First time in history!! !! The NT/AS open hotline ! !! !! !

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Idk. I, as an NT, am a law abiding citizen and maybe some NT's are not. However, it also seems that some Aspies here aren't law abiding either. Check out the marijuana threads or the prostitute threads and get back to me on your theory. I think it's just a "people" problem myself.

The difference is that prostitutes and weed don't endanger anyone else's life. Speeding does.

Not if you don't hit anybody. And check out one of the latest post in the prostitution thread and then come back and tell me that prostitution doesn't hurt anyone.

Nurseangela

Those are both things that would also be a hell of a lot safer if they were legalized and regulated. The OP is talking about things that are inherently dangerous on there own.

So, NT peoples... I'm just started to come to the realization that all the social gyrations that you go through and all the back-double talk actually MEANS something other than talking into the air and listening to yourself talk.
However, something that blew me away recently was the idea that- all of your cultural posturing like within a subculture like a work or friend group or whatever...
Anyway I've been trying to get through to my rather seemingly unintelligent NT mother that going to parties and talking to people about small talk and exchanging banal tidbits about such and such is rather uninteresting to me. I usually get sensory over load and am in pain, and can't stand it.
Instead of being thoughtful or any bit sympathetic about this she calls me unkind and rude and inconsiderate to others.
Never mind that she never truly tries to understand my position while I literally spend all of my spare time trying to understand her NT world.
And I realized that the reason she enjoys these stupid and bizarre and ritualistic cultural events is because they are integral to her social life which is essential to healthy NT functioning, being social and "a part of" her cultural group and doing the cultural dance so to speak.
It then follows that the reasons she gets so upset with me for not following through is because she feels I am being willfully ignorant or disdainful of her cultural world that I have neither the capacity nor interest in being a part of- in the normal NT way that she is attempting to force me to participate in?
Is it because she thinks I'm being willfully dismissive of her cultural maneuvers and mannerisms?
Does this sound right to any of you NTs out there?

I am an NT with an Aspie son, and I think that different NTs would have different answers to your question. But MY answer, what MY reasoning would be for trying to force my own son into social situations or trying to get him to learn and mimic NT social behavior, is wanting him to be successful in this (unfortunately) NT world.
To be successful in a job, to have a successful school career, to be successful in attracting a partner, people have to like you. It's a sad, but true, fact. It would be nice if job performance was all that mattered in career progression, but it's usually not. The boss will promote the person he/she likes better. Maybe not consciously, but people are human and often ruled by their emotions. And if two people are equally qualified and performing equally, guess who's going to get that raise/promotion/position? The person who made small talk in the elevator, or remembered their birthday, or asked questions about their kids.
It's the same with any position of power - police officers will be more likely to let you off with a warning if you smile and apologize and play the game. A teacher is more likely to let you do some extra credit work to raise your GPA if he/she likes you. A prospective partner is more likely to accept your offer of a date if you make him/her feel good emotionally by complimenting their outfit, or asking them about their day, or any of the other pointless stuff people say to each other all day long.
In any situation where you deal with another human being, things can go well for you and you get what you wanted/needed from the interaction, or things can go badly and you don't get that thing. The difference between these outcomes is how well you can play the social game. The REAL "Game of Life." And some people genuinely love to play. Others (like myself) do it because you have to.
Either way, the only way to learn these skills, the skills that grease the wheels of life, is to be exposed to them and practice them. It may not be fair, but that's the way things are, usually.
As a mom to an Aspie kid, I want his life to go well. I want him to have everything he desires. I want him safe and happy. And I know that he has to successfully play the social game to achieve that. So I might find myself pushing him into social situations that he has no interest in, just so he can learn the skill. Like I had to learn Algebra to pass high school.
I might also find myself getting angry or frustrated if he didn't seem to realize how important it was, or didn't try to learn the skills, or was dismissive, because I would be worried about him. It would be the same as if he decided to go surfing but didn't know how to swim, and then dismissed the idea that swimming was important.

This is so me (particularly the bolded part). *__*

NTs, help me out here: Why is it so hard to give an honest opinion of a person or a habit you dislike to the person in question? For example, there was a guy in my class who would never shut up, so at the end of class one day, I went over to him and politely told him that he tended to talk a little too much and it would be appreciated if he wouldn't talk as frequently. He was very appreciative that I told him this, but when I told another person in the class about it, he found it hilarious that I did that.

