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JuanDiegalo
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28 Jun 2022, 1:45 pm

My wife said that our son's room was really warm, and noticed that the AC was "set to one." She said that "one is the warmest and seven is the coldest."

I believed that this was backwards, so I went in to double check. I was right. But she had made the adjustment in the correct direction and merely mixed up the numbers in the telling of the event. I told her that she had it backwards.

She said, "Whatever it is, I fixed it." And then, "Are you seriously nitpicking me, right now?"

I said I wasn't. "I just wanted to be sure it was right."

She said, "I had it right. I don't need to be double checked."

This upset me, because I was simply concerned our son would be too warm at night. If she turned the dial in the wrong direction, that's an honest mistake. What one of us misses, the other one usually catches. We usually appreciate the benefits of parental redundancy, because it relieves some of the pressure for one person to get everything right all the time. But in this instance, she took it as me correcting her and questioning her parenting abilities.

For a moment, I considered if this was a situation in which I should "make a new rule" for myself, which I often do when something I said goes over especially poorly. I thought, Should I make a rule that tells me: "Don't double check her work when it comes to parenting"? But then I remembered the times when she thanked me for catching something important that she'd overlooked, telling me what a good dad and partner I am.

I realized that wouldn't work, because I care about being a good partner and father. The more logical rule might be: "Don't double check her work if she's in a mood and the matter is not deathly important." This is easier said than done, of course, because I often miss important signals that alert me to what kind of mood she's in, and whether something normally appreciated might go over badly.

I decided that a social-emotional impairment is like a visual impairment: I'm always bumping into people. If I was visually-impaired, it would be rude for someone to think I was doing it on purpose, or if I just "tried harder and showed a little more consideration" I wouldn't piss people off so much. Because social-emotional impairments are "invisible," people are less likely to be understanding when I "bump" into them or knock over their stuff. And that really sucks.

The only solution that I can figure is, maybe I need to slow down and focus more on my other "senses." I wonder if part of the reason I'm always "bumping" into people is because I try to hard to present myself as someone who can "see." Maybe I'm so convincing that people forget I have an impairment, and they automatically assume I wasn't watching where I was going, when I bump into them. When you mask too hard, you make them forget about your disability, and they forget to be considerate and understanding.

Those are some thoughts, anyway. I could be way off. What do you think?



SpiralingCrow
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28 Jun 2022, 2:36 pm

Perhaps your wife had a bad or busy day and interpreted your help the wrong way. My boyfriend and I have had such reactions to each other, not frequently, but once in awhile. One of us might be stressed about something and just have a bad reaction. I don't think it's uncommon in couples.



rse92
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28 Jun 2022, 3:29 pm

There are going to be times when, in the course of explaining something to you, people will misspeak. Now, they know they meant, and you know what they meant, and they know you know what they meant.

In these circumstances, correcting someone is correcting them for correcting's sake. It serves no purpose. I have done it before, and I no doubt will do it again. I am at the point (certainly since my ASD diagnosis) that I regret the words as soon as they come out of my mouth.

Yes, it is nitpcking.



JuanDiegalo
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28 Jun 2022, 3:38 pm

SpiralingCrow wrote:
Perhaps your wife had a bad or busy day and interpreted your help the wrong way. My boyfriend and I have had such reactions to each other, not frequently, but once in awhile. One of us might be stressed about something and just have a bad reaction. I don't think it's uncommon in couples.


This was my thinking, as well. Earlier, she had told me how she corrected our son and he began correcting her correction, and she set him straight. Also, a friend had been irritating her and invalidating her. She was certainly primed!



JuanDiegalo
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28 Jun 2022, 3:40 pm

rse92 wrote:
There are going to be times when, in the course of explaining something to you, people will misspeak. Now, they know they meant, and you know what they meant, and they know you know what they meant.

In these circumstances, correcting someone is correcting them for correcting's sake. It serves no purpose. I have done it before, and I no doubt will do it again. I am at the point (certainly since my ASD diagnosis) that I regret the words as soon as they come out of my mouth.

