If someone isn't interested in what you're talking about....

Post Reply New Topic

Well, it's your opinion, and it's your view of how things should be, but there's a big difference between how things should be and how they really are.

How they really are -- upwards of 65% of a conversation goes on at the sub-verbal level. Body language and facial expressions are the foundation and house, and the person's words are the roof. If you ignore the foundation and house, all you are getting or seeing is the roof, and the roof doesn't really tell you what the house underneath looks like.

This of course is why Aspies have such a hard time, especially full Aspies. It's also why there is no excuse not to do what you can to study NT's, their behavior, and their signals, because at the end of the day, you live in an NT world.

Please don't think you can brush this off -- it will only make life harder for you.

My mother gave birth to two geniuses. My IQ was tallied at 158 when I was 15 years old. My brother's is higher. Mom had a lot of work on her hands raising two extremely bright people and she rose to the challenge and offered us some incredible stuff in order to keep us moving forward (except Mensa -- she hated "those stuck-up people"! her words, not mine). One of those things she gave us was this statement, which she recited whenever my brother or I got "too big for our britches" and would complain that we were smarter than most of the people around us:

"You may be brilliant, but you're obviously not wise. Truly wise intelligent people realize that they aren't the only intelligent people around. So, let a dumb, wise lady inform you of a thing or two: You're always going to find smarter people than you as you go along in life. How stupid will you feel, if, one day, you complain like that in front of someone as smart or smarter than you and they make the time to take you down a notch or two? Arrogance and being offensive are not very smart ways of dealing with the world, my dear."

Mom, with no special training and an average IQ, was, in the end, wiser than any smart person I've ever met.



But if your brilliance is cloistered in the safety of a self-fashioned haven of a few carefully chosen "safe" fans, isn't it just a dead-end loop where no new and alternative points of view are welcome? And even "dumb" people have interesting things to offer on subjects you haven't even considered yet. The sensitivity to criticism and rejection that comes with genius is a sore point for those who are burdened with it -- here we are, these incredibly intelligent beings, yet, we lock ourselves away and basically talk to ourselves JUST SO we can escape the fearful place we must inhabit if we reached out and let the world tell us a thing or two we didn't already know. Or worse yet, correct us! It's hard being smart and humble, but, being smart and arrogant leads to an end to learning from others.

Just my NT "humble genius" take on it. (thanks, Mom!)

Ah, no. To be more precise, just because an aspie looks at their watch it doesn't mean they're bored. But when an NT looks at their watch it either means their bored or they're running late and worried about the time. Either way, the message being politely communicated is, "I can't hear anymore right now." Your job in the "conversation" at that point is to say, "Oh, dear, I'm sorry. I seem to just be talking and talking here." At that point the NT will possibly reassure you that it's ok by saying something like, "No, no. You're fine. It's just that I have to meet Sally at 4 and I don't want to be late." which signals to you that you have a little more time to talk, but that the other person has politely asked you to be aware of the time so you don't force them to be rude by having to just finally cutting your lecture off when they have to go. But a lot of times, NTs unconsciously look at their watches when they're bored out of their minds. They're thinking, "How long has she been going on and on and on like this?" All socially adept NTs know that, unless you reeeeally need to convey that you're short on time, looking at one's watch is actually kind of rude, precisely because it says, "Oh, my god! Are you done yet?" Which is very uncool indeed.



Again, no... to be precise, when an aspie isn't looking at a person while they're talking, it doesn't mean that they are bored. Eye contact is huge for NTs. We have built into us, probably from our caveman ancestry, an instinct that kicks in when people avoid eye contact. It is the quintessential sign that either the person is ignoring you or they have something they're trying to hide. We are hardwired by DNA from birth to sense things this way. So, no eye contact or very little eye contact is the best way to show us you don't give two figs about what we're saying. Now, you throw into that mix that most of us NTs who live with aspies are "enduring" the hours and hours of "lecturing" from our aspie loved ones, and when it's our "turn" to talk and you guys can't even give us eye contact, we can't help but get our feelings hurt! To us, the feeling is that since you're done talking, all the interesting stuff has already been said. When that feeling comes to us, we just don't want to hear any more of your lectures. Then all communication breaks down. So, eye contact is very, very important in the NT world. Does that make sense?



