Am I doomed?

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If you had an IEP, and you have "autistic-type" behaviors in your record, it's more likely you would be diagnosed with ASD in retrospect.

There really was no "official" notion of an "autistic spectrum" until 1994, when the DSM-IV came out.

I was "fortunate" in the 1960s----in that my autistic behaviors were obvious and "classical."

Obviously, I've never met you in person---so I wouldn't be able to offer an impression of how you would be "diagnosed" now.

Depending upon the clinician, a combination of your representation of your behavior by yourself, your parents, and friends---plus your present presentation---plus your scores on various intelligence, academic accomplishment, and screening tests--could lead to an ASD diagnosis. Or it might not.

It's a "who knows?" kind of situation.

I relate to what rdos is talking about. I'm not gonna say I dislike having friends but having offline friends was never a priority for me. I've been pretty desperate for a serious offline relationship thou. I really wanted one person I could feel comfortable with & be myself around. Offline friends have always drained me but my girlfriend does not. Pretty much all the offline friends I've had were people I knew from skewl or work. I needed time to myself when I got home & I never really done much outside of skewl or work with them. We lost touch after I quit skewl & working. I only have one friend I knew offline(he was my former supervisor, I lost contact with everyone else) & I only see him 1ce a year since I moved across the country to be with my girlfriend.

Hello samcharlton143,
You have said; 'I don't have the slightest clue what to do to change my situation.'
That is an easy one - all you have to do is change your mind set. It is not that difficult as you do it all the time without being aware of your doing it.
All people are able to change their mindset.
You have also said; 'The older I get it's only going to get worse.'
Well you hit the nail on the head there, you are 100% correct. If you truly believe that you/it will get worse with age, then you/it will.
Then again you might think; 'Hey I am only young so why don't I change my mindset.'

What are your criteria for deciding what is "optimal," beyond your own personal taste?

I would not want to have a romantic relationship with someone who is not also my friend.

Beyond personal taste, my criteria for "optimal" include:

1) Ability to form romantic relationships in a relatively non-awkward, non-stressful way.
2) Ability to form lasting romantic relationships.
3) Ability to break up on non-hostile terms, and if possible remain on friendly terms, if the romantic relationship isn't working.


If indeed this is true of many autistic people, then I think the most likely reason is that they don't understand what friendship is or how to make friends in a way that actually results in a meaningful friendship. I would suspect this is a failure of social skills training. I don't know what kind of teaching autistic kids are receiving these days on how to make friends, but I would suspect that they are NOT being taught how to make friends in ways that actually work well for themselves, but instead are just being taught to try to imitate culturally mainstream NT ways of making friends.

True friendship is one of those things that, once you've experienced it, you never want to be without it; but, if you haven't experienced it yet, then you might not be fully aware of what you're missing. It's not like sex, the desire for which involves specific, easily-identifiable bodily urges.

Additionally, I suspect that many autistic people may be turned of by various NT-world trappings of friendship (e.g., in my case, holiday gift exchanges). But these trappings are not the essence. True friendship is a highly individual, highly customizable thing that doesn't require any of these trappings, as long you've managed to find a friend who agrees with you.

You've said in other posts that ND people have, more so than NT's, a strong propensity for romantic crushes. From that, you conclude that crushes are the "natural" way for romantic relationships to develop among ND people. I, on the other hand, have always regarded crushes as extremely dangerous, because they are extremely unlikely to be reciprocated -- and, even if reciprocated, not a sound basis for a lasting relationship, because emotions inevitably fluctuate, although a crush-based relationship might be super-thrilling while it lasts.

If indeed autistic people have a greater propensity for crushes than NT people, I think that's most likely a symptom of being starved for friendship. It seems to me that if a person is starved for friendship but doesn't really know what friendship is, hence doesn't really know what they are missing except that they feel a mysterious inner void, then they are much more likely to be tempted to throw all their emotional eggs into one basket and expect a romantic relationship to satisfy all their emotional needs.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 04 Jul 2019, 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You're assuming here that there is a single (or at least majority) natural mode of nonverbal communication of ND's. Can you provide any evidence for this claim?

Problem is, ND's are very different from each other as well as from NT's. ND's differ from each other more than we differ from NT's, because we have such a wide variety of different ability profiles, sensory profiles, etc. For any given trait, ND's are often found at either extreme, whereas NT's, by definition, tend to be in the middle of the range on most things. So ND's as a category have little in common apart from just being freaky by NT standards.

Hence it is highly unlikely that ND's all have similar natural body language, much less a natural ability to read same.

But there may well be subsets among us in which all members of the particular subset have a particular natural body language specific to that subset, and that can be read by at least some, if not all, other members of that subset.

As the autistic community grows, hopefully any such subsets will gradually become aware of themselves as such, and hopefully they will eventually be recognized by others as well.

However, in the meantime, clear verbal communication is the only natural lingua franca amongst those members of all the subsets that are capable of verbal communication in the first place.


Indeed, we ultimately need a world in which nonverbal autistics are cared for autistic people who are "higher-functioning" but of sufficiently similar neurotype that they can readily understand the nonverbal person's body language.

