True friends

[BruceCM]

Well, since they say they can't know what anybody with whom I socializied meant by anything they said to me or what they might have been responding to, particularly, as they don't know those people & weren't there at the time, they can't then advise on those things! It was obvious long ago that some part of the body language, facial expressions &/or tone of voice sometimes give misleading impressions but whatever it is making people think I'm rude , arrogant &/ or disrespectful doesn't seem to happen with the support workers. Oddly, although it's therefore been agreed, long ago, that any advisor for such problems simply has to be there at the time, there's never been such a person available.
The first hurdle is the probelmatic one, which is just gettting people to see that whatever words we're using to communicate with each other do need to actually mean something! You can't get to agree what that is when the first part isn't agreed. There's not really any question of what I mean by table/ chair/ radio, etc. Or, for the 'abstract' area, there's no question of what I mean with any maths terms, etc. It'd be like saying 2+2 can equal anything you like!

 

[ziggification]

[Please don't let this fall into TL;DR territory....I'm trying to be concise....it just....isn't happening]

Morning,

I can only ever give my opinion about things. But I have a theory as to why some people might find you rude. (That is not to say that "I find you rude" but that I can see why others might.)

To my American sensibilities your sentence structure is incredibly concise and formal. You might even describe it as "punchy." I am not sure you converse in the same way that you write, but if you do that might be something that is off-putting to a few people in informal situations. Example, "...they can't know what anybody with whom I socialized meant..." although the text is grammatically correct it is constructed in a way that is no longer used in conversational English. The additional formality of the words adds meaning to them. When I read what you wrote here, the underlying message that I see is:

"I am dealing with idiots who don't really understand that by nature the things they are saying they'd "need to see" are the exact things that I am asking about. And any interpretation, even if it is so precise in its pertinence to just one specific instance would be more helpful than the "no comment" I've been getting." I would dub the overall "tone" sarcastic and angry.

Would you be willing to describe a little the last time that you had an interaction where communication just broke down? If that's too personal, then I'm sorry for prying.

As for conquering that first hurdle, you can almost always infer what people mean when they refer to objects. Example when someone is in a store pointing to an item and calling it a "halter top" and comparing it to a "T-shirt" and "tank top", you can wrap your head around what halter top means without explicitly asking and feeling awkward about it. This is pretty much true for 80% of the words you use. So there's no need to worry about having someone hand you a spoon when you ask for a chair. And outside of math jokes, numeric expressions are almost always taken as they should be taken. (I would joke that 2+2=22, or that 2+2 = an apology because you spit in my face while saying that.)

Then there are the words that HAVE fairly concrete agreed upon meanings, but are able to be applied to different, even mutually exclusive things. Example, "beautiful". Something/someone that is beautiful is aesthetically pleasing - base definition. Now after THAT point it's up for debate. Does aesthetically pleasing only refer to something that is pleasant for the five senses or does it also include things that are pleasing to the mind? And then you can argue about the ability to actually attach the title "beautiful" to a particular item. If I say a sock is beautiful, and you say it isn't -- we aren't so much disagreeing about the MEANING of beautiful, but on the qualities of the sock. We could then proceed to converse about beauty, and many people do. Other words that fall into this range are right, wrong, moral, honorable, brave, charitable, good, bad, peace, power, you get the point?

BUT what I was really trying to touch on was words and phrases that have little to no socially agreed upon meaning in practical contexts OR that can have WIDE-RANGING additional meanings for certain individuals. Please allow me to list a few in no particular order and then end with a series of questions that you may not have thought of when writing your original post. Art, Love, Intelligence, Friendship.

What does "true friend" mean to you? How is a "true friend" distinct from a "friend" or a "best friend" or a "close friend"? If someone isn't really a good friend, wouldn't they lose the title friend....so wouldn't all people who actually live up to the title "friend" BE "true friends"? Which would make the addition of "true" unnecessary....redundant even.

I think that everyone SEES that the words they use must have A meaning. BUT they don't SEE that the words they use MAY have different meanings, for different people, in different places. When dealing with people in an informal context, trying to socialize on a personal level having disagreements about which words need extra definitions can get cumbersome. Which is why some people tend to gloss over these topics at first until you can spend the time with the person to delve into their understanding of language and the world -- which are inextricably meshed. That delving process is....the overture of friendship. Taking it slow with consideration for the other person makes them feel like you care about what they have to say...like you aren't just asking to ask or to be disrespectful. Because saying "what do you mean by that" in a flat tone will almost always come across to an NT person as sarcastic and rude. It must always come from a place of curiosity about them...Ex. Hey Jules, you called me your friend the other day when you introduced me to Martin, and it got me thinking about friendship and what that word even means anymore. What does friendship mean to you? then listen to the response and insert your own meaning of friendship in the form of a comment or question.

This seems as good a point as any to end for now.

