arguing with and bossing difficult people

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Citizen72521
Butterfly
Butterfly

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Joined: 28 Jan 2009
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 9

20 Sep 2009, 5:29 pm

I'm in a difficult spot with the person who is basically the closest thing t
o a best friend I've had in a long time or ever because I'm engaged in a some times stressful business partnership with his long time friend who is NT. The root of the problem is the very difficult nature of the friendship to begin with. Basically my friend is not technically always sane, normally this isn't an problematic and as part of our mutual understanding I ignore or put up with occasional bouts of absurdity. But, he has other personality and attitude issues stemming from the roots of insanity. I have some problematic aspie traits, but I seem to pass for normal enough most of the time and I end up trying to cover and make up for his annoying others by explaining he has some issues.

I'm having to do this a lot now because he is basically now an employee and being a deranged know it all he interferes with others and tries to run things and decreases efficiency. The other friend I'm doing business with is of course just as aware of the issues and tries to help put him in his place, but he isn't around a lot and I'm concerned about the long term damage to our business. We frequently discuss how we spend more time managing him than the job itself. He thinks he has to supervise everything and imagines he has more applicable experience even when its clear everyone is against him and he is at least partly wrong. I've gotten tougher and we've had some strong arguments, but its difficult enough for me to get my points across to a normal person let alone some one so difficult to converse with in a argumentative way. Our friendship is based originally on some small business and mutual interests as well as a degree of tolerance of each others oddities.

It's more stressful now occasionally because I am effectively the primary investor and my orders need to be clearly followed especially when things have gotten a little problematic business-wise. I've never really outwardly made friends myself and I don't have actual friends my own age anymore (both of these guys I'm working with now are older), but I feel I need to learn to manage the friend I have left. I've never discussed ASD's or anything in particular, but things have come up before over the years I've known him and we are both aware of our differences. I just don't know how to argue effectively in this case and I give up and just leave because I don't seem to be getting across constructive criticism without being insulting and I know it's not all due to my aspieness either.