Protecting your territory as an adult

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I find this pretty hard to deal with in life. As a kid and teenager it was perfectly acceptable (in fact it was considered a good thing) to settle things with violence so if someone was trying to dominate me, bully me, steal from me, invade my territory or whatever I would just fight them and it'd be settled then and there and on top of that I'd gain respect and notoriety which ensured that other people would be reluctant to mess with me in the future. As an adult things aren't so simple. If I'm not mistaken adults assert their dominance with their social skills and wit. This is a problem for me since I have HFA. I'm not making excuses for myself, I still give it all I have and manage to hold my ground but I find it pretty draining since I don't like socialising. If you don't know what I'm talking about, heres some examples. At work a couple of years ago a guy who wasn't my boss would subtly disrespect me by asking me to go to the shop for him regularly. He'd do it in a subtle and witty way so it appeared like there was nothing disrespectful about it and if I just said "f**k off" or "no, go yourself" that would sound disrespectful so I'd be the one on the wrong. Instead I knew all I had to do was come up with a witty way to tell him to f**k off and that wasn't too hard but the hard part was saying it without sounding offensive and disrespectful. My understanding of it is this: this guy was asserting his dominance over me and people do this in gradual steps so for instance if I had starting going to the shop for him then he would have gained ground and it'd be a small victory for him. Similarly if I had outwardly told him to f**k off then he would have also gained ground because he would have seen it as him "causing me to lose my calm". And that there is the source of my problem. I do not lose my calm but since I have HFA I often talk like I have because I don't have the social skills to disguise my attempts to gain ground so it looks like I'm doing it out of desperation. This gets a bit frustrating sometimes because I've had many opportunities to test the people I'm dealing with and it becomes blatantly obvious that I have far more balls than them yet they can gain ground over me with their words. If I didn't have all these opportunities as a teenager to fight people who were doing this to me I would probably fall under the illusion that they gain ground because they're tougher than me or whatever but in reality its just a matter of ones ability to speak.

Anyone here know what I'm talking about? If so can you give me any tips on how I can hold my ground without appearing aggressive or disrespectful? Its clear that the way to do is to be witty but its as if you need some kinda rapport with the other person to be witty.

It depends on the situation. I don't think most people perceive their actions in most situations you will run into as an attempt to dominate you, but rather they might just be testing boundaries and this can actually be a rather innocent affair in that they aren't necessarily actually trying to be malicious, they simply really don't know where that boundary of appropriateness is between you and them.

When you first meet another person, who you are with respect to them, and the place you occupy in their mind, is usually not very well defined, if at all. The first time you were asked to go to the market, this co-worker probably hadn't classified you in his mind as someone equal or subordinate to him. If you said yes then he would naturally think you didn't have a problem with it. If you always said yes, he might conclude you enjoyed going to the market for him. It's difficult to say how this co-worker actually viewed you based on what you have told us.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with saying "Sorry, I can't today, I have some work I have to get done."

What about other situations? Today I was in the drug store and the line was rather long and initially started as a single file line. There were two checkout counters, one to the left of me about five feet away, and one to the right of me about ten feet away, but only the right one was open when I got in line. The lady being checked out had some coupon issue, and this resulted in a delay long enough such that they called another checker to the front and opened the checkout to the left of me. The checker asked for the next person in line and the next person dutifully went over to pay.

Now I momentarily got distracted for a short period of time, and when I looked up I saw that a second line had formed to the checkout to the left of me and people who had not been standing in line for 20 minutes were allowed to pay ahead of me.

I could have said something to the checker such as "Excuse me, we've been waiting in line for 20 minutes," we being everyone in front of me and behind me who had been waiting as well. This would have been perfectly reasonable, especially considering the cultural demographics of my area.

However, I hadn't been paying attention when the second line formed, I wasn't actually in a hurry, I didn't care to make a scene, and about two of the people in the second line were probably there because they thought they could get away with cutting (they did) and the rest just got into the line because they figured there were two lines instead of one.

I decided to let it slide and was out of there five minutes later.

I do this a lot, even when posting on this site.