trusting people who are not trustworthy

of course it's confusing when they say one thing and do another, or when they show one expression on their face while using words that say something completely opposite. (Pops into my head that an autistic may actually be more functional than a 'normal' person - at least, from reading Ballastexistenz it seems this way).

Maybe it's just that 'normals' are able to dissociate better, to 'split'; maybe the problem for autistics is that they can't ignore the other signals the person is making, so that when they're around someone whose body language and words don't match up, it literally scrambles their signals in a way that keeps them from functioning? I'm guessing, because I feel that all my life I've had to ignore at least half of what I perceive and try to focus only on the aspects of people's behavior that they'll admit to or are conscious of.

Derail to give an example: The very weirdest one in recent memory was this guy I'd gone out with for a while, we got together again one more time and were being very physical and affectionate.

His words: I thought we weren't going to do this any more (which I wondered if he was asking? or telling?).

But his actions seemed opposite: I was standing in front of him, leaning against him (we were waiting in line for something, and had to wait a while); he had one arm sort of pulling me to him in kind of a half-nelson in such a way that when I tried to bend to set down a bag I'd been carrying, I had to actually ask him to let go of me! That's how tight his grip was.

It was as if one half of him so wanted the physical contact that he was literally clinging to me with almost a death grip, while some other part of him (that was apparently completely disconnected from the first part!) was in complete denial that he even wanted to be with me in this way. Very confusing, but so blatant that I laughed out loud. I thought it would be too cruel to explain it to him (and also I was enjoying the contact), so I didn't say anything at the time. But it was pretty frickin' funny.

So, the point? This guy's left hand literally didn't know what his right hand was doing. He was extremely bright, extremely conflicted, and terribly hurt by a long-term marriage that had ended a few years before leaving him severely insecure about who he was and what he needed from life. To me this reflected a guy who was unable to resolve the gigantic gap between what he wanted (needed?) from life, and what life actually gave him. Which seems pretty common and normal. But I'd never seen anybody who was literally that split apart before, while seeming to be utterly, completely, totally unaware of it.

With this guy the trust problem was more that he had no clue, which, though it's a gigantic red flag and says I shouldn't be with him, didn't actually make me not trust him. It just felt more like he was some little kid who really had no idea how to resolve the things that were going on with him.

Not sure where I'm going with this, seem to have lost the thread. Maybe come back later.