Being able to live alone as an adult with Asperger etc.

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is it even possible? do you guys live alone/married with children /without children?

I'm 25 at the moment, first year at the university of history and with few previous work experiences (although 2 of them abroad, which was a great experience to add to the CV).

I can't see myself being able to work full-time and being able to pay my bills, do the shopping, drive a car (I drive only in my small city, and only when needed because it scares me) etc. (all the stuff that is required to hold a private home).

How are you guys and girls managing? everything is going smoothly? i'm kind of worried for my future alone.

I have AS. I'm 58, married, with 5 children. I've mostly managed to stay employed, except for a few periods where my depression became too much to handle and I went on disability. My relationship with my wife has had its ups and downs (mostly downs I'm afraid) and I've never been able to make proper friends. I've also never really been able to connect with my children. But for the most part I've managed to muddle through as best as I can.

Thanks for sharing your story Steve1963, it was helpful indeed. That is quite a succesful story for an Aspie.

you're welcome. successful by some measures perhaps, but lonely as hell.

I used to be terrified at the thought of living on my own, but since I moved out and living with my boyfriend I think I'll be OK living on my own. I may get lonely though, but at least I could do whatever I wanted.

The only worry is that I'll probably become a hoarder like you see on those TV documentaries, because I have a really hard time throwing things away and I only do it because my boyfriend strongly encourages me to.

I turned 27 a bit over a week ago. I live alone in an apartment that I own (bought it with loan that I'm still paying, of course, but legally it counts as mine), buy my own groceries and make my own food, pay my own bills (well okay, dad handles the phone bill, but we agreed that I take that under my own name too after the current contract ends.) I work, but not full time since I haven't been able to get a full time job. I had one in 2016, but it was a short contract and they didn't continue it. Fortunately, I get by financially. I don't drive 'cause I have a disability that prevents it, but the public transportation here is good enough that I get to work when I need to. Of course, the lack of a car means I can't apply for all jobs that I could if I drove.

Anyway, the point is that it's possible for us with Asperger. Not for everyone, it seems, but having it doesn't automatically mean one can't become independent.

I'm thinking virtual intelligence must be able to help autistic people quite a bit in the future. I'm thinking googles that can interpret facial expressions, help navigate. Or auto payment for bills, help you keep track of time. I mean help for whatever kind of weakness need to be adressed.

I have been living alone for a few years but my parents live close too so they drop by often.

I have lists for everything i have to do, i have to buy, the bills that i need to pay, subjects i have to study for work and such.

How does reading facial expressions help one live on their own?

Mostly I've found independent living pretty easy, the hardest part being holding down a job with all the stress and boredom it entailed. It was a relatively good job, secure for life as long as I didn't misbehave terribly, fixed salary and working hours, but I still found it hard at times. I think if I'd had to survive on benefits I'd have been a nervous wreck, the way they keep throwing people off them and never pay anybody what they really need to live on. But I guess I was lucky and I practically fell into a job after I left school, being quite well qualified by the standards of the day, and hung onto it for years. It might not be that simple in today's jobs market.

But my salary was stable, and quite enough for me as long as I didn't waste money, and being frugal by nature that wasn't a problem. I even bought a house or two in my time - it wasn't exactly easy but the solicitors took care of most of the complicated parts of that. Paying the bills was always stressful for some odd reason, though it's not really very hard to do and I've always managed to do it on time. Apart from that, independent living boils down to buying food and eating it, getting a bit of exercise, washing a few clothes, having the occasional bath, brushing your teeth, getting a bit of exercise, the occasional visit to the doctor, dentist, or optician, and that's about it most of the time. I've enjoyed fairly good health so I've barely needed doctors anyway, so far. I have trouble getting service providers such as government officials and repair people to help me, so I dread the thought of (e.g.) the central heating going wrong. I can also make the house very untidy because I don't know how to tidy it up, but eventually I learned not to make a mess in the first place, so that's not really much of a problem any more.

It may be that it's harder to live independently in the USA than it is in the UK. There's fairly good provision for buses and cycling in the UK, and none of this complicated rubbish with healthcare - no private insurance to figure out, you just get an appointment and turn up at the doc's or the hospital, no silly forms to fill in, no bankruptcy to worry about, and you take your prescription to the chemist and they just give you the medication. And no tax returns either, you could live your whole life through without ever knowing income tax existed, because your employer deals with all that. I didn't have to think about pension provision, everybody gets a State pension if they've worked for a few decades, and you get enrolled into occupational pensions by default.

Auto payment for bills is here already. Most companies and service providers love you to pay by direct debit where they just do the whole thing for you, and there's my preferred option of logging into my bank account and setting up a standing order, though that does need a bit of maintenance here and there. Of course you have to live within your means, and think before you spend money, if money is tight.

