The unspoken social rules: People asking questions they don't really want answered...
I just had an a-ha moment. I was just realizing how I respond to things vs. how I would want someone else to respond to me. example situation: someone writes somthing and then askes "what do you think"? Instead of saying" oh, it sounds great!" which many times, I find that is what the person really wants, I go ahead and start picking it apart and critiqueing it. When they say this, it sounds like they are asking for something, when they really don't want it answered. kind of like when somene says"hows your day", they really don't want to know how your day was. I too have showed someone something I did, ande said, " how is it" meaning more or less "here it is", and I would not want someone to start picking it apart.
It seems to me that what the person really wants is positive affirmation but aren't saying it more directly. There is a big difference between this affirmation and an actually, honest critique. I know I've done this too -- given a more blunt response, but yet wanted that positive affirmation when I asked someone else the same question later.
I think it is us imitating others, as us women are more observant of others manerisims to "fit in" or to " survive" becaues no one else would teach it to us. I find myself using alot of phrases that I hear others saying. What is embarrassing is when you find yourself replying to someone with one of these learned phrases, and it doesn't quite fit the situation. LOL. the other person looks so confused, and I usually feel like such a dumb ass.
...us women are more observant of others manerisims to "fit in" or to " survive" becaues no one else would teach it to us. I find myself using alot of phrases that I hear others saying. What is embarrassing is when you find yourself replying to someone with one of these learned phrases, and it doesn't quite fit the situation. LOL. the other person looks so confused, and I usually feel like such a dumb ass.
Ha! This could be me writing!! I have spent decades of my life observing and imitating others. I have developed 'scripts' for all sorts of situations, a sort of huge mental 'filing cabinet' or 'library' of them. But sometimes i get the wrong 'script', or i get tired and say the wrong thing, eg 'thank you' when i mean to say 'goodbye'. Even after all my learning, i am not 'polished'. And sometimes i forget the scripts altogether, especially under stress.
what is even more embarrasing, when stressed, is when all that comes out is a jumble of gibberish. The words get all mixed up and you find yourself stumbling on words. They just don't want to exit the mouth in an orderly manner that makes any sense. so frustrating. sometimes funny, but usually embarrasing
I can relate to pretty much all of this. Sometimes I feel bad that my social conditioning is so one-sided with regard to manners, affirmations I expect but would never think to give. It happens a lot with irony, too. Very often I'll make a joke that I wouldn't be able to understand if someone else told it. And usually I think, like Genisa, that this has something to do with being female and therefore being more socially perceptive while still very clueless/awkward!
Plus the remarks that don't fit the situation. Many times I have thrown out a preconditioned response only to have it be reinterpreted as something amazingly clever in the context of the conversation. Cognitive bias can work in your favor, sometimes, too!
This is why I like writing emails so much better than interacting in real life. When I get an email, I will often launch into something, then go back and see I didn't do the nicety that was needed at the beginning. Instead of spell checking, I nicety check and I still end up writing more than most and being accused of being self centered (well, it happened once and so I suspect more think it) when (1) I attend to address everything the other person says, checking and rechecking the email to ensure that, and (2) I attend in the way I know that women bond: I show the other person how we are alike by mentioning how I relate (not for everything, but perhaps too much for a normal exchange).
The aspi colleague that I know responds to my check-in greet by way of actually replying to the question. I tend to ask: "How or you?", or "Did you have a good sleep?" Last time she answered that question by sharing at lenght details of her night of poor sleep, caused by a banging door.
NT's would mostly reply: "Could have slept better, but alas. ... And you?" The last part is reciprocity, and safeguards privacy.
I know an autistic man who has a t-shirt that say "don't ask me 'how are you' unless you have half an hour to spare". I know that he'll go on about how he is if I use my standard greeting scripts, so with him, I don't bother. Then again, my scripts tend to be automatic responses to common greetings/phrases, so I don't really think about it, or initiate them myself.
Funny enough, I caught on the questions that didn't really want to be answered and the need for affirmation pretty quickly and early on. I actually used the "what do you think/here it is" subtext to try and gain affirmation and praise from my mom, but I don't think she noticed, because I don't recall getting it very often. Possibly because she was busy with schoolwork at the time and/or she didn't understand what I was wanting. Which leads me to suspect some ASD traits with herself. It kinda hurts though, not getting that positive feedback as a kid and as a teen.
I want that shirt. :)
I've learned to just say "ok" or "fine" and after probably too long of a pause I remember the "you?" but by then they've usually moved on. The whole thing just annoys me. What's the point of asking a question you don't want to know the answer to and then having the other person do the same? And I feel like I'm lying, too, because most of the time I'm not fine or even ok but I know those replies are more "socially acceptable" than what I _really_ wanted to say. :(
Michelle
I'm relating to all of this. Sorry that I'm jumping in so late.
I started catching on to this just in the past few years, and I'm a 60YO Aspie woman diagnosed about three years ago, so you can see I'm a slow learner ;-). But I feel a stab of annoyance when I get this. About a year ago I was at my niece's violin recital, and saw her paternal grandmother, who I hadn't seen in some time. She asked, "So what have you been up to?" And stupidly, I told her. I caught on, but not in time. As soon as I walked away from her I told myself, she couldn't have cared less what you've been up to. I usually catch myself now, and when people ask how I'm doing, I know they don't really want to know, so I say, "Fine, how 'bout yourself?" And that's the end of it. But it annoys me. I want to shoot back, if you don't want to know, why do you ask?
On the other hand, when I say "Have a nice day" to a check-out clerk or the trolley operator, I mean it. I really do want them to have a nice day. But I know that most of the world just sees it as a pleasantry.
About learning to imitate NTs, I have learned that, but it only works up to a point. If I'm stressed, fatigued, distracted, or whatever, the mask slips. I couldn't keep it up indefinitely if I wanted to. It has been a big problem in work. I wasn't always with the best caliber of co-workers. I'd keep up the NT posture for a time. But all it took was for me to lose my grip on it a few times. I'd get the "goofy," "weird" labels, and the trouble started after that. It's exhausting, and I don't see how anyone can keep that up indefinitely.
Same for me, by the time NT's say "and you?" my conversation moved on. Fine with me, sometimes I am not that interested in the other person when the move-on part absorbs me.
I had an aspi experience of this type last week: my aspi-colleague edited a memo that I prepared for her - and while she was at it, she made a mistake. I noticed the mistake a week later, after reading the finalized memo, which was sent to the division manager.
When I asked her why she made an incorrect edit in my memo, she replied: "well, that's what you sent me in an email."
So, I asked her to retrieve the email that she used for her edit. Now, here is where most NT's probably would start to worry. But not my colleague: she traweld through her in-tray. After some time she found the relevant email, then sent it back to me: "Look this is your email, and by the way, digging out old emails is very time-consuming."
NT's probably would have responded differently early on, e.g. by admitting to having made a mistake.
Yeah this is one of those pet peeves, my ex was like that, he'd ask me a question regarding autism or the kids and he'd either way a "yes/no" answer or an "abbreviated" explanation to something that wasn't as easy for me to answer in an easy form and have it understood. It got really frustrating after a while.
Serenity (Mish)
Single AS/ADHD Mom of Two Sons on the Autism Spectrum
(9 1/2 yr old with Autism, 7 year old in process of AS dx)