What is causing the problem here?

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I have aspergers syndrome and perhaps my communication skills could be causing the issue here?

Okay more to the point in April this year I started talking to this male instructor at the gym (he approached me first) and I would have a casual chat with him while weight training although we could talk about the same subject a lot but I tried to vary the kind of things we talked about.

This went on untill mid to late august and since then he has not bothered to talk or say hello to me when I go to the gym. A few weeks ago I did stop and say hello while entering the gym but he was in a hurry and said "Sorry I am in a rush and I need to go now".

Why do you think he has stopped being friendly to me if you can take a wild guess?

What kind of stuff did you guys talk about, and how long would the conversations be? Was he your instructor, or was he simply talking to you when he wasn't teaching?

I can take a few wild guesses, but that is all they are. Perhaps you inadvertently said something which he found offensive. I'm wondering if you dominated the conversation, and perhaps he wasn't as interested as you thought? It could even be possible that you sent the wrong "message" to him. I have had female acquaintances stop talking to me because they thought i fancied them, even though i am straight! (These are all very wild guesses, so please don't take offence.)

He talked to me when he wasn't teaching mostly and I would just talk about the gym in general or what he did over the weekend. Sometimes I did find that i had to try and come up with things to talk about which is not that easy for me personally. No he was not my instructor either.

I seriously doubt I said something offensive to him but maybe I chatted to him about a topic that he did not have so much interest and failed to read the signts that he was not interested? But I am usally good at telling when somebody does not like talking about this or that.

Maybe when he was opertaing his computer at the desk in the gym he expected me to go over and chat with him rather than vice versa.

Also I did notice that he does not work at the gym as frequently as he used to. I did see him at the gym today and thought it was rude of him not to even say hi or come over and chat with me.

The converations we had would usually last up untill about 3 or 4 mins and sometimes they would go on for up to 7 minutes. We would talk about soccer as well.

And yes possibly through body language i might have sent of the wrong vibes or i looked annoyed or sad or something like that.

You know it could be posssible that I offended him since many years ago I offended an old friend (I am not buddeys with him now) but his paretns were annoyed of him and having friends round the house, when my ex friend told me this I said to him in a friendly way "If your parents even try to throw me out of the house I will tear them apart". Now I was only 13 when I said this and even though I intended it to be friendly my friend took offensce to what i said and did not bother with me for ages after I said this. In fact this probably caused such a rift between us that I did not start being friendly to him again untill I was 16.

Jamesy wrote:

When you say friendly do you mean in a dry humorous kind of way? Because if your facial expression and body language didn't indicate otherwise he probably heard it as a threat.

I did say it an agressive way and yeah probably looked serious when saying it even though I was joking. My friend did give me a look of hate before I left that night back in 2002.

To be fair my friend had no idea I had aspergers or what it even meant?

I would guess that you came across as placing too much emphasis on the interaction. He's at work and it's his job to be pleasant to people who use the gym. If you seemed to be trying too hard to prolong the conversations, he would have wound up feeling pressured to keep talking to you whether he wanted to or not because he has to be nice to a gym customer. That whole dynamic can make someone extremely uncomfortable.

That alone could be the reason, but if on top of that you said something that sounded even slightly threatening, it makes sense he would avoid you. Scary customers in the workplace are too common a problem for many people.

Maybe that has nothing to do with you.
Maybe he's found himself a girl/woman and doesn't feel like talking (chit chat) to other girls/women anymore.

Have you noticed if he has changed his manners with the other female customers?

lol I am not a girl. He just seems as friendly to other people men or women than he was before. Not all the insturctors at my gym are friendly only a few will go out of there way to approach and talk to you.

What I also noticed today when I went to the gym even when he was standing 2 feet away from me he avoided eye contact with me most likely becasue he was uncomftable/emabrressed.

The thing is though I have started talking to this other male instructor at the gym and unfourtantly in a matter of months I think he will stop talking to me as well. Oh well as the old saying goes "Friends come and go".

You know after reading the comments on this topic it has just struck me like a bolt of lighting that he might of thought I was gay even though I am straight. For example when he came over to talk to me I would smile or grin at him and he might have thought I fancied him or something. The only reason why I would smile or look happy when he came over to talk to me is becasue I thought he was a friendly and down to earth guy.

Oh sorry, I didn't look at your profil.

But what you said there:

could be a good reason, indeed.

I've known a guy who would have never noticed that kind of things even when it was so obvious
He could have easily seen that for others but never for himself.

(Thanks to have brought back a good memory to me! )

sorry Zena I just find it a bit offensive and rude that the gym instructor will not even say a simple hi or nod his head when he see's me. I reckon whenever I am in the gym he must think in his mind "Oh s**t he's here today".

Yes, that's bizarre. I agree with you.

But here on line, we cannot observe that gym instructor nor everything.
Maybe you'll find in the end what happened and why he turned away so abruptly.

Maybe he's just an instable man?
Maybe you said something, as you were first wondering, that he didn't like.
Maybe maybe...

Could you ask in some way but discreetly the other instructor what he thinks about it?

Could you ask in some way but discreetly the other instructor what he thinks about it?

How exactley could I ask him?

The only person who could know what happened are you and him, I wouldn't recommend asking him so that leaves you with your own memory. Think back to the time he stopped speaking to you, try and remember specifically when it was you felt his attitude change towards you.

If one day he was nice and the next aloof then you can be fairly certain that the first day was when the change happened. The other thing you can be fairly certain about is it happpened for a reason, usually something you said or didn't say.

Like when your other friend gave you the 'look of hate' and you connected it with what you said you need to do the same here. As an adult it'll be unlikely he gave you a look of hate but his demeanor will have changed at a certain specific point in reaction to some kind of stimulus on your part he percieved as negative.

It's possible that it could have been something you didn't say, maybe he was talking about his weekend activities in an attempt to get to know you and you didn't reciprocate in the way he expected and has taken it as a snub.

In the end there's not much you can do to repair the situation as you weren't friends to begin with. Just take it on the chin and be more aware next time. People always do things for a reason, if he was going out of his way to talk to you he had a reason, could be as simple as he thought you looked cool and wanted to hang out or he may have wanted to sell you a time share who knows?

It may help to try and figure out what people are trying to acheive when they interact with you, everybody who interacts with you wants something and conversely everyone you interact with you want something from. It could just be that they want to fill in the time you are in the same space together such as when a taxi driver talks to you or it could be they want to get to know you like when asomeone goes out of their way to speak to you. We all want something, wouldn't do anything otherwise.

The gym instructor is a nice guy for sure. I don't really hold it too much against him that he has decided to stop talking to me. Maybe he possibly expected more from me and I didn't really conform to what he expected out of the interactions we had in the long run and just decided to 'give up'.