And again, no, to be precise, just because an aspie is on the computer and you are talking to them doesn't mean they are bored... but is the aspie, or anyone for that matter, REALLY able to give 100% of their attention to the speaker while they're on the computer? Case in point: My husband calls me from work today, I drop what I'm doing -- and I had butter on my hands when the phone rang, so, what a pain in the butt it was getting to the phone in time -- I answer, he says 'hi', I say 'hi', he asks what I'm doing, I tell him I'm baking something, he asks what, I start to tell him and then I hear the damn computer keys start clicking in the background, like me talking is the signal for him to disconnect and do "more important" things than listen to a housewife about her boring day! He called me, I didn't call him! He asked me what I was doing, I didn't force him to hear about my day! And then he splits his attention, right when I start talking, between his computer and what I'm saying?! Why did he call then, if he was too busy to talk? It would've been better if he'd never called at all. I had to go lay down and cry after that.

That makes me wonder: Do aspies care if anyone is really listening to them when they give their dissertations, or is the talking what matters most? Because, to an NT like me, the feeling is that when you're lecturing us, we could darn well get up and walk away and go take a shower and pay some bills and feed the cat and come back and the aspie wouldn't have even noticed we left the room and would still be lecturing. It's painful to feel superfluous to the conversation the aspie seems to be having with themselves. Do you guys care if we listen? Do you disdain our input that much? Is it that you feel that NTs are that beneath you? I'm really asking, this is not rhetorical. I live in constant pain from these issues with my NT husband.

Your mom is wise, and I'm sorry I came off as elitist in my post -- I was probably sulking about having no friends

There definitely is a difference between intelligence and wisdom (D&D is right about some things in life ), and also different types of intelligence. Case in point, many of us here (myself included) seem to rank low on the social intelligence scale.

And yep, your mom is right again on the point that no matter how good you are at something, or how intelligent, there will always be someone better. I've learned and relearned this lesson the hard way, to the point where I'm somewhat loathe now to say anything good about my own abilities for fear that I will have put my foot in my mouth once again.

The reality about me is that my friends and acquaintances (many more acquaintances than friends) are a pretty diverse group over my lifetime. People from all walks of life, experiences, and nationalities, etc. My main frustration is that I seem to have a hard time finding someone I can click with for an extended period of time. I either seem to wear them out (or bore them) or vice versa.

That being said, I find it pretty hard in most cases to immerse myself in idiot pop culture, and many people here seem to share that trait. When I find people who will not deviate from what they are spoon-fed by corporate media shills, who won't open their minds or contemplate something other than who won American Idol last night, it is very frustrating. I've had too many empty-headed friends (and even one girlfriend) tell me "You think too much," when in fact they didn't think enough, and their lives reflected this. It's sad to see people with potential waste their minds on crap.

So when I say things like what I said earlier, it's just me venting, and also my desire to see some of the smart people here not waste what they have. I'm not saying it's wrong to like pop culture (I like a lot of things that other people find mundane or disturbing), but please make sure you like the things you do for some kind of good reason, not just "everyone's doing it."

Final note -- anyone else here ever feel like they can see where things are going or what is going to happen before everyone else? I don't mean ESP, I mean you noticed something, solved a problem or factored in things in your head, and then made a prediction that came true. Happens to me all the time, and it sucks when no one else listens and then no one remembers afterwards that it was you who made the prediction. It's like you're doomed to see the Titanic go down over and over again.

My daughter does something like this, and we are both Aspies. She will call me, and then start talking to someone else in the room, or start a text message, while I am speaking. I usually have to ask her if she was calling for something important, or did she have something more important to do than talk to me? She is easily distracted, and cannot filter out what can wait for later. Once, she called me from a store, and then got into a conversation with a group of friends who had come in to the store. I asked her if she could call me back, when she was done talking to her friends. Later, she apologized, and admitted that it was like juggling eggs, and people keep adding another egg, and she is trying not to drop one, because they all seem equally important.