Yes, it is nitpcking.


This makes a lot of sense. Thank you.



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01 Jul 2022, 6:39 am

Interesting. I don't mind my work being checked for errors as long as it's done by somebody who is broadly on my side, but I know a lot of people do mind. I tend to think the fault is with them because to discourage people from checking your work suggests an attempt to hide mistakes. But sometimes people just feel a bit insecure and get unreasonable like that. And it's important not to highlight too many minor errors. Even I don't like that, though I normally have a lot of respect for rigorous scrutiny.

It's probably wise to tend to carry out error-checking quietly and not to give much feedback on small mistakes. If I have to point out somebody else's error, I try not to be too blunt, loud, or verbose about it, and to couch my criticism in friendly terms, playing down the idea of their personal failure and reassuring them that they're doing a good job overall.



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02 Jul 2022, 7:06 am

I don't see the point of her telling you that you are nitpicking.


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KMCIURA
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02 Jul 2022, 5:38 pm

Pal, I feel you.

This irrational behaviour is one of the most important aspect why I do not "get" people.

For me, double-checking comes natural. I always want to acquire as much information from multiple data points, test everything out thoroughly - because I perceive so many branching possibilities and how these may translate to consequences and made new questions to arise.

This was VERY useful during my studies and in fact, this type of thinking was encouraged. It's basic principle of working in a lab, for example - you do not jump into conclusions, you do not assume - you evaluate and verify. It is a part of broader thing called scientific method. Analytical, rational minds gravitate towards this approach in natural manner, do not need actively remind themselves of this necessity.

But this way of doing things always caused me problems with people. And at this point, I am just starting to give up on humanity in general, when it comes to efficient communication. I have simply accepted that I am too different to be fully understood by anyone, to efficiently channel concepts boiling inside my brain and to understand how and why other people operate in a way they do.

When I was working in corporate office, whenever I've been delegated to do a new task I haven't been doing before, I've been asking around, gathering useful info. I've never wanted to base my actions on data acquired from just one source be it training materials or a person. I knew that materials can be outdated (and they often were), that people's memory is not perfect, that some might came up with some useful ways of increasing efficiency. I wanted to check for discrepancies.

This have pissed off so many people that I've been having a talk with my manager over it multiple times. People were coming to her and complaining that I do not trust them and undermine their authority and position. She was, fortunately, a very bright and understanding woman, but had to carefully balance the moods and morale in teams she was leading. So yeah, she tried to persuade me to stop doing that, even if it will come at a cost of making more errors and things taking more time.

Now, imagine that. A company where a sensible approach needs to take a back-seat because of people's feelings and their ego.

Most folks do not care about accuracy, precision, efficiency. I have hypothesis that they simply do not give that much of a thought about anything, really - they take whatever first plausible conclusion comes into their mind and are fine with it. This, of course, results in many mistakes, sometimes of catastrophic proportions. This "shallow" way of thinking also surfaces when you speak with most of them about things they are supposed to be interested in - most of the time, their knowledge in the field of interest is super shallow - they may enjoy the given thing, of course, but they do not feel the urge to learn even more about it.

This may have an explanation in subconsciousness. Mankind has evolved in high risk environment, after all and for majority of our existence as a species, death could came quick and out of sudden. Acting fast, based on limited set of data, was preferable to spending more time to think over the issue. "Acceptable" was preferable to "perfect" because to achieve the latter you needed to spend more valuable resources - time, energy.

Thing is, most of people on Earth, as of now, do not live in high risk environment. We can afford to stop and think things over, to look for different outcomes, to verify information. We can do things better, more accurately, make less errors.

I am a data junkie. I cannot stop analysing, checking, thinking. There are days where I cannot stop thinking intensively about various problem and issues, almost doing it in parallel. There are few moments of calm. It can be paralysing when it comes to making decisions. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I event think than simply getting by, being less conscious about world around me, not giving things as much attention, would be a lesser experience of living.

