Just when I thought I was getting away with it ...
I don't have friends, but I do have some people I know at the moment who are friendlies - they're part of a group I attend and I see them there, and seem to get on well enough with them when I do.
I thought I was interacting ok, no obvious signs of screw-ups, etc. But recently I overheard a conversation two of them were having in another room. I was not intending to eavesdrop on anything private - I could simply just hear through the wall as they were talking.
They were talking about the boyfriend of one of them, and the way they talked to each other Vs how they talked to or around me reminded me of the way adults often speak to or in front of children - in an abridged, sanitized way that is very simplistic and cuts out anything too complicated / requiring intelligence, or anything of a mature nature, emotionally, sexually, experientially or otherwise. It also tends to involve a sort of mild doting pleasantness.
I hadn't realized I was in a way being talked down to until I compared it to how people speak to others whom, I assume, they judged as equals.
I know some of my behaviour gives me away as impaired / autistic, and I may be developmentally way behind in some ways, but I had thought I'd demonstrated enough intelligence not to warrant being in a way infantalized. It made me realize they may not be seeing me as a peer, someone on their "level," but as a child or someone with an intellectual disability, whom they thought fit only to be privy to a superficial sample of their experience.
I don't really know what to think or do about this. Anyone else experienced this socially? What did you do?
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Alexithymia - 147 points.
Low-Verbal.
27 May 2017, 6:34 am
I'd be upset over it as well had I been in your shoes right then and there.