Well, speaking for myself, I do not think NTs are beneath me. If I felt that way about someone, I would not be bothering to talk to them!

I fully agree with the OP..

it frustrates me that aspies aren't prepared to try and change and work on themselves, some of them are stuck in the attitude that they are perfect and the rest of the world must change for them..

They say "how can i talk to NTs, I don't understand them" and when someone tells them they say "oh, i wont do that, thats stupid".

They should make their minds up - if they don't want to talk to NTs or talk in and NT way, then fine, just don't come here and complain about it. If they do want to talk to NTs, be prepared to try new ways of talking that feel different, and don't just complain that its not how you are.

I once observed on a thread that NTs use small talk to test who they want to be friends with or who they can talk about deep issues with, once they have found out the other person is like them, then they move on to deeper chats. But aspies skip the testing stage so they never know who is appropriate to talk to about politics/sport etc, so they end up boring people.

But everyone just bitched at me, "well NTs are stupid, I dont want to talk like that anyway". It made me feel very frustrated. Because, those same people will come back moaning that they can't make friends, after spurning the help.

Plus some of us HAVE to learn how to cooperate with NTs in order to survive in our jobs..i know so many aspies who have had to leave job cause they alienated people so much that it was too hard for them there. Its all very well for the lucky aspies with high paying solitary jobs they can cope in to say "oh no, we shouldnt have to learn small talk".

NTs aren't all shallow and stupid, colleges are full of NTs studying philosophy, science literature etc. You can be very highbrow and still party and be social, some of them have it all unfortunatly, it used to make me very jealous!

i agree with what feyhera said, i heard once "the cleverst thing a clever person can do is realise not to show everyone how clever they are"

although, I did say here a couple years ago that aspies should stop going on at people who arent interested, and I was told that the more severe aspies are not capable of stopping or recognising they should stop.

i often notice in retrospect, often moments after parting, that i have been rambling, and not listening. makes me feel like a rambling idiot

No prob! Yeah, my mom worked hard on the social skills stuff with me and my brother. I don't have an AS diagnosis, but I do share some characteristics with you guys. I often wonder if some of what is attributed to the AS in some aspies isn't really just part and parcel with genius. Being super smart intellectually lends a certain emotional vulnerability, because our take on things can be so acute. For me, sensing the universal pain of those who suffer from inhumane treatment (empathy ramped up to an excruciating 1,000%!) was, and can still be, crippling. My hyper-existential angst lasted until my late 30's! And man, did it create some big problems for me. In my life, human relationships have always seemed so one-sided, with me feeling like I did most, if not all, of the work. My marriage is no different, and sharing life with an aspie has been probably the most one-sided relationship I've ever experienced so far. And I'm less energetic these days. And I have less hope for the future at 46 than I did at 26. Where age has given me experience and a broader, calmer take on things in general, it has also whittled away at my ability to just get back up, dust myself off and forge onward with determined "focus" and resolve. *sigh*



Whoa, howdy! Ain't that the truth! I'm emotionally intelligent, and gifted in the arts and humanities. But when it comes to math, I just do what I have to do to get thru it! I could be very good at it at if I wanted to be, but, my "special subjects" tend to just distract me, and so I only do math as a matter of daily life. Sound familiar? So, this NT, anyway, can relate from personal experience to AS in many ways. You guys aren't alone. And we do not feel superior to you. Not the decent NTs who have any contact and knowledge of AS anyway. As for the rest of the NT world, the lack of understanding most aspies seem to receive just comes from a lack of integration of aspies into everyday society. But integration, being part of the huge social morass that is the NT world, is exactly what most aspies find so damn uninteresting/confounding. It's like me trying to fit in at an MIT lab! I'd feel completely out of my element and would just be itching to get the hell out of there! But send me over to the local community theater group, and I'd be up on stage dancing and singing away in no time!

