I have a probably typical aspie confusion, but something I noticed additionally.
Firstly, I was roped into going to an engagement party. I don't understand this at all. I turned up, in the specified dress code, and stood near a door because that was the only thing I could think of doing. Customarily, I'll talk to anyone - it doesn't matter if we know one another or not. I've found most people enjoy talking about themselves, and I'm not adverse to listening. But since there seemed to be groups and I have no awkwardness about being alone, I just stood there. A woman I used to speak to in high school then approached me, and started talking to me. Following her, her husband then joined us and started talking to me. This is where I suspected aspies and NTs may have a different perspective as to the positive or negative meanings of social interaction. The woman in question and I had been friends as children, but as we grew up, her natural prejudices and my inherent lack of any clashed, and we stopped seeing each other. I percieved these past clashes as a negative social encounter that should have ended our association. And it was always abundantly obvious that her husband hated me. Why, exactly, were they both speaking to me? Was it just the facile, shallow nature of such social engagements that forced them by some kind of social standard to "be nice" and smile and chit-chat with me even though they both disliked me, or possible that NTs may percieve such differences of opinion as natural to social relationships, and therefore did not think it as negative as I did? I've often heard it said that aspies bungle social dynamics because they percieve things as going well when everyone else around them percieves it as directly the opposite - they think they're doing well when everyone else thinks they're freaks. Could the reverse be true?
And engagement parties - I don't understand this at all. It consisted of two people who had told each other they might get married next year inviting a whole bunch of people who didn't know each other to bring them presents and stand in a room in front of buffet tables and make pointless conversation, and then go home. Do people actually enjoy this? What is the point?
03 Dec 2010, 11:45 pm
