How Do You Relate to Your Peers?

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This thread is about how we aspies try to relate to other people, especially our peers. I won't presume to speak for all aspies, so I'll speak from my own experience:

In the past year or two, I've tried to use humor, albeit a somewhat absurdist, exaggerating sense of humor, to ease interpersonal tensions. It works okay, in that people laugh at my jokes much of the time. I'm not sure to what extent they're just humoring me, though.

I try to converse with their interests. I have a wide variety of academic and other assorted interests that I can converse knowledgeably on. No, I do not give "lectures" anymore, or at least I try to avoid that.

I still need to work at displaying my emotions better. I realize my facial expression often isn't very inviting. My eye contact could definitely also use some work. It seems sometimes my ability to display my emotions is almost completely off, and sometimes it's functioning quite well.

Anyway, welcome or not, I am pretty much on vacation from friendly social interaction except for what I get at work. There, it's mainly greeting customers, helping them find things, listening to my bosses, and telling lame jokes to the cashiers and other coworkers during slow periods. I guess I also get some social interaction from my family. I'm working on improving myself despite the lack of deep, meaningful social interaction.

It's interesting, what you've said about making jokes. I have a rather dry sense of humor (think Mulder from the X-files), and I often don't even intentionally make jokes- sardonic little comments just sort of slip out. I've been told that I'm very funny, and most of the time, I don't even mean to be! (Note- I know they're laughing with me, not at me, because it's all good-natured).

A weird quirk that's been pointed out to me is that I will start saying something I find funny almost completely deadpan, and then at the end, just burst out laughing. I don't know how most people deliver jokes or humor, because I am particularly bad at picking up on it, but I guess that the laughter sort of comes from me reminding myself that I need to give an indication that I am not being completely serious. My "sarcastic voice" is a bit too close to my "normal voice."

It's almost impossible for me to start a conversation with someone, and even when I am able to start one, it dies within the first few exchanges. I usually do ok when the person I'm speaking to is leading the conversation. I've learned that asking questions is a good way to keep a conversation going, and indicate that you are interested in what a person is saying, but you can't ask questions forever, because it will be more like an interrogation. This is usually where I fail.

As for facial expression, I have absolutely no control over mine. I've been told that I look angry or upset when I am perfectly happy, and am always being told to smile. Apparently, I do show distress, because even when my voice is completely even and normal sounding, someone has said "I can tell how upset she is by her face" about me. I tend to speak in monotone, though I've asked one of my friends, and he said he can hear slight variations in my tone when I speak. I've been told by other people that I "sound like I'm reading from a script."

It's good that you are practicing your social skills. During the summer, my social skills tend to get neglected, since I don't have a job, and I am pretty cut off from my high school friends (I go away to college during the year). I think that every little bit helps, so keep at it! Maybe, after people warm up to you, you will be able to have more meaningful interaction with some of them.

I get along really well with people on the whole. It didn't always use to be this way, but now I am friendly with many and have some very close friends too who I care about and who care about me. I have become increasingly dynamic.

My sense of humor can also be described as absurd, or sometimes, really surreal and fantastic (in the spirit of "fantasy"). I am sometimes questioned whether I am on drugs, but I let out a laugh and say "noooooo... it's an all-natural high!" This makes me fun to be around, from what I've observed.

When in doubt, I make pop culture references, that often works. I'm not good at small talk though, especially the things that people say but DO NOT MEAN. Two of the worst are "how are you today?" and "let's do lunch sometime". Yeah, whatever... I'll safely slot that into the b.s. department. I'm trying to do more Japanese bows and less dirty handshakes. But I do like to learn from other people's life experiences, and sometimes the questions come out odd (asking girls about how they do their makeup), but I am truely intrigued.

I've picked up a lot of behavior from doing impersonations of celebs and things like that, I find it really helps. Watching stand-up comedy is a visual aid. It seems to be something common too, that people feel more familiar with that sort of behavior, and so at parties and the like, I like to be lively and engaging and as for eye contact -- I look deep into eyes to emphasize a point but turn away every now and then as to avoid "laser-beaming" someone's retinas.

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How do I interact with my peers? Ummm.. I try not to? Seriously, people don't get my jokes and half the time I don't finish my jokes because I'm laughing hysterically by the second word. I've long since perfected the art of looking peole in the eye--I stare at their left pupil until their face goes blurry. They usually laugh at the blank expression on my face when I do this.

People are forever telling me to "lighten p" and "smile", shich gets annoying and has resulted in me having few real life friendships, but multiple online friendships!

The whole "peer interaction" thing has something I've never been able quite get. I can't bring myself to make eye contact for more than a second at a time, others can't understand my sense of humor, I often have extreme emotional reactions to things, I'm always mis-interpreting others people's tones when they talk to me, plus I can never seem to do or say the right thing when I need to.

In other words I suck greatly at it.

I love to talk and I'm a great talker, so I don't have much problem with conversing with people. My big problems are understanding humor and "talking too much." I also have trouble with eye-contact. If I know the person very well, eye contact is not a problem, but with people I don't know very well, or people I don't like, I usually don't make much eye contact with them.

I can do some small talk, mostly about the weather, asking after other people that I know who have connctions to the other person, asking about family; etc.

I often say things that other people find hilarious, but I have no idea why people think I am funny. In these situations, I usually just laugh too, after asking why what I said was funny!