My social anxiety versus dad's radical honesty

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This has all been resolved but does anyone else have this when they're dealing with other aspies or people they suspect to be aspies…

Me and my stepdad took a taxi home. I have diagnosed social anxiety and wanted him in the car to provide company for me so that I wouldn't be stressed. He took the opportunity to chat all the way home about rugby, something which doesn't interest me, with the taxi driver.

I came home and asked him the next day why he did that.

He told me because the taxi driver's conversation was more interesting than mine …

I took that to mean he preferred a stranger to me. I know that's just my anxiety talking but... don't tell family members that strangers are more interesting.

We've since apologised to each other but, essentially what I suspect is an autistic trait in him (he can't tell white lies or read the situation and know what his 'role' is supposed to be) and my own social anxiety clashed.

Do other people have this when interacting either with socially anxious people or with radically honest people?

My husband is brutally honest... but it's actually something that makes me comfortable around him.
I know he says what he means and he means what he says. Other people often give me subtle hints and get mad at me when I don't get them. He never does, our communication is clear.

A lot of normal people have some traits of autism.

Especially older people who are intelligent and have been successful in life because of their intelligence despite their social ineptness.

I mean why get a diagnosis if that's the case? Especially since autism was seen so differently in the fifties and stigmatised so much? He barely agrees I'm autistic and I have a diagnosis - because I'm not non verbal and I'm intelligent etc.

It's funny, we tell him the negative traits of Asperger's and he says he doesn't have it, we tell him the good ones and he says he has it. But he does have the negative traits too. He's just too egotistical to notice.

I do like him by the way, this sounds like I don't.

NTs don't tend to have the need to go into a shop they're not planning on going into and tell them that they put the apostrophes in the wrong place. I know him well. He has a lot of aspie traits.

Anyway, autistic or not, he has this habit of being incredibly honest to the point of rudeness and it doesn't work well because I have social anxiety and sometimes he 'has' to be rude to me. And he doesn't know body language so when he folds his arms and frowns at me I think he's being rude, but he doesn't mean anything by it he's just cold.

Older people get a diagnosis when they want an explanation of why they are different.
Yes, many people, especially those that are successful, don't care.

For most older Aspies, there is no assistance to be had with a diagnosis.

I think NTs can sense when they are saying something and shouldn't and stop by picking up a person's body language.

A "rule based" interaction isn't going to prevent the bad experience you had because there are never enough rules to cover everything. And most Aspies aren't gifted with ability to memorize endless rules without effort.

I'm a little confused by the OP, TUF. Are you annoyed that your stepdad did not serve your social anxiety needs by chatting rugby with the driver? He may not have understood that you needed that. He may have thought you just needed his presence during the taxi ride, not his conversation.

Then, of course, you were hurt when he said the driver's conversation was more interesting than yours. Yes, that was rude.

But I don't see a lot that indicates he has autism - although going into a shop to correct their use of punctuation does sound suspicious.

We won't diagnose your stepdad on this forum and neither will you diagnose him, it takes a specially trained professional to do that. In any case, you can't do anything about it. But what you can do something about is re-calibrate how his actions and words can affect you.

For the last 20 or 30 years of my father's life, I knew I had to not let his brutally honest or in most cases, merely dismissive, words hurt my feelings. I did not know about autism most of those years; I did not have a diagnosis for why he did that; now, I think he was very likely autistic, but so what. We must accept the fact that for older people, they had no way of being diagnosed in their youth and developmental stages, and that is not their fault.

I suppose you could tell your stepdad that his comment about your "less interesting" conversation hurt your feelings. But what will he hear?
- Most likely, he will hear "TUF is very sensitive, so I must be careful what I say to her in future."
- Most likely he will NOT hear "I have a tendency to be brutally honest and it's part of a disorder I have, which I need to learn more about."

Good luck. You have a right to feel good. I hope your day goes better after posting here.

What I want is him to learn 'TUF is sensitive I need to be more careful about what I say'.*

Which is what he heard after we made up.

I don't know, it's just that mum's worked with a lot of autistic kids over the years and she keeps saying it. The autistic or not autistic part isn't what bothers/interests me. I shouldn't have said it because it's a tangent everyone seems to be running with.

It's the radical honesty part that bothers me. Sometimes when someone has a habit of taking being 'honest' too far it can really hurt. Never tell a family member that strangers are more interesting than they are, it's rude.

* Ideally I'd like 'TUF has a diagnosed mental health problem. I need to do what I can to alleviate that instead of making it worse' but only mum seems to do that.

Well, good for you for bringing it up for discussion with him. I know that wasn't easy for you to do, but it seems to have had a favorable outcome.