking about him, even without chitchatting all day.
For NTs it also may be hard to understand, why Aspies dont simply accept habbits as they are. We are around here often joking about NTs, following every trend without any logic sense. The thing is, there is a logic sense, but for many of us its simply not recognizable. If you follow accepted habbits, you get appreciation, not always verbal, but by different behaving, body-, face- and eyelanguage. So following social habbits has a real logic benefit for NTs. The thing is, if you are blind for that stuff, then there is no benefit. If I started to wear highheels, I would get more social appreciation, that I wouldnt be able to recognize if you were bashing it in my brain with my hammer. So I dont get anything. In the opposite, I would be annoyed of more people trying to socialize with me, which annoys me. I am not interested in fashion, so being forced to socialize with people with fashion as topic is as boring for me as a discussion about evolution of matchbox-cars. *puke* But again for an NT, this is an rejection. So he/she shows me his appreciation of me following social habbits, giving me his friendlyness...and I react annoyed of it or even get afraid, when I dont understand the behaviour at all. (My partner had to tell his mum not to freak out, when I dress up for her festivities and proudly show me around to relatives, leading to me being completly shocked and afraid of ever dressing up again, to avoid a similar horrible situation.)
There are simply many situations that can lead to misunderstandings, based on different emotions in the same situation. Just like dogs and cats, when the cat thinks the dog is in bad mood, because of him shaking his tail wildly and the dog thinks the cat was growling, when she is actually purring happy. That doesnt mean that there can be no cats and dogs, living happy together, but both simply have to understand the opposite, to understand the displayed reactions.
10 Jun 2013, 10:14 pm
