Autism

No worries. Sadly this is one of the few places I have left without conflict - despite all my efforts and avoidance of personal comments, I always end up in a major conflict somewhere. Each of my hobby areas has been affected by it as well as my community group. I've had another conflict happen today because the people I was talking to couldn't see the significance of an issue I was trying to highlight, so I ended up being accused of putting forward a strawman (which of course makes me retreat as I feel threatened).

I sometimes wonder if part of the issue is that because I am detail and fact-oriented, I don't engage in conversations the way people expect and so they end up thinking I am being disingenous or have some ulterior motive (last month it was that I was clearly a government shill because I understood the details of a local project and trying to explain the facts to another member of the community). They also don't like it when I want to understand how they reached their opinion or (heaven forbid) I actually want to understand where I made a mistake in my reasoning (apparently people just don't do that).