BurningMoose wrote:
... Droning on and on about one subject and refusing to talk about anything else is going to ANNOY THE sh** OUT OF PEOPLE, and for good reason: it's not a conversation at all! Nobody wants to be lectured by a "professor" when they're trying to have a casual social relationship (or dating).
.... There is an art to conversation, and no matter how AS you are, you CAN learn it if you genuinely want to get along with people and increase your social skills. ... THERE ARE BOOKS OUT THERE TO HELP YOU. Read them, learn how you're having an effect on people, and alter it if you want to be more social.
Can you recommend some of those books? I'm very new to this board, as an NT who's just learned that my partner of six years is AS, and am trying to learn more about this aspect of his personality. I can't tell you how many times he's freaked out and shut me down when I try to participate in a conversation – which he experiences as me "interrupting" him before he's reached the absolute end of what he's trying to explain to me – which at times can take as many as 2-3 hours (literally) of nonstop talking. I really appreciate what you've written in this post ... it's good to know it might be possible for him to learn a new way of interacting with me. Seeing his behavior through the lens of AS makes it a little more understandable, but it's still depressing and isolating for me to be held hostage to these marathon lectures until HE feels satisfied that he's finally exhausted the topic. He often says he wants to be more social, invite people over, etc. – but I know he's self-conscious about his social skills. It's only with me, when we're safe at home, that he lets it all loose. So I know he's capable of reeling it in, when he wants to. Anyway ... thanks for the post. And please do give a few book titles, if you can. Thank you.
16 Sep 2009, 4:07 pm
