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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think you mean well op but you say you drone on about stuff that people have no interest in. So if they changed the subject you’d just drone on about something else. These are not your people. You need to find people who love talking and listening about what you love to talk about. If you can’t pick up on social cues, it is what it is. It won’t change and make you more likable to people who are partiers and NT. [/quote]

I’m OP. So I’m ND but how I differ from people with classic ASD, or at least being a milder version of it, is that some habits I’ve been able to grow out of. I look back at some of the things I subjected my friends to when I was in middle school and high school and cringe. But let me tell you what it’s like to get caught up in one of my obsessions. It’s like I lose myself in a topic when I get engaged in it. It’s like having a romantic affair with a given subject. My heart races and I blush and I feel like I can’t get enough. And I lose sight of how other people are reacting. When my family used to tell me, eventually I would listen and understand how it annoys people, but I’d be in denial or at least unaware of it when I was in the real world. And to this day, while I’m sure I do it a lot less than I used to, I probably still do it without realizing it, and that’s what I wish people could make me more aware of. [/quote]

Since you know this about yourself, there are things that you can do — yourself.  Set a timer on vibrate, or find some other strategy to remind yourself to check your behavior.  Perhaps you can pay a coach to do a few outings with you, or enlist a family member to do this a few times and give you feedback on your behavior.   In the end, though, it really will be on you to learn to manage this.  Sure, you could warn other people that you’d appreciate feedback — either directly or subtly (such as wearing an autism symbol — although not everyone will recognize this.). In the end, though, you’re asking people to put your needs above their own, and your comfort above their own.  The “honesty” that you’re requesting would be considered rude and inappropriate in most settings. It’s on you, then, to somehow indicate to others that you would find this helpful— and also on you to appreciate that not everyone will have the bandwidth or the motivation for this.

One more piece:  Think about how you respond when people do go out of their way to give you cues. If you’re briefly appreciative and shift to accommodate the cue, that will go over much better than if you seem irritated or ignore the cues. [/quote]

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