Alas it's not going to be possible to attain this immediately. The community of verbal autistics need to become a lot better organized first, before we can have sufficient clout to improve conditions for nonverbal autistics too.


What constitutes "acting naturally" for you is not necessarily the same thing that is natural for all or most other ND people.

What I think needs to happen is that the autistic community needs to grow and diversify to the point where a wide variety of different communication styles can be accommodated by different groups, with each group making clear what its preferred style is.


I don't think it's possible to attain that in any one group. What we need is a wide variety of groups.

What is the definition of "neurodiversity" that is used by the Aspie Quiz?

Being desperate for a romantic relationship is a self-compounding problem, because being desperate tends to be off-putting to potential romantic partners. And it seems to me that the only way to not be desperate is to have most of your emotional needs already fulfilled by people other than romantic partners, i.e. by close friends.


I gather that none of your friends were close friends? If you can't be comfortable around a particular person, or if you can't be yourself around that person, then that person is not a close friend.

Anyhow, good for you for managing to find a girlfriend despite the self-compounding-desperation phenomenon noted above.


That's a problem right there. It is difficult -- and dangerous -- to become close friends with someone you know from work. A close friend is (among other things) someone you can deeply trust and confide in. It's risky to confide in someone you know from work because, if they break your confidence, it can have serious repercussions for you at work. To a lesser extent this is also true of school.

Almost all of my closest friends have been people I did NOT meet at school or work. They were people I met by seeking out people who shared various unusual interests of mine.

Furthermore, although I knew these people in-person, most of my interaction with most of them was on the phone, not in-person. (The nearest equivalent in today's world would be online chat, now that talking on the phone seems to have gone out of fashion.) Back in the days before the Internet became popular, I also corresponded with some of my friends via snail mail.


I've always needed plenty of time to myself also.

It's a few important things:

1. To naturally share feelings and emotions. NTs will typically talk about feelings or show them with facial expressions, but many NDs strongly dislike and/or are unable to do this naturally, and will not show them with facial expressions naturally either.

2. To be able to know when something is wrong in the relationship without constantly needing to peek with "is everything ok" or expecting partner will bring up problems as they arise.

3. To be able to compromise & solve problems, which partly is learnt.

4. To be able to keep each other happy naturally (communicating happy emotions rather than buying gifts or presents).

5. Sexual compatibility. Many NDs dislike the typical sexual behavior with variations in positions as the only parameter. Many NDs, and especially women, identify as asexual, but really need other types of sex rather than sexual intercourse. Sex is primarily in the mind, and especially for NDs.



No argument about those.



The problem with that is that there doesn't seem to be a natural way NDs form friendships, and so all advice & training will be on how NTs do it & prefer them. I don't find this meaningful personally, and I don't think I need any friends beyond a girlfriend. Some (even many) NDs might disagree and say that they want friendships, but the problem with knowing if this is authentic or not is that we are indoctrinated that friends are very important from a very young age, and many probably buy this concept and so think they miss out on something important (even if they actually don't need any friends).



I don't think I have any of those urges. I like a few people a lot (on a platonic level), but our exchange is driven by things we are working on, and sometimes there is no communication for weeks or months, and sometimes we send a huge amount of messages every day. I think this is how it works for many NDs. These "friendships" are not aimed at discussing feeling or partners or gossiping, but to discuss special interest projects. Sometimes these friendships die naturally when we have no more new things to talk about, and then we might find new friends that we can have fresh exchange with. Naturally, we cannot have relationships this way as they would die when we no longer needed input on a special interest project, or when we switched interest.

With a girlfriend or love interest, it is different. I would get sad if communication was irregular, but the communication could just be peeking without any content, and so I wouldn't need to have regular interesting discussions. That means that partner could just send "hi" or anything else, and I would be happy provided that happened regularly.



The main findings were that having a crush (high infatuation score) created a stronger bond, and that when NDs dated, this would kill the infatuation and result in a poor bond. I'm not saying that crushes are safe. I'm just saying that they are essential for a strong bond, and that the strength of the bond can predict the duration of a relationship.



I think that is contradicted by my inability (and probably others too) to get a crush on a friend. That means that friendships turned relationships will be fragile and suffer from poor bonds.

I also think that I actually prefer that a partner will fulfill all my emotional needs. If I lacked a partner, I would simply not need anybody at all to fulfill any emotional needs. I don't need a friend that I can share emotions or problems with. I might find it useful to have somebody to tell everything that happens in a relationship, but I don't need any feedback on that. Just somebody to monologue with and to know the perspective of a woman. I mean, I had this for a while, and it was useful as we both had similar problems of how to make things advance and could share similar experiences. It was more like a friendship based on a special interest than a typical NT-friendship.

My working hypothesis is that NDs only have ONE natural body language and ONE natural set of relationship preferences. This hypothesis has worked well and has huge support in my data.

The reason for the hypothesis is that it was Neanderthal & Denisovan that contributed the ND traits to the human gene-pool. Which actually is the only possible hypothesis for why NDs have different communication & mating behaviors.



