Autistic people unknowingly committing crimes

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How do you know if a woman isn't interested?

- She'll leave you on read.

- She'll take 24+ hours to get back to you.

- She'll always be too busy to go out with you, but you browse her Facebook and Instagram and she's with her girlfriends at the club.


I'm talking from personal experience.

I think this is one area of life which is far more difficult for men than women. I mean dating, not crimes.

I had lots of obsessions with men, even after I was married. Obviously I never went anywhere with them after I got married. But I have constant crushes on men, even in my 50s.

I didn't have a boyfriend til I was 22, but looking back, there WERE boys interested in me but I never picked up the hints and subtle clues because I'm not capable of doing that. Some of the hints were very obvious though, there was one boy at university who gave me a birthday card, he'd written: 'to my darling (my name)' and covered it in xxxxxxxxx I was thrown however, because the day he gave it to me, another friend walked into the room at the same time and started talking about something else. I just thought 'oh that's nice, what a nice card' and nothing else happened! I didn't really fancy that boy though.

How I ended up married I will never know. At school/ work I was always the loser, never had a boyfriend, always in a muddle and desperate for a boyfriend.

My first boyfriend made it really obvious he liked me, I was so relieved that AT LAST someone fancied me, I just leapt into bed with him. He turned out to be a manipulative user though.

My second boyfriend also made it really obvious he liked me, by formally asking me out on a date to a party and formally asking my mum if I could go etc. That's what I like: clarity! Obviously he is also a kind, good, caring, funny, affectionate, reliable man. So therefore we've been married for nearly 30 years!

I can't imagine this happening to an autistic man because society says men must be the chasers and women the chasees. Although hopefully attitudes are changing. I do know some strong, forthright women who have autistic husbands.

Wow, I think that confirms something ive been suspecting for a while.
Many people don't actually listen to what you say, they just listen out for keywords and fit them to a pattern.
So she heard of you writing things down and fit it to a pattern of a killer or stalker that she probably saw in a movie.

I've never seen any data on this.
I would have thought it would be at least an equal proportion to the rest of the population.

I have known some extremely abusive men with an ASD diagnosis.

Totally over the top (on the therapist and administrator's part). It's not like you were deliberately crossing any boundaries. You were simply taking notes on when exactly you organically crossed paths with her.

Last edited by SkinnyElephant on 12 Sep 2022, 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not saying success never happens (when it comes to an autistic man finding a woman). All I'm saying is it's a lot harder for us than a normie.

Without having any statistics on hand (and I'm not sure they even keep statistics for this), I would venture to guess the marriage rate for autistic men is a lot lower than for neurotypical men.

Also, generation makes a difference. Older autistic men came of age before online dating apps ruined the dating game (When a woman has dozens of jocks with perfect social skills to pick from on the dating app, why on earth would she want anything to do with someone like us?)

Maybe the person with "perfect social skills" is a total ass? I've met people like that.

"Being an ass with perfect social skills" is pretty common in high school, actually.

Of course, autistic men will run into difficulties in dating. I ran into difficulties in dating. I've made mistakes in determining whether someone "liked" me or not. But, ultimately, I had success because I put "finding a girlfriend" on the backburner.

The absolute worst thing a guy can do as far as his chances in dating are concerned---is to appear desperate. I appeared desperate quite a few times. I lost dearly every time, with some women actually backing away from me in disgust. This wasn't because of my "looks" or how I smelled; it was because of how I seemed to them in an emotional sense.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 12 Sep 2022, 12:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.

You two are correct. I've read that book, A Field Guide to Earthlings, and the author says people do indeed behave like that! He gives it a name (Pattern matching, or something?) and it means that NTs actually can't understand explanations unless certain keywords are used.

I've certainly noticed this many times. I've explained something, the NT has picked out part of it, repeated it to me, and I've thought, THAT is what you took from what I said? People don't listen as carefully as we do. I'm learning not to listen carefully either. It's a knack, a type of communication.

e.g. I said once that I didn't agree with someone spending £4000 transporting one dog from Latvia, when that money could be used to help many, many starving children in the world.

The NT understood that meant I hated animals and was therefore a horrible person. Erm...?

