women and empathy

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I have a question on this, I'd have to ask the guys and ladies here as well, but even for the ladies here I'd have to ask you're thoughts on you're NT friends as I don't know how well we as aspies can comment on it (some can, some can't I suppose).

I've noticed a phenomena for a while and I've always wanted to figure out how to put the pieces together on this one but its proved somewhat tricky and illusive just because there seem to be so many influencing factors.

I'll phrase the question like this and I'll use two distinct movie scenes as examples of how this works - not that Hollywood paints wonderfully accurate pictures of reality but I've seen similar things happen IRL and its been confusing. Women, as I've always been told - especially NT - ahve superior empathy skills to what guys have. That said I've seen where it's extremely insightful but at the same time it has some things that I can't tell if they're blind spots or just authoritative checks. The examples of the dichotomy I'd give are in The Proposal and then in a movie I just saw tonight, Friends With Benefits. In The Proposal there's a scene where near the end Ryan Reynolds is complaining about how wicked, frustrating, and annoying Sandra Bullock's character is and his ex says something to the effect of (as Sandra is leaving town) "So...why aren't you chasing after her?" - that's the kind of razor-sharp observation that I have seen women pull out of situations where, guys tend not to spelunk into complexities like that quite as often, enough of us can but women just seem to do it better on a consistent day to day basis. Then, in the example with Friends With Benefits - to explain the situation Justin Timberlake's sister is trying to figure out why he's just friends with Mila Kunis, unknowing that she's in the room listening he kinda trashes her - in the context of it it sounds more like he's having a vulnerability fit than literally trashing her, I even caught that as a guy; her character proceeds to take it quite literally and isn't even understanding it but making him jump through hoops - she took it quite literally.

Seemingly I've noticed how much many guys have to be on their P's and Q's about what they say, what kinds of things could be construed one way or another, and at the same time what's baffled me about this is - with women having the wealth of insight into people's minds and emotions that they do - how so much gets taken literally. I've seen it happen where someone who's at worst too innocent for their own good says something that could be taken as offensive and they get jumped or get a reaction where the room clears and its been perplexing when I would have taken the guy's character first and filtered their meanings through that. Muck like if I were in Mila Kunis's place and heard that rant, I would have likely would have reacted to Justin's rant (however she would have chosen to) on the note of "Holy s---, he really does like me! And he's so deep in denial!", where yes - run if you actually wanted FWB, start working your way covertly passed his armor if you actually wanted in.

That said I know that, as human beings, we all have situations where society tells us - if you take this from people you're a floor mat, and there all kinds of prescribed canned reactions of offense that are really more principle and behaviour-checking mechanisms, really the 'don't read on me' reflex; but I can't tell, when these things actually do happen - how much of it is holding authority vs. women actually missing what a guy is really saying or not being able to read between the lines. I've known guys who claimed that for as much as women claim that they can read guys they really can't, and perhaps that feeds into the problem when they're raised to believe that they're social savants? Admittedly the genders are different at the core and it takes a great degree of skill and many years on this earth, without just having extreme environmental luck, to have the ability to really reverse engineer how the other gender thinks and read them like your own.

Hope that didn't end up too long winded or that the question didn't get lost in all the detail. I'm curious on your take though. Admittedly guys do all kinds of dippy things, just as much men are diverse - women are diverse, there's hardly such thing as a generic man or woman regardless of how much social conformity tries to bleach those differences out of us for both better and worse.

Caveats aside though, for those of you who do understand it, what do you think the ins and outs of it are? Ie. what do women see crystal clear about guys and on what angles do your NT friends see AS/NT/other guys as utterly opaque? Please understand the question isn't a hidden criticism, if anything a good accurate answer helps guys better understand how to be properly civil or where they should be expounding, speaking plain English, and leaving the world of implication because the particular facets are outside of what I'd consider perhaps gender-common emotional structure.

I'm afraid it did.

And I can't really answer what I think your question is. As a mostly NT woman, I have been told that I can't read between the lines, continually commit faux pas and then facepalm about them hours, even days, later.

There seem to be a wealth of women on WP, aspies and NTs alike, who are astute in these kind of things. I'd also be interested in what they have to say.

Thank-you, Esther, for creating a nice opening for me and some of the other aspie women on here to contribute to this thread, lol.

Personally, I think a lot of women are good at predicting 'typical' male behavior, but not necessarily at fully understanding the reasons why men behave the way they do. I think it's starting to shift a little, but for a long time society has expected women to let men take more of a leadership role, listen to or watch what men do in their leadership role and react to it. Women, up until pretty recently, have been expected to be nothing more than supporting actors in life. (For example, being expected not having career ambitions of our own, but rather to stay home and keep house, while men were the sole breadwinners). Because of that, some women are conditioned to become keener observers of the behavioral patterns of the opposite sex, but it's not like we are all clairvoyant or something.

