Being COMPLETELY wrong about whether someone likes you

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Does this ever happen to anyone?

You might think a bunch of people hate you, and you might respect and like a certain person and think its mutual.. only later to realise that they like you even less than the other people do?

It's a real slap in the face.

That will never stop bugging me. But it does make me trust people less and less.. catch 22. Happened to me recently. One of the only guys I ever trusted turned out to be even dickier than the people who I know hated me.

I'm not sure if that happened to me really... I think everyone pretty much hated me equally!

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

It's impossible to accurately judge what's going on inside someone's head whether you're an Aspie or not. NT friends of mine often complain about this very thing happening to them. It's annoying and upsetting, but it's a fact of life for everyone.

I am almost entirely incapable of judging whether or not someone likes me or what they think of me. I rely on them telling me and trying to judge the sincerity of their words. Otherwise, I just don't know, unless they're incredibly overt about it (maliciously mocking me, for example). I can know a person for years and have not the slightest idea what they think of or feel toward me. Fortunately, this keeps me from making the sort of error you mention (how nice to find an upside - I had never thought of it this way).

I've got no doubt it happens to NTs too. Its nothing abourt diagnosis.

I guess where thats where being burnt in the arse comes from.

Lets say after ca. 2 years of acquaintanceship I know that a person doesnt hate me. Because I cant get a clear message, I have to consider a million hypotheses before I know if somebody likes me. I count people as my "friends" if I have known them for ca. 5 years (plus minus one year).

Hasn't happened for years, but I still worry about it.

I'm a carpenter and was working on a large project for about a year. I had a lot of common interests with the site agent and thought I got on well with him, I even took the blame for some things he cocked-up as I liked him and thought his job might be on the line. He did eventually get sacked and I later found out he had been trying to get me sacked because "I wasn't a nice person". I was shocked I read him so wrong.

Yes, it happens all the time. I feel like I get stabbed in the back. You'd think I'd learn by now.

I've had situations where someone hasn't told me in any way that they dislike me. In fact, they often appear friendly. As a result, I treat them like a friend, only to find out from someone else that I'm actually despised. The more I'm friendly to them, the more they despise me. They think that I'm intentionally trying to mock them or get under their skin with my friendly actions. Eventually the "friend" reaches a breaking point and lets loose with their feelings, leaving me attempting to explain that I didn't realize it, and belittling me, "Are you nuts? How could you NOT understand that I hate your guts? I've hated you and your lame jokes since the minute I met you."

One of the great lessons I learned in early adulthood was that the only things you know about a person are from what they DO. A person can tell you all sorts of things about what they think and how they feel, but in law, that's refered to as hearsay and is not usually admissible. It is the things they do to you and to others or the things they don't do that really tell you who they are.

But often you don't see people doing things enough to know them that well, and I guess, in some ways that's my point. The information you have about a person is fairly limited. Often you can't draw either a positive or negative conclusion for quite some time. You just have to rely on a gut reaction. Not an easy thing for an Aspie.

I usually make the mistake of assuming people don't like me. It took something like 10 years before I began to feel that my closest friends actually enjoyed my coming to visit. I am anxious in most of my interactions with people because I feel they are barely tolerating my presence. It is only through recoginzing that people are really not pushing me away that I have come to feel more comfortable with them.

It happens to me all the time. To make it worse, I often assume the best in people, so I get taken advantage of a lot.