Attaching meaning that is not there...

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Wow, so many things mentioned in this thread I can relate to and have similar experiences. It will take me a few posts to get caught up.

Bumble I am the same way about getting unwanted advice. Or even advice that I've requested, if I do not find it useful, I still feel the need to say so. I feel like it does both parties a disservice if I leave someone with the impression that I will follow their advice, it could only lead to further misunderstandings.

I can appreciate when people are trying to be helpful and I think sometimes there are too many expectations attached. One is, they want to see a certain outcome and they act like others don't have the right to choose their own outcomes. Maybe their advice would be fine if I wanted the same outcome they are looking for but I want something different and they don't recognize that.

Another thing is, I think some people want to be SEEN as helpful more than they actually want to BE helpful. They don't care what the actual impact of their help is on another person, they just want to be recognized as having good intentions. They want to be thanked for their efforts but I don't feel the need to thank people just because they meant well. Sometimes a person's attempts to give advice and/or help is unwelcome and can even have negative consequences.

Romantic misinterpretations have been a terrible problem for me. I don't understand flirting at all. I think some things I do are taken as flirting when I'm just being friendly. And vice versa, when others flirt with me I have no idea it is happening. I am not inexperienced at all so at my age I should have figured these things out, but I haven't.

I have been in situations where men would suddenly start touching me in a sexual way and I had NO idea it was coming. I had no idea whatsoever it was leading to that but they thought it was and somehow I missed the signals. It's confusing and can be really scary.

And yeah men have thought I wanted sex, when I just wanted to touch them. My ex snapped at me one time asking me why I always wanted sex, just because I was touching him. It probably sounds funny and childish to say it like this, but I like to pet people the same way you pet a cat.

One time a guy asked me to meet him at a park, and I thought we were just hanging out as friends. I had no reason to think otherwise. When I got there he grabbed my hand, and I was surprised but thought, okay maybe he is just weird like me and he likes holding hands with friends. So we walked holding hands and I noticed he kept gazing at me in this kind of funny way. And it still didn't dawn on me what was going on. Then he kissed me and I realized a horrible misunderstanding was taking place. I was not attracted to him at all, and if I had been, I would have let him know as I am not shy about that. So I was totally confused about why this was happening. I didn't know how to tell him I wasn't interested so I just made some excuse and left and never saw him again. He seemed like a nice guy so I felt bad for leaving it like that, but the more I thought about it, it wasn't that nice of him to act like that.

My roommate in college told me all these things you are supposed to do to flirt, and I thought she was out of her mind. I never heard such rigamarole! Things like, you flip your hair a certain way it means this, and you flip it the other way and it means something else. Things her mother had taught her. I couldn't believe people actually believe such things, let alone practice them. Yet it worked for her because she hooked up with guys left and right. I hated the very idea of it as it seemed so manipulative. I don't remember the specifics of what she told me, but I wonder if I do some of those things she talked about without realizing the message I am sending.

I have never had any normal dating experience or romantic relationship in which I knew what was going on, such as the fact that I was dating someone.

Nice cute nerdy men would often touch my arm or hand or hair at times, and I never got that this touching was a signal for anything. I just never picked up on this information growing up, and it was like Advanced Socialization for me or at least not Socialization 101, which I only took (in my mind) for a couple of weeks before failing out of it (in my mind). These are not real classes, but I think that they need to be for me. Since my diagnosis, my therapist has told me about many social signals, so I think (hope) that I will be able to pick up on these things in real-time in the future, because I am interested in dating and relationships.

I was reading something the other day that talked about this in the context of the Myers-Briggs personality types. It said that this was one of the differences between the J and P (judging and perceiving). The J types tell other people directly what to do, like saying "turn off the light". Even if they phrase it politely it is still a command, ie "would you please turn off the light when you get a chance?" is still essentially "turn off the light".

And the P types will give information about it and leave it up to the other person to decide what to do, like saying "it keeps me awake when the bathroom light is left on" or "we need to save electricity". The J types view this as passive aggressive. But the P's can't stand the thought of telling someone what to do, they want it to be the other person's decision.

I have always tested about half/half on the judging/perceiving and I can go either way.