Autism, social cues, romantic relationships....?

Post Reply New Topic

first off, i'm not a diagnosed anything, in fact i've never been to a doctor for anything, ever, beyond childhood stuff. I was reading an article about evolution and it mentioned autism and social cues and i'm looking for a better understanding. The article mentioned social cues in the context of apes being unable to understand collective work, whereas humans have used a collectivity to better apply technology and intellectual capacity. This got me thinking about social relationships and social cues, so i googled and came to this forum.

My personal relationship to my question is that i've never had a problem having girls attracted to me but i've never been in a relationship. Generally, it plays out over time where, for lack of a better term, we've become friends, but i had always wanted more but didnt know how to pursue it or if she wanted me to. (full disclosure, religious issues-evangelical christian upbringing-contributed to the hesitancy as well). In repeated instances of grief and heartache i relive and analyze what went wrong, why and how i messed up. Not to put too scientific a spin on it, but post-analysis makes me believe that she always was interested and wanted me to do something but that i missed the cues for whatever reason.

In this context, is this partly what is meant by social cues and autism? Could this be a form of mild autism? Or am i putting too specific and literal an understanding of the term `social cues` as it pertains to autism?

I sincerely hope this doesnt offend anyone, but my impression of autism has always been the person who wasn't a functional human, meaning couldnt speak, write, feed himself etc (fed by, for instance, 60 minutes profiles of savants who are brilliant piano players but are non-functional in any other aspect) because of some genetic defect. I say this because i have two university degrees, speak three other languages, have been a `star` athlete and am fully functional physically and mentally, so obviously my view on what autism is was never applicable to any self-diagnosis.

so i guess what i'm wondering is if autism can be so mild that it only affects one single, narrow context of social, physical and mental life, and if something as variable as lack of success in romance could be a reason to seek out professional diagnosis?

welcome to the club. i can only guess that you are blind to body language. most f2f communication between humans is via body language. i don't dig the lingo myself, that is a big part of why i am a hermit.

No. Not in and of itself. This alone is just not enough to base "need for diagnosis" on.

Look a lot more into Asperger's Syndrome, High Functioning Autism, PDD-NOS etc. before putting it in high gear actively looking for a DX.

What you're talking about here is nothing more than a human trait almost anyone can have. Maybe you're just too distracted by other activity in your mind to pay attention to the signals. Maybe you are Autistic. No way on earth to know from this little information.

But still, welcome to the club of "Hit me over the head with a two-by-four if your interested in me, because I don't get all that subtly crap!"