I screwed up with a dear friend because I’m autistic

[JaredKFan]

Long story short, I made some mistakes with a friend of mine because I let my mask down around her. We had had occasional communication difficulties (she and I are both hard of hearing and I can have a hard time understanding her voice sometimes) and I have spatial awareness problems that can result in me invading personal space without being aware of it. Now she isn’t talking to me because of those communication differences and a personal space violation that I didn’t realize had until weeks after the fact. I got hauled in for a behavioral complaint despite the fact that it is obvious to me her complaints are about those things - things about being autistic I can’t necessarily control unless I’m told specifically what went wrong, which didn’t happen. I know she’s acting out of fear of the unknown because she has an autistic brother but we all know each of us shows our autism differently and I think she was expecting me to be more like her brother.

I feel terrible about what happened but there is a possibility of resolution to the point where she is willing to be friends again once she understands that my behavior was due to being autistic. The first school official I tried to work with was completely an asshole and refused to understand or believe I’m autistic despite my diagnosis being on file with the school. Their boss, however has been more understanding abd more willing to listen and reslve things between me and her but she’s going on vacation tomorrow until the 9th and I’m not sure I can wait that long. We all know one of the most common .things for us is other’s misunderstanding and misinterpreting our intentions and that’s what is happening here.

I suspect my friend is autistic themselves but undiagnosed and I am really having a hard time waiting until the school official returns from vacation to help me and her deal with the autistic misinterpretations - to me it just seems like the school is stalling on acting PRECISELY because I’m autistic and don’t know how to deal with our sense of justice and righting a wrong that occurred because of a misunderstanding. I’m so frustrated right now because the first official successfully stalled for a month before I was forced to file a complaint against them FOR STALLING.

 

[Tom]

Just for clarification, I don't understand why a school is involved. Your age is shown as 40. Is that incorrect and you are actually school age?

 

[JaredKFan]

I am 40. Went back to college late in life, but everybody does that. My friend is also older than typical college age.

 

[AO1501]

The first thing is that where you can't move forward due to others and their timescales or vacations, you have to simply accept that fact and not try to push for a faster resolution. Doing that might work, but will not help to bring anyone to your side of the issue, and would more likely cause them to be even more resistant.

Secondly, it is possible, but improbable, that the school official is stalling because you are autistic. why would he or she bother? What purpose would that serve them, or the school? It is possible they might stall because they don't like you, personally, but if that's the case, pushing them is the last thing that would be likely to help.

My advice would be to sit tight and wait. It will help defuse the situation anyway, and make it easier to resolve in a couple of weeks. I know that it can be very hard to wait, but it would be much harder to get a negative result right now.

 

[JaredKFan]

Yeah you’re probably right, it’s just to my view all the delays seem like stalling, and as a ND person NT conflict resolution procedures and processes just seem illogical and designed to be as slow as possible. I’m happy the boss of the complaint manager is seeming to be more understanding of me being autistic but it’s just so damn inconvenient for them to go on vacation NOW, I was only told on Friday that they would be on vacation Monday, a greater advance notice would have been better. I care about my friend a lot but sometimes it can get shown in ways that NT people would see as “strange”. I didn’t disclose everything about how autism manifests for me precisely because I was afraid of this kind of reaction.

 

[AO1501]

I totally get that. I hate waiting, and it does often seem like a deliberate thing when there are obstacles put in the way, but I've learned that even if I'm right, it doesn't help, because things will only resolve when they're allowed to.

These kind of 'conflict resolution' strategies are social structures designed not just to resolve a problem, but to make people feel happy and supported by the process, and sadly that can make them difficult to navigate for NDs. But the upside is that problems are often easier to resolve amicably if some time is allowed to slip by, because animosities and confusion tend to die down with a bit of time anyway.

I also find it best not to try and rationalize the behavior of people who manage these kind of processes. It can be easy to assume they are predisposed against us when they more usually simply don't get the problem, or why we might feel urgency in resolving it.

Best of luck to you anyway - as you say, when we care about someone or something it can appear to NTs as 'strange', so taking a more relaxed approach to it will seem rather more compliant and reasonable anyway.