Advice for allistic women on relating to autistic BF

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The trouble as an NT is we don’t know or understand well enough to know what “unrealistic” expectations are. . . . .. . . The way we react (especially someone like myself who,is probably very near the other end of the spectrum) is so very different . . I therefore find having no expectations works perfectly. I am often pleasantly surprised and never disappointed. That works for a friendship but I’m sure would not work for a romantic relationship

From what Teach51 said, I didn't get the impression that he took her "embellishment" as a PUT-DOWN, but only that he might have been confused about the specific reason why she was exclaiming about her illness at THAT time, given that she had already told him plenty about it the previous week and she was already feeling much better. (Teach51, correct me if I'm wrong.)

One possibility is that he simply missed the emotional significance of what she was saying. Another, opposite possibility is that he might have felt overwhelmed by her emphatic way of expressing it. Some autistic people tend to feel overwhelmed by the emotions of others and find it hard to express sympathy when feeling overwhelmed. (See The Empathy Conundrum on the excellent blog Musings of an Aspie by Cynthia Kim.)

I suspect also that her BF might have the trait of alexithymia (difficulty verbalizing or even identifying both one's own and other people's emotions) -- which, to one degree or another, is common (though not universal) among autistic people. (See Emotional Dysfunction: Alexithymia and ASD, also on the blog Musings of an Aspie.)


Among autistic people, let alone ND people more generally, there is a very wide variation in how we behave.

I like to cultivate closeness and intimacy too, but, for me, it requires a foundation of intellectual companionship. It's hard for me to connect with someone on an emotional level without first connecting on an intellectual level including a shared search for truth on one or more topics of shared interest. Intellectual companionship, for me, is not a prerequisite to empathy, but it IS a prerequisite to feeling like the person is someone I can relate to on a more than superficial level, and, for me, it is one of the anchors needed to sustain a friendship or partner relationship.

I an under the impression that my need for intellectual companionship is unusually intense even among autistic people and even among highly intellectual people of whatever neurology.

But I believe that my requirement of intellectual companionship has actually helped me have much better relationships than I could have had otherwise, and I suspect that it has also helped me avoid abusive potential romantic partners. I am under the impression that most romantic relationships in general, but especially most abusive ones, tend to be built much more on mutual ego-stroking than my relationships have been.

And, as a result of the relative lack of emphasis on mutual ego-stroking in how I relate to others, I think I probably have a higher tolerance for being "corrected" than many people do.


Yes, having my feelings ignored is frustrating and annoying, for me too, and I try not to ignore the feelings of others. However, I need the people in my life to be people who take it for granted that emotional misunderstandings do happen, and that, when they happen, the thing to do is just to work on figuring them out and clearing them up. I know I'm lousy at picking up on subtle hints, and I don't expect other people to be able to pick up on subtle hints from me either. I need clear, explicit communication. As a relationship develops I expect the other person and I to get better and better at perceiving and understanding each other's feelings over time, but I neither am capable of, nor expect in others, the degree of mind-reading that many women seem to expect and want.


Yes, traditional patriarchal attitudes encourage men to distance themselves emotionally from women in lots of ways, which certainly can greatly exacerbate the problems between an autistic man and an allistic woman.


Agreed that he should probably work on his communication skills too. However, from what I've heard and read, attempts to teach NVC to autistic people have generally NOT worked out very well. NT's/allistics usually can learn NVC much more easily and can then use it to help resolve emotional misunderstandings, in a clear and succinct manner, with an autistic partner or close friend.

What I think many autistic people probably COULD benefit by learning are the skills of assertiveness (being assertive without being aggressive) and active listening. Learning these myself, to the degree that I managed to learn them in my twenties and thirties, has been extremely helpful to me, though I am still far from perfect at these skill sets.

NVC is a highly formulaic combination of assertiveness and active listening that emphasizes feelings and "universal human needs," which makes NVC inherently difficult for anyone who has trouble verbalizing feelings in the first place. So, for many autistic people, it would probably be easier to learn other variants of assertiveness and active listening that do not emphasize feelings quite as much.

But, if you personally happen to better at verbalizing feelings than most other verbally proficient autistic people are, then you might be able to learn NVC without too much difficulty, and perhaps you might find it very helpful as a way to resolve any misunderstandings you may get into with your friends.