I also think that autistic people pick out different things from what people say. We focus on A, the NTs focus on B, so we all get confused. We have different priorities.

Oh my God.

In regards to the dog, some people are 'rabid' animal lovers and go crazy at any hint of not treating an animal as well as a person. So I guess they would be pattern matching like that.

I've been inappropriate towards men, thinking it was innocent. For example...in my first year at uni I pulled my flatmates bottoms down...thinking it was funny. My mental age was clearly underdeveloped.

I definitely don't go around doing that now.

When a woman flat out tells me "no" (right off the bat), I back off.

However, the following scenario has played out several times:

A woman initially tells me she's into me. Then we seemingly fizzle out. But since she at least expressed interest in me at one point, I continue persisting. Sometimes the woman ultimately ends up telling me to get lost, sometimes I simply stop trying, but sometimes I end up succeeding.

IMO, there's a huge difference between what I do vs a guy who persists even when told "no" right off the bat.

This woman I was talking to wasn't a rabid animal lover, she was a friend/colleague who worked with children and young people alongside me. So I assumed she liked children and young people, and would agree that spending money on them would be better than spending it all on one dog. WRONG!

I suppose we can't always guess a person's interests correctly. Anyway, I didn't bother with her after that. Telling everyone that I was a horrible person when she'd seen me helping children and young people (a job I loved) is not okay with me, it's just lying.

She went around saying you were horrible to people you knew because of an off-hand comment about a dog? Wow.

Yes...I suppose I did talk more about the dog than one comment but she had known me for years and knew I loved helping children, we worked together happily.

I hadn't seen her for about 10 years and she was pretty different so maybe things had happened to her in those years.

Although I have noticed very clearly that most people I used to know are very different when I meet them again, they seem a lot more touchy, easily offended, angry. Humans seem to have changed.

Yeah, it'd be good if there was such a way. One thing that would be easy to accomplish in theory with more resources would be to educate law enforcement a little about autism and have them always check if the suspect has some diagnosis or the other. Of course, with this undiagnosed people would still fall through gaps just as easily, but at least some people might get help. Like, if the suspect had a diagnosis, more attention could be put in to not only asking "did you do x?" but also asking "were you aware that doing x is a crime?" If only the former is asked, an autistic person is likely to simply answer with the truth without even realizing at that point that it was a crime and thus not defend themselves in any way. Of course, if such a system was put in to use widely, there would likely be people who'd try to take advantage of it and claim they didn't know what they did was wrong. And yes, some autistic people might do so too. So, it's complicated.

As an example of my own, I think so called friendly teasing falls under this banner rather easily. In junior high, it was normal for friends to give each other slightly mean nicknames and come up with jokes on each other's expense. I did that too, but it seems I occasionally missed some signals of when a certain joke was outlived or went too far. As in, friendly teasing was fine, but I couldn't always tell the difference of when people took my friendly teasing as just that and when it wasn't funny to them anymore. This kinda thing makes school tricky for those on the spectrum... oh, and apparently I freaked out one of the guys in my class in junior high because I stared at him too much (yes, I had a crush), but since staring was the only creepy thing I did (as far as I know), I didn't get in to any trouble for that aside from our shared friend telling me to stop after the guy had told her about my staring. And I don't think I traumatized him or anything; we hung out a lot all the way through junior high, though only during school hours, but still, if he hated me he could've and probably would've told me to get lost, or at the very least would've never approached me on his own.

For certain crimes (like murder), obviously you still have to be prosecuted (even if on the spectrum).

However, crimes committed by people on the spectrum tend to be much milder than murder.

In most cases, the only "crime" any of us will ever commit is unknowingly "harrassing" someone (because we're not able to take hints). For such a mild "crime," leeway could definitely be given.

I can totally relate to your story about teasing in school. Just like you, there were times (during my school days) when I wasn't aware if my (what I thought was) playful teasing went too far.

Also, in retrospect, some of my classmates definitely egged me into doing pranks that were never funny in the first place. At the time, I thought they were laughing WITH me. Looking back, it's more likely they were thinking "Look what we convinced the socially awkward kid to do. Let's laugh at him."