The person who perhaps knows me best has described me as having a kind of social-relational dyslexia. That is, it's not that I'm incapable of understanding a thing, it's just that I must have things explained to me in rather painstaking detail before I understand. Not every time mind you, just for each new thing, like I need help sounding out a word before I know what it is.
I feel like there are so many rules to behavior, and I often have a hard time understanding why something I've done/said (or not done/said) has managed to upset a person so much. There are layers and nuance in interpersonal relationships that often escape me.
I am 33 years old, and I know that part of my problem comes from a life of general inexperience. I am a hard man to offend and thusly, when I put myself in another person's shoes, I don't see the thing I'm doing as problematic. I am very matter of fact, able to discuss flaws and failings (in myself or perhaps, in another) rather dispassionately, as if it were simply theoretical.
My question, if I have one, is what to do about all this. So much of behavior is nonverbal, is not something that can be discussed. You act this way to communicate that, this gesture means this, and so on. You do something, you say something, and the rest is silence. Far too often I walk away from a situation with a picture in my head that does not match what the other person experienced. So much of the time I'm seen as odd but heartfelt and quite frankly, I'm become more and more disheartened and nonplussed as things go on.
Do I belong to some category or cadre of people who prefer to verbalize and spell out things that most people treat as unspoken (yet inescapably real and consequential)? I don't seem to meet many of them and yet...
I need to know if people who like to spell it out, what's going on, how things are seen, how things are taken, people who take on faith that I'm trying and want to be the best possible and just need to verbalize what's going on underneath the surface... I need to know if they exist!
Do they?
I feel like there are so many rules to behavior, and I often have a hard time understanding why something I've done/said (or not done/said) has managed to upset a person so much. There are layers and nuance in interpersonal relationships that often escape me.
I am 33 years old, and I know that part of my problem comes from a life of general inexperience. I am a hard man to offend and thusly, when I put myself in another person's shoes, I don't see the thing I'm doing as problematic. I am very matter of fact, able to discuss flaws and failings (in myself or perhaps, in another) rather dispassionately, as if it were simply theoretical.
My question, if I have one, is what to do about all this. So much of behavior is nonverbal, is not something that can be discussed. You act this way to communicate that, this gesture means this, and so on. You do something, you say something, and the rest is silence. Far too often I walk away from a situation with a picture in my head that does not match what the other person experienced. So much of the time I'm seen as odd but heartfelt and quite frankly, I'm become more and more disheartened and nonplussed as things go on.
Do I belong to some category or cadre of people who prefer to verbalize and spell out things that most people treat as unspoken (yet inescapably real and consequential)? I don't seem to meet many of them and yet...
I need to know if people who like to spell it out, what's going on, how things are seen, how things are taken, people who take on faith that I'm trying and want to be the best possible and just need to verbalize what's going on underneath the surface... I need to know if they exist!
Do they?