That’s a very good point — I guess it’s like we walk into the restaurant and someone fills our plate for us!

I was socialized neurotypical — neither I nor anyone else knew I was autistic until I was forty-nine — and in retrospect I can see how at least most (and possibly all) of the things I now understand about neurotypical social expectations were things I consciously learned, often on pain of significant trauma. In many, many cases I can remember doing things in a more autistic way, and the specific occurrence that clued me in to what was expected instead.

I mask very well now — obviously well enough that even once we hit the mid-nineties and autism became more of a recognized thing, no one seems to have considered it might apply to me — but ironically getting ‘neurotypical socializing’ right most of the time just meant that when I (inevitably) failed, people assumed I meant something by it, that I did so deliberately.

I’m curious, do you feel like your understanding of neurotypical behavior was learned, or is innate? Or some combination?