Bottomline, we're all humans. Aspies are not aliens. We're all burdened with differences that need to be sorted out, on an individual basis, and none of us really feels completely understood. Especially if you're super smart. Brilliance is a gift and a curse.



Planet NT Tour Guide entry: "It is not necessary to obliterate feelings of superiority from one's self-estimation in order to fit in well. Your privately-held opinions of yourself, the good and bad alike, have no effect on one-on-one communication with NTs, as long as you become adept at not allowing yourself to proclaim them openly. The cultural expectation on Planet NT is that one should never allow such feelings to be self-proclaimed. Such self-promotion is perceived, by inference of present company inclusion [refer to pg. 223 for "Inference of Present Company Inclusion" entry], as a denegration to any NT you may share this information with. Natives will only respect your superior deeds, sharing a belief that "actions speak louder than words", and will disdain your assertions that you are too special or too confused to have to prove it to be so, as they too must labor to have their true abilities proven out. To create bonds with your NT acquaintances, refrain from offering the insult of proclaiming outright that you are a genius, which may tend to be perceived as inelegant and crass. Instead, invest your time, energy and brain power in AS/NT mutually beneficial pursuits if you wish to have your brilliance recognized. Teamwork, comradery, social efforts, contributing to the betterment of individual lives as well as that of all of Mankind -- all these endeavors will create for you a reputation of brilliance rather than burden you with a reputation as a self-important, lazy braggart."

And from the "Inference of Present Company Inclusion" entry: "When speaking of a thing that "all NTs" do, in a general sense, remember that you are inferring those NTs who may be standing next to you. If the statement is positive, ie, "all NTs are socially adept", the NT listener may tend to think on personal experiences where this was not the case and will inevitably not see your comment as sensible. They may appreciate your attempt to offer up a compliment, but they may tuck away some idea that you are possibly naive. If the statement is negative, ie, "All NTs are dull-witted", by inference, your NT audience will be highly offended. Remember: if you speak of something that "all NTs" share, you are by inference of present company inclusion, including those NTs to whom the statement has been made. When speaking of yourself in emphatic ways, ie, "I am too smart for this NT world" the inference you will be communicating is that the NTs in hearing range are not as intelligent as you are. This sort of statement will inevitably cause offense, even in dull-witted NTs, and rifts between you and the NTs in your immediate surroundings can be expected to arise."



This, I am sure you realize, is not an exclusively AS issue. I could've written this about myself! And so could so many people I've known in my life. And to my knowledge, I've only met one diagnosed AS so far! You're so not alone in feeling alone!:wink:



I totally get the need to vent. One of the main reasons I came to WP was to find a venue to vent myself. And I do struggle with finding PC ways to do that. But I keep trying, spending hours and hours writing individual posts, just so I make sure that my tone and words can't be misconstrued as vengeful or petty. I have to say though, that, prior to coming here and reading so many threads where some of the angrier aspies are ripping into the NT world with so much hostility and open discrimination (present company excluded), that I am pretty disappointed so far with my time here. The first 24 hours, when I came on and really got some solid help and constructive interactions with some of the other members, were fantastically healing. Since then, I've started noticing that I actually am getting madder and less tolerant with some of the negative AS characteristics some aspies have, like, speaking their minds even if it tears other people's hearts out, than I was before becoming a member! I hope that I haven't let that bleed into this thread. I'm trying very hard not to let my outrage show, and I definitely do not want to take my frustrations and feeling of being discriminated against out on people like you who aren't being cruel.



Yeah, I have this too! There are some fantastic books out there on Futurology (I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, right? ) and I especially liked, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must by Robert Zubrin. There were all sorts of ideas in there that I had come to me when I was a little girl and I really enjoyed finding them being explored by those who really love the subject. And that's the thing: We can't possibly go out and develop EVERY SINGLE idea we get. We are like little one-man think tanks who could never hope to be on the cutting edge of ALL the fields that interest us. I say "us" and "we", and I'm technically considered an NT... you see, aspies don't have a monopoly on some of the things which have been classified as clear-cut indicators of AS. There are plenty of NT geeks too. And I'm proud of the moniker, thank you!

