Oh, I can absolutely relate to this topic! It seems like people are always looking for the worst in others. If they're given the chance to take your comment two ways, they choose the negative. It happens to me all the time. I try so hard to be nice, but people end up lashing out at me.
During the first few years of my marriage, my husband always wanted to invite people over for dinner. Being an Aspie (unknowingly, at the time), I wanted to avoid it like the plague. Finally, we met a (seemingly) nice couple who had a baby the same age as ours and asked them to come over. Things seemed fine at first, but soon they started to get aggravated and snippy. They asked to see our wedding pictures and proceeded to hurtfully criticize pictures of me, specifically. It seemed like they were grasping for anything to get back at me or hurt me. I couldn't understand it, since I thought we were having a fairly nice time. I'm such a people pleaser that I would never knowingly say or do anything that would hurt anyone, even if I don't like them. After they left, I went over the night in my head, over and over, trying to find the exact moment when they became hostile. The only thing I could think of was when I noticed the stitching on the women's (girl's -- we were both so young) jeans and saw how the belt seemed to be a perfect match. I thought it was cute and said to her, "Oh, I like your belt! Does it match your jeans?" What I meant was that I was wondering if they came as a set, since they looked so perfect together. I guess she took it to be a passive aggressive way of criticizing her and challenging her fashion sense.
It seems like people are more willing to think the worst of me as an adult. As a child, they pretty much knew I wasn't going to say anything mean to them, even if I had an awkward way of coming across, sometimes.
Last edited by kiki3 on 10 Apr 2007, 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.