This is good advice, thanks!

Unfortunately the worst of it always seems to take place over text, at least I know it’s common now.

I considered this, but the fact that it’s been two different friends plus my sister made me think I was the one being a dick.

Maybe we’re all dicks

I don’t think that’s quite right. I’m a basketcase and they know it. They’re always pretty rightfully annoyed with me for catastrophizing. I also used to try too hard to reassure them— eg, someone would say he feels like a bad person and I’d remind him of the good things he’s done— and they had to explain to me that that’s a dick move.

Its certainly harder to explain over text since we can’t hear your tone. Do you put in a lot of effort when you speak ? Does talking come naturally, or do you spend a lot of energy trying to be polite ?

It definitely takes a lot of energy. Using the right tone, making the correct amount of eye contact, listening to what the other person is saying, and not talking so long to come up with a reply that they get mad at me, feels like multitasking. I really try, though.

Also a two day argument is a long argument. Who kept it going? Who would bring it up first?

I guess we both kept it going. I should have dropped it but I hated leaving the conversation with him thinking I was lying. That’s another problem I know I need to work on.

Edit: I see in one comment that you are autistic. Have you talked to your friends and family about what this means in a conversation ? At some point its on them, honestly.

I’ve talked about autism before, but two of my friends are autistic and the other has a TBI, so they told me it wasn’t really fair for me to expect them to hold my hand and explain everything I was doing wrong, which I think is fair. As for my family, there’s no talking about psych stuff with them.

Either way I’d rather learn social skills than ask everyone I meet to let me be rude since I’m autistic. No one’s going to want to put up with that.

Eh, I’ve gotten that feedback from two different friends, plus my sister. And I know I’m autistic. So at some point I have to accept that I’m sending messages I really don’t mean to.

One possibility is that it’s how you phrase things? Everything seems fine here but people tend to write and speak differently, so just throwing out a possibility here.

Maybe? I feel like I try too hard to be polite sometimes. My last therapist told me I was allowed to ask my friends for better ways to phrase things, but they got mad and said I was putting them on the spot.

Last time I explicitly said, “sorry, that was my fault,” and explained what I did wrong, and my friend still took it as me calling him stupid.

I’m beginning to think it’s just too complex for anyone to explain to me how to be nice

Also some subjects are sore as you experienced with your unemployed friend, so having this habit of taking a step back might have helped with realizing that in advance. It’s not always doable of course, you can’t know everything.

What do you do when you accidentally bring up a sore subject? Last time, I apologized and said I should have realized (I should have), and my friend and I got into a two-day argument about whether it was a sincere apology or not. I finally asked what I did to deserve being accused of lying and he just said “well if I had said that I’d mean it manipulatively, so I assumed you did”. So apologizing in that scenario is taken as manipulative, right?

I went into more detail in this comment. Can’t pull exact quotes as I left the group chat because I was tired of constantly causing arguments, so this is the best of my recollection.

Also once friend A was feeling guilty because he was enjoying the weather even though it was the side effect of a natural disaster. I didn’t know this at the time, I was talking with friend B who was encouraging me to vent about my family.

I wasn’t being treated for my OCD and was a paranoid pain in the ass and kept asking why it was OK, when last time I was told that venting about my family was insulting to friend A. Friend A saw this conversation and immediately posted “I know the real reason you’re mad at me—” (I wasn’t mad) “—it’s because I’m a colonizer!”

I don’t pick up on these things and spent the next several weeks trying to figure out why my question insinuated he’s a colonizer, and how to ask things without calling people colonizers.

Like some examples I could give just sound really weird if you weren’t there. And that’s just one where I eventually picked up on what actually went wrong. Mostly I just look back on old arguments and I’m really confused and I wouldn’t be surprised if they sound like word salad when I try to describe them.

This is a good suggestion, thanks!

I’ve tried but I work 8-5 and through the weekend, I can’t find anything compatible with my hours 😭 I’d love to join one of the local hiking groups someday

No, it’s mostly my friends and family telling me I’m being an asshole or insinuating things I didn’t mean to. Oddly enough, people seem to like me at work.

