Do you like learning about someone else's day?

[Jane Smith]

Ever since I've been on this site I've learned a lot.

My family back home are all autistic, but they're very abusive. Every time I confront them about it, they use being Aspie as an excuse to be toxic. Since I didn't know a lot about Aspies, I didn't have an argument.

Now that I am on this site I am a lot more enlightened. Everyone on here is very nice. I feel like I have been very mislead.

One thing I was convinced is that Aspies don't care. I would tell them about my life, my successes, etc, but they didn't want to hear it. This would happen even if my life update dealt with their interests.

Do you like it when people reach out to you? Do you like hearing about people's days? Does it mean a lot to you when you hear an update?

 

[Mia]

Yes I do, as long as it's not too much or too long so I don't have concentrate too much on it, and figure things out for the other person. When they wants answers to social difficulties I have a hard time, untangling it all. There's so much to know and understand.

Used to be in the same situation with my own biological family. They pretended to care, but their actions showed otherwise. They don't like success, unless it relates to themselves. They were always measuring things against their own success, and finding it difficult to appreciate how others have done. Envy was there from the very beginning. It made it difficult to care about them.

 

[Katleya]

As much as it pains me to concede this, being an Aspie and being an a**hole aren't mutually exclusive. I'm sorry you're dealing with family members who may be both.

That being said, I couldn't give you a black & white answer. Here's how it goes for me --I'm not claiming to hold universal answers.
- Do I like chatting with just anybody about their day? Absolutely not.
- Do I like hearing someone talk about their day? I'm interested if it's someone I care about, but would prefer getting rid of my leg hair with tweezers that have lost their spring rather than hearing, say, a coworker or someone I'm generally uninterested in go on about their day.
- Do I like talking about how the day went because that's what I'm supposed to be talking about? Nope. The worst is having to ask people how their weekend went. I don't care, not because I'm mean, but because it feels like useless information to me. And I hate that I'm expected to talk about my own weekend in return. Or worse, I'm asked first, have nothing to say, and then am supposed to ask about their weekend.
- Would I want to hear about someone's day everyday if there weren't a single change? No.
- Would I like to hear about the super unusual thing that took place? Yes. Bigger yes if it's someone I like and have bonds with, smaller yes if it's not.
Updates, I'm okay with, because they're generally more concise.

Overall, I'm still happy to talk to people if I feel it's stimulating or constructive. And on rare occasions, I might chitchat about everything and nothing (that's likely to happen, oddly enough, with random strangers that I know I'll never meet again), but otherwise, I tend to prefer quietness, so that I don't get overwhelmed by the tone/pitch/pace of people's voice, or by too much information to process, on top of the fact that I need to remember which facial expressions should be shown at certain milestones in the conversation, while possibly filtering out background noise. It's too much to process & I prefer to avoid it when I can.

 

[kay]

Depends on who and what. I don't really want to hear about someone's digestive troubles and there are some people I just don't like. But when my boyfriend comes back from breakfast or church I want to hear all the details. I call my sister to see what her lab results were and see what she saw at the park . There are a number of people who I do want to know about their day, week, month, year because they are nice and interesting and genuine type people and I tend to be quite curious.

 

[megacomic]

I dont tell people the mundane details of my life so I can get annoyed if they do that to me. I just depends. Im not really the kind of person to respond to gossip but if something exciting or something heavy is going on I want to hear all about it.

 

[Progster]

I tend to need a purpose to conversations, and if people are just talking to me out of politeness or because they feel the need to fill in a gap in the conversation, that is when it gets tiring for me. I don't see why people need to be talking all the time. I'm a lot more confortable sharing an activity with someone than just chatting.

I also don't like it when people just start asking me a bunch of questions about things that aren't relevant or really important or interesting - if someone asks me about my weekend, I don't know what to say if I haven't done anything of interest.

I enjoy interaction if I get some sort of stimulation from it or learn something, and I don't get that from 'what's the weather like' conversations, unless the weather was particularly unusual that day, in which case the conversation becomes interesting.

 

[Siobhan]

The thing is, I don't actually care about people's days and in fact listening to them sometimes actually causes me to have mild shutdowns, but I intellectually understand that listening to that stuff is a necessary and important way to show love and respect for the few people I'm lucky enough to be close to, so I grit my teeth and bear it so I can make sure the people I love feel important.
Some people get sucked into the idea that they're irreparably damaged and can't get out and it sounds like.your family is having problems with that. If you're not dependent on them, you have the right to seperate yourself from that environment for your own health and focus on other relationships.