Navigating unspoken expectations as an autistic person

Have you ever found out too late that you had been expected to know something no one actually told you? I'm talking about someone expressing frustration that you didn't follow an unwritten rule, your supervisor saying, "You've been here x years, you should have known," a friend expressing hurt that you didn't respond in the way they thought you would. You might ask in earnest what you were supposed to have done differently and hear, "It's common sense."

Often what people think of as common sense is a social convention that not everyone's encountered, or the situation allows for several reasonable ways to interpret it. The book, "A Field Guide to Earthlings: An Autistic View of Neurotypical Behavior" describes "common sense" as an allistic preoccupation with "what is appropriate (confirming to culture), instead of what is true or beneficial. If there is some choice to be made, the work of deciding what to do consists of reflecting on their shared beliefs and determining which option is the least disruptive to those beliefs."

Maybe a facial expression was made, or a tone was used to drop a hint you didn't register as a request. Or perhaps you were expected to infer their preference from what they would have wanted int the same situation. This can really create a dilemma: you want to get better at navigating other people's expectations (especially those that have meaningful consequences), but being told to simply "read the room" isn't especially useful when the problem is that the room isn't giving you enough information to read.

You don't have to become a mind-reader

There is a difference between learning to navigate social expectations and learning to intuit what everyone else is thinking (the first is possible; the second isn't). You can develop skills for noticing when a situation may involve an expectation you haven't been told about and learn ways to ask for clarification. You can become more familiar with common conventions in environments you spend a lot of time in, and you can learn from experiences when someone tells you they expected something different. None of that requires assuming others' expectations are automatically reasonable or that failing to anticipate them means you did something wrong. I've found a goal like this to be useful for many people:

Become better at identifying and gathering information about expectations I haven't been told explicitly so that I can make informed decisions about how I want to respond.

Take note that this is not the same thing as Figure out what everyone wants from me so I can avoid upsetting them. That one puts you in an impossible position, and it sets you up to interpret any reaction someone has as evidence that you did something wrong.

Types of expectations

It can help to distinguish what kind of expectation we're talking about in a given situation because "other people expect this" doesn't really tell you much. Why do they expect it? The category an expectation falls under doesn't necessarily change the importance of meeting it, but knowing the why can help build up your confidence that you're not missing something important. It might also inform how much you value the expectation, whether that helps you decide whether to meet it or not.

• Explicit requirements: A form needs to be submitted by Friday; you need to notify this specific person if you're going to miss a deadline.

• Common conventions: In many workplaces, people are generally expected to respond to work communications within a certain amount of time, even if nobody has written down an exact response-time rule.

• Role-based expectations: The manager of or person responsible for a project may be expected to notice when something is going wrong and tell the rest of the team, even if nobody specifically said, "Please tell us if this happens."

• Relationship expectations: A person who shares something vulnerable with you might reasonably expect some acknowledgment, even if they don't explicitly say, "I need you to acknowledge my feelings before we discuss solutions."

• Individual preferences: Your supervisor might prefer people come to their office instead of sending an email; your friend may prefer phone calls to texting; your partner may like receiving a "good night" message. Preferences can matter but aren't necessarily universal social rules, and you don't have to treat every person's preference as something you should have magically known.

• Unreasonable, contradictory, inaccessible, or discriminatory expectations: "You should have known," for example, is not actually proof that you could have known.

Learning to distinguish among these categories is probably going to be more useful (and less overwhelming) than trying to memorize an endless list of social rules.

Wait, should I have known??

If someone tells you that you should have known what they expected, you may immediately start trying to reconstruct the situation by considering what you missed, what clue you overlooked that was supposed to give you the answer, what a "normal person" would have taken away from the same information you received. Rumination on where we went wrong promises to teach us how to prevent it in the future, but it's only functional if we actually have the info; it doesn't fill in gaps on its own (and in the meantime, it can leave you feeling extremely anxious). Instead, you can sometimes approach the conversation as an information-gathering exercise. You might ask the person whose expectation was unmet:

• What were you expecting me to do?

• What information did you think I had that would have told me that?

• What would you like me to do differently next time?

• Is this something you generally expect in this situation?