Be well!
Feyhera

I don't have the courage to say these things, and some of your statements border on not being PC... but I feel exactly the same and wish I could be as brave and completely forthright as you are here. And not being able to just say it like it is, and take back some of my self-respect as an NT makes me feel frustrated, sad, confused and ashamed...

Thanks for saying what I dare not say...

Based on a few of the responses here, I think you are right. I'm even conscious of doing it (usually either mid-conversation or after the fact), but don't seem to be able to break the pattern of boring or lecturing people. Makes for a pretty lonely life

Hey Feyhera,

Great post.

Just FYI -- I'm not a full diagnosed Aspie, but like you, share some Aspie characteristics. I can easily recognize facial expressions (if anything, too much so, to the point that I'm rejection hypersensitive), body language, and know a lot of social rules -- however, I still seem to mess up on other social aspects (only to rue it later), like being too haughty some of the time (while having low self-esteem the rest of the time) or blurting out the wrong thing. All things NT's and everyone else does, I know (especially we men), but still hard going sometimes. My biggest Aspie trait seems to be the long rambling lectures, and the skipping the small talk for "the big concept speech" -- Great post by Tom in this thread that pointed that out. I gotta learn from that one for sure. I also seem to bounce wildly between having tons of empathy/sympathy, to almost none at all. Sometimes I can literally turn it on and off, and sometimes I'm wracked with guilt. The mind is a weird place. Oh, and I also obsess on things/people, so that seems to be an Aspie trait as well.

I wouldn't get too down about some of the negative or anti-NT reactions you may be getting from people here -- There are a lot of frustrated Aspies here in the Romance thread, and if there's anything I've learned from world politics, a lot of the misery and violence in this world stems from not having access to affection and love (and sex) from the gender you prefer (the Mideast, case in point). There are also some people who either won't change because they can't (literally, they are full Aspie and have an actual limit to how much they can change, biology overrides the rest) or won't right now. There are also several people here who are clearly clinically depressed, and who will probably need therapy and medical intervention to advance on. These people get the angriest at times, because while depression is anger turned inwards, there's plenty of anger to go around, and it can also lash out at the outside world.

I personally post almost exclusively here in this part of the forum because sex/affection are probably my #1 concern in life. Things are fine for me now, and have been for about 13 years or so, but I do remember how terrible it felt to not have a GF or wife, which is why I have a lot of sympathy and empathy. I've always liked to be a help to my peers in certain topics, and I like to mentor, so I feel like maybe this is one place where my long boring lectures might do a little good I've had some reasonable success in this arena, so maybe I can help others in the same situation I was in get what they want.

Thanks for the futurology recommendation -- I had not heard of that Mars book, so I've added it to my list. Might I recommend the book "Wired for War" to you? Great forward-looking book on the role robots will play in future warfare, and maybe humanity itself (going either the "AI" route or the "Terminator/Matrix" route). I also have heard Ray Kurzweil as a person, and his company, are great visionaries. I actually came to the conclusion that humanity would merge with machine/hardware/AI before I heard that he had written a whole book about the same topic. Very interesting and scary stuff from him.

I dont agree, I have read lots of helpful social books but Ive decided that its is too much like hard work.

I would much rather not talk to anyone than bother trying to make people understand me or interest them.

I enjoy chatting to myself and find my own company much more satisfying than that of others.

When I try being good company, I come away from the situation feeling unsatisfied and drained, the other person may have enjoyed it but I certainly did not.

Some of us just do not have the ability or motivation to be bothered with other people, nevertheless we are still valid human beings and just as worthwhile as our more social brethren and our moanings/groanings are even ok (certainly on WP).

and if people have the audacity to find me boring, I certainly would not bother talking to them again as they must be a very uninteresting person!

i wish someone would obsess with me about cortisol.