Lying to Attract a Mate

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And anecdotal evidence is still evidence. If you want to find a larger data set, why don't you look for it? Go out to Delphi or another similar site and do your research - I'm not stopping you.

And then maybe you'll stop blowing smoke and reveal your plan. If making a concerted effort to dispell misconceptions about autism (and partners with autism) won't work, then what will?

What will work is giving people a chance to get to know you beyond your label before you drop it on them so that what they've learned about you to that point challenges their preconceived notions. The approach you are suggesting and mine don't even have to be mutually exclusive. You can educate people through advocacy resources (the "long-term strategy") at the same time as you approach your personal relationships in the way I've described (the "short-term strategy").

That's what I've been saying the whole time (well, the short-term part anyway). But that disagrees with your world view, so you're not listening either.

If we're not listening to each other, this conversation is effectively over.

Oh....so creating a resource that contains accurate information about autism, and understanding how that information applies to you individually is actually not terrible advice. What a relief.

Why not, instead of mentioning the word "Asperger's" and risking the other person doing research and finding all the "ZOMG IT IS A TERRIBLE DISEASE AND THEY WILL MAKE YOU LONELY AND SAD" sites, just say "I have difficulties with x, y, and z? (possibly also say "but I am good at a, b and c)" ?

Yeah sorry, I apologize, I just don't get how the trend of thinking helps people with aspergers or autism at all.

I don't even get how it in all but the extreme cases would help a NT. Other than to give them possible unfounded biases.

LogicallySound is right about stereotypes, people make asinine assumptions about autism equivalent to rainman or worse. Heck, autism isn't fully understand by the general populace, forget high functioning autism or AS. I could poll 5 co-workers and I bet if i'm LUCKY 1 or 2 might have heard about AS , if i'm real lucky 1 will understand what AS actually is. I know for a fact not a single person in this household except for me and my girlfriend have even heard of it. AS/HFA in many instances was taken as someone just being a super nerd.

I'm not even formally diagnosed, but i've been with my girlfriend a number of years and people who have been diagnosed have been with theirs and found out about AS within the relationship. If you cannot find out that you do not want to be with a person after a certain amount of time, you're responsible. There is no way to hide the symptoms of AS for years anyway.

Relationships between NT and AS are categorically different, yes. But relationships between individuals are just as different. How they meet, how they interact, what they fight over, why they get along. Most "courtships" are done as teenagers, have very little depth, almost nothing personal shared, and still begin and end.

The standard somehow changes when we're grown up?

The national institue of mental health estimates a whopping 26.2% of people in the U.S. with a mental disorder. A MENTAL disorder, something that is usually only classified as such because its gets in the way of day to day living if not taken control of. Something that you'd probably categorize as hard to deal with in a relationship as AS. A mental disorder practically can very well be considered a disability as well.

You're saying 1 out of 4 have a chance to sabotage a relationship? Or is someone with knowledge that they have AS more responsible or have a better chance of saving a relationship due to being diagnosed? If its the knowledge, I don't get the whole sabotage thing, i'd tell someone when I felt comfortable enough to start a committed relationship with them. They might regret it later, because they were so smitten and too biased to end the relationship at that point? You can end a relationship at anytime. You can divorce at any time. A relationship is either a choice, or blindly driven by hormones and guilt with no self-input.

Is autism technically considered a disability? Yes, so is ADHD. (Which millions of people have and no one clarifies in a relationship) But the strict definition of it to even be on disability is--

You cannot do work that you did before;
We decide that you cannot adjust to other work because of your medical condition(s); and
Your disability has lasted or is expected to last for at least one year or to result in death.

To be legally qualified to even go on disability. (Social security website, not me)

Also keep in mind I in no way consider ADHD (Controlled) or AS/Autism (controlled) a disability. Yet, you can still have those disorders.

Would I continue to date someone who I found out after a few dates couldn't have kids? Nope. Is every specific case of AS something that extreme that it'll have an irreversible flow in the direction the relationship heads? Nope.

