Do not know how to interpret what roommates girlfriend said

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Sorry for the long post.

Scenario:
I am a guy. I live with a room-mate(guy) whom I have known from around 2.5 years (1.5 years:college, 1year : room-mate.). He goes off to to work in the morning. I stay alone at the room during the day and work from home.

He is in a relationship with a girl from about 2 years. She was our junior in college. She is a nice person. In course of time I became comfortable with her to the point that I told her I probably have aspergers syndrome. She knows I have problem with social interactions, dating etc.

From sometime I am meeting a friend(a classmate of mine from college) of mine (guy) quite regularly. Once a week rarely twice a week.
I meet him because he has a frame of mind which I can relate to. When we meet we usually play games on our mobile trying to break each others scores, talk about science, space, society, very very rarely any personal stuff.

My room-mate once asked me Why do you meet this guy often? I did not know what to answer and shrugged it off by telling he is a good friend.

Event:

Some days back when his girlfriend was visiting our room, she said You should get a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend out of nowhere. I replied back with I am not bent that way. About 10 secs later, I realised that it was not something appropriate to say to someone and asked her why is she suggesting this?. She replied with girls will be difficult to handle etc. I did not bother about this incident much and ignored it.

Yesterday when I was about to leave to meet my friend she asked me Are you going to meet your boyfriend?. This kind of set an unsettled feeling. She knows VERY well as a fact that I am straight. I found it very weird. I am guessing my room-mate has told her about me meeting my friend regularly.

I do not know should I be angry at her. I do not know whether she was trying to make fun me. I do not know whether it was some harmless humour. I still have this unsettled feeling.

P.S. My straightness(sexual orientation) is as constant as the distance between two parallel lines.

Last edited by ThinkingMonkey on 08 Sep 2012, 1:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.

She's discriminating. Whether it's based on her misperception of your "difficulty" to handle girls or knowledge of your AS isn't really important.

Tell her it's not girls that are the problem, simply girls like her and I bet you'll shut her up. Expect typical NT disdain for forwardness, honesty, and expectation of respect. She'll probably project and say that you're the one being rude.

Bottom line though, it's harassment.

If you really want to confuse other guys, when you go to a restaurant with one and sit at a regular table with a chair on each of the four sides, let him pick his chair and then pick one on either side of him instead of across the table.

Many won't have any trouble with this, but some will get up and move because they see sitting like that as a girlfriend-boyfriend type seating. For those who want to avoid eye contact, this is immensely practical because you can more easily look past them while talking without it being so noticeable.

One time my roommate at the time and I went to a Mexican Restaurant for a bite to eat. The roomate was from Brazil and was working on his PhD in Engineering. He started to sit down and so I naturally selected a seat to his side. He saw that and moved and so I did, too. We proceeded like that around the table one time before I gave up and sat across from him.

He said that in Brazil, sitting like that would be misconstrued every time.

After reading your post, I too would wonder why on earth she would ever offer this audacious "suggestion." I guess one should offer her the benefit of the doubt and/or ignore her weird "suggestion," but you have every right to be offended. I cannot imagine why she would even need to offer her advice that's so inappropriately disrespectful. Could you have an earnest talk with her about how wrong (and hurtful) her thoughtless "suggestion" was for you? In this case, she owes you an apology. Egads.

Like anybody, you have every right to have fun with friends at your place. That's normal. From what you wrote, you guys have a brotherly friendship - that's cool. Someday you will have a girlfriend, irrespective of AS. Had you suggested such a thing to her, I bet she'd be incensed.

At times, I simply cannot work out another's motivation - I'd be perplexed too: tell her so.

ll give a thought.



Ya, I agree she would be furious if I had told/suggested something like that to her. I will try to have an earnest talk with her. Will see what she has to say before I make any reaction which could be perceived as harsh.

I don't know, it sounds relatively harmless to me. It's hard to say without having first-hand experience of the situation but I'd guess it's a friendly joke. I wouldn't confront her about it. If she knows about your Asperger's maybe you could gently and politely ask her what she meant by it (make sure to explain that you're just curious).


Stephen

this sounds like harmless teasing to me; calling your friend a 'boyfriend' since the two of you spend so much time together.
as for the comment that you should try to find a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, i do not know what to make of that, but the latter is something that happened to me as well (or simular), and i managed to force myself to ask for an explination, the summary of which is my first sentence in this post

I think I will be asking for an explanation. Gently of-course.

I would tell her, "Don't be jealous". If she carries on I'd wonder why she acts all hot and bothered about who "your" seeing. Remember when people don't have their own lives and interests they have to meddle in everyone else's.

That wouldn't work... people like her don't have any respect.
Plus if you went about it this way, it's giving her more ammunition to intentionally insult you.
Fact of the matter is that if you actually show how this affects you, she'll continue this behaviour.

I'm a NT girl and it sounds like she is just being a b*tch. And rude at that. She thinks it's fun to try and keep poking fun at calling you or implying that you are gay.

I agree with Evy7. Though I have friends who joke around calling each other gay, it doesn't sound like you and your friends all call each other gay in "harmless fun" or whatever. If it's not usual for her to say this and you to laugh, it's not a harmless joke. It is also strange that your roommate asked why you hang out with guys so much. It does sound like maybe he suspects you're gay. Is that possible, maybe even where she got the idea?

Seriously though, she sounds like a b!tch.

I would say it's best to just not talk to this person. Ever.

• She could be an emotional 12-year-old.
• She might not believe what you've told her about your orientation given other evidence (from her point of view).

Too little information.

Perhaps the important question is why it's on your mind. Do you have any problems with being seen as homosexual by others? Is her opinion (or, your roommate's opinion) of your sexuality specifically important to you?

I don't know either. However, I do know this: when you present a little differently than a "normal person" people will sometimes first assume it is your sexual orientation that is responsible for the difference, not knowing any other reason.

It could simply be this: you seem a little different than people she generally knows, and she does not understand why so is imposing the only explanation that makes sense to her. I imagine it is fairly common for someone with ASD to make a friend and at first have their motives be a little confusing to someone else since the way we offer ourselves up for friendship would (like everything else we do) be different than the way an NT would.

Just a guess.

People sometimes think I am gay, but I'm not. I don't relate much to gender, though, and that's common for someone on the autistic spectrum as well as misunderstanding social expectations, so it is not far fetched to think another person would misinterpret all that when trying to make sense of us. If we seem to be acting a little odd, and not fitting our gender too well or fitting socially too well, people might think gay before thinking "autism"

I wouldn't read too much into it. I once accidentally convinced all the women in my European studies class that I was gay. That was...awkward.


Anyhow, have you considered the "blunt and crass" response?

Example:

"No, seriously, I like p&ssy."

It asserts stereotypical masculinity in more than one way. Also, it'll probably take her completely by surprise.