This is something that can only be learned, slowly, as you get to know the person.


This, by the way, is also one of the many reasons why I personally think autistic people, in particular, are likely to be better off having romantic relationships that start out as friendships rather than starting out as courtships from day one.

(My own relationship with my BF started out as a work relationship, then became a business partnership after we both got fired from the same startup, then gradually evolved into a friendship, and didn't become a romantic partnership until about three and a half years after we first met.)

Mona: Thanks for the extended reply. As far as communication styles that's something for now that I would pursue when we get to that topic w/the therapist(s) I have. But thanks for the suggestion about NVC.

In terms of much of the rest of what you talk about I just simply can't relate from my own experience to the experiences you and other posters on the spectrum are saying about alot of these symptoms or behaviors. I relate much more closely in what's described here by NT's like Teach and Ann. It feels to me like emotionally the NT's and I are coming from a different country b/c the differences you and other posters are describing are so alien to me.

I suspect my late mother was either on the spectrum or had some undiagnosed other psychological psychiatric and/or neurological issues/differences and never learned emotional regulation. In fact she didn't want to. Because of how I was parented and also my genes probably I've always been a very emotional and empathetic person despite having alot of ASD symptoms along w/my ADHD. Responding to my close friend telling me she's pregnant or having her do something as dramatic as diving into a river to rescue one of my most important possessions are both such important and moving acts/information that I automatically react. It's instinctive so I just can't emotionally get into the kind of shoes your talking about. And it's true yes I can probably cognitively understand and if I think it through empathize w/the ND experience in regard to these sorts of issues.

I have also had the experience of feeling emotionally overwhelmed by someone else but that's usually if it's what Gaus calls an unpleasant emotion particularly anger-based (less so sadness or fear-based ones). But again usually I don't mind the intensity of others' feelings most of the time. In some ways I welcome them b/c I actually feel more able to bond w/others when we share that experience. In terms of wanting/needing intellectual bonds yes I can understand that since I've kind of experienced that but again probably partly b/c of my not having yet learned emotional regulation my intellectual interests are kind of fused to my feelings including re: my main SI (politics). And that often isn't a bad thing b/c it fuels my desire to learn and engage with others and sometimes debate them or whatever as well. Finally in terms of having issues w/social cues unwritten social rules and such sure and needing explicit/precise explanations (about how someone's feeling for example) I have alot to learn still and it's hurt plenty of my friendships. But that's what the support and social groups the therapy my homework from the therapy to some extent this website and practicing communication w/NT's is for. To improve all those skills and foster as many positive social relationships as possible. I guess that's all I have to say for now.

How did he happen to drop something precious to him in the river? What else was going on at the time?

I'm wondering if, perhaps, both his dropping the thing in the river in the first place and his very delayed response to you retrieving it may have been caused by sensory overload and/or otherwise being extremely overwhelmed or otherwise distracted by whatever else was going on at the moment.

Anyhow, a clarification to my earlier reply:


However, usually when someone does something important for me, I'm not THAT slow about thanking the person, unless I am just too overwhelmed or distracted by the overall situation.

But there are other situations where my emotional processing is very slow, even when not distracted or overwhelmed. For example, when I got an email from my niece telling me her father (my brother-in-law) had died, I was not able to respond immediately with a brief condolence note. I had to sleep on it, and then it took me several hours to compose the note.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 31 May 2019, 3:25 am, edited 4 times in total.

ASD is an extremely heterogeneous category. As the saying goes, if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person.


Indeed many autistic people are very empathic, at least in terms of emotional empathy, despite whatever difficulties they may have with cognitive empathy.


For a clarification on this matter regarding myself, see my further response to Anngables above.

Also, we don't know the full story of why her boyfriend took so long to thank her. We don't know what ELSE might have been going on in that situation that might have overwhelmed or at least distracted him (but that might not have similarly overwhelmed/distracted the average NT). Accidentally dropping one's prized possessions in a river, in the first place, is not exactly an everyday occurrence for very many people, so it's likely this may have happened in a situation that was highly unusual to begin with.


That's true for me also.


Different autistic people are affected in a variety of different ways by other people's emotions.

