7:29pm November 21, 2013

why don’t people with asperger’s text

tomorrowsjam:

autisticdrift:

I like texting.

The real problem is that sometimes I forget people exist.

Funny how I so often ask myself why don’t neurotypicals text. Because. Seriously. If texting is an option, please don’t call me.

This. That’s a major reason I will very rarely give out my mobile number at all, even specifying that text works best for me because I have trouble hearing on the phone. A lot of people will totally ignore that and try to force me into voice calls.

I actually avoided getting a phone for years because I didn’t want to take voice calls all the time. It didn’t help that a few of my (not all NT, but without auditory processing and/or hearing problems) relatives and “friends” abused this on the landline, and acted shitty if you didn’t always answer whenever they wanted to jaw at you. Asleep or not home, it didn’t really matter. It was kind of stalkery—besides one actual stalker for a while. Hell no, when I’m out and about. :/

Now I know that I am not somehow required to, I just don’t do voice calls at all if I can help it. And don’t answer if I don’t think I can handle it.

I wouldn’t mind texting or IMing with more people, but most I still don’t trust enough to even give my number. There are only a handful who do have it now.

(Same with the landline, actually, and the do not call list equivalent thankfully works a lot better here than in the US, so we rarely get telemarketers or the endless political calls that almost drove me apeshit the last time I was back home.)

I’ve gotten that same sort of thing on a landline, where people would give me crap because I either didn’t pick up, or didn’t want to talk if I did pick up. Like they’d act overly put out about “I called but YOU DIDN’T ANSWER” or (on the machine) “I GUESS YOU’RE NOT THERE RIGHT NOW OR SOMETHING” in this voice that was kind of hostile or annoyed or something. Of course when people do that they’re going to do it about emails and anything else, too. Like the whole idea that you’re not answering them is supposed to be meaningful. And then the more pressure they put on you to talk to them, the less you actually want to talk to them, so you stay away. And then you almost want to talk to them one day but encounter more pressure (subtle or unsubtle) and then feel like it’s impossible to talk to them. That’s what it feels like, with the pressure – not just “I don’t want to” but “I can’t, under this kind of pressure, hold a conversation.” And they’ll deny to the ends of the earth that they’re actually doing this if you talk about it explicitly, but they are, it’s the only explanation for all the different pieces of what’s going on.

Notes: