Part of the confusion is the men I have had experiences with spend a lot of time talking about women but then invest an uncomfortable amount of time trying to turn me into a man that they want me to be for them.
One guy spent nearly two weeks trying to get me to take creatine and go work out with him. Like if he wants me to cuddle him with big, strong, manly arms, he was going about it in a weird way.
It’s just as confusing when men love that I treat them as unique individual but get upset with me that I also treat women like unique individuals, almost like they are jealous.
100% agree, tons of NT men do weird, esoteric, ‘interperet my strange, indirect dance of actions, and if you fail to understand what they mean, well you’re an asshole / a bitch / a tease’ type bullshit.
NT women of course do this as well, watching a couple recent compilations of women explaining that they are sending an extremely obvious flirting sign by literally holding eye contact with a person they are walking past for an actual quarter second longer than their own personal normal duration for this… has been uh, eye opening.
Like these girls would be irate, immensely frustrated that no one noticed this form of flirtation, no guy noticed that and then immediately asked for their digits… because this form of flirtation is apparently just extremely obvious and noticeable?
Everything would be about a million times easier if people just actually stated what they wanted… at least in concept… but the problem is that being that direct forces people to be honest with themselves, forces the possibility of a direct denial/rejection, and people tend to not like that.
The whole problem is that NTs all seem to think their specific weird actions are universally, easily understood to convey the same meaning to everyone, but other NTs will significantly disagree about these things when they bother to actually examine them in detail!
So its less that Autists ‘cant figure out social cues’ and more like ‘NTs can’t agree on social cues, but they all act like they do universally agree’… and then Autists are confused by this, because much of it actually is inconsistent and contradictory.
I’d love to be able to ask directly, but my fear is they’ll treat me differently after I ask. It’s already happened once to me; a friend stopped hanging out with me for a while (I think that’s fixed now, but it lasted months). I feel a bit safer about it around autistic people though, because I’m pretty sure a rejection would be just a “no” and then we proceed like nothing happened.
Oh, many men are jealous when women they like hang out a lot with other women and enjoy their time. Modern culture made it look like women may form a special form of deep connection men can never reach, while simultaneously making men feel isolated overall, and some are driven quite crazy over it.
As such, when they get the attention they crave, they don’t feel they can secure it. Thereby, mentioning other women and what they mean to you feels like a threat. This takes a while to unlearn, and is one kind of trauma many men get to experience.
I do not have many personal insights about how men want their friends/partners to be manly, but I may suggest it may come from the same point. Male friendships nowadays are fairly rare, and some folks really just want a bro to hang out with.
Part of the confusion is the men I have had experiences with spend a lot of time talking about women but then invest an uncomfortable amount of time trying to turn me into a man that they want me to be for them.
One guy spent nearly two weeks trying to get me to take creatine and go work out with him. Like if he wants me to cuddle him with big, strong, manly arms, he was going about it in a weird way.
It’s just as confusing when men love that I treat them as unique individual but get upset with me that I also treat women like unique individuals, almost like they are jealous.
The signals are there but I can’t read 'em!
Autistic guy here:
100% agree, tons of NT men do weird, esoteric, ‘interperet my strange, indirect dance of actions, and if you fail to understand what they mean, well you’re an asshole / a bitch / a tease’ type bullshit.
NT women of course do this as well, watching a couple recent compilations of women explaining that they are sending an extremely obvious flirting sign by literally holding eye contact with a person they are walking past for an actual quarter second longer than their own personal normal duration for this… has been uh, eye opening.
Like these girls would be irate, immensely frustrated that no one noticed this form of flirtation, no guy noticed that and then immediately asked for their digits… because this form of flirtation is apparently just extremely obvious and noticeable?
Everything would be about a million times easier if people just actually stated what they wanted… at least in concept… but the problem is that being that direct forces people to be honest with themselves, forces the possibility of a direct denial/rejection, and people tend to not like that.
The whole problem is that NTs all seem to think their specific weird actions are universally, easily understood to convey the same meaning to everyone, but other NTs will significantly disagree about these things when they bother to actually examine them in detail!
So its less that Autists ‘cant figure out social cues’ and more like ‘NTs can’t agree on social cues, but they all act like they do universally agree’… and then Autists are confused by this, because much of it actually is inconsistent and contradictory.
I’d love to be able to ask directly, but my fear is they’ll treat me differently after I ask. It’s already happened once to me; a friend stopped hanging out with me for a while (I think that’s fixed now, but it lasted months). I feel a bit safer about it around autistic people though, because I’m pretty sure a rejection would be just a “no” and then we proceed like nothing happened.
Oh, many men are jealous when women they like hang out a lot with other women and enjoy their time. Modern culture made it look like women may form a special form of deep connection men can never reach, while simultaneously making men feel isolated overall, and some are driven quite crazy over it.
As such, when they get the attention they crave, they don’t feel they can secure it. Thereby, mentioning other women and what they mean to you feels like a threat. This takes a while to unlearn, and is one kind of trauma many men get to experience.
I do not have many personal insights about how men want their friends/partners to be manly, but I may suggest it may come from the same point. Male friendships nowadays are fairly rare, and some folks really just want a bro to hang out with.
I’m quite literally a bro they can hang out with, and have always been. I just lack the big strong arms they want me to have to cuddle them with D: