Cassia wrote:
I don't remember that happening to me, but I have been on the opposite end of a situation that may be similar to the ones that cause people to say "stop following me".
When I was an undergrad, I knew an autistic grad student. (At the time I suspected he might be autistic, but I didn't actually learn that until a year or two later.) We got along well and had some good conversations, and I thought he was an interesting person. I found that when I talked to him, the way it worked out was that 100% of my attention was on him, even if there were other people in the room. Apparently I was one of the few people around that he got along well with, so whenever we were in a group situation (for example, in social time after a presentation in the department), he tended to come talk to me. I found this frustrating because there were other grad students in these situations that I also liked and wanted to talk to, but I couldn't if I was talking to him. I liked talking to him, but I also liked talking to other people, and if he always came and talked to me whenever I was around them, I wouldn't have a chance to talk to them.
I discovered that I was starting to worry about him coming to talk to me and was in danger of starting to resent him. I didn't want that to happen, because I did in fact think that he was an interesting person and like talking to him. So I decided to tell him as gently as possible while still being direct that I liked talking to him and thought he was an interesting person, but I also needed some time to talk to the other grad students.
That solved the problem, and we stayed on good terms. But I can imagine that someone else faced with similar experiences might not really understand what was going on and might just get annoyed at the person for always taking up their attention, and might say "stop following me".
I have had the same thing happen to me. A girl, who I suspect has AS, would come over and take up all of my attention, which prevented me from talking to family, etc. She also tended to follow me everywhere, rather annoyingly. I never told her to go away, as I don't want to hurt her feelings, but I began to quietly resent her. I don't really see her much now, except sometimes when she comes into the place where I work. I have told her on several occasions that she can't really talk to me for too long at work, but I still have to say "right, I better get back to work" everytime she is in, otherwise she would just stand and talk to me all day if she could.
26 Nov 2010, 6:54 pm
