You've developed the patience of a saint. You very clearly set boundaries at least three times. Those boundaries were very clearly crossed.

You want to watch the fight. You don't want a drink. (What if you are an alcoholic or on medication?)

Being friendly isn't an excuse to step all over your boundaries. Friendly or not, he's lucky he didn't end up wearing the drink. No means no, coming from a man or a woman. You were more than kind in this situation.

I have a lot of patience because I have a bad temper. When I was a child, I would snap very quickly at things that wouldn't bother most people.

With some anger management classes taken during middle school, that changed a lot. If I was a teenager, he probably would have been glassed.

Is it tough for you to have to second-guess like this in social situations? Do you have to do it often? Do you find it hard not to be paranoid and just assume that things you are not sure about are negative? What's your all time favorite hobby?

Sorry for all the questions. I'm just curious and nosy. Tell me if I cross any lines.

You come across as very together and super intelligent. Is your disorder reflected in your IQ, do you think?

But was he forcing the others that he was buying food/drink for to teach them English? I doubt it. You don't owe him an English lesson, and certainly not for the price of a Spanish beer and some tapas or whatever that you surely can buy for yourself. As an American who has never been to Spain, I can't really judge their culture and how it pertains to this situation. Americans like us some space, though. IMO, he was being way more socially awkward than you. Popular people can be socially awkward, too, and here he was just over imposing.



I get that, but to me "being friendly" means respecting my space/intentions. Again, probably much more of an American thing than anything really. It's got to be extra tough for you to have to meander through social situations in other cultures, since they will make less sense to you than your natural American culture.

Yes, this makes the situation tough. I said earlier if a dude moves my drink aside and sets one down I'm standing up and asking him if he has a problem, but if half the bar is his cousins then that's a little different. I'm not sure what you should have done here. Leaving the bar isn't correct unless you feel you were about to physically snap. You just need to be firm in your tone and say you are not interested in working tonight, and are here to watch the fight. I mean what else can you do? He was definitely in the wrong, though. I don't care what culture he comes from. And he was also way more socially awkward than you, at least in this 1-on-1 scenario.

Keep in mind everybody runs into awkward social situations from time to time, whether they are on the spectrum or not. And they don't handle them all perfectly. So don't feel too bad about it. Social skills seem much closer to an art form than they are scientific.

Not sure exactly what you mean by the first question. Are you talking about the negative impact second-guessing myself has in social situations? Or whether or not it is difficult to second-guess myself?

Anyway, I used to not second-guess myself because I didn't think there was a reason to. I was who I was and just went through life dealing with it. When I realized that I am not living a normal lifestyle (I can't think of a better adjective) and needed to change things, I started second-guessing myself. I do less of it now than I used to but I still have times where I feel as though I'm traveling through social situations with a blindfold on.

There is no doubt that when unsure about things that my mind jumps to pessimistic possibilities before the more positive ones. I wouldn't call it paranoia because the pessimistic possibilities are not unrealistic, but I'm definitely not an optimist by nature.

Most of the hobbies I have are quite nerdy and are mostly sedentary activities. I really enjoy playing Magic: The Gathering, D&D, video games, anime, poker, and board games. My more active hobbies are ping-pong and badminton. Sadly, it is difficult to find people who I can share these hobbies since most of them aren't all that common among people my age.

Thanks for the complement. People with ASD are all over the place in terms of intelligence. You have a rare breed of people who are classified as twice exceptional, abbreviated as 2e. This means you have a superior IQ while also having a mental disability. While I fit many of the typical characteristics of 2e people, you have to have an IQ in the top 2 percentile to be classified as 2e (meaning over 130). The only time I was formally tested was when I was 11 years old. At that time, my IQ was 119. So, I would just be considered a high-functioning autistic unless my IQ jumped 11 points or more since then.

I did exhibit some above average intelligence as a child. According to my mother, I was reading the newspaper when I was 2 years old. Now whether or not I was fluent when doing so or if I understood what I was reading is a different story. Given that I spent my preschool and kindergarten years with a speech therapist, I would wager that my pronunciation wasn't all that good. I was a regular in spelling bees, math bees, and geography bees throughout my academic career. I'm not one of those super geniuses that makes it to nationals or even regional competitions, but I won a lot of those competitions in my school.

I flopped massively after high school as I had some serious issues with depression and anxiety while in college. This mental instability was a contributing factor to my mediocre performance in college. It's fair to say that I wasted my potential by not applying myself in school and getting the high marks that I knew I was capable of getting.

It is an American thing. Personal space is respected far more in America than any other country I have been to.

Some things are a bit awkward to me. I think it's weird when I see a couple making out on a train. Obviously not full-on, but certainly more than you would see in public in America. The kiss on the cheeks that you give the opposite sex are also odd to me as I don't know exactly when to do it or who to do it to. So, I normally just don't do it.

If you were reading the newspaper at age 2, you likely had hyperlexia which is generally linked to those on the spectrum.

The description of hyperlexia is a perfect fit for me as a child.

How's it going?

Ah, my thread is alive again! Thought people lost interest in it. So, I didn't really post much.