Sharing an emotional experience with someone can enable/deepen bonding for me as well, although the focus of the shared emotional experience usually needs to be something external to both the other person and myself.


In my case this issue has actually NOT hurt very many of my friendships, because most of my friendships have been with people who shared an ethic of explicit, clear communication and did not expect me to read their minds, and because most of my friendships have been with people whom I met in subcultures where a lot of the mainstream social rules, written or unwritten, did not apply. (Alas, most of the closest friends I made were quite a bit older than me and are no longer living.)

Given my experience, I am a strong believer in the idea that autistic people need to build our own community, eventually to include its own ecosystem of cooperative businesses (to be built with the help of sympathetic NT/allistic relatives of some of us), as a better alternative to trying to blend in with the NT world.


Therapy can help you to an extent. However, for most of us at least, ASD means not just being delayed in learning about things like subtle social cues, but having underlying neurological issues (the exact issues varying from one autistic person to another) that make these things intrinsically difficult to act upon even when one has learned about them.

Those of us (primarily many autistic women) who do manage to blend in with the NT world often do so at great cost to themselves. Imitating NT's, however successfully, can be exhausting work, draining one's already-limited energy away from more truly worthwhile accomplishments.

(I plan to start therapy with one of Dr. Cody's externs soon too, but will probably be focusing primarily on other aspects of ASD such as executive functioning, including time management.)

Hi again . . .sorry I don’t know how to do the quotes. Just to clarify. . . . This is not my boyfriend we are just friends. . . . .. but it is a friendship I value and have taken a lot of time to try to make it work despite the odds. The examples I gave were things that would have upset me in the past but now I understand better how his mind works so I don’t get upset.
So the river incident. He is a very keen and v good photographer one of his “specialist interests” he was perching himself in a very awkward position on a tree laying across the water to get a photo of a waterfall, and so,etching fell from his pocket. He immediately got v anxious, fretting and cross with himself. . . . . . . .i walked a bit further down river and could see the object where it had sank to the bottom. . . . . . .so I retrieved it. He did say thank you when i gave it back to him, but was still lost in his world of having been disturbed from an activity he was engrossed in, then anxiety and annoyance with himself for having lost something.

About an hour later he must have been rethinking the situation and gave me a hug and a heartfelt thanks for my help

I tell this as an example of how I have come to understand my friend better. Previously I may have made some comment about him caring more about the object than me, or similar. . . . . I don’t now.

I happen to believe that the "odds" for an Aspie-NT relationship working, whether on a friendship or a romantic basis, are not as long as people believe it is.

There are lots of successful Neurodiverse/Neurotypical relationships out there right now. It's not an anomaly, by any means.

I'm sorry for forgetting that he is not your boyfriend. You did mention this earlier. (Alas I don't have the super-excellent memory that some autistic people have.)


Thanks for the clarification. Now that you say he DID thank you immediately, but just wasn't able to give you his full ("heartfelt") attention until later, this sounds a lot more like the sort of thing I might do, too.

I, too, after making a serious mistake, tend to be obsessed for a while with the question of how and why I made that mistake and how I can prevent it in the future. Also, more generally, having my concentration broken abruptly, under any circumstances, is a much bigger deal for me than it is for most people. Difficulty shifting one's attention is common among autistic people.


Good for you for coming to understand him better.

Anyhow, at the beginning of your message, you wrote:


Click "Quote" above the top-right corner of the message you'll be replying to. Then, in the editable text area, to split the quoted text into chunks that you are individually replying to, copy and paste the quote tags as needed. Each quoted section must begin with:


(with the person's actual username in place of the word 'username'). Each quoted section must then end with:


Then intersperse your reply between the quoted sections. Click "Preview" when done to see what it looks like and fix any errors, before you click "Submit."

This: "I, too, after making a serious mistake, tend to be obsessed for a while with the question of how and why I made that mistake and how I can prevent it in the future."

I've ALWAYS been this way. It eats away at my gut and now it's starting do so in my chest too including the faster heartbeat etc. when it happens. In fact I had an incident like this happen today except that I apologized multiple times to the person I was talking to within a matter of minutes. This is part of my emotional regulation issues but in my case as I've said above I'm confident I can get a handle on this beast in therapy which my therapist and I will be starting to do soon.