People who have pattern recognition libraries judge people who don't have them yet. They say things like:
This judgment assumes everyone has access to the same information, the same reference library, the same pattern recognition ability. They don't.
"Obvious" doesn't mean universally visible. It means:
1. You Didn't Have the Pattern Library
You can't recognize patterns you've never encountered before. If you grew up around healthy relationships, you don't have templates for covert manipulation. If you grew up around chaos, you might not recognize stability as an option.
This isn't stupidity. This is lack of reference material.
2. You Didn't Have the Language
Without words for what you're experiencing, you can't organize your observations into recognizable patterns. "Gaslighting," "trauma bonding," "love bombing" - these are frameworks that make invisible patterns visible.
Before you learn these terms, you just feel confused. After you learn them, everything suddenly makes sense.
3. You Didn't Process Social Cues the Same Way
Neurodivergent people often process social information differently. What reads as "shifty" to a neurotypical person might not register at all if you're reading for explicit content instead of subtext. You're not broken - you're reading a different channel.
Someone saying "your social radar is off" might as well be telling a blind person their visual perception is poor.
4. You Didn't Have the Context
If you've never experienced certain kinds of abuse, you don't know what to watch for. If you were raised with certain dynamics as "normal," you lack the contrast needed to identify them as problems.
You can't see outside the system you were raised in until someone shows you what's outside it.
5. You Were Actively Being Confused
Manipulation works by scrambling your pattern recognition. Gaslighting specifically targets your ability to trust your own observations. You weren't "missing" red flags - they were being actively hidden from you.
Blaming someone for not seeing through skilled deception is like blaming them for being pickpocketed.
If you're neurodivergent, you face additional layers of unfair judgment:
None of this is a deficit. It's a different processing system. Judging you for not catching neurotypical social cues is like judging a Mac for not running Windows software.
There IS a difference between:
People who judge you are often conflating these two. They assume if they could see it, you should have seen it too.
"I didn't know" is not the same as "I was stupid."
Intelligence doesn't create information that doesn't exist. Smart people without frameworks are just as blind as anyone else without frameworks.
Learning is evidence of growth, not evidence of prior failure.
The fact that you can see patterns now doesn't mean you "should have" seen them before. It means you've acquired new information.
Pattern recognition is a skill you build, not a trait you have.
Nobody is born knowing how to identify manipulation. Everyone learns it somewhere, from something. You're learning it now.
People are hard on you for "not knowing better" because:
None of this makes their judgment accurate. It just explains why they're doing it.
You can't recognize what you haven't been taught to see.
Pattern recognition is learned. Frameworks are learned. Language is learned. Social cue interpretation is learned. Context is learned.
You are learning now. That doesn't mean you should have already known.
Not having a pattern library yet is not a moral failing.