[Doxin]

It's pretty wild how few people say what they mean, and as a result people will end up trying to parse what you're saying for anything but face value.

slightly contrived example: if I ask someone if they would like to go to the beach they'll probably assume I want to go to the beach. As opposed to what I meant to say and actually said. I mean sure, fine, fair enough, if that question is code for "I would like to go to the beach" then I can deal with that. But how am I then supposed to ask if you would like to go? maybe I'm ambivalent but would be okay with going if you would like to.

Now the above example is fairly harmless, but add in a lot of bullshit around people trying to parse emotions from sentences and you can see how this gives autistic people a lot of trouble.

[jiggawatts]

Also, non-autistic people (apparently called "allistic"? TIL).

My partner does this exact same thing. I'm never able to find out what she wants to do, because any such question becomes reinterpreted by her as a "he must want to do this, so I must say what I think he expects me to say" game.

[watwut]

What about asking "what do you want to do" instead of suggesting an activity? The partner here is making reasonable guesses anyway, they are not misinterpreting, they are just not stupid.

They assume you are not setting up the following conversation:

- Would you like to go to beach? - Yes, I would love to! - I am really opposed to the idea!

[mock-possum]

My goto has always been telling other people what I want up front, before asking them what they want to do.

So - “I just want to stay here and chill - how about you, do you want to go to the beach?”

Or - “I’m starving, are you hungry? Should we get food?”

[Doxin]

How about people learn to take what I say at face value? Yes I can work around this sort of nonsense, but doing it all day is exhausting to me.

I've learned how to deal with this sort of thing well enough to the point where most people that know me wouldn't guess I'm autistic, but it sure as heck would be nice if we all didn't invent weird-ass mind games for no benefit all the time.