Face blind or rude?

[JDM625]

DH and I meet a group of ex work colleagues and friends we've know 25yrs, about twice a year. We've been to Glastonbury, gigs, BBQ's, weddings etc over the years.

Our close friend has often invited her friend Liz who comes to nearly every group event. Despite meeting her 15+ times, Liz acts like she has never met me before. We all went out lastnight and I said:

'Hi Liz, lovely to see you, how are things? How are Rob and the kids?' She did her usual blank expression and asked if we'd ever met! This happens every time we meet!

The woman that invites Liz heard the conversation and said 'For goodness sake Liz. You've met JDM and her husband lots of times! How can you not remember them?' Liz thought my DH looked familiar but not me- again!

I appreciate some people are face blind. Surely though when year on year people point out you've met multiple times you'd say something like 'Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not great with faces?'

If you are face blind do you ever apologies or just ignore the other person?

I have face blindness too and it can be selective (remembering some people but not others - maybe because of other contextual triggers like conversations I've had with them or voice/hair/clothing style etc) - I learned the tricks others have mentioned already so I don't appear rude in social situations. If I'm meeting up with people I see occasionally, I know I'm not going to recognise most of them so I make sure I go through the list of people I've met before in advance so I can be on the look-out for clues that will help me. You gave her enough clues. She was rude. (I also married a super-recogniser - we both thought we were normal until meeting each other!).

This! I’ve been diagnosed with prosopagnosia but would remember that I’d been out with a group of friend’s friends. I’d reply warmly but blandly then just wing it until I was able to figure out who you were.

I’m face blind and it can occasionally be excruciating if my usual coping methods fail.
As others have said though that normally happens when people are outside their usual context.
I do find it hard to make friends too and I think there are multiple occasions that I’m not even aware of where I have ignored people I should have recognised without even realising :(

She either has a medical problem affecting her memory or she's a CF... is it only you that she does this to?

I have pretty bad face blindness/prosopagnosia, to the point where I often cannot recognize VERY famous actors, or neighbors I’ve lived next to for years, etc. It’s honestly a bit awful because it’s embarrassing, as everyone around you IRL generally assumes you just DGAF about them if you don’t recognize their face instantly.

No clue if Liz has prosopagnosia or not, but do remember that she is your friend’s friend; you are not directly her friend! This is no reflection on you personally, but she may put very little value on remembering her friend’s friends/ex co-workers, especially if you’ve met only about 15 times or so over the course of 25 years. It’s not like you see Liz at every single twice-yearly gathering, or more than twice a year, etc. If you were hanging out with your friend once or twice a month, and she always brought Liz along, then I’d say she was just being rude, because even those of us with face blindness get good at recognizing peoples’ voices or the sound of their laugh, as a way of “recognizing” them, since it’s hard for us to remember faces well.

surely if she were she wouldn’t remember any of the others either, and your mutual friend would be aware of her condition?

There are degrees of face blindness, it's not all or nothing. Some people are more distinctive than others - so even in a group of a similar level of acquaintance the one with the very arched brows, strong accent, unusual walk or who always wears stripes will be remembered more than the average-height person with no particular distinctive features who regularly changes their hairstyle.

And unless it's at the most severe end it's quite possible that friends don't know. She may not even realise it herself. It's only quite recently that it's been widely recognised, it's not tested for, and it's very common for people to cover it up rather than mentioning it.

Or she might be rude.

Or both.

I didn't know face blindness was a thing until a few years ago, so for all the years before, I was always terribly embarrassed.
I thought I must have been so stupid, selfish or there was something wrong with me.
I felt ashamed every time it happened.

I still am embarrassed in the moment but at least now I have words to describe what it is.

So yes now I say something like "i probably said this last time, I'm absolutely awful with faces, it's face blindness, I'm lucky to know my next door neighbour if she's not three metres from her front door"

I have this too. People have told other people that I'm rude because I didn't say hello to them! I have a better chance of recognising people if they are in the same environment where I first met them or know them from. If they are outside of this, I may as well never have met them.

A few months ago I met somebody from my kid's nursery school who I hadn't seen in years. She said hi, we exchanged pleasantries and went our separate ways. About a month later, I was buying something from a local fete and she said something like 'Can't believe we've met twice after not seeing you for years'. I stared blankly at her and stupidly said something like 'Have we seen each other recently'. She walked off! It was hours afterwards when I realised who she was.
Its very embarrassing for both people.

When you retail the events you've shared, it does sound natural that she'd remember you.

However - I've shared rooms at work conferences, gone to the events with my roommates, been at the same parties, effectively been best friends for a week. and I wouldn't know any of them if they knocked on my door. I don't recognise long-standing friends. I'm often unsure of my own parents and siblings until I've had a chance to get a sneaky 360° look and watched them 'behaving'.

