I think I don't really know how to have conversations with people, how to maintain friendships, and what interacting with people is supposed to be like in general.

Maybe that's obvious; I am autistic and I've never been good at interacting with people or making friends or keeping friendships going.

But it does feel like I'm the only one who's *this* bad at it. I see so many other autistic people who have friends and who participate in conversations and group chats, and just interact with people in general.

It's meant to be easier for autistic people to interact with each other than with allistic or nt people. And for me that is *easier*, but I'm still so much worse than everyone else. I still never know what I'm supposed to say or do.

There are so many ways to accidentally hurt or upset someone, and there are so many ways to annoy or offend someone, and there are so many things that are the wrong thing to say or do, and there's *nothing* that's *always* correct and kind and appropriate in every situation.

If a person is sad, sometimes what helps is giving advice, and sometimes that's wrong. Sometimes what helps is just saying "I'm sorry, that really sucks", and sometimes that's wrong. Sometimes what helps is giving your own experience or perspective, and sometimes that's wrong.

Sometimes what helps is a distraction like a picture of a cat or something, and sometimes that's wrong.
Sometimes what helps is asking them how they want you to respond, and sometimes that's wrong.
Every response is occasionally right but usually wrong.

And a person being sad was just a simple example that it's easy to list out possible responses for.
The same thing applies to *every* situation.

Asking the person what answer they want or how they want me to react is in itself a response, and it's almost guaranteed to be even more wrong than anything else, because it comes off as unsympathetic and insensitive and not genuine.

And also, personally, if I'm sad or having some kind of problem, "what do you want me to say/do?" is my least favourite response, because I don't know. Being asked that just makes me feel like "?????" and have no idea what to even say at all.

So I'm not inclined to ask other people that, because I know how much I don't like being asked that and how difficult it is for me to try to come up with an answer to.

And also, personally, if I were to say to someone, "please say "I feel sympathy for you"" and then they did say "I feel sympathy for you" because I asked them to, I wouldn't consider that to be the same thing as that person actually feeling sympathy for me.

Because it isn't, it's just repeating something I told you to say.
Kinda like if I said "please tell me that your favourite colour is red". Anyone can say "my favourite colour is red" when asked to, but that doesn't mean it is.

So that's also lot why I wouldn't want to ask someone how they expect me to respond or what response they'd consider acceptable, because I know if *I* gave someone a response just for them repeat back to me, it wouldn't feel the same as them actually saying that.

So I don't ask people what response they want, because I feel like that implies that I don't really have any genuine thoughts or emotions to give them at all, and I'm just asking for some fake ones so that I can pretend to care.

And obviously that wouldn't be the reasoning, but I feel like that's how it would seem.