Anyway, I'm a bit stressed at the moment. Public schools are finished in Spain. So, I lose some hours and thus some pay. Good news there is that I almost immediately got private classes to substitute them. One of my students is an accountant who evidently told everybody about me at her workplace because now people from her business want me to teach them. Definitely good news. Would like to get to the point where my schedule is mostly one-to-one tutoring since those are the most profitable and enjoyable classes.

My current job finishes at the end of June and I do not plan to stay there for another school year for various reasons. So I'm looking for work elsewhere starting in the fall. I am also pursuing work for July. Summer jobs can be tough to get because they either go to people who are more heavily networked or are offered to people who already work at the place. There are also far less of them in general as most academies just take the summer off.

Since my lease on my apartment runs out in mid-July, it's possible that I'll either find a new place or sign a lease that begins in late August as I will be on vacation for most of August and don't want to pay for an apartment I am not living in. Some volunteer teaching jobs provide room and board which would cover my expenses for the time I spend working there. I also have an offer to crash at a friend's place temporarily should anything fail.

I think the most likely scenario is that I accept the work that my current employer will have during the summer and crash with the friend for the last 1-2 weeks of July before my trip in August.

Socially, I've been pretty limited. Finally found a place with some people who play ping-pong and tennis. So, I have that going for me. I'm starting to get back into chess (might start posting in the Chess Forum soon). I spent just about my entire life not having any human opponents and that continues to this day. So, I'll have to work with chess.com and maybe some of the Chess books I used to own are on Kindle now. I'll have to buy those.

The chess.com chess team is fun. You should join. I'm on it. BobJoeJim, vixticator, grando, and others. But those are the SE regs that I can think of. We got some good players on our team. wlrs is a FIDE Master. We play human opponents, just over the computer!

Guess what my screen name is...

I for one haven't lost interest. I just try to keep myself from crawling all over a poster with questions. I can get annoying. Anyway....

I want to share that you have been a conduit for making me aware, on a conscious level, of something I have been doing. Wasn't actually even deliberate.

See if I make sense.

When I read the threads, I have been avoiding looking at the names and avatars before I finish. If I find a comment that I find especially interesting or thought provoking, I glance at the picture.

Do you know that I had no idea to begin with that you had changed your avatar?

Apparently, I make a snap judgement on an opinion, then look to see who said it.
I have no clue if this is healthy or normal or even interesting, it's just that I became conscious of it because of you.

Incidentally, I had the same positive reaction to your comments even when I didn't realize it was you.

Keep posting if you have the time. I enjoy the read.

Same, although im aware of it. Like I didn't know who posted this until I hit the quote button, not even bothering to check the avatar.

I only do this when I phone post. Laptop posting I look at the avatars/screen names.

By all means, fire away with your questions.


Guess my title remains true lol

Thanks.

You are not uninteresting, slightly intimidating, if anything.

Have you had any feedback from your friends since you told them your diagnosis?
Have you or they changed in your interactions since?
What's the most interesting question anyone ever asked you about your autism?
How is it that you manage to consistently nail the emotional construct of the posts you respond to? (At least in my opinion you do)

Not really. Though to be fair, I haven't seen most of them since I told them.

Lately, I've had a more "**** it" type of attitude with my socialization. If people don't like me, they don't like me. I've had this attitude before and it hasn't worked out but I believe that was due to being out of my element and oftentimes drunk. Now that I'm sober, I'm gonna be me and not sweat the results. I view it as a way of not letting my condition define who I am. This has resulted in me going out way less often since the environments my friends tend to hang out in are pretty toxic to me. I found some other people to hang with but I'm not really close to them.

One person asked me how autism could be used to pick up girls.

Was speechless for a solid half minute not knowing what to say before giving some meandering response that very quickly became unrelated to the question I was asked.

Because I have time to think about my comments before sending them. I'm sort of a perfectionist when it comes to making posts with regards to grammar and diction. Even after submitting the post, I have 30 minutes to edit to see if I misunderstood anything or made any mistakes.

Thanks for your comments, SUB. Some require more thought on my part.

As to your new avatar:

If you meant it to be funny, I'm laughing my a** off.

If you meant it as some political statement or some other obscure reference,
I'm still laughing my a** off. What a dude.

Bob,

Thanks for posting this thread. I have a question for you. You said:

If one of my friends told me they were autistic I might respond indifferently. I would show interest, but I wouldn't make a big deal out of it or ask a lot of questions, at least right away. That doesn't mean I don't care, and privately I would think about it, but I try to value my friends for who they are, not the labels attached to them. The autism label might explain some of their behaviors and/or attitudes, but it doesn't change our relationship. I was wondering if you could speak to this and help me understand your perspective.

Kind regards,
aki

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. I just don't see a question in there.

Wow, this is crazy. Never heard of this before but it describes how my niece is.

Thanks for sharing and that's a lot of guts and confidence to be able to share something like this. Never look at anything as a negative, be positive and make every day a better one. Be happy with who you are, because everyone is unique and no one is perfect.

How would you like to be treated after telling a close friend about your diagnosis? What thoughts and feelings would you want them to express?

I answered that question earlier in the thread.

Describes my son perfectly as well