My therapist thinks I can just learn social cues...

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I posit there is a hard wired friend or foe routine hard wired into humans.
It is very useful to know whether someone you meet is a friend or foe without thinking about it.

IFF Indentification Friend or Foe was developed during WW2 for aircraft.
You don't want to shoot down your own airplanes.

There are more advanced techniques. How do you know someone is a spy or not?
A good test is to see if they like native foods!
Someone claims they are a Pacific Islander who doesn't know much living out in the middle of the Pacific.
Truth or a ruse? Give them a plate of SPAM! Pacific Islanders love to eat SPAM!
A Russain spy? Highly unlikely!

Like many here, I often found it awkward to socialize for decades.
But, I discovered when I changed my gender presentation from male to female,
I could do things automatically and the other person would respond without confusion.
Could I have been learning the wrong gender clues?
Maybe my appearance was so feminine no matter what I did that there was a mismatch?
Anyway, socializing is much easier now with random people I don't know.

A belated reply to this reply to my post here:

The trait of struggling with body language is called dyssemia.
The trait of struggling with verbal social cues -- I wonder if there's a specific term for that... SCD cannot be diagnosed in conjunction with autism spectrum disorder after all.

Not all autistics have dyssemia.
It's a common misconception that all autistics do because of how it is portrayed, the common issues around cognitive empathy and double empathy problem.

First layer is the social motivation, the social interests in humans.
This is sort of how some autistics mimic social cues from others; they still have to learn NT socialization in an explicit manner -- but social cues are still visible, 'audible' and can be deduced with enough observation.

Some had it easier with visual and pattern recognition strengths. Had it easier with body language.
Some had it easier with hearing and verbal strengths. Had it easier with tone and wording.
Some have it both.

And even a rare few that has all the intuition; empathic and can read humans intentions that can even surpass NTs; yet is autistic and still as 'culture blind'.
The ability to read people and sense their intentions, and the ability to integrate the cultural and it's contexts in socialization may look the same, yet is not necessarily the same.

Many definately have difficulties because they have executive dysfunction -- whether it's dysregulation of senses, emotions, behaviors itself, or issues related to memory, learning, attention, processing...

And some have more direct sensory issues; whether it causes distractibility due to intensity, having issues with perception, stimuli comprehension issues or having slow processing speed.
It can be one, it can be all.

Making the process incomplete, slow or more difficult to master.
These issues had nothing to do with the common autistic social issues, but it can interfere with social learning and socialization.

If you are truly have dyssemia and issues with decoding other cues -- it will never be as easy nor as simple as OP say even if you're allistic.
Some cognitive profiles won't simply allow learning social cues.

If you have dyspraxia, your self expression might be compromised.
If you have NVLD; it is definitely not as simple as watching and listening to people.

If you have alexithymia, it may complicate the process of putting context over self expression and observed expressions in others.

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