Assuming

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I know words in the English language sound similar, but it bothers me when someone thinks I'm saying something, and I mean something else totally different. Is anyone else bothered by this?

Yeah, I'm bothered by it. Especially if someone starts responding to what I've said and they've totally misinterpreted what I said and they can't understand what I'm saying.

It bothers me when that happens because I start to wonder where I went wrong - how I managed to mangle whatever I was trying to say. But it bothers me even more when it's the other way round - I often misinterpret things, and wonder why they give me funny looks. It then takes a while to establish that I misinterpreted it, by which time I just want the ground to swallow me up because I feel so stupid.

This happens to me a lot, and it always drives me mad.

I find how I'm misunderstood varies from person to person, so it always takes me a while to figure out how to explain things clearly, without causing the same sort of confusion.

Half the time I'm the one assuming - assuming that the person I'm talking to is going to totally misunderstand what I'm saying, because it happens so often. There's just something about my communication IRL...

You all know what happens when you assume don't you?

I sometimes say the wrong word in place of the right word... but this is nothing unusual. NTs do this too.

My problem is I can't always understand the words someone says. I hear the sound but my brain assigns no meaning to the sound. That's the best way I can describe it. I'm known for saying "What?" all the time.

I once went into spasms of embarrassment when someone asked me where I came from, and I answered that both my parents were northerners... (I was trying to interview a chairman of an organisation I was involved in, I knew him a little bit but not well, and the university newspaper asked if I could get him to speak to them for a debate we were covering).

He meant, "where have you just come from today"...

I was mortified for at least a week afterwards.

I can never say exzactly what I mean and it's annoying!! !


-SpaceCase

There seems to be a double standard. When an NT says a wrong thing, all he/she has to do is say: "No, I didn't mean X, I meant Y", and everyone gives an "oh ok, no problem", and all is forgotten. When an aspie say a wrong thing by mistake, no one listens, no matter how hard an aspie tries to explain him/herself. And the aspie has to take the heat for many days, just because he/she made an honest mistake. That irritates me to no end. Does anyone else feel this way?

Assumptions make up 95% of the worlds problems, everyone is guilty of it, everyone.

Yeah, agreed with the double standards comment. I have that problem all the time, I get so annoyed because I'll start explaining myself and then no one cares or they're like "what? just forget about it", or tell me that that's not what I meant. Gah! I think I'd know what I meant!

(might haveh been said already)

I have noticed that "NT"s (for lack of a better term) respond more to tone than the actual words I've said...

NTs (..) communicate in body language, tone, then words... Whereas Aspies, I feel, communicate mostly via words...

I know. That was a bad joke, but now that I've heard it more than once, I believe it.