Have you had "post facto" 3rd party criticism?

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What I mean by that is, have "third parties" i.e. bystanders or witnesses of a social interaction you had with somebody criticized you after the fact, e.g. "Umm, you DID realize by her facial expression that she wasn't really interested, right??" or "Couldn't you tell by the way he/she was inching away from you that they didn't want to talk about that?" or "why did you ask them for clarification on what they meant by that, it seemed obvious because... bla bla blah."

The trouble is, those third parties can't act as your "nonverbal interpreter" in real-time; at best, you'll just see them, peripherally, exchanging "WTF??" glances or derisive expressions with each other - which may clue you in that you're not interacting in the prescribed NT manner but you can't spontaneously work it out due to processing bottlenecks for such sensory input.

In that case, in the past I made an attempt to "save face" and turn it around by telling a white lie (yes, Aspies can lie, not just exaggerate like Mr. Spock in Wrath of Khan), e.g. "Well, I used to work in sales, and my mentor taught me some tactics, to turn it around and continue to persuade them in spite of any negative signs - just push past them - and I actually got decent results from that approach."

It's kind of like a "faux confidence" approach to fend off any detractors or would-be manipulators: kind of like the Napoleon Dynamite character, who had that faux confidence in spite of his impediments which he refused to openly acknowledge.

I remember one time I got a negative third-party response when I was 21 in a bar/club while at college/uni, I was flirting with a young woman and - being undiagnosed at the time and unaware of that "up to 90% of communication" maxim, b/c she hadn't told me to "go away" I didn't pick up the negative signs. Then, a "fake friend" I was sort of hanging out with that night decided to "pounce" and feed me disinformation, i.e. "Hey Jayo, that girl over there, she likes you, I can tell she's interested in you b/c she keeps looking your way with bedroom eyes." I could pick up on his sarcasm and just told a white lie that I had to go b/c I've to get up for a study group the next morning. (I also noticed, incidentally, that him and his other loutish friend were exchanging those derisive glances, which clued me in that they were not to be trusted.)

As one astute Aspie remarked one time on another forum, the bulk of our challenges stems from our slower processing speed for integrating verbal and nonverbal input to arrive at WHY that person would respond in that manner given the situational context. So I totally believe that...

Mostly people just give each other looks or avoid me. This is why it is hard to answer the ASD evaluation questions "has anyone ever told you..." No, people don't talk to me. I can see the non-verbal communication very clearly (although folks have suggested I might be looking at other things around me and miss some - could be). I often don't like what I see/hear. I am going to completely deny that the person might be attracted to me or want me to take a hike b/c I don't know what to do about that or I don't like it, or as you suggested it's going to take me a moment to process it and the moment of action has passed.

Albeit recently as I unmask nice people are telling me during conversations: "you're cute!" "you're unusual" etc. A horrible boss told me I was "rude" (but it was after my evaluation, not "often" and over six months ago so useless that way ). Once in my mid 20s I had two young women at a bar come up to tell me I was too weird and I wasn't going to get the guy. Jerks. (and they were wrong.)

Well, as a female, you have a certain "privilege" that us ASD/HFA guys don't - nobody would suspect you of being a deranged serial killer or mass shooter loner or some silly cultural archetype as such, based on those awkward interactions. Not that I'm upset at your for that, not your fault in any way - it's just a sad commentary on the judgemental society we live in

In my later 20s, following diagnosis, I built a certain "muscle memory" by interacting with females in a bar or other place with certain "scripted" interactions (that I wrote down at home and rehearsed), from week to week it gradually worked as I realized my missteps from her nonverbal and corrected them on next attempts, or I knew from recent experience what signs were good. (Or I just reminded myself that for some women, it really was "just them" and not me, which happens to NT guys all the time too.) I also did quick scans of my peripheral vision to see if any "3rd party" onlookers were looking at me funny, and I didn't see any, so maybe just maybe I was doing it "right"