Are you often completely misunderstood because of peculiar tastes/feelings?

[musicalman]

Hi everyone,
Yesterday I had a bit of an incident take place with a friend of mine which illustrates the topic I'm getting at. I'll describe what happened since I think it will lead nicely into my question, but if you don't want to read a novella, you can skip to the bottom of the post to get to the actual question .

This friend of mine, I'll call him Dave, wanted me to meet a singer he knew. She wasn't doing much, just got out of college and was looking for work I think. He figured the two of us could meet up and play some gigs together with her on vocals and me on keyboard.

When we met, the singer brought a list of songs and Dave picked one and asked us to run it through. It was a singer/songwriter type thing which I really don't like too much. It wasn't interesting at all for me, I did not enjoy playing it.

I tried to explain this as politely as I could, saying this just wasn't cool for me, I wasn't feeling this. Now Dave is a really nice guy, but my impression is that he tries a little too hard to be helpful and get things done. He tends to jump to his first point and stick to it. So when I said that, his first thought was, then make it interesting to you, you two have to work it out. Then him and I got into a debate over how we'd make it interesting, and I felt like we weren't on the same wavelength. Close enough to still make contact if that makes sense,, but not close enough to get reliable positive communication. In fact I think he believed I was being arrogant and saying I wanted to be this amazing guy or something, when all I was trying to do was express my needs, which I will try to explain in this post, though I wasn't thinking so clearly during the discussion.

With music being one of my special interests, there is a certain intricacy that I've come to appreciate and seek. It's kinda like how some autistics have their sensory toys, whether they be visual, tactile etc. My sensory stim, or at least my auditory one, is intricate music. I'm not very attached to emotion in music, lyrics are difficult for me to connect with. The things that do hit me emotionally are simple things that have some complexity at the same time. The rhythm and harmony that adds the flare to jazz. The orchestral envelope of a film score. The snap and aggression to well-produced rock. The wub-wub of dubstep. Or some technical thing I have researched and have heard a cool use of. I could name many elements, those are just a few. Once I find such an element, I often want to know why it exists, to learn how it's done, especially as a musician myself who is easily influenced. For better or for worse, those are the soul things that keep me coming back for more. That's why I have a diverse but extremely small collection of music I would call my favorite. A lot of modern singer/songwriter stuff doesn't do it for me especially when you reduce it to keyboard and vocals. I couldn't think of anything to do to really give it a quality I found interesting. Without that, I'm bored to tears.

In the end, Dave was like "well we're done then, if you're not interested." Which is not at all what I was trying to say. If we tried other styles, if we gave it a proper chance, maybe I'd like this.

The singer didn't get much of a chance to speak up. I don't even know what she wants or likes, all I know about her is her name and what her singing sounds like. That's literally it. That bugs me. I think she was kinda shy so didn't go out of her way to intervene between us. If I had gotten an opportunity to hear her side, maybe we could've made something work, or felt more at ease. I would like to allow her the time I spent debating with Dave to communicate her own thoughts. I will reach out to her in a few days and try to talk one-on-one if she is open to it. Dave gave me her number and told her he was going to do so, just in case I change my mind, so I hope it won't be awkward.

When these things occur, I try to figure out what precisely went wrong, just out of habit. Was I fueled too much by emotion or passion or what have you, and came off self-centered? Was it just bad miscommunication, bad timing? Was I blind to things which should've been obvious to me? Should I have given it more of a chance before I said I wasn't feeling this? How much can I blame Dave for this exchange versus myself? These thoughts are more rhetorical by this point, but they are thoughts that are still hammering at me.

A friend once told me that understanding is most important especially to an aspie. Granted I'm not sure if I have Aspergers,. But this situation has given me a stronger belief that I do. I wish more than ever that I was better understood during that half hour yesterday afternoon. No, I rather wish we all understood each other. All three of us. But I am starting to believe that Aspergers has turned me into a bit of an odd qwirky person who may not be good at articulating or listening, or who may just have to hunt for people who do understand. I really don't know. These thoughts are nothing new to me, but I feel I will never truly get used to them.

So, have you ever been in a situation like this? I.e. In an effort to explain your admittedly peculiar perspective on something, you might come off as completely disinterested, arrogant or something else negative, when you were just trying to find ways to make it tolerable/interesting for you?

 

[Gracey]

I’m sometimes labled arrogant.
I like what I like and I know what I know.
I might be direct in my approach, idea or opinion.

I read your post.
Were there two definite sets of expectations at your meeting?

Yours and Dave’s ?

Dave turned up excited about his idea in his mind of what was going to happen, perhaps you did too?

The ideas didn’t connect or match?
Get in touch with the singer.
Find out what influences her, what drives her, what she’s passionate about.

Try to remember she knows more about what she likes than you do.
Once you understand where she’s coming from, you could add your magic?

 

[Progster]

I've had a similar situation at work, where I've been asked if I want to do something, and it's something that I haven't done before, or not how I usually work so I just kind of panic inside and say, um... err.... I'm not sure... I haven't done this before... I need to think... and the other person takes it as a no, or refusal, but it's not nesessarily the case that I don't want to do it, it's because it's new, a sudden change, daunting, I need to process it, to think about it first to get used to the idea. I then realise I made a mistake, but don't know how to repair it. It's one reason why I much, much prefer to communicate in writing because I have time to think about how to handle it, how to express myself in a more positive and/or confident way, and I don't get put on the spot like that.