Yeah, you did miss my point.

NT world, male culturization the opposite of 'confidence' is admission of weakness. Admission of weakness - one good example is talking about medical problems. You or I might think its a good idea, the rest of the world is....kind of slow, basic, and vulgar. Its deemed wholly inappropriate to even admit to ourselves that we have a condition let alone admit it to other people. Thus we have the notion that we're not to appear 'weak' literally jammed down our throats from day one, most male figures in our lives will enforce it, and many of the more visible women in our lives will be endorsing it themselves and this is a feedback loop that's gone on since time immemorial because of what men are supposed to be or at least as has been for thousands of years previous to today, ie. anything less than hunter/killer barely has a right to be alive. At 31, I've been done with having that concern govern my thought process for the worse for several years now but, then again, it took perhaps until my mid 20's for people in my life to back off of me enough to 'let' me think how I am. For a lot of guys under 25, due to their surroundings, that option can easily be unavailable. I still remember my friends scolding me (I was maybe 24 or 25) for going to a bar and getting a drink, a girl says that her friend is coming back, her friend comes back, and I have a friend in each ear telling me that I'm a p***y or f****t if I get up. I can go into countless other stories of where everything from peers to adults ripped me apart about my kindness and gave me Densel from Training Day type lectures about how I needed to grow a pair a spine and a pair of testicles. I bullied myself constantly with that for years because of the impact these things made on a day to day basis. This is the kind of thing where I don't even know if its possible for women to believe that guys go through this, admittedly there are things that women go through that guys are mostly in the dark on simply for the reason that it never gets talked about for whatever reason.

I'm not trying to run your original point out at all, I'm just telling you that this is a very big complicated picture and we can't over-simply it - otherwise the message completely misses the mark. Part of why I've even gotten this involved in the topic is that we're hitting on issues that I think need to be addressed, again it seems like almost all gender misunderstandings and antipathy come from lack of knowledge of what the other goes through on a regular basis. I also cherish the moments where women will be as forthcoming about their experiences - it goes a long way for the positive that anyone does so.

Good idea. This is the way to do it.

Okay, I really don't understand your position here. Are you saying that because most people don't accurately understand autism, that lack of understanding should be accepted? Because my position is that it should be challenged by education.


Sorry, I'm not sure I'm following you. I do think adult courtships are quite different than teen-aged courtships.


Absolutely agreed.


I'm saying that if you have knowledge of a condition that impacts the relationship and you don't disclose that knowledge, you will be sabotaging your relationship. The first type of sabotage is that you and your partner won't be able to discuss the diagnosis and the challenges it presents, research the diagnosis, and deal with it openly and honestly. The second type of sabotage is that you will have destroyed your partner's faith and trust in you when he/she discovers that you knew about the condition, and hid it from him/her. I agree that a diagnosis of mental illness, or any other type of chronic physical illness has to be disclosed. When you're in a relationship, your life isn't just about you any longer. It's about your partnership, it may be about children (if you have them). So IMO, you absolutely have a responsibility to your partner to do the best you can for the relationship - and that includes working to accommodate your disability.


Seriously, though - what? I had a team lead with ADHD at my last job and he told the whole team about it. I worked with a guy 15 years ago (that I'm still friends with) and he told me he had ADHD more than 10 years ago. Why do you think partners wouldn't disclose that information to each other?


Look, I can't get into a debate over how the US government defines a disability for the purpose of paying benefits. I know lots of people with ASD who receive those benefits, so I guess ASD is considered a disability by the feds.


Okay, I don't know how you can consider autism "controlled" - can you explain that?