-Sylvia

 

[BruceCM]

That's why any chat referring to physical objects isn't a problem! I'd not be asking in a 'flat' tone but there' s plenty of other ways tones, body language & facial expressions might convey misleading impressions. I do get angry when people insist on things that so obviously (to me) contradict themselves or whatever; the problem being I don't think they'r e idiots; what they say clearly does make sense to them & that makes it a very different kind of thinking from any I can do. Nobody's said I'm 'too formal', so I don't think that's much of a problem. Probably the best example of the sort of communication breakdown I'm talking about would be an email from somebody from a local Autism Centre. He was the one who said 'the only meaning is the one you put in'. I replied to 'explain' why that made no sense to me & there wasn't any reply but the other support worker seems to manage to blame me for that. Many thanks for your posts!

 

[ziggification]

There is always a bit of condescension in the expression of the thought "Why don't you get it?! I am being SO clear" or "What are you talking about. That makes no sense."

Any display of emotion or judgmental thought -- frustration or confusion -- is almost always interpreted as rudeness and it can make you unwanted company.

What kinds of things contradict themselves?

Why did you put explain in quotes -- was your explanation more of a rant than a conversation starter? Explaining why the phrase doesn't make sense for you places you in a dominant position socially. The only response for the social worker would have been to bow to your argument or to argue/debate with you -- I am going out on a limb and going to say that either of those would have put him in an even more awkward position -- professionally and socially-- so not responding at all may have been the best course from his perspective.

What response would you have wanted from him?

Is it possible that the center is just busy, and he couldn't respond to the email?

Can you think of a way that you could have phrased the email differently to get the clarification you needed without offending/upsetting the support worker?

[Irrelevant Side Note: When I read through the thread, I imagine that you are all 'speaking' with regional accents. And this led me to Google accents from the Netherlands, Nebraska and Devon. The one that surprised me the most was......Nebraska...Weird, right? I'm kind of keen on Dutch 'R's now. And I don't think that I would be American if I didn't swoon over a English accent. Do you 'hear' posts when you read them?]

 

[BruceCM]

So, I'm in an impossible situation & this is jus t getting bogged down, really; thanks but I've really got no way of anticipating how people will take what I said. Naturally, I seem to be responsible for that & how whatever they say comes across to me, too. Shame the support workers can't say things in ways that don't upset me & there's thus nobody to ask about that!

 

[Mr. Jones]

My best friend is a ?true friend? to me. I consider her to be a ?true friend? because of the nature of our relationship and what she has done and continues to do for me.

She has been friends with me for an extraordinary amount of time: 5 years! Although that might not sound like too much, in my life, where most individuals will stop communicating with me and break off a relationship or connection in less than a year, it is a significant amount of time to have been friends with someone. She has also continued to support me through horrible times in my life when most others don?t care.

As of now she allows me to send a barrage of emails to her inbox about all the issues, worries, sadness, frustration, and everything in between that I struggle with. She is incredibly wise, patient, supportive, and accepting of my limitations and difficulties. She coaches me on socializing, hygiene, and everything else in life.

We have affectionate names for each other - I named her ?Redneck? and she named me ?Mr. Jones.?

She bought a shirt on eBay that says, ?I Love Someone with Autism? that she proudly wears .

On my shelf next to my office desk I have a framed photo of her and I together when I travelled to the United States to meet her in person for the first time in Montana. Planning a trip to see her in Seattle in a few years when she has the time and I have the money.

A poem she sent me in a file folder sums our friendship up:

?This is for you, my best friend,
The one person I can tell my soul to
Who can relate to me like no other
Who I can laugh with to no extents,
Who I can cry to when times are tough,
Who can help me with the problems of my life.

Never have you turned your back on me
Or told me I wasn?t good enough
Or let me down.

I don?t think you know what that means to me
That you have gone through so much pain and you still have time
For me.
And I love you for listening even when inside YOU are dying
And I look up to you because you are strong,
and caring
and beautiful.
Even though you don?t think you are.

And I hope you know that I am always here
To listen to you laugh and cry and help
In all the ways that I can
And I will try to be at least half the friend you are
To me.

I hope you know that I would not be the person I am today, without you.
My best friend.?

Beautiful poem .

She accepts and knows me better than anyone else and she is invaluable to me.

Yes I have a ?true friend.?

 

[Spinning Compass]

Sometimes we don't realize who our truest friends are until they are no longer in our lives. Sometimes they are the people that we snarl at, lash out at, because they tell us things we don't want to hear or aren't ready to hear. There seems to be a feeling that a true friend will always take your side no matter what. Wrong. Sometimes the people who go along with us, who sympathize with us and generally tell us what we want to hear really aren't our friends at all. A true friend will hold you accountable. A true friend will sometimes say, hey, this is not a good course of action or a good course of behavior, this is going to hurt you in the long run. And we get all defensive and bristly about it and call them all kinds of names only to find out many years down the road that maybe, just maybe they did know what they were talking about.

 

[Arashi222]

So my thoughts on this is that its true often I feel like I don't know what I had until its gone. I realized that years ago when my good friend passed away. My newest attempt at friendship didn't go well and now I wonder what a true friend really is. I think a true friend makes you accountable but loves you anyway. I think a true friend is willing ot help you when you ask and doesn't tell you that its all in your head or that you don't feel that way. I also think that true friendship is hard to find. That maybe its someone who sticks through the tough times.