Bluntness and honesty vs. politeness and white lies

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Please do not misquote people.

Aspies don't have much of an excuse to be rude since we may not be so tactful, but most of us are intelligent and it only needs for us to take time to respond and think about what we are saying before we wade in with our version of honesty.

I didn't know those!

But I used to like telenovelas very much, especially when they had my lifelong favorite Argentinian actors.

Talk about NTs not having obsessions! Just see the addiction to telenovelas...

Depends, sometimes you have to think on your feet and can't go away to quietly think over how your response may come across, and often figuring that out is a matter of intuition rather than intelligence.

Even here, it's situational. Whether you should use tactful honesty or the dishonest white lie depends on whether she has the option to pick another dress at that time and how much she needs to feel she looks good in that dress at that time. (And I realize that figuring THAT out is something bound to drive AS people bananas.)

When to use the tactful honesty:
You are shopping together- stop her from buying it.

You are getting dressed for an event together-your tactful honesty can get her to change into something else.

You are out together. She's already in the dress with no option to change but looking her absolute best isn't that critical. Maybe you are just getting lunch together. Your tactful honesty could get her to retire the dress from her wardrobe at a later point.

When to use the white lie even though it is completely dishonest:

You are somewhere together where she has no option to change yet it is critical that she feels like she looks good. Perhaps she's just about to give a presentation in front of a bunch of people or go up on stage to perform. If she asks you how her dress looks at that moment, she needs to hear that it looks great regardless of whether it does or not. She has no option to change it and being told that it looks great (even dishonestly) frees her mind from the worry that she looks like crap and allows her to concentrate on her presentation or performance in blissful ignorance that she could have looked better. The (true) information that it was a bad clothing choice would have stuck in her head at a critical time and hampered her presentation or performance.

That is an example from my own life. I had no idea ththe people saw a good presentation from a woman in an ugly dress. Had I been tactfully told, they would have seen a bad presentation from a woman in an ugly dress. Same dress in either scenario. The only thing that would change would bat the dress I'd chosen to give a presentation in was a color choice that looked weird with my skin and I looked pale and unhealthy. (And it was a new dress too! One I'd bought special for the presentation. Damn those fluorescent lights in dressing rooms.) I didn't realize this till I saw photos. Had I been tactfully told this right before the presentation it wouldn't have helped because I couldn't change at that point and it would have stuck in my head and I would have been thinking "I look like crap!" which would have distracted me from giving my best presentation. So e the quality of the presentation.

Please do not call my personal inferences, quotes or misquotes.

I'd like Barbarossa to be my toyboy

Merle
Moderator

Wow, thanks sinsboldy!

A way to deal with the latter situation without being dishonest is to say something like "You look fine", which literally means that the person you're talking to looks fine, and you haven't mentioned anything about what they're wearing. Most people will take it as "that outfit looks fine on you"; and you don't need to correct them.

I repeat: I didn't quote or misquote. And inferences needn't an alert.

Now calling someone "stupid or lazy" with the moderators' agreement, that's another story. I guess we can call you stupid or lazy too, since it seems perfectly fine to you and within T&C?

What I wrote was, "I have nothing more to add at this time." If you're too lazy or stupid to read the last three words, it's your problem.

For you, it's all about challenging, isn't it?

You challenge me to prove things to you, but your mind is closed.

You were very nice to me as long as we were emailing to each other, but as soon as you posted, on this thread, my comment which you said would be useful to autistic people, you began criticizing, not only my original comment, but every comment I've made since then.

Your first question to me, in our emails, was about why you suddenly lose all your NT friends. The answer is on this thread. You become friendly with someone, and then at a certain point you vent your spleen at them, the anger you have at the misunderstanding you've suffered from NTs in the past. I don't know why you need to play this game, but I'm not surprised that no one wants to play it with you. Therefore you have no friends. But I think you'd say that's not a problem, because honesty is the most important thing. No problem.



Your problems with South Americans are your issue, not mine.

As Pablo Neruda would say, "Eres una persona muy poco amable. Por eso nadie te quiere." I'm confident you'll appreciate my honesty in this post.