Also, there are times I want to know how I'm perceived, so I ask for an honest opinion in order to know how to improve myself. But people never give me a straight answer. What is so hard about this? Wouldn't everybody like to know people's honest opinions of them so they know if they need to change something about themselves? What makes NTs virtually unable to do this?

Last edited by Grammar Geek on 04 Dec 2015, 10:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Yeah, I would like to know too. This is something that can get very frustrating.

Yes, it does. And it might indeed be a more important reason than that she thinks it is necessary to participate in this social games, to a certain degree at least, in order to get along well in life.

But maybe this is only part of the story. You describe your mother as someone who completely lacks any insight into your condition. If she were very NT, she should normally better get that you feel truly overwhelmed and pity you, she would get that there is enough reason for your not overdoing it with socializing, and respect it a bit more. She would still be puzzled by your way of being, but less. So my guess would be that she might be on the autism spectrum, too, just more on that part where people are particularly social-rule-oriented and highfunctioning enough to observe or even set those rules. So there could also be something like jealousy: she might have worked hard to fit in (maybe herself under the pressure of her family), or even overdid it, and lost part of herself in the process, while you just have the nerve not to take care and behave like you want.

In particular if she is on the spectrum, she might also want to prevent you from some alarming psychic tendencies she felt in herself when she was younger, or which she has seen develop in other family members, and which social interaction, even if it is just a seemingly superficial one, helped her (or would have helped them) to keep in check.

First of all NTs can stand babbling more easily. Then I think it was definitely good to tell him. The older I get the more allergic I get against people who always have the lion s share in conversations (unless they are very interesting or have really lots of interesting things to say), and the more I dare to tell other people directly what I think. That is partly because I feel more confident in some matters (because of their cognitive experience younger NTs value life experience more than Aspies do, they are more aware that there is still a lot to learn), and mainly because I am much more aware of neurologic differences than I used to be, and know that some people need a straight talk. Before I would have first tried to make someone like your classmate talk less by giving him hints which I would have considered as being sufficiently clear, or interrupted him once in while when I or someone else was hindered from saying something, I would have only approached the issue directly when already quite annoyed with him not getting the message, supposing half-unconsciously that he does not want to get it. You are right that it is better not to wait until this point.

Now it is rather the Aspie (more the hyperactive type, the OCD or the little professor syndrome type) who chatters without caring much about how much others are interested. And the NTs reluctance to say something has also to do with their better insight that this person is just different from others, and not so easy to be stopped. BTW did it help? I mean, does he talk less now?

So the real reason why NTs dont talk directly is sometimes that they feel less bothered by it, often that they are more aware of that the person is a little different from others, and mostly that there is not enough awareness, or that it only builds up over years of life experiences. Sounds a little contradictory, but still ...

If you want to get a feedback, try to make the other (preferably an elderly person?) understand that you really need it to be direct and that otherwise you wont get it. This wont work with all people but there is a good chance that the few people who understand it, give you a really useful feedback. Consider a little that aspies sometimes come across as quite harsh and at times as techy: Aspies often dont realize enough when they are getting upset, and compared to NTs their way of getting upset is less predictable, for an NT at least. So we are more careful.

Then we act spontaneously, so it is not easy for us to give advise on how to change one s behavior, because we usually dont think about it. We also have considerably more scruples to teach someone to behave differently from how they would behave normally. For example we would not like to teach someone how to appear self-confident in order to pick up a girl while an Aspie does or advises what is necessary to get a girlfriend, without having in mind too much what consequences this might have for both people. NTs think, and rightly so, that there are often no hard and fast rules for any real improvement which does not stop at the behavioral level, but that it is a complex process of development, so their advise, if they give one, might more aim at circumstances. Nowadays I would say that much of a person s personality is in any case acquired through imitation and habit and I see authenticity as being less important, but it took me some time to get to that point.

Wow, this is a really eye-opening post. Thank you very much. And yes, he did talk less after I brought it up.

Could you clarify something, though? What consequences do you speak of when you said an NT wouldn't want to help someone appear self-confident to get a girlfriend because of some consequences?

This is an amazing thread. You know, at this point in my life I can understand AS and I can understand NT to a certain degree. What throws me for a loop is AS people trying to act NT or anyone else wearing a mask. That's when the communication breaks down.

Excellent question, Monkey!!

How does it feel to NT? I guess it's an awesome, fun life.

I do, this is the reason that I cannot watch romcoms, where the humor and conflict is almost entirely based on social misunderstanding (a situation I am all to acquainted with).