I wasn’t directly called a dick, but I get told I “clearly” mean something I didn’t mean a lot. Like once I was complaining that my siblings (all late 20s to early 30s) didn’t work and expected my mom to pay for everything, and a friend came in with “I know you’re just mad at me for being unemployed” when I wasn’t talking to or about him. Another time, I was venting (with permission) and said I was scared I was a bad person, and this friend took it to mean he was a bad judge of character, and even after I apologized he kept talking about what a bad judge of character he is.

I thought it was just this friend projecting his insecurities, but recently I was arguing with another friend and I apologized and said it was my fault for not explaining myself clearly, and he took it to mean I thought he was too stupid to have serious conversations with. He said I look down on him for being disabled and stopped talking to me.

My sister has also gotten mad at me without warning during casual conversations and I have to pry an explanation out of her and it’s always “your tone of voice made it sound like you were picking a fight”.

Also multiple instances where I was repeatedly told my apologies weren’t genuine and I was lying.

So no one’s straight up called me a dick, but I think a person who says or thinks the things I’m communicating would be a dick. Whether I mean to be or not, the person I’m presenting to the world is a dick. I make people feel awful about themselves, and I want to not do that.

Anyway, thanks for the tips. I try to do all those, but now that I think about it, I’m probably bad at the last one. I’ve definitely been yelled at for not shutting up before.

I tried, unfortunately I get shuffled between relatively solitary jobs and customer service on a moment’s notice. I think last time I tried I was listening to something gory and didn’t have time to pause it before helping a little kid find clothes. Sorry if I looked traumatized, kid.

I could probably find more opportunities to listen at home while doing chores and stuff, though. I have a tendency to want to take in fiction in big blocks of time instead small chunks split across the day, but it’s not always an option.

And the book is The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy! I picked it up kinda blind because I’ve had both friends and Lemmy users recommend books by him, but the library didn’t have any of the ones that were suggested to me.

I feel like the odd one out because I don’t care that it’s a plant I just find horny anime faces really unattractive.

I’m not in the “would” or the “ewwwww” camp. I have standards but they’re stupid standards, I guess.

Didn’t this happen in Thomas the Tank Engine

It’s so stupid, ain’t it? The logic is so broken when you think about it. So the south has oppressive laws. You think that’s bad, because people deserve better, right? Except then you hate people for being oppressed, so much that you want them to suffer further punishment.

So you don’t actually hate oppression, right? So then why don’t you like the south?

Liberals are some of the stupidest creatures alive. (I’m a leftist)

Appalachia is flooded and tons of people can’t get clean water or evacuate due to roads collapsing. Opened Tumblr, saw a smug liberal practically orgasming over “you Trump voters” getting what we deserve.

I guess I’m fighting with my only friend again. I told him I explained something badly and he misunderstood it. He told me he’s too stupid to have serious conversations with. I reiterated that the communication failure was on my end, and he’s not stupid. He suddenly flipped the script and said I always make him feel stupid and that I think he’s lesser than me. Even though he was calling himself stupid and I was trying to reassure him? I attempted to comfort him and asked what I could do better, since I actually really admire him, but he hasn’t replied.

It’s almost time to return my library book and I’ve barely touched it. I carry it everywhere with me, but we’re so busy I have to work through my breaks and I pretty much fall asleep when I get home. I guess it’s more of a hobby for well off people.

Maybe next week will be remotely decent.

It’s like a sweetened, fizzy sassafras drink. Pretty good depending where you get it.

The USA has a weird thing where we use the words for alcoholic drinks to describe non-alcoholic ones. We also call spiced fruit drinks “cider” and actual cider “hard cider”. Not sure why.

Maybe Homer’s got shit he’s not telling Marge

Just because you’re aro or aroace doesn’t mean you don’t understand heartache and loss. When we empathize with fictional characters, is it because we’ve been through exactly what they’ve been through? Doubtful, because then fantasy wouldn’t exist. But we’ve had similar emotions, so it resonates.

I don’t really see why songs would be any different.

Lil bit of a bummer, feels like I just exercise, work, and sleep. My limited free time has been spent on my family, which… ughhhh by the time I realized they mistreated me all my life and I hate them, they’d lost power over me, so basically they’re not pushing me around anymore and think we’re all friends, and I don’t know how to tell them that I’m retroactively spiteful. So I play nice.

Gonna try so hard to get some reading and drawing done in the coming days.