why don't mild aspie call themselves nt

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well,for me
-hate doing social things (once a while,ok)
-can't get married
-don't drive
-work at job with disable folks
-ocd
-lives with parent
-learning disable
-have a personal agent
-very low on independent living skills
-immature
-like to touch people face
-talk about weird,strange stuff
-talk to myself.
-can make friends easy,for some
reason.
-I really don't do much with
my friends,I rather be alone
(once in a while,ok)

so,you can see I am pretty messed up.

^^^
but at least you had a GF and had the GF experience [with whoopee and affection]. that is a lot more than a lot of the rest of us.

They process stimuli differently.

what is stimuli

No effect on their lives!? Are you f*cking kidding me!?

First, I am of the opinion that there is NO SUCH THING as MILD Autism. Being better able to develop "coping mechanisms" does not lessen the long term effects of chronic anxiety, and sensory overloads on the nervous system. Being able to HIDE pain does not mean you are not EXPERIENCING pain.

Second, being able to FORCE yourself to go out and PRETEND that you are fairly normal, long enough to get through a job interview does not mean you will be able to KEEP that job for more than a few months if you get it, because you still have plenty of HANDICAPS to make you completely DYSFUNCTIONAL at knowing how to behave around your coworkers, or being able to keep your train wreck lack of social skills hidden. Being chronically unemployed because you get fired over and over is no picnic. It's depressing and it hurts. After the tenth or eleventh time it makes you just want to give up and eat a bullet.

Trust me, sometimes I WISH my disability was more obvious, so people would cut me some slack when I'm not up to the task, but when you appear "fairly normal" you NEVER GET A BREAK. Everybody just assumes you can do everything just like they do, and when you can't, they decide you're just an @$$hole LOSER and kick you like an ugly dog.

The only reason I was ever able to date, was because I had a job that allowed me to meet girls on the phone before I had to talk to them face-to-face. I've been married THREE times, billiscool (and crashed at least as many relationships that just never were made legal partnerships) and buddy, IT SUCKS. Once again, just because you manage to START something that looks Neurotypical doesn't mean you can maintain it.

As for friends, honestly, the only close friends I've had my entire life were people who were almost certainly on the Autistic Spectrum themselves, and they had most of the same problems struggling through life that I have had.

Why don't we call ourselves Neurotypical? I can only speak for myself, but its because I'm light years away from being neurotypical. People have referred to me as "odd" and "weird" and "screwed up" all my life and I can't argue with them, because they're right. I'm nothing like them and their kind. But they by-God expect me to be anyway and they go out of their way to tell me I'm nothing but worthless when I can't.

Appearing normal is not BEING normal and in some ways, its actually HARDER.

Stimuli are things that you respond to. Incoming stimuli are all the things you perceive like sights, sound, touch etc. People with AS perceive and process the world differently to the norm, so their experience of the world is different. Even if they put on the best possible "show" of appearing NT, their inner experience won't be the same, and therefore their mental health may be impacted.

I do...

well,that one advantage of being a semi-special autism man,you can hook up
with semi-special autism woman,(like I did)

semi-special autism folks have a dating advantage,we just date other autism,disable
folks because we all work together,have the same classes,go to same social events,clubs.

so,in a way,semi-special autism folks have it easier in dating.

I don't consider myself gifted. I have learned with time to cope with my issues from a very young age. It's just an ability to use your individual skills to cover up my introverted traits and personal stims which nobody knows. I honestly feel like an alien masquerading as a human being.

We may have that mild amount of autism, but even mild isn't enough to consider us NT. We still show signs of having autism, but it's more subtle so people can hardly tell unless one makes the confession.

I don't understand what you wrote,sorry.

Basically just that autistic people experience things differently to NTs, even if it may appear that they are the same from the outside.

My doctor's opinion was that my autism is the mildest of the mild, and yet...

- While I do have some ability to socialize, neither do I fear social situations, and in fact wish that I could be more social, it is exhausting for me to do so
- I have zero friends
- I am fortunate enough to be married to a wonderful woman who is very patient with my disabilities, but the fact of the matter is that she runs the house, she is more like a parent or caretaker and our relationship is not equal because I am basically a fourth child, who also happens to be able to financially support a family
- I do not have a good paying job but it is one which I am comfortable doing and I work with people who are understanding, I also managed to complete a career in the military which provides a very generous pension and allows us to live a reasonably high standard of living in spite of my low paying job.
- I am able to drive, in fact I enjoy driving.
- no-one besides my wife and children understand why I am able to earn straight A's in college but have no interest in completing my bachelors degree because it is no longer relevant.
- I am completely dependent upon my wife, I am incapable of functioning independently.

I guess, in some ways, I wish I had more pronounced traits. As it is people, including my own immediate family, don't believe I'm on the spectrum at all.

If I could count matches dropped on the floor they'd believe it. If I could memorize all the names and numbers in a phone book they'd believe it. Subtlety, however, is not so easy.

I think people overestimate the impact of gifted IQ on impairments.

I COMPLETELY agree and thanks for pointing this out

I pretty much fit all the "requirements" to being able to act like an NT, and still here I am being almost 29 without a job, without ever having had a girlfriend.
And now finally I am getting my life back on track because of a depression that crippled me for about 7 years, after I melted down caused by trying to be normal from kindergarten all the way trough college.

Because one day that mask can fall off and then what do you got?

Not that I complain, because I am happy for everything that happened, as it only made me stronger, and in the end made me who I am today.