 

[musicalman]

Thanks Gracey and Progster for your replies.
Progster, I know exactly how that works. My brain works overtime in those situations in the moment. Then after a little while, I can think more rationally, and then I have the urge to write these sorts of rants lol. But I agree that writing feels safer for the reasons you said.

Gracey, to answer your questions:
I didn't know what to expect, but I think Dave and I had the same idea at first. Get us together, learn some tunes, get to know each other, and do gigs when we're ready. But anything beyond that was completely up in the air.

I think what got to me most, at the end of the day, was that Dave seemed to kinda get carried away trying to bring us together, and in a sense I felt like he was the singer and directing me, rather than the actual singer. If I have to guess, things really fell apart when we jumped right into playing songs, without knowing anything about each other. I think the pacing was all wrong. The question of how I could've handled it better is still up for grabs in my mind, but I can't change the past, and I was totally unprepared for that type of discussion, so that factored into things too.

I do plan to talk to her and let her know that I am genuinely interested in what she has to say. I'll start off by asking her what she wants or something similar.

I won't think less of her if she likes stuff I find boring/uninteresting, even if that's the primary stuff she wants to do. I wouldn't at all want to change that. Whether I'll actually do that stuff with her or not is something I'd have to think on. But no matter the outcome, at least we'd have an open discussion that was a little less chaotic and more perspective-oriented, which tends to be more productive I think.

 

[Tom]

I think it sounds like you were being honest, maybe blunt, but not unresonable. The real problem may have been your friend's plane didn't work out and he was frustrated/a bit angry.

But doing something like that to make someone else happy, and yourself miserable doesn't make sense. Its ok to do things for people in a measured/limited way. But pairing off with the wrong partner musically doesn't sound like that sort of situation. Not unless you wanted to do something/anything for a limited time as an experiment or just to keep your feet wet. You could be Captain and Tennille.2

 

[MrSpock]

I have a strong impression that I'm often so completely misunderstood that it's not possible to say whether peculiar tastes/feelings are the cause or not. It may seem silly to question whether we even have the same meaning for the words 'tastes' and 'feelings', but two days ago I discovered that either I have a different definition of 'hurt' than do NTs, or else there is a different mechanism at play where 'hurt' is concerned such that use of the term should be expected to lead to misunderstanding.

What do I mean by 'mean'? Ugh. At the moment I wouldn't feel qualified to guess at the motivations of the people in your novella, even if they claimed to have told me what those motivations were.

 

[musicalman]

Yep Tom, I thought that too. If I only had to do this once, I would've been less reluctant I think, but I believe everyone was under the impression that we would try to do this longterm, maybe a few months, or a year, or how ever long we managed to stay together. I couldn't have hidden my disinterest for that long. I'm a bad liar even when I don't want to be honest .

MrSpock, ugh. I've gotten myself thinking like that before. I hope you can work out whatever it is you're going through.

In a perfect world we'd be able to use certain feeling words completely objectively. I think we all do use them as such, and fortunately they often seem to get the intended ideas across, but sometimes they don't.

For example, what I might perceive as anger or hurt, someone else might perceive as motivation. Is that because they never felt angry in the first place and found motivation in something else? Or was anger the actual motivator? Some people seem to think that there is good in everything so maybe they find positive qualities in their anger. Or does their anger have to go in a specific direction in order to be the motivator? These are things that not even the person experiencing them can really articulate, especially not in the moment. Once you start considering all of this, the world can seem like a very disorienting place.

I used to think that there was some hidden track of definitive intuition and reasoning that most people just found without effort, which allowed them to think and communicate comfortably and live with confidence. I used to think most things had an indisputable purpose or meaning, or a way of fitting together like a nicely-made geometric puzzle, and I just had to figure out how they fit. I know now that it's not that simple, you can never put the puzzle together completely and proudly proclaim you've figured it all out. The indefinite way of human reasoning is a beautiful thing,, but its not-so-pleasant side shows up when a miscommunication occurs like the one I experienced.

I think the only thing one can do when thinking like this is to stop trying. I'm not some divine all-knowing presence, my purpose is not to figure everything out. I just have to make simple things fit as well as I can and let it go like everyone else does. Doing much more wears me down and doesn't accomplish much.

Few, I don't write like that very often, but I do get into these contemplative moods sometimes lol.

 

[MrSpock]

I think the only thing one can do when thinking like this is to stop trying. I'm not some divine all-knowing presence, my purpose is not to figure everything out. I just have to make simple things fit as well as I can and let it go like everyone else does. Doing much more wears me down and doesn't accomplish much.

I have to agree that it wears me down and doesn't accomplish much. I've read some books about dating, and all of them seem to begin by assuming that the person reading isn't socially blind as I am. Although it doesn't accomplish much, it's the only way I have of adding to the NT/dating tool kit I'm acquiring. To give up on this process is to give up on women, I'm not yet willing to do this.

It seems that I have already added useful tools, although slow and painful it is fruitful. The tools I have are making the acquisition of further tools easier. Even as I encounter new information about how bad the situation is I believe that I have reason to remain hopeful. It's possible that my life until this point has been like the vast majority of human history, and I've very nearly got the tools for an industrial revolution. Over hundreds of thousands of years we made relatively little progress, in only the last two hundred years (the blink of an eye) we've added to our box of tools by orders of magnitude.