This was awkward because my career depended on social networks, but I didn't recognise anyone away from their desks! I got really good at blagging it. I don't think I've told anyone how bad this is - people's egos can get really dented by it and, as I said, my work relied on good relationships.

On the funnier side, I have bounced up to endless celebrities thinking I knew them from work or something - they say this happens a lot, must be annoying! And I'm very easily pleased by films & TV, as I rarely recognise actors from one work to the next, or even characters when they change their appearance.

This woman might simply be embarrassed and reluctant to advertise her disability. Alternatively, she could be suffering memory losses. Or I guess she might hate your guts, but it's a funny way of showing it.

I remember the striking details about people: piercing blue eyes or gap in their teeth and suchlike. A colleague had long blonde curls, and I totally failed to recognise her when she transformed them into a short dark bob. To the point that I was making tea for the office and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met, but would you like a cup of tea?” 🙄 The rest of the team fell about laughing; so did she thankfully. I felt such a chump.
But I did recognise her subsequently.

I also introduced myself to a couple my partner was talking to because he “wasn’t going to do it!” Turned out that
I had attended their wedding, two years before 🤦‍♀️

Liz is just rude.

face blind people apologise, compensate or fake it.

I'd be very surprised if its deliberate. I feel sorry for her if her grip on people is that poor though. It must be very lonely 😬

I’ve had a head injury and after recovering had some face blindness especially trying to ID men because they all tend to have short hair and look more similar. Over the years it has improved such that now I can notice in a tv show if a character changes their look.

But when it was bad I have not recognised my own partner, so whether or not this was true face blindness I don’t know but it might well have caused me to not recognise someone. My memory in general is very bad and getting worse. So I might not remember meeting someone a few times, very possibly.

So I’d give this person the benefit of the doubt because her response sounds unusual enough that something unusual might be going on with her. If you forget something (like previous meetings) it’s just not there- you don’t know you’ve forgotten it. You know that phrase ‘clean forgot’’ ? It’s that. No memory of something happening that you might be hazy in recollecting.

I have aphantasia but can’t remember if that was always the case pre head injury or not. I’ve don’t know if that’s related or not to memory or face recognition.

I know someone like this, we first met him nearly 10 years ago. Have met him again a number of times (we have mutual friends), sometimes at quite small gatherings, so not like he has to remember lots of people. Every single time we see him, he introduces himself to us as if we’ve never met.

Pretty sure with him it’s rudeness, as he recognises other people. I overheard him ask a mutual friend at a party who my DP was and she said “ that’s Mr Donsyb, you’ve met him loads of times” and he just looked at her blankly.

If it were rudeness, why would he have asked?

I have prosopagnosia (face blindness) but wasn’t aware of it as a ‘thing’ until I got to my mid 30’s. I just thought it was normal to struggle. Like another poster, I havnt always been able to reliably recognise my son by face but I can identify him by posture, walk and voice immediately. I still struggle to locate my partner by face in a crowded room after 25 years. He’s very patient :-)
it does make some tv stuff tricky if there are too many characters that look too similar.

makes it hard to get to know people although I really wasn’t aware of it as an individual issue for most of my adult life. All just part of my general quirkiness and frankly one of the easier things I have going on :-)
name badges are great. So are table plans and quick hand sketched layouts on the back of a napkin. Modern phones are great because the photo is by the name. All helps. Unless they change their hair !

It probably isn't rudeness.
I can 'recognise' people unless they are distinctive looking or have something that strikes me about them e.g. memorable hair cut and colour, a particular style of dressing, is very overweight, is very tall or very short etc. I'm in real trouble when someone 'blends in' and doesn't have any distinguishing features. I have watched films and failed to recognise very famous actors because they don't look like they did in a different film. I'd recognise Meryl Streep or Jodie Foster but the others mostly blend in a sea of similar women.

I’m not faceblind as such but I’m very bad with faces. I’m excellent with names and voices and otherwise have a good memory. I just don’t have a good visual memory also am bad with directions. This means I’m usually bad at remembering people who don’t talk a lot as I have no other information points on them than visuals which I’m bad at. I’m sure I’ve offended so many people over time. I wouldn’t be so hard on Liz. I have a job where I meet a lot of people (a bad combo!) so I have to confess that if I meet someone who doesn’t say anything interesting or just don’t talk a lot, I struggle to remember them. Once I forgot that a very quiet colleague has been there for an entire work trip abroad and said to him oh but you weren’t there and he said I was! I was mortified! But similarly sometimes I can’t recognize even very noticeable people if I see them out of context, like, a famous person I’ve seen online many times and I meet them in real life I rarely realize who they are. True story I spoke to Dustin Hoffman without realizing it was him, sat next to Chris Martin on a bench in Hampstead Heath and only realized it was him when my surprised friend came to meet me there, and asked David Miliband what time it was when I was waiting for a committee meeting at parliament, not realizing it was him..when he was the foreign secretary and the meeting was to be chaired by him! I also once spoke to a guy for 10 minutes before I realized I’d slept with him a few years earlier. No wonder he was being awkward.

