Being COMPLETELY wrong about whether someone likes you

Post Reply New Topic

Not always. Though, on paper, NTs have a better theory of mind, they still get things wrong fairly often. This isn't helped by the fact that NTs will sometimes pretend to like people they don't for whatever reason.

Yes, that happens to me too. I'm often in a lot of doubt regarding how someone really feels about me and whether they are being genuine or fake, or whether they really like me or are just being "polite", but sometimes I think I know that someone is being genuine and they turn out to be fake, or the other way around. I hate when I get this wrong or have no idea what to think about people.

I got really upset about something like that this summer. An old friend of my hubby came to visit us and stayed with us for two weeks. During that time we did a lot together and for her. We traveled a lot and showed her many things that she had been wanting to see and did many things she said she wanted to do etc. and we all seemed to be having a good time. She was nice and funny and made a lot of compliments about various things, so I got the feeling she really liked everything, including me, my home, my country etc. After she left, I found out that she had been saying very different things to other people than what she had said to me. She had complimented on things to me or when I was around, and then complained about those same things to others. It turned out she had just been really fake and it really upset me that I didn't realize it and that I had been like a sucker, trying to make a perfect holiday for her and really thinking that she liked it and appreciated it. I had been so happy about her liking everything so much and about her liking me (silly me to think I was finally making a new friend), but when I found out she hadn't meant so many of the things she had said I started second guessing everything she had said the whole time she was here. I was really upset about having spent my whole vacation and all that effort on someone who turned out to be so fake and had led me to believe she liked me and what I was doing for her when she didn't.

I'm also having a lot of doubts about someone who I have always considered a friend. We've known each other since we were kids and have been friends for so long, but for the past few years I've started to have doubts about whether she really likes me and values our friendship or whether she just meets me on a rare occasion to be polite or to make me feel better or something. I get the feeling she doesn't really want to spend time with me or stop by for a visit when she's in town (she's studying abroad and is only in our home town for a few weeks per year, during various holidays and school breaks). I'm always the one showing initiative, sending e-mails, asking to meet her when she's in town etc. I wish I knew how she really feels about our friendship. I don't know if she's just busy and still wants to be friends or if she doesn't care about me or our friendship and is trying to avoid me. Why can't NTs just be straight about things like that? I'd rather know the truth than be in constant doubt.

This causes me problems all the time. It's hard enough figuring out what people's intentions are when they don't throw up a smokescreen. When they deliberately obfuscate, it's even worse.

I had all the backstabbing I need as a freshman in college (and once in May), so I've always been careful to put every new potential friend on a probationary period. I was a little upset when one of the nicest guys I knew didn't pass my "test" and walked away, but I was also relieved when I would later find out that he wasn't that nice after all and that I had apparently dodged a bullet.

I hate it when they do that. If people don't like you, they really should have the decency to not pretend that they like you.

Unfortunately, some folks just want to appear as "the good guy."

There have been two times I can think of where I've actually physically reached out to someone in what I thought was an affectionate situation and in one case, I almost got punched and in the other, the other person backed off fairly quickly.
Most times with people I just feel like I'm being tolerated and it's very difficult for me to properly recognize affection, let alone respond to it. It always seems false and "put on" and for all I know, it is - but I assume some of it isn't because I do still get invited back sometimes so I suppose something right must have happened.
Wish I knew what it was, though.

When I worked at the resteraunt despite what I said about how badly I was treated there were some of the people including the boss that did like me. There was a waitress who was always touching me or holding on to my hair that I kept tied in a pony tail when she would talk to me. I guess my boss said she told him that she liked me because when she would grab me by the arm I did not flex my muscles trying to make my muscles feel harder or look stronger. She said I wasn't some macho dickhead with something to prove. My boss and some of my friends that worked with me were begging me to ask her out but I thought they were messing with me. I later found out from my friends after I quit the resteraunt on days she was scheduled to work with me my boss would have me move these massive stacks of potato boxes to pump my muscles up to give her something to hold on to. I never thought she liked me and they were setting me up because of how pretty she was she would never like someone like me. They had talked me into asking a waitress out a couple years before who completely hated me and she could not stand being in the same room as me just to hear us argue and have a few laughs at my expence.

I remember going out with my friends when I was in my 20's when women would come over to talk to me I would have a conversation with them they would walk away and I would hear the groans of my friends in the background. They would yell oh common, man or you blew it dude. They would ask why didn't you ask her out she liked you, you had her laughing her ass off she would of went out with you. I even had a woman's friends yell at me because this woman was talking to me and I did not know she was talking to me so I walked off and her friends asked me if I thought I was better than her or if I was gay. When I said I thought she was talking to the guy behind me they all said no ones that oblivious. I wish I knew had Aspergers back then because I could have told her I am autistic and oblivious to most social interacts at least that would have made her feel better and so I would not look like a prick.

Regrets I have few.

I have alot of suspiscions but I can hardly say for sure, too little experience I guess.

Same here. The opposite also happened, someone's mom whom I thought disliked me, and it turns out she always liked me (that was nice for a change).

It's always going to be the case. I would assume this is the same for everyone.

What you describe happens. Know of several instances of married persons who said that there was no way to know what a person's mate (husband/wife) was like for sure until after the marriage ceremony. Persons can play one role during the dating process/the engagement process, then another role after the actual marriage ceremony. Hey, that's life. In another instance, the wife said it took her two years after the marriage ceremony to know who (her husband) she actually married was. Best wishes.

Yes this is exactly what I mean. Some people were mean to me and I only trusted this guy and this other guy. I later found out one of the guys who I thought had my back was one of the ones who wanted me out.

That's happened to me both here, and in the real world.

When I worked at a machineshop I worked with the same group of guys for 9 years there was this new guy who acting all buddy buddy with me because I was helping him find things, deburring parts for him, and showing him how to do things faster and safer. He was always going out to buy food for me because he knew I don't drive so he could repay me for helping him. One day when he was getting me some food and I was waiting for my food with the other guys at the table he I knew for almost a decade kept asking me why was I being nice to him. Then they showed a cellphone video they made of him mocking me imitating my crossbite and how I forget things infront of the boss who told him to knock it off but was laughing at what he was doing. When he brought my food back I unwrapped all the burittos to make sure he did not spit in them. He was laughing at me for checking my food and kept asking why was going all csi on my burittos so I answered him like the way he talked to my boss. His eyes bugged out then when they showed him the cellphone video he left the breakroom. All my co-workers were laughing at him and told him you f****d up now douchebag.

I spent two weeks f*****g with him doing stuff to slow him down and telling on him for everything he did wrong to the bosses. He finally got fired when he had to splice a new power cord to a drill press then he went on a lunch break so I took his spliced wires took the tape off the wires and put them back together with all them touching. When the boss plugged in the wire it killed the outlet scarring the poop out of my boss. When I was laid off three years later the guy who took the video said he took the video hoping I would fight the new guy and get us both fired because they did not like me either. Sort of killing two birds with one stone. The guy who took the video was someone who depended on my help for all nine years just like the new guy.