Hints and Innuendos

What I find frustrating about NT people is that they never want to tell you things directly, it’s always through hints and innuendos. I think they do this mostly to save your feelings if they’re saying something unpleasant, or because they’re a bit shy about talking of their feelings, or sometimes I think they’re just showing off their superior skills in this area.

I tell people about my autism and how they need to be direct and talk in a straightforward manner with me, but I think they forget. Their minds are zapping ahead and they don’t remember to pause for me. But it causes so many complications. There have been so many arguments in my family because people think I’ve said or agreed to things I haven’t.

This tends to happen mostly between me and my younger sister. Not all NT people use the hints and innuendos technique equally. My sister does it a lot though, which can create havoc for me. She will say something which contains an unsaid meaning which she thinks should clear; I don’t get it, but because I don’t disagree, she assumes an agreement has been reached and all the while I am ignorant.

Taking the direct and straightforward approach with an autistic person can mean having to changing old, sometimes negative behaviour patterns, and this can be very challenging. People don’t always have the other persons wishes in mind when they decide what they want and if that person is autistic the temptations to exploit their social naivety can be great. Being around an autistic person is a lesson in behaving well. If you behave well, the autistic person behaves well; you both understand each other clearly and there is no game playing.

Now that I am wise to the games people play (it’s taken me up to this point in my life to get there) I am constantly on the look out for them. I have been naïve and innocent so people have used these tricks on me many times. But now I have caught on! And I do my best to stop them. . Before I had a tendency to go along with what others wanted because it was easier than trying to figure out what was going on in the first place. But I am not as malleable and compliant as I used to be. My growing awareness has lead to some conflict, I think my family sometimes prefer me the way I was before.

There was this one time when I was planning to go away with my family. I was going to get a lift back with my sister. I absolutely had to back for work Monday afternoon. I checked with my sister when we would be coming back and she said Sunday, though it might end up being Monday. What she really meant was Monday afternoon, but she didn’t tell me this because she knew I would try and get a lift with someone else and for her own reason this was not what she wanted.

As the weekend was approaching I was getting more and more edgy. I couldn‘t get a straight answer out of my sister and I smelt a rat. Eventually, after some pestering she conceded that they were planning to come back Monday afternoon, I then told her I couldn‘t go. She was very cross saying I could easily miss work. I was cross because I felt someone had tried to pull the wool over my eyes. I think you have to be autistic before you realise how much that sensation can hurt.