I hurt an NT friend's feelings

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Like most of you, I have scant few true friends. Very few people in the world understand me and choose to accept me for who I am. Like most of you, life is lonely and difficult.

But I have a few people whom I consider to be true friends. That group is very small, and I'm afraid it always will be. One of those friends lives half-way across the country, so I only see her in person every few years. I had the opportunity to spend an hour with her the other day, and, true to form, I missed a cue. She had made a career mistake and was feeling quite down, but I didn't pick up on the fact I was supposed to offer words of comfort until long AFTER our mere hour together was over.

Here's a hint for my fellow Aspies: When people share feelings of regret, they expect you to offer words of encouragement or comfort.

I hate hurting peoples' feelings, especially when it comes to my true friends. When I realized my mistake, I sat down and began writing my apology (like many of you, my written communication is much better than my verbal). She accepted my apology and ended with, "I get you and accept you for you."

She, by the way, is 100% NT. How rare is that?

yah but look what NT's did to TESLA?

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Cool, Story Bro!

I think that is a wonderful story and it sounds like you are both blessed to know each other.

And I just found out how old this thread is and was going to erase my response, but I'll leave it be.

Any other Aspies have neato stories like this?

I don't find this hard myself. When somebody is rambling to me, I try to be on their side about it, even if I secretly disagree.

I have a friend who gets paranoid about everything; she believes that her neighbours are out to get her and are watching her and are plotting against her, when to me they all seem like ordinary genuine people who barely know her and are just getting on with their lives. But I don't have the heart to say that to her because she is just being very paranoid. She seems lost and alone in her paranoid thoughts, so I don't want to make her feel worse.

Maybe she has some schizophrenia going on.

There have been times that I have accidentally hurt the feelings of my friends, but I never intended to. For me, it can be really difficult. I don't know the right things to say and sometimes no matter how hard I try, I say something offensive. It's just... a mystery to me. Social communication is always confusing on my end, and I wish it was just easy so I didn't have to worry.