I AM LIZ! Don’t be so hard on the Lizes of the world!

Out of if curiosity, how many of you are "honest" about it? And if not, how do you manage it?

It makes my toes curl with embarrassment.

My family are great, when the boys were at primary it was a nightmare picking them up as they all looked the same. They all knew to wave or come to me.

DS works in a pub but I can identify him as he has a visible tattoo.

STBXH always helped me with tv and films (incidentally I don't really watch tv because it's hard work now than anything else).

I was sitting in the village square and a woman came up and started chatting. I'm good at blagging it and she seemed happy when she left... and my son said "mum, you didn't have a clue who she was did you?"

I only told one very close colleague because we were both going to an event and I knew he would help me work out who people were (bless him, he whispered names to me as they came up).

I can do distinctive clothing styles, gait, sometimes height and voices.

I hate it. It's isolating, disorientating and sometimes scary.

As mentioned I’m not properly faced blind but bad w faces and anything visual. I do tend to tell people if I don’t recognize them, usually I say I’m so sorry but you are..? I’m terrible at faces! Still, I know many take it personally and they think I just don’t care about them. (Obvs not famous people, they probably wonder why I’m so chill w them, actually it’s been hilarious on occasion, like when I asked a famous politician to lift my dog over a fence or walked into an actual king of a smaller European country) so I think the worst thing is more insecure and quiet people because they tend to really take it personally. I try to compensate by being extremely kind to them whenever I can and also self deprecating and I make fun of myself and share my embarrassing moments…I think I tend to fall into portraying myself as a bit of a klutz to make up for it and actually it undermines my ability to be perceived as competent in the work place at times, so I don’t think I deal a it in the best way tbh. I think it gets harder as I age too, because when I was younger I could hide behind the charming ditzy younger woman guise, but as a middle aged woman that doesn’t fly and I want to be taken seriously, so actually I’m trying to focus on this shortcoming by focusing more on peoples faces and little details about them that helps me remember them. I find if in general I slow down, it becomes easier to handle. When I meet people now, especially first time, I try to focus on my breathing and maybe provide some other sensory stimulation like rubbing my fingers together etc to stay in the moment and not get distracted and kind of absorb their face better. This is going to sound weird..but sometimes I think I find other people so overstimulating that I don’t focus on them fully because it’s like if I do it’s just too much? Does that make sense? I often feel like when I meet someone I can see so much about them, how they feel and who they’re are right away and it feels like I’m learning something about them that’s too private and it’s too overwhelming for me so I don’t focus on them fully and so don’t remember a lot of people. Even people o know, friends and family, I often feel overwhelmed by them and it’s like it’s too much being around them. I think I’m a total weirdo tbh.
maybe Liz is weird too?

He seems to have no trouble recognising others though? And my DP is foreign, which tends to make him more memorable.

This is really interesting to me because I have face blindness and it’s really annoying!

but OP Liz would have recognised your DH/group of friends/voice/hairstyle etc and otherwise she should have certainly played along, she sounds rude to me.

I walked past a man with two dogs and thought ahhh cute I’ve got dogs like that - they were my dogs, being walked by my husband of 24 years. Partly I just don’t bother to look at faces so I didn’t ‘see’ him and partly it was because I wasn’t expecting him to be there, I need people to be in their setting…

Im glad people struggle with their own kids too! I’ve said to a mum in a playground that it’s hard to tell who’s who when they all wear the same uniform. She was a bit baffled.

Last week I was looking into meeting rooms at work to find my team. I looked into one window and thought that’s a lot of people more than our usual meeting, it made me really panic because I didn’t want to open the door to the wrong meeting. I had to go and ask and it was that room - to be fair there were some I actually hadn’t met but yeah it’s really hard to explain why you don’t recognise your work colleagues.

Films are OK unless there are two similar looking actors - I.e two blonde lead actors.

Well I've just discovered i have aphantasia. I can't picture things in my mind - pretty sure i used to be able to though. Definitely could as a child. Where did it go!!!

Also don't recognise people, I need them to talk and see their movements for a bit before it clicks. Pretty sure this is worse than when I was younger. Names are always slow to come back to me - takes me ages to get to the point where I can just recall them no effort

Also terrible getting places. I sometimes feel I could get lost in my own house!!

However, in the OP's scenario, I have been the person who doesn't recall someone in the group. I would be apologetic and do start to recall the last time we met (not always). Though I tends to only happen once or twice and I'd then recall them (unless voice, hair, bodyshape has charged) because it's embrassing to me so I reall make an effort

Given the context that it's just you out of the group that she does this to, it seems fairly clear she either has a social skills disorder or is actually deliberately rude/ blanking you for some reason.