Social faux pas: When a person does something in a social situation that is not considered normal. The person generally does this in a civil and kind manner, but may offend or confuse someone in the process. That is my definition for the purpose of this entry. Sound like something a person with AS would do?
How many times have I been on dates with people, or liked someone and it may not have been communicated properly, and then did something stupid about it. Here are examples and how it played out.
Example 1: I have already referred to it in mental breakdown number 4, the girl I dated for a couple weeks. I said to her on Facebook in a private message after her announced relationship with another guy, "So this is why you don't want to talk to me anymore? Well, I hope he treats you right then." She may or may not have communicated properly her feelings for wanting to move on, but she feels she did her job in doing so. I may have misinterpreted everything. So when she saw me a week later at the bar with her new boyfriend, she waved at me and I immediately looked the other way. She must have known right then how I felt. This was the beginning of the social faux pas happening. I gave her the cold shoulder a couple weeks later as well. Again she didn't like that and she did want to talk to me that night too now that her boyfriend wasn't around.
Fast forward another year, and now she suddenly wants to talk to me again at the bar. I was talking with another cute girl and she waved me to come over and talk to her. I ignored her at first. The second wave I went. She wanted to know why I deleted her off Facebook and stopped communicating with her. I detected some jealousy here considering what was going on inside the bar. We eventually met up for a couple drinks and a meal, and she said she was seeing someone and thought it was getting serious. However, she said something along the lines of "I haven't gotten laid in a while." The response would be "That's your problem." From someone else's view, this was a come on that I didn't read properly, and it offended her. However, it was agreed we work things out like friends. She backed out of two more meetings without saying a word to me and so I expressed my disappointment in a voice mail and said that she could call me if she truly does want to talk to me again. Yes, social faux pas between two friends.
Example 2: I can't explain what I was thinking as a teenager and in my early 20's, but this was a common occurrence. It happened with people in online dating, people at school, and people at work. How many times did I ask for a date with people I was getting to know. Either the date did or did not happen. I was feeling the need for companionship. Anyhow, I get the cold shoulder treatment, and I responded. I always let the people know how I felt about it, expressed a desire to not talk to them anymore and just move on. It always made things worse for me. Some I would vent my frustration on and now I got their pity, rather than their respect and friendship. What I just did with these people is make things sound like more than they really were. You are just getting to know someone, and you have it in your mind that you are going somewhere special with it. Yeah, that's what failing to learn how to communicate with people can do to me. This is ending something between two people when it has clearly already ended between the two of you, and try and be nice about it. It could also mean that the person values your friendship, but just hasn't communicated with you recently because there is something else going on in her life (work, seeing someone, etc.). This was usually done based on previous experience. I felt I was going to get burned when in fact it may not ever happen.
These are some prime examples of social faux pas for me. I don't know how many Aspies do this in their friendships or relationships. I don't even know if this is even normal for another Aspie to do. It may be my own experience and seeing similar things happen with previous friendships that make me think this way. If it does sound like an Aspie, let me know.
From a non-Aspie point of view, this certainly sounds like a set of plausible Aspie experiences with social mis-cues in relationships. I was seeing an Aspie friend for coffees and sharing interests for a few months but he was treating me like a real girlfriend and I thought he just had an unusual way of flirting. From the first coffee, he sidled up really close to me on the seat and would not sit opposite me. After going to a park to take photographs, he suddenly started kissing me and running around like a little kid, coming back and kissing me again. It wasn't until then that I realised he was serious in liking me. To me the big problem was that he had never SAID anything. He must have ASSUMED without being able to read my mind, that because I kept meeting him that I was in love with him. Needless to say I fell in love with him that day. We don't see each other any more because he misinterpreted several things as though I was criticising him, which I wasn't doing at all. Two and a half years later I still love him but he says he "thought he had got rid of me". Now two people are unhappy because we did not have proper conversations about our relationship. Perhaps all the assumptions Aspies make in relationships should be tested thoroughly before they make a move towards or away from a potential partner. And my Aspie friend is 50 years old, not a teenager.
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