As for gadgets, I find a task scheduling computer program quite helpful, so I'll be reminded in a timely manner when I have to do this or that - I'd forget to do a lot of things without it - and a simple timer alarm program for everyday use, so I can set it to alert me in case I get too absorbed with an activity to realise a cake is burning or whatever. But all those things are things that perfectly able-minded people find useful too, apart from the alarm tone I designed myself - it has a soft-start, with a bell that gradually increases in volume so that it doesn't shock me when it goes off, then it goes quiet again for a couple of minutes, then repeats, and so on, so I don't have to interrupt what I'm doing, not even to hit a snooze button.

It's possible. I am married but we live separately because of my extreme sensitivities. I literally cannot live with someone else. I have been living alone for almost ten years now.

I am not able to live on my own in my own house or apartment yet because my parents took my life savings and I am legally forbidden from having a full time job.I have never really had the ultimate goal of living the American Dream of homeownership completely because I have always wanted to live on a commune for the rest of my life.My parents are constantly complaining about me living with them and they threaten to kick me out and I have been homeless on the street multiple times.My mom does not even give me a eviction notice and she kicked me out at 3 or 4 in the morning with only a phone that was about to run out of power and no charger.My parents are constantly threatening to have me locked up for the rest of my life and never taking me back into their home.They also say they are done with me all the time and my dad yells at me all the time and I have no freedom and they gaslight me and my dad says that they are trying to let me live as an adult yet he wont even let me have the freedom I had when I was a 10 year old and I am miserable living with my parents because they micromanage every aspect of my life.They also threaten to take away my medical care for my life-threatening illness.

I just do it. I don't advocate procrastinating, but it seems everyone does it to some extent; so it makes me feel less guilty or bad for it. But, I kinda take a day, to where this is gonna be my "errand" day, and anything I dread doing at times, and I hate and loathe, (paying bills, appointments, grocery shopping, dealing with business things etc., possibly going out to buy personal supplies, or maybe treat myself to a new pair of shoes, if I'm due for a new pair lol, etc, doing laundry, doing bed linens, cleaning out my car, possibly cleaning my bedroom, my closet, and house cleaning and other maintenance things etc.), and I get all those agendas, and objectives, and activities, and tasks done. lol. So yeah.

However, the "live alone", part, I'm just gonna stress on, right here and right now. As I don't necessarily have "roommates", but I have other people in my building/residence, and I do not get along with them at all, and I'm always nice and civil to them, but they aren't the same with me, but it's okay. So for all intents and purposes, at the moment, I do live alone.

Being a gay black autistic man, and I'm 30 years old now; that's single. I really would like a boyfriend or partner, or any kind of love in general, as I don't know if that was the intention of this topic for "live alone", as maybe it wasn't, but I'm going to pinpoint this anyways. I feel it's much difficult being alone socially, and interpersonally, and intimately, but I am optimistic that I will find love someday, and yeah.

That's my opinion on this. Thank you.

It can be very different for everyone. I've spent several years living alone as an adult, and in general it was very pleasant. I was fortunate in that I was able to be employed in a moderately-well-paying career that didn't personally tax me very hard, had no particularly expensive hobbies, and for the most part was able to find accommodation which was fairly quiet (and, later, came with climate control). While I had assorted medical issues, both related and unrelated, and both physical and mental, for the most part they were not particularly severe and could be handled, meaning I wasn't constantly being forced into additional problems as a side-effect.

So yes, it's possible... but there are a lot of external factors which can influence how easy or difficult (or even, yes, possible) it can be, and those can vary a lot depending on your own personal circumstances. Many of the things which allowed me to be as middle-class-successful-ish as I was, living alone, were the result of pure luck, rather than anything I personally did one way or another. In fact, I put a lot of it down to many of the things I did poorly at being, fortunately, things I also did not really care much about, so I never really saw them as problems. If I had cared about them, I could have spent decades repeatedly banging my head against those metaphorical brick walls and seeing myself as not being successful at living alone at all. It can be enormously subjective.

Thanks everyone for the kind replies. I think it is possible to live alone with Asperger because for a brief period of time I lived alone (3 months, abroad in Germany) and I managed to do everything in time.
What I found really "cool" was the fact that being alone meant I was not being disturbed by anyone else. I had my "order" set in my mind and nobody could distract me from it or destroy my order, this is how I managed to cope alone for this little time.

has this happened to someone else? At the moment I'm back at my parent's house and I find it very hard to "split the chores" basically to have someone else do what I am supposed to do. When I was alone I had my order and I was able to satisfy it even if it took some more time.