Disliking telephone conversations

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Firstly I want to say this is amazing to read. I can relate to so much that was said here, I couldnt decided what to quote
As for noise at night..the patern thing with ANYTHING is terrible! If anything is running, clicking or ticking it is impossible to sleep. If something has an irregular sound to it (like some fans) I cant have that on. White noise machine as said above, I hear that loup type sound, so its a no go. Now I just have an air purifier running that makes the same noise all the time, nothing to pick out about it, nothing off.

On to the telephone subject.. I am scared, very badly, to call almost anyone. I can call a few close family members ok, but I worry I will call someone at a bad time, or somehting along those lines. I fear it to the point I just dont call most people, unless absolutely necessary, and then pray for an answering machine.
On the rare chance I am on the phone, I have a very hard time with anyone being able to hear me talk. SO I usually talk to people on the phone in a room by myself, otherwise I get nervous for some reason, very badly. Anyone else do that one?

I dont answer numbers I dont know, and in general do not like people calling me. I prefer internet communication also, gives me time to think of what to say, and its so less stressing. Emoticons are also amazingly useful

I also hate being interrupted with a phone. As has been said, it is WAY too unexpected. Much the same way I hate people just showing up at my door, whenever they so choose. IM's are ok cause I can ignore them (away messages) think about it first, and maybe reply.

Thanks for all the posts here, I really enjoyed them!

I guess it's to do with in real life, sure we can't see that they're thinking but they can see we're thinking and give us time. On the telephone, that can't happen.
Real life: patience
Telephone: are you there?
While I'm standing there, thinking 'Of course I'm here you fool, I'm just trying to think how I can phrase this without being rude'. I have now learnt to go 'erm' a lot on the telephone while I think. That seems to help. Other times, I have to ask the caller to slow down.

I have AS and I have the same experience. I dislike making and receiving calls and leave the answerphone on all of the time.

I have put this down to I need time to process and understand conversations which I can't do in 'real time'. When I'm with NTs then the conversations can be slightly more forgiving as people can see you are there thinking. On the phone I think it is much more difficult if the line goes quiet. The other person has no visual clues on whats happening (so this can give an NT a taste of what it is like to be AS!) and the interaction tends to be frought.

What do others think?

Ugh, I hate phone calls. I only call to arrange stuff, and I never know what to say.

I hate having to call people on the phone. When I was in the 7-8th grade summer vacation or so I had a friend (I don't think he was an aspie, although he had some characteristics) who had similar interests to myself. Anyhoo, I must have been over his house maybe 15-20 times, and because he lived like twenty minutes away I had to call him first. It was awful. The telephone just sat there for twenty to thirty minutes as I told myself that I would call him in "one minute" and then I would count down and not call. Sometimes the I would have the reciever in my hand, and sometimes I would dial the numbers but would stop and slam the phone down in horror before finishing.

I'm not quite as bad now but I still have serious problems calling people when it isn't routine stuff (ordering pizza, canceling an appointment). It is very difficult to explain to my father why it isn't such an easy thing to call my own psychologist to tell him something. This is clear from the responses: "Jim, just do it, "Jim, it's something you do." The calls that interrupt are bad too. I have on a number of occasion (usually on the second call in a minute) had to correctly say politely, "Hello," after snarling, "Hello!" into the phone.

I have great difficulty in conversations on the phone if I am forced to think about what I say (like a social conversation, but only worse). However, if you hit an area of interest I can just take off on a long lecture and not stop until my brain just runs out of information (this can take a while, and it's easier then with anyone but I don't see any faces). Then I have more energy (briefly), but there is an awkwardness again.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I'm utterly afraid of calling restaurants for delivery-- or any stranger, for that matter!-- yet I can talk with friends and family on the phone quite easily. Still not as easily as in IM or e-mail, mind you, but more easily than strangers by a long shot.

I think the biggest reason for this is that not only are my friends accustomed to my sometimes odd manner of speaking, but I'm more accustomed to their speech patterns. See, one of the 'side effects' of AS for me is auditory processing disorder, where I have difficulty sometimes making out what people are saying. There's no visual feedback whatsoever on the phone, unlike in face-to-face conversation, so I can't use that coping strategy; even worse, the sound is somewhat muffled, particularly the higher-frequency consonants that I seem to depend on quite a bit. Given that I've had several instances where I had to ask someone to say things repeatedly over the phone and I still couldn't quite make it out, it's no wonder that I'm so afraid of phone calls!

I will just say that all of that is how I feel pretty much dead on. I hate calling people I dont know, so much so I just dont do it unless I really need to.

And the auditory processing you speak of sounds very similar to issues I have on the phone. I always have a real, real hard time making out some of the things people say. And muffled voices just add to that. I just wish I could find a phone that was loud enough, clear enough, and one that talked for me...haha