I have ASD but sometimes it feels like I'm a psychopath

Post Reply New Topic

Just... why is everyone else so emotional about everything? I'm obviously not a psychopath, but often NTs will say things that make me feel this way.

Recently, a girl said she loved me. I don't love her so I let her down gently (with the aid of an NT cousin). The girl said "please don't contact me ever again" so I haven't. I'm fine (obviously, I was not the one who was hurt by the situation), and everyone is blaming me for not being hurt?

I explained the situation, that I did not love her, so why does everyone expect me to act heartbroken over it?

Moreover, people are blaming me for "letting her fall in love" with me. This girl is a grown woman, am I supposed to police everyone's feeling when they interact with me? I don't understand why people are angry at me when I did nothing wrong.

I'm just so sick and tired of NTs saying "I understand" and "I won't be offended" when I tell them that I have ASD and am the way I am, but then they don't actually act on those words. It's a similar situation to when people say "you can say the truth" and when you do they get offended, except more elaborate/extended.

I say to them "I am blunt and do not lie. Social interaction means little to me and friendship is not something I am inclined to nurture." And yet they still get offended when I don't treat them like the "golden friend"? Can anyone make sense of this? Why say a thing if you don't mean it?


I apologise if this is a pretty typical rant for these forums, I'm new here so I don't have a full scope of the kinds of posts made.

Yeah. Our blunt honesty gets some of us in trouble every time.

A lot of us don't have the NT gift of progressive social communication. That particular deficit hinders us, me included.

Anyway, welcome to WP. You'll find a lot of similar folks like you on the site.

What is this?

Progressive social communication.

I use that term to mean some of us are incapable of having social communication or meetings with people which are progressive, that is, moves the conversation forward in a positive way.

i fake about 95% of my emotions.

@OP: same, except that I don't even get frustrated over it...
As option 3 in the poll says... NT's will be NT's.

Yeah, many NTs don't like it when you are blunt and don't play social mind games and don't display the "appropriate" emotional reactions.

It's very strange, and it often seems like they are taking it personally even when they are not the ones involved in a situation.

I had a social incident this week, and I told it to my mother, and my mother said that she would have same reaction as me, telling blunt truth in this situation.

Then, I posted on forum where we are all online friends obsessed with TV show, and this one person started picking at me for my telling blunt truth to some stranger.

Maybe she took it personally because she identifies with NT stranger and NT stranger's actions and reactions that I described in post?

I have had situations in the past where people blame me if someone else has treated me badly or taken advantage of me. Supposedly, I let them, because I did not keep them in line. I don't understand this way of thinking. I can't be responsible for other peoples behavior.
If this is how NT's relate to one another, I can't deal with it. I'd rather be alone.

If you realized that the girl was falling in love with you and you led her on because you enjoyed her interest in you without actually loving her then you are an as*hole. People do this intentionally all the time and it is a sh***y thing to do to someone.

If you were oblivious to it and her telling you that she loves you was a big surprise than it isn't really your fault but that probably won't seem like a plausible excuse to NTs,.

Brutal honesty is something most people claim to welcome but for some reason every time I point out to someone that they aren't doing their jobs they resent it.

Oh yeah, policing other people's feelings during my interactions with them, that is not possible for me, I am very disabled in that area.

I think NTs mostly just can't seem to grasp that anyone would not understand the social rules. They assume that you'd understand that she was falling in love with you.

When in reality, it doesn't ever occur to us to do games like that; much less that we'd even act on it.

Until you said this, I didn't realize people played games. I can't grasp why anyone would do something like that. I guess it just seems naiive, but I'm always surprised at the evil that a lot of NTs do. It's hard to understand why they'd do it.

They do it because they try to survive. Rather be evil than die is the conclusion.

Human behaviour eventually boils down to (subconscious) survival desire.

My guess is that she was giving you signals that would have been clear to an NT, telling you she was falling in love with you. At that point, most NTs, if they didn't feel the same way, would have backed off from her long before she actually said the words. But you, being oblivious to her signals, unintentionally communicated that you were OK with her falling in love with you and maybe even felt the same way about her.

Typical AS-NT communication breakdown. Do the people who say this to you know you have AS? Just saying you're blunt, don't lie and aren't preoccupied with social interaction won't be enough for them to understand what happened, because a blunt NT would have spotted her nonverbal cues and brought up the conversation much earlier to let her down before she got too close.

Anyway, you're nothing like a psychopath. Psychopaths can't love, but are perfectly happy to fake love if it helps them manipulate someone. They often deliberately get people to fall in love with them, use those people as much as they can, and then either dump the person or get dumped once the 'rose-colored glasses' come off (ie, the person finally realizes what the psychopath is really like).

Pretty good guess. Or maybe someone she cares about acts like NT stranger.

Why would someone fake being in love when they aren't?

Well, psychopaths usually do it to have someone who's easy to manipulate. A person in love is blind to their love's faults, which makes it extremely easy for their love to use that against them. But psychopaths are not NT either, so it's not fair to paint out their actions as NT actions. Occasionally an NT might do the same, but most would feel too bad about hurting the person to do such a cold and calculated manipulation of love. Although they might do it under extenuating circumstances, such as a refugee faking love to get a person to help them leave the country.

More often, when NTs fake being in love, it's because they wish they were in love. For example, many gay people who have not come to terms with their orientation, if they meet a straight person who has a crush on them, they might play along, hoping that the relationship will turn them straight. (It never works, and other gays are quick to point this out if they spot someone trying to do this.) People can also do this without incompatible orientations, for example if they're trying to stop thinking about a person who they love and don't want to love (such as an ex).

Other times, they don't want to hurt the person, and feel like if they said no, it would hurt the person. Which is short-term thinking, because the longer they leave it, the more the eventual rejection will hurt, and they're generally not intending to settle down with the person simply to avoid hurting them.

I would call both of those misguided, but not evil (only the first scenario of deliberate manipulation is evil). To me, evil requires that you intend to cause harm. If you don't want to hurt anyone, but engage in a misguided action that ends up hurting someone, that's a mistake. It's not evil. (I also think that if worse harm would come from not doing the action, it isn't evil either. Sometimes life throws people nasty choices.)

Thanks guys, it's nice to have people who understand.

Yeah, you're probably right on that.

That's the thing, she knew, and the people around me all know, that I has AS. I've explained it in depth to her.

Ah.. I know I'm not, it's just that NTs are always saying I'm manipulative and emotionless. Kinda ironic that I'm the opposite of that.