The mystery in the rejection

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I once had the displeasure of asking a couple of my coworkers if they liked me (idiot!) and got silence.
So, yes, I feel your pain, intensely.
I think they think I am a mystery. I think they think I am anal-retentive. I always try to be witty and good-natured and helpful to make myself more likeable, but I guess I am missing the mark.
My boyfriend told me last night that he understands I need to be in control of basically every situation I get myself into (he is okay with this, somehow we still manage to stay on equal footing) - so maybe that's what people respond to. I always manage to know more about other people than they do about me. So, maybe it is the rejection of the mystery.

Anyway, with my mid-30s has come the realization that I don't need to be liked by everyone.
And those coworkers? I am their boss now.

You've been promoted to be their boss? That's one fabulous way to solve the problem!! !! Yay for you!! !

It can happen! Anal-retentive has its upside. I've been called "the machine" before (it's really just perception, it's not me at all, but I'm fast and thorough at what I do, and I let the perception ride, so to speak, because it helps me to stay out of trouble....!)

You know what...I feel the exact same way you do. I could have written that word for word. I don't have a therapist though but sometimes I think I could use one. My NT niece has told me I'm probably not seen as weird as I think I do. I don't believe that because she's from the inside looking out where I'm on the outside looking in. She can meet someone new and not have any problem connecting then a week later they're inviting her to come over and hang out. I don't get it. I can meet the same person and nothing. They treat me like I'm just some loser they really don't want anything to do with no matter how normal I try to pretend to be or no matter how outgoing and nice I try to be. I sometimes think people can sense an awkwardness that no matter how much pretending I do can't be covered up.

And yes, if I'm with one person, all is well but when that 3rd party comes along, they connect and I'm there like a defective wheel that just fell of the wagon. It's very frustrating and annoying.

You want to know what I think? They don’t have a clue either. They unconsciously sense something different about us that they can’t even begin to describe or even admit to noticing. I know even I can sense differences in manner between people that I have trouble describing in words. Certain essences of people completely divorced from the realm of language or description, existing completely in a subconscious perception. Other people seem much more aware of their own aura they have about them. I have trouble knowing what my aura projects to others as I merely perceive them. I don’t perceive me.

Also, what is it about NT groups? In groups of 3 or more there’s a weird cadence going on. People seem to all laugh in unison in a manner completely disproportionate to the actual funniness of the remark. Why do NT’s think everything is so goddamned funny when they get in groups? It’s positively bizarre to me. They all seem to imitate the exact same emotion as the rest of the group and it seems so fake from my perspective. There’s no way to easily fake an emotional response so it must be real to them, yet I just can’t get into their mode. Maybe I can for a brief moment here and there but it never lasts.

Sometimes I try to tell a joke that people would find funny but when in a group they don’t find me funny because the delivery is somehow off. My timing is off because I have to think about what I say before I say it. Their conversation seems to emanates from some unconscious forefront of their being while mine emanates from a deeper, highly conscious recess. They’re often shallow and trite in their thinking. Their conversation quickly becomes tedious for me to follow. My mind drifts and they proceed to ignore me. I spend the rest of the time staring at the design on one of their shirts, or maybe off into the distance, thinking to myself about more interesting things.

The way I relate to the world is by continually evaluating information and building up hypotheses, testing them, breaking them apart, absorbing more information etc etc. One of the hypotheses that I've seriously considered is that my problems are purely in the way my mind is interpreting the feedback of others. That I am in fact relating 100% exactly the same as everyone else, but the problem is my mind is deluding me that others think I'm odd and are rejecting me somehow. That others are really enjoying my company and my problem is that I'm interpreting positive feedback as negative.

This is what your niece seems to be suggesting and exactly what my therapist says.



I experience the same and that is why I believe the 'interpreting others feedback in too negative a light' theory is completely incorrect. I'm sure we all have many, many examples. One that springs (painfully) to mind for me is whenever in a class/group situation and the teacher says "OK everyone, now choose a partner and get into pairs". Ouch. I'll bet my trousers that you all know what happens next..... On an odd numbered group, guess who always ends up paired with teacher?

Droopy, I've had the same situation you describe, only with my wife. It's made our social life together impossible as her friends can barely hide their dislike of me. Whether I'm being too withdrawn and timid, too opiniated and hostile, too fake, too genuine, I have absolutely no idea. I've tried all these approaches and I just don't hit it off with 90% of people.

My current explanation is that nobody really likes being overtly negative to others. It hurts their self-image as a tolerant right-thinking person to be encountered by someone they want to avoid for whatever reason. Reminds me of several rejections I've had from females who just will not say why they're rejecting me. On every possible factor, looks, personality, size of bank account , they'll say I'm fine, there's just this mysterious unexplainable reason why they could never go out with me. People don't like to write others off as somehow 'weird' beyond repair, so they say that everything's absolutely fine, whilst frantically looking around for an escape from your presence. Lying is the oil by which the NT social machine functions smoothly.



Reassuring that it's not just me - although you have my sympathy. Or empathy?

You know, it's quite incredible that as someone who's lived mostly before AS existed, I always thought it was just me. And that I must be imagining all this. Sometimes I don't know how I survived. Probably lucky that every now and then I'd meet someone with a similar outlook and we would just get on without any of these problems. Now I realise these were the other "1 in 100s", ie other AS individuals.

So very true.

I'm witha you NTs can be just plain bizzare the way I see it. I tried to be friendly. Then I tried to be confident and incontrol of the situation. Next I tried to be compliant and friendly and my internship mentor told me "You're just a people pleaser!"
Say what

There is just no pleasing the NT world most of the time from what I see They don't seem to accept you for trying to fit in and then they get pissed bcause you are too much of a conformer. Go figure