• Was there something specific that happened that led you to expect that?

• Can you give me an example of what you would have wanted me to do?

While some of these might sound confrontational on the surface, choosing one that is an authentic point of curiosity for you might lead you to discover that there was a convention you genuinely didn't know about. Great, now you've got new data. You might also discover that the person assumed you had that data already, and it can be useful to understand why they thought that and to share with them the limitations of your knowledge to prevent future misunderstandings. If they were thinking unfavorably of you because of that misperception (e.g. that you intentionally shirked your duties), a clarifying conversation gives you a chance to clear the air. It's possible you'll learn they were expecting you to infer something from a subtle cue that you didn't notice. Now you know what they were relying on, even if you don't agree that it was a reasonable way to communicate. You can either ask that they share more explicitly next time to increase the chances you'll catch on, or you can follow up by asking if that's the way they will always be communicating requests in the future so that you know what to look for. Alternatively you might find out that they aren't even able to explain what they expected. Sometimes "you should have known" turns out to mean, "I was disappointed by what happened and assumed you would understand why."

If you tend to immediately turn inward when things go wrong socially (e.g. "What is wrong with me? Why can't I just know these things other people know?") try replacing the temptation to "fix" yourself with an inventory about what happened:

• What did the other person expect?

• What information did I actually have?

• Was the expectation communicated?

  • If not, was there a reasonable way I could have inferred it?

• Is this expectation something that's important for me to understand in this particular environment or relationship?

• What do I want to do differently next time?

There can be room to learn without a need to assign blame.

The power dynamic in the room

I would love to advise, "Don't worry about it, other people can expect whatever they want, but you don't owe anyone anything. You do you." That sounds really freeing and empowering. But there is a practical reason expectation-reading matters. Sometimes an unspoken expectation is merely annoying, but sometimes it has serious consequences. A friend being mildly disappointed that you didn't respond to a text in a way that matched their urgency is different from a supervisor deciding that you're unrelaible because you didn't understand an unwritten rule. Instutitions, workplaces, schools, medical systems, and other structures often operate through conventions that aren't spelled out. People with more power than you may have the ability to define what counts as "normal," "professional," "cooperative," or "appropriate," and while you may be a proud nonconformist and very comfortable with that quality in yourself, being able to decide on some occasions to play ball and on some occasions not to, depending on your values and capacity, is where your power lies.

That doesn't mean you have to accept every expectation placed on you, but knowing what the expectation actually is can give you more choices: comply, negotiate, explain what you need, find another way to accomplish the same goal, decide the expectation isn't one you're willing or able to meet, or decide the consequences of not meeting it are worth accepting when compared to the consequences of meeting it. You have more agency when

you have accurate information.

Well-meaning allistics often tell us to "Stop worrying what other people think." Define your own sucess, march to the beat of your own drummer, etc. Your worth shouldnt' depend on whether everyone approves of you, and you don't need to organize your entire life around avoiding others' disappointment. Totally true. But pretending others' expetations have no practical consequences isn't the same as not making others' opinions the measure of your worth. You can care about how other people experience you without making their reactions an authority. You can also want to be a good friend without assuming every disappointed friend is proof that you messed up. You can want to succeed at work without assuming every workplace convention is inherently reasonable, and you're the unreasonable one. You can aim to communicate effectively and to help others feel safe to approach you with feedback without the belief that you're responsible for anticipating every unspoken need. You can take others' perspectives seriously without treating your own perspective as irrelevant.

What information are you missing?

When you notice yourself thinking, "I don't know what they want from me," try asking what information would allow you to make a better decision. Sometimes the answer is a social convention you've never encountered, sometimes it's missing data, sometimes it's a direct request that the other person hasn't made, sometimes it's info about the person's individual preferences. Sometimes the answer is just, "I don't have enough information to know, and I can't get it without asking." Then you get to shift to decision-making about whether to make that ask rather than trying to find the last piece of a puzzle that never got put in the box.

Beng a person who knows how to notice when a rule may be operating is no less valuable than being a really good guesser about what that rule might actually be. A collection of social rules is only so useful; it will become outdated or irrelevant as contexts shift, but having skills that give you options for how to respond to uncertainty is timeless.