Again, the impact that ASD has on a relationship is not up to you to decide, because relationships are team sports, you know? It's like saying, "I have this kink that I need you to indulge, but it will have no impact on you - it's just something I need you to do." I'm not saying being autistic equals being kinky - at all. But if you have a kink, and you really won't be satisfied sexually unless your partner participates in your kink, and you want to be monogamous - wouldn't you feel obligated to tell your partner about your kink before your relationship had progressed? If your requirement is, "love me, accept my kink," wouldn't your partner have a right to know about your requirement before she decided to love you? Every person with ASD who wants to be accepted by their partner has that requirement: love me, accept my disability. Of course there are behaviors that can be modified within the context of a relationship, but there are limits. At the end of the day, there are going to be certain aspects of your personality that can't be changed - you can't just choose to stop being autistic. So if your partner is going to be with you, she's going to have to choose to accept and accommodate your disability - and you're going to have to give her that choice.

okay, so i'm having some trouble sorting out how these hypothetical dates are happening when there is apparently no background knowledge about each other. this is what i mean, taken from my own experience:

dating a friend: he would know about my AS, because we are friends

dating a coworker: he would know about my AS, because we are coworkers

dating a friend-of-a-friend: he would know because my friend would tell him before setting us up

dating a stranger: would not happen

dating someone online: my AS would sure as hell be on my profile, because the profile is supposed to be a way of presenting as much honest information as possible at-a-glance. if i am putting my body type, education, eye colour (and even income) on there, then hiding my AS is frankly dishonest.

there is another thread in this section where someone is mentioning how he is not able to get second dates, which is probably because that individual is not upfront on his profile, and it is turning women off. the women will think he is normal, and on the first date they will see he is not. he has a second opportunity to disclose his AS right then and there, but it seems like someone who is hiding things on a profile is not likely come clean on a first date. if the women knew ahead of time, he might get fewer first dates, but i think he would have exponentially more second and third dates.

Okay, I buy everything you're saying about all the macho crap men have to deal with - I sincerely do. I think that you'll find that your female peers (whom I'm assuming are your dating pool) have knocked "macho" way down on their dream date's profile. It has been superceded by qualities like nice; decent; honest; respectful....the things that are really important in choosing a mate. Frankly, "macho" was never on my list....I always liked the guys who could make me laugh. And I think it takes a lot of courage to be honest when it's tough to be honest. That seems like a good way to measure a man to me.

I agree that this is a complicated issue.....and I'm glad you're cherishing this bit of female candor.

I'm assuming you're talking about men/women noting that they are Autistic on a profile or letting the person know within minutes of meeting them. Hiding it over a long period of time isn't really acceptable in my book.

I think you're pretty vastly underestimating the scope of the prejudice and ignorance about the issue of autism. It might be slightly manipulative, but you don't exactly have to be a bleeding heart to accept the reasons one has for hiding such a thing.


@Hyperlexian:interesting point, I think the nature of online dating reinforces the problem. Maybe he'd have better luck if he had a more extensive personality profile overall and included(I can't be sure if he has already, haven't looked at his profile) the negative attributes that come with his AS without explicitly stating it right off the bat.

Edit:fixed the name.

Last edited by Darkword on 10 Dec 2010, 12:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

Um, she's actually @hyperlexian, not @dyslexian. To your comment: I don't think I'm underestimating the scope of prejudice and ignorance about autism. I faced some of it myself that last time I dated an autistic man: I revealed his diagnosis when the relationship was over, and several friends were absolutely shocked that I had even considered dating him, and almost horrified that I actually had dated him. One of them even said, "Oh, why would you want to date an autistic?" And yes, I was incredibly suprised by that reaction. I responded to those comments by educating those individuals about ASD, and I told them things they found surprising.

Look, it will take a quality woman - someone with character - to resist that kind of reaction, to follow her heart, and to face the challenges of her partner's disability. Any partner lucky enough to have her has to respect her enough to tell her the truth. To keep that information from her is way more than slightly manipulative - it will almost always be a deal breaker.

