Being "impolite"

[soph21]

Hello everyone,
I've never actually written a post here and I'm hardly in this forum, but I need to get something off my chest today and I don't have anyone that I could talk about it with, so I figured why not here. Maybe there are other people here who have the same problem.

My problem is that I very often come off as "impolite" because of the things that I say or how I say them. But the thing is, I never try to be impolite at all. It's just that I cannot control my tone very well and when I get frustrated/ overwhelmed/ stressed, I tend to snap at people (I really don't want to, but I just can't help it). Also, I'm often told that things I say (which I said because it was a simple fact or because I thought it was funny) are rude or I'm told that I AM rude (like not only what I said, but me as a person).

Yesterday, there was this situation which shook me a bit. My brother talked to our father on the phone and was speaking about visiting him for Christmas. My brother lives with our mother and I live alone and was just at my mother's place for the holidays. We don't have a good relationship to our father and I decided that I didn't want to visit him, but I didn't want to fight, so I asked my brother to just cover for me and we say that I'm sick. My brother told that to my father on the phone while I was in the room and my father asked questions about me which my brother couldn't answer right away and just answered with the help of me nodding or shaking my head.

After the call, my brother praised himself jokingly for what a good liar he is and how convincing it was.
And I said (I meant it as a joke, even though it wouldn't actually be a lie) that it would have been more convincing if he wouldn't actually have been able to answer all those questions (there were some things like 'does she have her phone muted' which I don't expect anyone to know, but definitely not my brother since we aren't super close). I didn't see that what I said was rude or anything, but my brother said "You're so rude sometimes, I don't understand why you would say that". And as usually when I'm told that (always in situations when I really didn't mean to be rude) my go-to answer is "Well, I am an asshole." I don't think this is the best answer, but I've found that people hate me a bit less if I make them feel like I hate myself more than they could ever.

Sorry ffr the long text, I just really needed to get that off my chest because it's so so frustrating.

 

[Misty Avich]

I don't see what is rude about what you said.

 

[Aspychata]

Now you get why a lot of us *mask*, because we just want to thru day to day interactions.

 

[UFO]

Hah. I just gave a short rant about same problems in my introduction thread. That is also my most prevailing autistic symptom, others being more trivial.

I wish I could give any advice, but I have never understood how to avoid most extreme reactions from neurotypicals to most harmless seeming comments. My best method is just to explain "I am probably an autistic and it comes with hardship to understand the weight of my words, but I assure that I don't mean to be rude and whatever I said is just meant to be a neutral statement". Or, in your brother's case (assuming he is aware of your symptoms, and what they mean), "you should already know that I don't mean that".

I have pretty much given up trying to request more information from people about what they think I have said, so I can avoid such situations from developing again, because such inquiries seem to make situations just worse

Oh. And that feedback to your brother. I don't see anything wrong in that. My own blurts tend to be worse and more obviously rude when analyzed afterwards.

 

[Hypnalis]

You misread the conversation.

Your brother was "fishing" for praise or gratitude, but in an appropriate way.
A simple "Thanks <brother's name>, I owe you one", (or rather, something culturally equivalent in Danish), would have worked better.

As an Aspie, you're better off not using sarcastic humor until you get the protocols for normal speech nearly perfect.

Sarcastic humor is funny because you deliberately break the protocols in exactly the right way. If it's done wrong, it's anywhere from mildly annoying to quite rude.

FWIW the "mildly annoying" reaction is sometimes because it breaks the flow of the conversation and "kills the mood". A neutral/positive response that sustains the mood is better, even if it doesn't add anything.