Question about a conversational situation

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It has happened to me many times in my life that I'm talking to someone and a third person comes and joins the conversation, then after a few minutes it seems it's just those two talking, like they've forgotten I'm even there or are purposefully ignoring me. They don't move away or even change the topic of conversation, just suddenly I realize I'm not really a part of the conversation anymore. I'm generally pretty good at conversation these days and most people never guess I have AS (and those who know compliment me on my skills), so I don't think I've said or done anything to make them not want to talk to me. I'm pretty good at telling when someone is annoyed or bored or what have you. It's just like I'm suddenly not there, and I'm not sure what to do. Sometimes I might try to rejoin the conversation by tossing in a comment, but they tend to kind of just brush it off and still fail to take notice of me.

Now that I live in a country where I don't speak the language very well, it's even more obvious. Today at work I was chatting with two coworkers in English (both of them Czech, but fluent English speakers). We were discussing how one of them is having trouble sleeping, the other two of us trying to help her figure out why and if we can help. Suddenly, the third person asked the other a question in Czech. It was answered in Czech, and suddenly the whole conversation was in Czech and I was left just sitting there awkwardly. The thing is, I do speak some Czech and they knew that I understood a good portion of what was being said, so it's not like they were trying to have a secret conversation. The topic didn't change and at one point I tried making a suggestion (in English) relating to something that had just been said. My suggestion was answered but then they went back to speaking Czech and ignoring me. I didn't have anything else do to so I just sort of sat there, feeling more and more uncomfortable. I couldn't even leave without making one of them move out of the way so I just sat there.

Is this a common situation? Is something happening here that I am not aware of? It's happened to me enough times that I'm starting to think this is one of those situations that everyone knows about and is very obvious, and I just never knew it existed. I would really like to know what is expected of me when this happens. I wanted to continue the conversation and couldn't understand why I was being pushed out of it.

Edit: It occurs to me that maybe I would get more responses to this if it were in the general autism discussion board. Might it be possible to move it there? Thanks!

I'm NT, but I'm shy and I have a female cousin that I always hang around with. She has many friends and sometimes they come up and talk to only her, and I don't join in unless I'm genuinely interested. But when they end up only talking to each other, I don't mind or think it's bad because I already talked to her and I just hang out a bit while they chat and in the end, we leave together since we came together. So basically, I don't think there is anything wrong that two people end up talking , just smile and do other things while they finish.

This has happened to me, especially when I was younger (grade school up to early twenties). I think people just found me kind of quirky and sometimes not so interesting. Often, the other (third) person had much much much more to say - I'm not a great talker if we are not talking about something I know a lot about and am interested in. Or I was talking about something that the other person was apparently not that interested in hearing.

Anyway, just to let you know, I do know the feeling.

I think it may be about speaking in English. You said you made a comment in English but maybe you should have said it in Czech.

I don't think it's about me being shy or not having enough to say. I had plenty to say and was engaged in the conversation, but when they switched to speaking Czech I felt like they were telling me "subtly" that they didn't want me to be part of the conversation anymore. When I tried to rejoin and they seemed to be dismissing me, I assumed I wasn't welcome to speak anymore, even though I had a lot to say. I could be wrong, though, because I don't really know what it means. And I am generally really quite good at conversation - I know the signals inviting me to speak, the ones that mean someone's not interested, the ones that mean I'm talking too much, etc. I didn't recognize any of the signals in this situation, other than that they stopped making eye contact with me suddenly.

Were they just being rude? Suddenly excluding me from a conversation I was fully taking part in? My initial reaction is always that I've done something wrong, but I can't see why they would have suddenly excluded me like that unless they simply didn't want to talk to me anymore.

On the other hand, once the third person left, the second resumed talking to me as though nothing had happened.

What would an NT do in this situation? Get up and leave? Push their way back into the conversation? I ended up just sitting there staring at the wall and I'm sure it must have been showing that I was uncomfortable. Why didn't they react and either include me or move away or at least give me an easy way out? Did they genuinely just forget I was there?

By the way, they both know I have AS. That might be relevant - it's not like I acted strangely and they didn't know why or something like that. They're used to my slight awkwardness and know the reason for it and are very accepting and accommodating. But maybe once a week something like this happens and I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

I'm not allowed to speak Czech at work (I'm the "English" teacher at an international preschool and the kids can't hear me speak Czech) and anyway my spoken Czech is not very good. But I understand most of what they say and we regularly have conversations where one of them speaks Czech to me and I respond in English. It's never a problem. The thing that confused me is the sudden switch of language when everyone seemed comfortable speaking English, combined with the fact that they suddenly stopped making eye contact with me and quickly dismissed the comment I made. It went from a 3-person conversation to a 2-person conversation suddenly and without any reason I could see.

Happens to me all the time. It's one more of the faces of the "NTs feel more at ease and interested relating to other NTs". What I do (because it's what I think an NT would do, from seeing it in movies) is excuse myself saying I have something important to do (even if they know it's just an excuse) and leave quickly. I think the trick here is to do this as soon as you notice you're being left out. Timing is everything because otherwise the situation becomes awkward.

Then again, I'm not sure this is the best solution, just the best I've found so far.

Do these people seem ok normally? Or are they usually rude? Without knowing them I can't say much about it. But if I am ever in a conversation and someone comes and takes the attention away from me I don't usually care. It gives me a moment to recover my brain.

Normally these are very nice people. The one with the sleep problems I definitely consider a good friend. We work together all day every day and we keep each other sane by joking around when things get stressful. Our boss, the third person, is also very nice, almost to a fault.

I work at a Montessori preschool and basically the situation was that the kids were in their afternoon classes (crafting and dance) and we had an hour of "preparation time" to work on class materials and give ourselves a break from the screaming mob of children. The only free room to do this in was the office. On this particular day, though, it turned out there was nothing to prepare, so we just got a break and were just chatting. If I had wanted to leave, there would have been nowhere to go. The rooms were full of kids in classes. I guess I could have hidden in the bathroom, but that would be weird too. If I had had some work to do I would have done it, but I honestly couldn't think of anything. Anyway it didn't seem to matter. I genuinely seem to have disappeared from their perception and they didn't even look my way.

It's not always such a tight situation, but often enough that I feel like, especially given that these are very nice people, I must be missing something obvious. On the other hand, I described the situation to an NT friend of mine via email last night and he responded that I was probably overthinking it and he can't think of anything obvious I might be missing. But he's very outgoing and even quite rude sometimes so he would have just said "Hey! Speak English, you two!" and pushed his way back into the conversation. That would hardly be appropriate for me to do.

Which is probably true. It's hard to describe the rules of social communication in a rational manner, and most people don't think that way.


Depends. The problem was that to them, you didn't seem to be part of the conversation. As stated above, they probably didn't consciously think about it. Thus, the reason might be hard to name, but it might also be as simple as too large physical distance.
(I often notice that when someone talks to me in front of me, I have the urge to move a step backward.)

This is absolutely what NTs do. It's a way of saying one of two things, either "You guys are being rude and not valuing me so I will leave" or "You guys have a connection and I don't want to intrude so I will give you privacy."

An aspie friend of mine from college did not "get" this during her first and second years of college, but I noticed that she started doing this as artfully as NTs by our senior year. I didn't directly ask her about it so I don't know how she knew to start doing it.

It doesn't reduce the pain, though, to be aware that they all tune me out the very second another person shows up or makes a comment.