You can't go absolute truth on that one though, its loaded with caveats such as severity, self-awareness, accuracy of impressions given by a person's profile even without it, just as with job interviews its still not good to bring up and, you'll also find far fewer instances where an employer would see someone in the interview seat with a neurological condition and have them there with the intent of making them president of payroll or treasury, abscond with the company and stockholder's funds, and leave the disabled individual hanging, in the dating world you have predators of all types.

In your own case - had you been single again; if you had a strong enough profile and followed your intuition not to talk to guys who didn't already seem like neuro-atypicals or at least being cut of a similar enough cloth to yourself for it not to matter, I wouldn't be so hard on you as you would be on yourself. With self-monitoring and with a good (accurate) profile you've already told people that you're interesting, quirky, alternative, unique, and a lot of other things that most people who would stay away from you - if they knew you had AS - would be just as disgusted by and allergic to. You can say it concretely just as much as you can say it without posting a dx. The later also avoids a nasty two-fold problem as well a) stigma and b) predators, even people who would like or love you for who you are - if you hang a heavy term out there (bipolar, schizophrenia, autism), it's still quite likely to get a worst case scenario playing in their head and its one that would not have existed if you told them later.

BTW, I do have an eharmony profile - do describe myself accurately (say a lot for the sake of drawing an accurate picture), and many times - just as it came up as a fluke of conversation - I did admit to having AS either on a first date or even in email correspondence. IF someone is mild, if they are overall pretty 'normal' and don't have an elephant hiding in the closet, they'd rather at least get people to see what they have to say in writing and what sort of psyche they possess. AS can range from dealbreaker to "Oh, yeah, I was dx'd with ADD a while back so I can relate to that" - that's exactly why its not an accurate thing to say about yourself upfront, unless you're in a situation where its thick enough that your loved ones and support network even have difficulty with you, and at that point it really depends on what those issues are whether you'd want to be on a dating site, even then talking about AS on a profile (ie. everyone out there browsing by who you don't know) can send all the wrong notions to predators as well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1Yt0xJKDY8[/youtube]

Listen folks it does get annoying when others demand the moral and ethical reality of a label being part of my identity as if it was the color of my skin and then in my personal life be judged to reveal it or else be judged by the all mighty superficial dating gods. It is absolutely destructive to demand that others to be so superficial that the world, my mind and those around me must revolve around a diagnostic criteria or else be deal breaker in dating. I wouldn't want to date someone that in the first place obligated the obvious to be written on my forehead to.

If someone cannot accept someone for how they are without the disclosure of who and how they are which is already present then the prejudice is self-inflected and self-mandated regardless of others being dumb like some say which is just bad social discourse. This is a real-life manifestation of what I call an obsession of a label and frankly most with autism I know are not even interested in the label and other times not even aware. Now a social clique that wants to be the governing "cultural" definition of people with autism lives is trying and failing to brand it on our foreheads as if some elite medical and psychiatric establishment intended for it to be this way morally in romance.

Be yourself!

Think beyond the label.

Great attempt to create awareness with the romance obligation effecting self-esteem, self-image and back to the diagnostic idenity. Less folks talking about this rubbish aren't even aware of it themselves. It's not healthy.

I don't understand your use of the word "accurate" here: it is an accurate thing to say about yourself if you've been diagnosed. I'm not following you.

i mention my AS on my covering letters for jobs. this ensures that my employers know who they are hiring. i would do the same for meeting a person for dates.

i think more honesty from people doing online dating could lead to a lot more potential success. i've read profiles of people with AS and would have had suspicions about them if i had been perusing their pages as part of the dating pool. if i am even picking up something "different" from a profile, then it is logical a first date would definitely lead to differences coming out.

not everyone may disclose on their online profile, though i would encourage them to do so. but... by the end of the first date, the chance to openly disclose is *gone*, and the chance for a second date has probably evaporated. someone who wants a date with an NT and gets a date with an aspie may be reluctant to continue onwards - and i would not blame them at all!

(i don't see how a predator would seek out a person with AS over any other person)