Do you know you are wrong when you make a social faux pas?

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I know immediately after, even if I didn't know before I said it. Something just tells me that I shouldn't have said it. But I do learn from each one of my mistakes.

Just yesterday, I made a pretty bad one.

We have three kids. One of them signed up for the robotics team at his school, and they're going to build a robot that competes against robots from other schools. The contest conflicts with my high school reunion, and when I broke the news to my wife, she was upset about missing the reunion. I told her "but sweetie, he's gonna help build a robot! This is the most bad-ass thing any of them have ever done!" Unfortunately, I said that while his older sister was in the room with us.

My wife flashed me an angry look and jerked her head toward my daughter, and I lamely added "to date yet" (i.e., the possibility existed for any of them to do equally badass stuff in the future). My daughter said "he hasn't even done it yet!" I completely missed the point of her outburst and said "but he will.. he's signed up and committed to it". Yeah, she had her feelings hurt and was saying the first thing that came to her mind, not analyzing the probability of him dropping out or something. Duh!

One lame apology later, I left with my tail between my legs hoping they'd remember how bad I am at stuff like that and cut me a little slack - again. Dammit.

You just wrote the story of my life, if I do say something it is wrong, so I spend so much time running through in my head what might be the right thing to say that i might as well not bother.

Seriously you guys, stop stealing my brain.

I never know when I make a social mistake unless someone gives me "the look." Unfortunately, few have ever done more than flash an angry look in my direction. It's as though I am supposed to already know what I did wrong. I can't correct my mistakes unless someone TELLS me I did something wrong. I find this to be really difficult. How do you learn to get along with others if they never bother to point out a mistake & help you correct it?

On the other hand, when I was a kid, if I made a mistake, I was never told, but I was often physically & verbally reprimanded also without any corrections. Not the best learning environment for an Aspie.

Pretty much the same, like a dog that craps on the carpet but gets smacked on the nose 2 weeks later, with no context.

I hate contradictory, mistimed or hypocritical reprimands...like I am supposed to learn from that??!

For me, the was I was treated was more akin to rubbing the dog's nose in its urine or feces when it made a mistake as well yelling & hitting it at about the same time. Instead of taking it outside to teach it where to relieve itself. How a puppy or dog learns to correct its behavior is best accomplished through positive reinforcement, not severe punishment. I learn better with the corrections are positive too.

I would like to say most of the time, but I suspect that I might look past some situations where others think I'm rude. For me I mostly get aware of it if I think the situation through. Then it occurs to me that from a NT perspective, what I said might have been considered rude, and then I used to feel extremly ashamed and feel very sorry. Now I try to think "well, I'm just different and don't see these situations the same way they do". Most of the time it helps. Otherwise I say I'm sorry and that I can't help it. Like last week, when a (boring) conversation with a co-worker if cats could be kept on a leash turned into a heated argument with me raising my voice. When you suddenly realise that the other person might just have stated their opinion, and did not make a personal attack at you, it's best to apology afterwards.

Usually way after the event, but there are times when I get an "intuition" that something has just gone wrong which will then unnerve me for the duration of the conversation.

Only when it gets pointed out to me or when I get a rude answer like "why?" But then I also don't know if it's just that other person with the problem, not me. People laughing at what I say, I think I may have did something wrong but I don't know if I said something funny or if I said something cute, I can't tell the difference.

I realize my mistake almost immediately after I make it, and am usually humiliated. Then I go overboard in trying to compensate for whatever I did. I must look like a total flake.

I'd say about 80% of the time. I know I made a mistake, just from watching the persons reaction. People think I dont think enough about my actions, I strongly beg to differ. In fact I think too much about my actions. The problem is that I cant anticipate that what type of effect that saying something is going to have on someone, thats where my deficit is. For some reason, people think that if you make social faux paus, its cause you dont understand why its wrong. Maybe for most, this is true, this is certainly very very far from the truth for me. A persons level of social theory does not always match up to their performance in RL. People get fustrated with me, because I appear to understand everything perfectly fine, and I do! Doesnt mean I can perform up to my theoretical par.

The descriptions of aspies ought to have some revisions. The statement, aspies dont understand social cues is a highly overused statement. The generic description should strongly emphasis that aspies often cant pre-anticipate their actions.

I even had a conversation with my friend who told me that I dont really miss very much. The fact: I DO read SOCIAL CUES.

Sometimes I can tell that I've upset someone, but almost all of the time I have no idea why. Often even after someone explaining to me why they were upset, I have no idea why.