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Responding to "how many friends do you have?" with "how are we defining 'friend'?" is perfectly reasonable given that what constitutes "friendship" varies considerably from person to person based on individual definition and expectations, and might even be defined differently by the same person in different contexts. I refuse to acknowledge that this question demonstrates autistic social cluelessness
On Asking for Help
It's always okay to ask for help, if you genuinely need it.
If you genuinely need help, you never should feel ashamed of asking for it.
It's never okay to simply demand or coerce an outcome that would satisfy a genuine need, rather than asking for help.
It's never okay to ask for help that you don't genuinely need, for ulterior or manipulative motives (e.g. just to get attention, or just to feel special, or just to make someone feel guilty, or just to prevent anticipated abandonment by making someone feel guilty).
It's always okay to reasonably decline a request for help.
You never should feel guilty for reasonably declining a request for help.
It's never okay to simply ignore a request for help, if it's possible that the request is genuine.
It's probably not okay to ignore a request for help even if you know that the request isn't genuine.
It's never okay to deflect someone's request for help by lying, changing the subject, shifting the blame, or minimising or denying the person's need for help.
It's never okay to hurt, punish, mock, or shame someone just because she is asking for help.
If you've genuinely asked for help, and have not yet received a reasonable response, then it's okay to ask for a reasonable response to your request for help (a reasonable response being either the provision of the help that you require, or a reasonable declining of your request for help).
It's always okay to reasonably decline a person's request for a reasonable response to her prior request for help.
It's never okay to simply ignore a person's request for a reasonable response to her prior request for help, if it's possible that the prior request for help is genuine.
It's never okay to hurt, punish, mock, or shame someone just because she is asking for a reasonable response to her prior request for help.
It's never okay to deflect someone's request for a reasonable response to her prior request for help by lying, changing the subject, shifting the blame, minimising, or denying.
If you've genuinely asked for a reasonable response to a prior request for help, and you have not yet received a reasonable response, then it's okay to ask for a reasonable response to your request for a reasonable response (a reasonable response, in this case, being either the provision of a reasonable response to the prior request for help, or a reasonable declining of your request for a reasonable response to your prior request for help).
And so on...
Nobody’s capacity for compassion is infinite, but far too many people seem to imply, “I am incapable of feeling compassion in this situation, and therefore, nobody should.”
Posts like this are so deeply frustrating to me, because there’s not really much recourse provided for people who genuinely do have trouble picking up on nonverbal cues. And any sort of inquiry as to what you’re supposed to do if that’s your situation is generally taken as some sort of bad faith excuse to manipulate and hurt people.
(Like, maybe nobody’s “turned your post into utter garbage” because they’re afraid they’re going to get yelled at or accused of being abusive for asking that question, just a thought.)
I will say that I do try to pay attention to nonverbal signals people are giving off, but so often I just kind of overstep the mark and assume people aren’t comfortable with me or my behaviour when that’s not actually the case. And possibly these people would claim that that’s ok, and it’s better to be too careful than to hurt someone, buuut it also makes it kind of difficult to actually form relationships or foster intimacy within them.
And they’re also frustrating in not really addressing when you should privilege verbal cues over nonverbal ones. Some people will say they’re fine with something when they’re not, because their inclination is to be accommodating and they have trouble setting verbal boundaries; but there are plenty of situations where it is more appropriate to take somebody’s verbal communication as the final word. I, and probably plenty of other people, would find it pretty frustrating and condescending if someone repeatedly ignored my statement that I was ok, just because of some involuntary signal they thought they were getting from me. I’m allowed to make deliberate choices.
Also, to be perfectly frank, I really don’t think this post is emphasizing the responsibility of people to set their own boundaries enough. I fully understand that many people struggle with this, for plenty of reasons - and I do too! I get what it’s like! - but, the fact of the matter is, if you never speak up about your needs or tell people when you’re not comfortable with their behaviour, that is eventually going to erode trust within your relationships, as this post pretty eloquently articulates. Like, yes, I do think that people close to you have some responsibility to develop some intuition about your personality and preferences, but that doesn’t mean that all the onus should fall on them to play a guessing game about what you need without you actively saying anything. Because that’s not fair either.
This post is.... look. I, as an autistic person, often get annoyed when other people know stuff about things I’m passionate about and feel the urge to prove that my knowledge about it is superior. This is a pretty common autistic thing, actually! A lot of us feel super jealously defensive/protective of our interests and stake a lot of our self-worth on them and thus feel threatened when others appear to know more about them or care more about them than we do. (And we can also be super pedantic about them, such that we can’t let a simple misconception go in a conversation.)
Like, these are all impulses that I’ve gotten better at (or at least tried to) as I’ve matured, and I would hope that I wouldn’t actually respond to someone’s enthusiasm with snottiness and condescension, but the idea that that’s never an autistic impulse, or behaviour that can result from being ND, just feels very obviously wrong to me. The world is not divided into “harmless, always interpersonally responsible ND men” and “entitled sexist NT men.” (Like, it reminds me of “nobody who has trouble respecting boundaries in social situations is actually autistic, if they claim that they’re just using it as an excuse.”)
And additionally - I honestly struggle to understand why it’s even important to know whether someone is “infodumping” or “mansplaining” - or, rather, if they’re behaving this way because of neurodivergence or just because they’re pretentious and sexist. Is their behaviour harmful? Are they making others in the conversation feel respected or put down? Are they letting prejudice (like misogyny) guide how they’re addressing the group? Those seem like more important questions to ask than just “do they have an Acceptable Excuse for conversing about/expressing enthusiasm for a topic in a non-normative way?”
Especially because the former, to me, just doesn’t leave room open to acknowledge the fact that many NT people are themselves prejudiced in favour of conversational methods that are more socially accepted, and are more likely to feel harmed by divergent methods of socializing, even if those methods aren’t inherently harmful. And acting as if autistic people are just naturally inclined to be respectful in how we approach conversation doesn’t leave room to address that, because how people tend to evaluate “respectfulness” in general is often already informed by interpersonal norms that harm autistic people. (Which is kind of what the OP is getting at, but I also feel like the commentary doesn’t really allow for, because a lot of autistic people are simply bad at drawing other people into the conversation, regardless of how good-intentioned they are. An autistic person could theoretically come across as an elitist asshole due to not really knowing how to facilitate a conversation in the way described as ideal, even if that isn’t their intention!)
I think “having things in common” is possibly an over-applied and oversimplified facet of what constitutes interpersonal compatibility
1. Harmful interpersonal behaviour does not magically become less harmful if the perpetrator is neurodivergent.
2. People are much more likely to feel harmed, or judge behaviour as harmful, if it does not fit normative standards of social interaction.
3. When your natural way of expressing yourself and relating to others is constantly judged as harmful, that in itself causes its own harm over time, to you.
I don’t, generally, have emotions about “The Offspring” (or TNG in general), but that scene where Lal’s dying and tells Data she loves him, and he says that he can’t feel love, and she says something like “then I will feel for both of us”.... that has some Resonance.
A one-sided internal experience affect does not render a relationship inherently meaningless, or lacking in investment from the unemotional person!
