Being patronized

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I know there has been threads about this before but I never joined one so I thought I'll start a new one, since I feel people patronize me a lot (not so much my young friends, but my older friends do). I find it quite embarrassing because it makes me feel like a 3-year-old sometimes, or a person with Mental Retardation. I remember a few weeks ago when I was waiting for the bus with my friend (she is a bit older than me), the bus drew up and people got off, then a girl in front of us stepped aside to kindly let us by, so I said thank you to her and she smiled, but as I was getting on, my friend literally grabbed my arm and yanked me right back and said, ''no no, wait, we'll wait for all of these people to get on first.'' Then my friend looked at the others and said, ''sorry''. This made me feel really silly, as though I was a nuisance to everybody. I didn't say anything but I did feel annoyed with my friend after that, for pulling me about like I was a toddler and apologizing to other people as though I was completely ret*d and unaware of what's going on around me, which wasn't the case.

That was ONE situation where I felt patronized, and that wasn't the only situation. Does anyone else feel people patronize you? Is it embarrassing for you, since it makes you look sillier than what you really are?

That friend would've gotten a slap.

Seems to me your friend is a jerk and a nasty physical one at that.

Is she this way often with you, pulling stunts like this? Why do you hang around her? Because she's "nice" to you? Certainly seems from this instance that when others are watching, she is not nice at all to you. Hate to think what kind of friend she is to you when just you two are together (not that I need to know either).

Honestly I think your friend was not patronizing you. She put her hands on you and violently pulled you back, all on the notion that other people deserved to step onto the bus before you. Here is an instance of patronizing you: If she were reading this thread, she would say, "We Brits spell the word with an 's," not a 'z,' as in patronise, dear." Nope, per the bus incident, she put you down and embarrassed you after assaulting you.

If you need to feel "bad" for being treated meanly and rudely by a so-called friend, have at it. From your threads, it seems that you are stuck in the "victim" role. But then again, you are young and unworldly. I'm guessing one of these days, but not soon, you will come to the realization that allowing others to say you are at fault when you are not and believing them are mistakes.

I think people are overreacting. If she really is a friend, you should talk to her about this. If you can talk to her about it, she is your friend. Don't lose something as valuable to an aspie as friendship when you haven't tried to communicate about the problem. Don't ever underestimate the power of honest communication.

Were all those other people already standing there waiting before you arrived? Or was it an elderly or handicapped person? If so that may have been why she wanted them to get on first. Or there could have been someone creepy waiting to get on the bus and she knew if she sat down first that person might choose to sit close to her. Or maybe she has social issues of her own. OR maybe she's a patronizing jerk, I don't know. I do feel people try to patronize me, but I tend to look at those people like I think they're idiots....

In my experience, it's best just to be cool and not make it something it's not.
It is entirely possible that there's a social component you didn't see or grasp there.

However, I would talk to the friend and tell them not to manhandle me any more. Especially if you feel like you were embarrassed by it.

You can communicate better than that, which seems to be the root of the issue here anyway.

I camouflage well, so I tend to not have these issues. However, sometimes my wife will help me out with subtle things I don't get. And that's nice because it's embarrassing to look like an oaf in front of a crowd.

The word you're looking for, Joe90, is humiliate. Your friend caused you humiliation. She was not patronizing you and she did not patronize you.

Look at the differences in their meanings:

Humiliate: to make (someone) feel ashamed and foolish by injuring their dignity and self-respect, esp. publicly.

Patronize: to treat with an apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority.

If a friend treated me like this, they would be a friend no longer. End of.

Well, because the girl who stood by to let us on first was looking at me and smiling and pulling that expression as if to say ''after you'', which I know that expression when I see it because I get on buses an awful lot, I didn't want to stand and hesitate because I didn't want to hold the queue up, and we were actually there first. Well, I know I did the right thing by seeing that somebody was waving me to get on first and stepping forwards and saying thank you to her, and I knew nobody else was trying to get on so I wasn't pushing. Plus I did like the bus-driver, so I was just about to smile nicely to him just before my friend pulled me back. I didn't want to look at him when we did finally get on, although I still did and gave a smile, and he smiled back, thank God.

But even if I was pushing my way on to the bus, I still wouldn't want my friend yanking me back. I would prefer a tap on the shoulder and just a gentle, ''I think we should wait 'til all these people got on first''. But in situations like the OP, it always seems that the victim always ends up looking more ridiculous than the person causing the unnecessary embarrassing situation, for some reason.

But my friend is rather bossy, and since everybody's got a fault (nobody's perfect), this is one of her faults. Sometimes I wonder if she has ADHD, since some have said she is very hyperactive, not in a cheerful way (hyperactivity doesn't always necessarily mean ''a person who is always shouting hysterically and jumping on furnature''). She is just kind of living on her nerves all the time and seems to have her own rules, which aren't always right to general NT standards - and even I can say that and I'm an Aspie.

You're making excuses for your "bossy" friend now, Joe90.

If you do have a chat with her, then by doing so you will be standing up for yourself. You don't have to get emotional about it. Tell her you've been thinking about this incident and how much it hurt you. And you want her to think before she acts and speaks whenever it comes to you. Because you like her and she needs to remember that friends treat each other as friends, not as disobedient children.

And if she makes fun of you for bringing up this subject, then kick her in the leg. Hard. And tell her every time she treats you badly, you will kick her in the leg. She needs some behavior modification. A swift kick to her leg will be your reminder that she has been mean to you.

Yeah... that would be a decent reason. Though, she should have tapped your shoulder or said "one second" or something, not yanked you back like a toddler.

Hahaha.

Yes.

She sounds like an annoying "friend" if she's bossy all the time.

Um... this could be an excellent example of being patronizing.

This is the right attitude. I'm glad you're not insisting on the malicious intent everyone in this topic is certain about in a person they've never met. You can't like every aspect of every friend. Just have a talk about things that cross the line. That's how society functions. We all have to be flexible around each other.

Ha-ha.

But no. Just trying to be informative without being mean or patronizing.

From her other posts, it appears Joe90 is still grappling with words and their meanings. When I was her age, I loved dictionaries, thesauruses and encyclopedias. Now with the internet and computers, we have instant access to virtual libraries. Anyway finding the right word has always been a particular interest to me (but perhaps an annoyance to others).

I don't think you were intending to be patronizing.
That's why it was so funny.

I don't think intent is necessary.
Many people who are patronizing do not intend to be.
You may think you are being informative, but whether Joe feels humiliated or not is subjective on her part.
You can't really argue that humiliate is a more appropriate word, and that Joe is incorrect, because Joe is telling us how she feels.
If the situation happened to you, then sure, you might feel humiliated, and that would be the right word for you.
Finding the right word does not always apply when the words belong to someone else.
Saying that Joe is "grappling with words and their meanings" is a judgement call, you are indicating that you think your ability is superior to hers. If someone said that to me, I'd find it very patronizing.

But, good job validating the OP's complaint.