An NT reaction I don't understand...

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My aunt is moving out of this building, and she knocks on the door and asks "Do you want a table and chairs?"

I thought I was polite, I said "No, I'm sorry but I have no room for it in my apartment."

Then she got all angry and said "They are antiques! Fine, they are going in the trash!"

Then I asked "Are you still taking me to the store?"

She said "No!" And stormed off...

I mean, I have no place to put them, why not give them to someone else? Why get angry??!

I could be wrong here but I always seem to look at such things differently because I've been taken advantage of too many times.

It could be because she wanted you to move them only for her to want them back again AKA free storage for a while. You've made her have to move them herself or try and find somewhere to store them at her cost.

She's attached to them enough that she doesn't want to lose them or see them go to waste.

It's not really an NT/ND thing, just something people do when they don't get that you don't value their stuff the way they do. She was assuming you'd see eye-to-eye with her on this and wasn't prepared for that to not be the case.

Always the Aspie's fault, never the NT's fault.

Did your aunt specify that she wanted the table and chairs in your apartment temporarily and/or that the furniture was valuable to her? Doesn't sound like it, and you can't read minds. If you haven't got room then you haven't got room.

But NTs have a license to behave how they like around Aspies, so if an Aspie says no it's fine for the NT to throw a tantrum like a 5-year-old instead of sorting it out.

What irks me is that Aspies are always expected to see all the hints, but when we ask someone something we have to say it clearly because we get told that they can't read our minds.

It's like the other day when me and my boyfriend were on the couch together watching TV. I had my legs across his lap, and I had one of the trouser sleeves pulled up because I had been putting cream on a sore cut I had on my leg. Then after a while I said, "my leg is cold" and he was like, "will you stop whining?" So I said, "pull my trouser sleeve down please, that was what I was hinting." (It was easier for him to pull it down than it was for me because it means I'd be fidgeting). He said, "oh, I see. You should have just asked me to pull your trouser sleeve down, I can't read your mind."
I thought that was a good implication that I wanted my trouser sleeve pulled back down, and since NTs are supposed to be so brilliant at reading between the lines and picking up hints without you having to specify everything clearly, I thought he'd get the hint, or if he wasn't sure I thought he'd least ask if I wanted me trouser sleeve pulled back down.

I mean - if it were an NT hinting for an Aspie to pull down a sleeve by saying "I'm cold", the Aspie would supposed to have got the hint.

Your aunt sounds daft. I'm not trying to diagnose her. Daft sort of sums it up.

Happy New Year, Angnix!

She may have thought that her set is better than yours, if you have such things, and that you would upgrade, passing yours on to the curb. Then, you would remember her fondly as you used them, and the family would feel more united. Or, she may just be crazy.

Maybe your aunt thought you might want something to remember her buy after she passed away. She also thought that you might have wanted something better than what you had. She should have told you that the table and chairs have some sort of meaning to her.

Honestly, no one here knows what was happening in your aunt's mind, and it's ridiculous for people to speculate. She could have simply been stressed about moving and not angry about the furniture. There are a million possibilities.

I'm not sure it's worth analysing, I just hope you can ignore these pesky relatives and escape their petty dramas.

I think that we can agree that you werent being the textbook obtuse autistic who said something manifestly inappropriate.

She had some kind of agenda that even other NTs would have been thrown off by.

She could go to public storage and pay some money to have her stuff stored for a while. Until she got a bigger house, or until she found buyers for it on Ebay, or whatever the heck she was angling for.

Or she coulda said "its gonna go in the dumpster anyway so take a look at my stuff ...take what you want".

But when folks are moving(even in good circumstances) ...moving is very stressful... so she was probably very stressed.