I Thought I Was a Virtuoso Reader of People

[content warning: child abuse]

When I was twenty-four, I hit a low point in my life. I had been deceived, betrayed, and abandoned by someone I was deeply in love with. I was devastated by this loss, but my reaction went way beyond heartbreak. I lost all ability to function in the world, because with that betrayal my entire worldview had shattered.

Learning to read people had been a survival tactic for me. My mother was a sadist, almost certainly a psychopath; my father had poor control over his temper. I remember the particular moment, the year I was thirteen, when I could suddenly see what my mother was doing — the way she was deliberately goading my father into a rage so that he would beat me. I knew which sentence would send him tipping over the edge. I watched her shame him for his brutality afterward, and use his guilt to control him further. She wielded him like a weapon against me, a tool for her own sadism, and he — at forty-two — didn’t seem to see it. But at thirteen, I did. From my powerless position I was never able to stop what was happening, but from then on I could predict it, with uncanny accuracy.

I entered young adulthood with a very conscious human-prediction system in place. I was hyperalert, highly skilled at observing patterns, and had already studied a lot more psychology on my own than most people absorb in a lifetime. Several times, throughout high school and college, I had divined intentions and identified threats that no one else saw or lent much credence to … and then watched as events bore out my predictions, as the people who had set off my alarms did exactly as I had warned they would.

I had spent most of my life in terror, and I needed very much to believe that I could avoid dangerous people, that I could protect myself from hurt, that I could be safe. When my sweetheart’s lies were revealed, it upended not just that relationship, but my entire concept of the world. I had utterly failed to see it coming. And if I could be fooled that completely, be hurt that badly, by someone I had been certain I could trust … then there was no safety anywhere, ever.

No safety. Anywhere. Ever.

I kept running up against that fact in my mind and then freezing, unable to move forward at all, to even imagine how to exist in a world like that. My ability to correctly identify and avoid harmful people was the ground I had clung to as I crawled up out of the horror of my childhood. In one instant, that ground had disintegrated, and I was falling and falling, with nothing left to hold on to.

I survived that experience in large part because some people were kind to me. It still was far from easy. When I did begin to move forward again with my life, after months of therapy, it wasn’t because I had given up my belief that I was good at reading people. Instead, I accepted that sometimes there just aren’t any clues to read. I suppose I found a way to believe that even though I wouldn’t be safe, I would survive — and to hope that maybe, in the long run, surviving would be worth it.

Though I never again hit the same world-shattering depths of devastation, it wasn’t because I was making good relationship choices. I was desperate to be loved, and I had terrible self-esteem; those two things together meant that for a long time I accepted almost anyone who wanted me. I ended up in far more toxic and abusive relationships than ones that were even mostly healthy, and — being polyamorous — I had the opportunity to fail at multiple relationships simultaneously! But at least I failed differently each time, as I worked from an increasingly complex rule set I created out of logical analysis of each painful experience.

The people who set off my Cassandra warning system were few and far between; the rest of the time, I defaulted to a state of implicit trust. And still I thought, because I could point out psychology that other people missed, that I was exceptionally good at reading people. For another quarter-century I believed this about myself.

And then, at forty-nine, I discovered that I am autistic.

Early in the research process that led me to that conclusion, cognitive dissonance ensued. Autistics are notoriously bad at reading people. I am demonstrably good at reading people. I have social intelligence. I couldn’t be autistic!

And yet. Autistic women, in particular, are known to often study people with great intensity from a very young age — ‘little psychologists’ in contrast to male ‘little professors’. My tendency to trust and believe what people say, my strategy of identifying behavioral patterns, my rigorous logic, my hypersensitivity and outsized emotions, my low self-esteem — all of it maps to commonly reported autistic experience.

And then I thought about that sweetheart who lied to me and sent me into such a tailspin when I was twenty-four. And I thought about someone else, a few years later, whom I’d trusted enough to move in together, and who turned out to be entirely toxic and manipulative. And then, and then.

I widened my field of memory, looking for other times I’d been blindsided by someone’s actions. I thought about interactions with coworkers and bosses, where people hadn’t behaved like I expected at all. I remembered jobs and friendships I’d lost for reasons I never understood.

For someone who believed — who prided herself! — on understanding people, the list of times I had failed at it became appallingly long.

In retrospect, I can see that I had focused on my frequent successes and disregarded my occasional failures, like a scientist assuming an outlying datapoint is a measurement error, and throwing it out because it doesn’t clump with the rest. It’s terrible science, and it wasn’t good self-analysis either.

I am often very good at reading people. And also, sometimes I am terrible. I will see things that others miss, and miss things that others see.

This, too, is typical of autistic experience.

In admitting my fallibility, I’ve had to let go of my pride. In exchange I’ve received an explanation which, however late, has been transformative.

To be honest, I miss the self-confidence my belief in my people-reading skill inspired. My self-esteem is not so good that I can absorb that loss without flinching.

But I’d rather know the truth. Not because I think this knowledge will protect me; I haven’t believed in safety since I was twenty-four. Nor do I imagine this insight will keep me from ever making mistakes.

But I’m far less confused about my path through the world. For the first time in my life, everything comes together and makes sense. There is ground beneath my feet, and I can move forward again — both seeing what others miss, and missing what others see.

23 December 2019

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