Title is the epiphany. Story as follows:
There's a fairly new neighbour that has moved in next to me. They are outgoing and extroverted in that needy or demanding way whereas for me as an autistic person, I'm much more self-contained and don't seek out idle chit-chat with acquaintances because I honestly don't need it in my life and I don't reap any benefit from it.
Anyway, there has been a few odd conversational topics that have arisen multiple times over the course of our interactions and with one of them it got to the point where I've thought to myself "What the fuck is up with their preoccupation with this topic? I'm sick of talking about this." and, upon reflection, I realised that they were insinuating themselves into a situation that they are completely oblivious to, that isn't their business, and that isn't a concern whatsoever.
I don't want to explain exactly what it is because it's pretty identifying info but think along the lines of someone "casually" mentioning that the soil your cacti are living in is very dry - yeah it really is, what of it?
Anyway once the penny had (finally) dropped for me that this person doing that weird Boomerish thing where they repeatedly drop mention of something like how nice the weather is today and they expect that you're going to understand that they're trying to suggest that you should mow the lawn today (a legit post that someone made on social media but maybe it was about mowing the lawn or maybe it was about putting the washing out - I forget the specifics), I turned this over in my mind and came to the conclusion in the post title above:
They are literally treating interactions with me like it's a chess match. They are making conversational manoeuvres in an attempt to force a particular response out of me. You don't do that sort of thing with a person unless you see them as an adversary. If you are gonna treat me like an adversary then we are not friends and I have no obligation to extend my goodwill towards you.
(On a tangent, this is the reason why I have a strong dislike of the Socratic Method - because it essentially treats people as your conversational adversaries.)
This is the newest development in my experience of unmasking and growing beyond my people-pleasing so I thought I would share this realisation with others.
It's not that adversarial, I've had this conversation with someone at work - they read masses more information into statements and context than we do. One of my coworkers thought there was some sort of drama going on between me and the boss's wife because of an offhand comment I made, and I had to explain that I literally only meant the words that I'd used and they didn't carry any additional insinuations. Similarly, I miss a lot of the information she thinks she's giving me when we chat, but it's mostly gossip and small talk so I don't really care that I don't understand.
My boss used to do it a lot, but I generally look at him like he just said the moon tastes like curtains until he explains what he actually means.