Most of the time I find people to be useless as a source of data - when certain conversation subject sparks my interest and I am starting to ask more questions, digging deeper, it becomes obvious how limited their knowledge is.

I haven't had a satisfying, longer conversation - which wouldn't feel like a disappointment - about any complex subject for years now. The closest thing I have are appointments with my neurologist - she's a fascinating mind and I am always discussing interesting things with her, leaving with food for thought, learning new things, exchanging perspectives. But it's like 30 minutes every three months. I do not have this kind of mind-touching-mind contact with anyone whom I see regularly, even my wife.

As for trying to make the rules on how to act - stop doing that for your own good. You'll ultimately fail and feel frustration. I have tried to do it in the past and it is a rabbit hole. Kept whole trees of branching statements in my mind, making rule sets on how to interact with people in different situations. It is, to put it simply, futile and the level of success you'll meet by taking this approach is not worth the effort. The exact same input can result in vastly different output, depending on too many factors. People are, for the most part, not predictable, consistent and rational.

As for overdoing masking and making people believe that you are the same - it doesn't matter much. Even if you'll act in a way that will give clues about your condition, they will still treat you like everybody else.

I know it first-hand - I am suffering from lateral temporal lobe epilepsy, which wasn't diagnosed for 6 years even though I was looking for answers what is happening to me (I do not have tonic-clonic seizures, only partial focal ones) and damaged parts of my brain responsible for transferring information from short term to long term memory, especially autobiographical ones and ones passed through speech. I am having a problem of recall, too. I forget a lot, or cannot instantly remind myself stuff. People around me know about it. Yet, they still treat me like I am a fully functional in this area and get angry when I am failing at doing something because of this handicap. I am tired of saying sorry over and over. This is on top of my AS, which already causes friction.

What you do is not nitpicking - it is operating at higher level of awareness. The results are the same - people get offended. But people get offended at stupidest things imaginable, so I do not think there's a point in proactively trying to prevent this kind of friction. Stop seeking confirmation for data and you'll end up being called stupid for not thinking about something or not checking.



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04 Jul 2022, 10:43 am

JuanDiegalo wrote:
This upset me, because I was simply concerned our son would be too warm at night. If she turned the dial in the wrong direction, that's an honest mistake. What one of us misses, the other one usually catches. We usually appreciate the benefits of parental redundancy, because it relieves some of the pressure for one person to get everything right all the time. But in this instance, she took it as me correcting her and questioning her parenting abilities.

For a moment, I considered if this was a situation in which I should "make a new rule" for myself, which I often do when something I said goes over especially poorly. I thought, Should I make a rule that tells me: "Don't double check her work when it comes to parenting"? But then I remembered the times when she thanked me for catching something important that she'd overlooked, telling me what a good dad and partner I am.

Would it be possible for you to have a conversation with her about the question of when (and under what kinds of circumstances) she appreciates being corrected, vs. when (and under what kinds of circumstances) she does not appreciate it?

In any relationship, I think it's important for people to have a mutual understanding on this point.


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04 Jul 2022, 11:24 am

KMCIURA wrote:
I am a data junkie. I cannot stop analysing, checking, thinking. There are days where I cannot stop thinking intensively about various problem and issues, almost doing it in parallel. There are few moments of calm. It can be paralysing when it comes to making decisions. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I event think than simply getting by, being less conscious about world around me, not giving things as much attention, would be a lesser experience of living.

In other words, like Socrates, you feel that "the unexamined life is not worth living."

I too like to spend a lot of time analyzing things. I too have always thought of myself as a deep thinker, but not a quick thinker.


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04 Jul 2022, 12:44 pm

If I were you, I would explain to her that this is not nitpicking and that it has nothing to do with her and what she does or doesn't do. It's about how your brain understands and organizes information so that you feel safe and secure. If she can understand that, it will help your relationship.


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