I think people like to believe they know these things when in reality they don't.

I am not sure that empathy exists in the way the word is used. I think the person 'empathising' is imagining and generating, within themselves, what they 'think' the other person is thinking and feeling rather actually feeling or knowing what they are actually thinking and feeling. So it's an imagination thing more than anything.

People often get it wrong. They are looking at the world via their own personal lens and everything they experience and feel is coloured by that. People can believe they know what it is like to be someone else but in truth they can never know exactly what it is like to be that individual because they do not have the same lens. Yup, you can find people with a similar lens to yourself, but there is no one out there with the exact same lens as you, even an identical twin.

Looking at it that way can be depressing though, as only then do you realise just how alone you really are! No one out there will experience the world in exactly the same way as you do. We are all living in a world of our own. Some people prefer to believe that they are not though...maybe it's more comforting. Maybe that's why they like to spend so much time socialising...it feeds the illusion that they are not alone and that others in the world share the same experiences as they do.

And yes they may share the same experiences they do in terms of both having been present at the same event (for example) but in each case their view or experience of that event will be slightly different depending on their personal lens...

NTs seem to need the illusion, it comforts them.

It is my 'Through the looking glass...' theory of life lol. I am the mad hatter...

I think bumble is putting a postmodern touch on the meaning of empathy.

And one only has to glance through The Haven or Love and Dating to see that the need to share, to experience, to enjoy certain things with just one other person or a bigger group is not just the domain of NTs.

It's funny, for me. In the examples you gave, OP, I always identify with the male point of view. I'm always gobsmacked, sitting there as though the female characters had just performed some sort of wizardry in front of me, because I never had any idea how they knew all this secret, subtextual stuff that was going on. I'm a little less linear in thought than I find most men to be, but I'm still totally confused when it comes to some things. It's hard for me because men (and women) expect you to be "the girl" in relationships, and I just fail hard at that aspect. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy being me, but I was confused for so long.

Thank goodness for AS, it now gives me a context in which I can place my experiences and understand why I do the things I do.

- mv (Female, 44, shite at most interpersonal relationships)

That is true. Although I am not sure that the need to share is always empathy based. The term empathy is most often used to mean that a person feels another persons feelings or 'shares' those feelings.

From wikipedia:

"Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being."

The need for a partner can be based on the need to love, be loved and have companionship. It is more about bonding than empathy as such, and they can be separate things. You can love someone but not share their excitement about something for example.

Ie a partner gets a new phone and is a lover of technology.

Sometimes, you can be pleased for them or think their excitement is cute, but that does not mean that you are as excited by their phone as they are. Personally I do think their excitement is cute (albeit strange in a fond way rather than freaked out way) but I am not excited along with them as I don't find phones to be that interesting lol.

You can never completely understand every thing that person is thinking or feeling in exactly the same way that they are experiencing it. You can come close, but it's not an exact science.

Can you rephrase your question into MAXIMUM two lines?

Thank you in advance.

No.

Yes, it seems more like projection. The ones you find genuinely empathetic (who happen to be, in my experience, not very typical) know when they don't know something and they keep trying to get reactions from you until they understand you.

techstep, the female intuition thing is sort of real. I can't offer much more than that. Your problem seems to be annoyance at women getting pissed off when you say things, but that's just the game people play. Insecure people need to assert their place in the social hierarchy.

Its not about annoyance, I'd just like to get my head around what it is and what it isn't. I don't have a lot of problems these days in terms of causing grief, on the contrary - one of my most crippling issues is being overly reserved IRL, partly because history's told me that I needed to play it safe. I don't get blind-sided much anymore but, at the same time, I don't take many risks either. I've wanted to break that down, but also do so successfully. Part of confidence seems to be knowing who's accountable for what in a given social situation and when that's unclear and things are muddy, that's exactly where people opt out because they realize that they may not find the grounds to assert themselves or right the conversation back on if thing drift.

Even with all of that though I guess the OP is really just a curiosity question. Watching a movie with some friends spurred the question into a more concrete form and, I get the feeling its one that a lot of people could benefit from having a better sense of.


@bumble: I don't deny that there's good possibility that what you're indicating is a fair part of it, but I think we all agree as well that some people just get into studying others as well and - I'd suppose for those who have the skill, if you're good at something its hard not to take it to the edge in terms of developing it.