Whats the point of consent and asking permission if you get lied to

Why would she when people can just read between the lines…

OP will never just say what they mean 😂

it was a local cafe with special offers on, for different foods

Well, that still doesn't clarify the cost - £3.50 each or £7 each?!

You're the master of evasion and missing the point with your answers,OP!

That’s not what I took from the post, personally.

This is such a weird thread. I guess it’s a wind up?
it would be understandable for someone, maybe ND, to ask about the social rules for gifting someone a meal and someone accepting, and the limits for that. To help keep the friendship going between two people going out for a meal once a week.

But then the OP talks about her friend in such a derogatory way and basically seems to be using her to keep paying for her every time they meet up, criticising her for being tight even and showing no real concern about paying her way when they meet up.
It just seems unpleasant and that the OP has not much respect for her friend or even the people here trying to help with her question.
Probably far too late but I’m going to leave you to your double potato eating adventures OP, for as long as your friend can put up with it I guess.

Of course I know, it still doesn’t mean it’s ok to take the mickey out of MH disorders.

Well, it's still not clear... were the spuds £3.50 each or £7 each? People keep saying it only totals £7 but I don't know where you get a baked potato for £3.50, even if it wasn't very big! Surely they were £7 each and the OP had two so that's a total of £14, still well within the £20 max budget, of course.
If I was your friend I'd be crystal clear from now on to avoid further offence or misunderstanding. You can have one main meal up to a value of £20 but you do not have to spend right up to that limit, it's not a target! Nor do you have to order add ons and sides to maximise your benefit. Better still you pay next time and absolutely insist.

That depends horrific, but you must know that post wasn’t aimed at you.

@MrsOctaviaCharlotteSmythe ,

‘what i want to know is why do humans have the social conventions of not saying what they mean ?’

I read an interesting book on AI recently which kind of explained this. When computers talk to other computers over the internet they can now transfer data at around 1,000,000,000 bytes/second, so if one AI asked another AI what they could ‘eat’, in a tiny fraction of a second they could go through budget plus every possible permutation of food on the menu. So that would be a sensible answer.

OTOH, humans chatting to one another know a lot and think a lot but they can only transfer data at 5 bytes/second (or 200,000,000 times slower than a good internet connection).

This slow data transfer means humans have to build up trust and social conventions so we only need to explicitly tell one another a small part of the overall picture, and the rest can be assumed from convention/etiquette/prior knowledge.

If you are ND, maybe the above is helpful?

Yes - it’s like talking to a toddler who keeps asking ‘why!’

NT and ND people on this thread have explained multiple times why indirect communication is used, both from the perspective of "getting it" and not getting it or liking it, but accepting it. However, it's like it resets to the OP asking why it's used for the first time every few hours, as though we hadn't all replied and been acknowledged. It's quite disheartening to have engaged in good faith.

At this point I think this entire thread is a wind up. No one is this obtuse and grabby.

Yes

she may well have just been expressing surprise that OP managed to eat two potatoes rather than complaining about paying for it

My favourite part of this ridiculous thread is the fact that the OPs (very generous) friend never actually moaned 😂 So whilst the OP is honing in on a question of why say X if you mean Y... it never even happened. The friend never moaned, the friend paid without complaining, the friend merely commented that she didn't expect the OP to order what he/she did order. Zero moaning. A figment of OPs imagination.

The friend should have just done a cats bum face and tried to make the OP guess what the face was for. They've really let the side down.

Yes, the friend doesn't play the NT conversation game correctly either.

Which makes this thread even funnier. So many posters slam the OP for not doing it, applying their own reading of the norm, without noticing that it is not that relevant here. They are so triggered by the lack of smoothness, that they just kick, explaining how clear things are - demonstrating their own lack of understanding.

Not going to write much, as I don't want to derail an already prolonged thread. But, I'm just calling you out for your 'lighthearted remark about MH'. Just as I would be for a 'lighthearted remark about racism' or 'lighthearted homophobic comments'.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Look it up and learn something. There's nothing lighthearted about severe childhood abuse and a lifelong disorder that leaves me wanting to kill myself. (I have MH support, so don't worry).

It is considered a useful social lubricant to NOT demand of others that they spell it out (or risk deliberate misapprehension by a determined literalist.)
Sometimes we speak in euphemism or circumlocution for reasons of embarrassment, trepidation, or any other kind of reluctance, and unless lives depend on it, we generally endeavour not to insist on an explicit exposition, but swiftly comprehend what is being said to us, out of kindness (or friendly affection, of course)

A person might be reluctant to tell her guest that she should limit what she selects as her meal, for reasons anyone could easily imagine, as it may embarrass one or both of them.
So the pleasant and grateful guest knows not to stick to the letter of what’s said, as this treat has been repeated weekly for a long time and she knows it ought to be at her expense, for once.
Similarly, if she made faint preparations to pay once or twice, but was assured it’s not necessary, she knows of course that her friend is hardly going to come out and admit that yes, paying would be a very good idea.
Her friend’s way may not be her own way of conversing (despite showing evidence of being at ease with elision and abstraction, in a very long ‘debate’) but she’ll gauge whether this is the perfect time to ignore what her friend says and just insist, by asking herself whether or not being deliberately obtuse just at that moment benefits her materially.

Oh, so you don't take everything literally?

It'd be a very strange fish that could read and type!

I don’t think either person was wrong really, there is communication problems and I agree that the friend is also probably ND if she mentioned the extra food x 2.
Both of their decisions and reactions make sense in a ND conversation.
I hope you can both put it behind you. Pay for lunch next time if it won’t leave you penniless, if you can’t afford it then I would have a conversation with your friend about it, hopefully you can both move on.

It's simply far too difficult to cover all eventualities-like being psychic and knowing you'd order two meals. Did you eat them both? Maybe she was more upset about potential food waste than the cost?

It is the case that girls successfully 'mask' better than boys, and so often aren't diagnosed until much older.

Autism is more prevalent in boys than girls, which is another reason why it might not be identified in girls.

None of it is easy, and it is very common for ND students to remark that people don't mean what they say, or say what they mean. Whether or not she is ND, OP shares that same confusion.

Assuming friend is NT @FourSevenFive

Multiple ND people on this thread have seen the logic from the friend's side. The friend has commented more than once on what @MrsOctaviaCharlotteSmythe has ordered as it wasn't logical to them to order extra food.

I am actively ignoring that fish does not go with sausage and garlic does not go with beans in my world to apply any logic.