From the abstract of the published paper:


That is, neurodiversity is not defined with some subjective criteria like all DSM diagnoses are, but rather on the natural clustering of ND and NT traits. If you take a very diverse set of evenly distributed traits and let a diverse set of people answer these, you will always get the same ND and NT factors regardless of survey population and actual traits used. Thus, given large enough populations available, anybody could replicate this categorization without knowing anything about traits & score weights in Aspie Quiz.

The evidence that it actually works lies in Cronbach Alpha. For Aspie Quiz it's above .95, but for typical ASD tests like the AQ test, it's in the .8 area.

Rdos: I'm with you on the little-no need for friends. I've always resented the way the concept of you-must-have friends has been shoved down my throat and how I was told even by own family that is not "normal" to not want them. Well, it's normal for me. I'm not starved for something I have no interest in. I do want a partner, who is my friend. I have my life in hand, have succeeded in my field, have taken care of myself and my emotional needs for my entire life. I don't need a man to complete me, I need him to be on my team and for emotional support (and vice versa) in those rare moments when I can't support myself. If I never find him, that sucks, but I'll have no problem surviving without him.

Agree completely. I don't need a girlfriend either, but it's nice to have somebody to think about, send & receive happy emotions to, and to be out wandering with. It's also nice to have a family & raise kids.

There is indeed a natural way for me to form friendships that's different from the typical NT way. I was a late-bloomer when it came to seeking friendships. Once I began, in high school, I sought friendships in my own way that made sense to me. Nearly all my friendships began with intense intellectual companionship around shared special interests. When I reached my twenties, friendships of mine still began with intellectual companionship but evolved to include more than just that.


I've had plenty of friendships of this kind also. What you've described is what I call intellectual companionship, which for me is a key ingredient of friendship. I've had friendships that consisted of intellectual companionship and nothing more, but I've also had friendships that included intellectual companionship plus a deep emotional connection as well. For me the intellectual companionship is a prerequisite to a deeper emotional connection.


That's a difference between you and me. I need to have regular interesting conversations, about topics of common interest, with my partner. The conversations don't need to be about my current special interest, but they do need to be, at least, about topics that are of interest to both of us in the long term. I also crave what I call comradeship -- facing common challenges together -- with both my partner and at least some of my friends.


I do not agree that crushes are essential for a strong bond. My strongest and longest-lasting relationships have all been ones that started slowly and didn't even seem all that terribly special at first, and only very gradually intensified. On the other hand, the one relationship I had that entailed a mutual crush did NOT last long at all.


For myself, on the contrary, I've always thought of crush-based relationships as the ones that are fragile and suffer from poor bonds, whereas my current and longest-lasting romantic relationship evolved from business partnership to friendship to romantic relationship.


What I desire is a set of friends who can constitute an alternative extended family. More about this later.

Yes, one might say that this is the natural way NDs form friendships, but I wouldn't call them for that since they have little in common with NTs friendships.

When I took my MSc back in the 80s, there were 90% guys and 10% girls, and so I judged it as impossible to find a girl that shared my interests. It would be just as futile as today's online dating, probably even more so. My special interest for a long time was operating systems, and there basically was no girl into that, so that was even more impossible. Today my main special interest is in neurodiversity research, and that actually is something that women find interesting. Still, I wouldn't require that a potential partner found that interesting, and if I did, I would severely limit my potential dating pool in an unacceptable way.

I think a lot of ND guys have interests that few girls share, and so would hardly be able to find a girl that they could have interesting intellectual discussions about their special interests with, or even something related to it.



You probably are pretty lucky to have sound such a man, and many NDs of both genders would not succeed with it.

The difference might be that you are a very verbal individual, while I'm shy and prefer to talk as little as possible. So, yes, I would enjoy having interesting discussions about a special interest with a love interest but I would not require it. I prefer to be highly selective in whom I create intellectual companionships with, and it would be sub-optimal to think in terms of a potential love interest at the same time.



That's something I think should be part of a romantic relationship too, but I would not seek it from friends. It's completely different to be almost an expert on neurodiversity research and just supporting you and giving advice. Thus, comradeship doesn't require high competence in your special interest projects like being a discussion partner does.



Well, that's empirical data. It might not fit you, but it does tend to fit on NDs as a collective.

How does your data manage to say very much of anything whatsoever about natural body language? Is your data based on anything else besides just the Aspie quiz?


The only possible hypothesis? How so? I can think of quite a few others off the top of my head. More about this later.


What published paper, and where can I find a copy (in English) of the whole thing?


How do you determine the validity of what you are measuring? How do you know you aren't measuring the mere fact that people who are freaky in one way tend also to be freaky in other ways, even though different freaky people may be freaky in different ways?

Construction process of Aspie Quiz:
Leif Ekblad (2013). Autism, Personality, and Human Diversity: Defining Neurodiversity in an Iterative Process Using Aspie Quiz SAGE Open July-September 2013 3: 2158244013497722 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/1 ... 4013497722

Optimizing RMET (shows that staring is the most significant difference):
Gerit Pfuhl & Leif Ekblad (2017). Optimizing the RMET to measure bias not performance differences. Scandinavian Psychologist, 4, e18. https://psykologisk.no/sp/2017/12/e18/

Infatuation & attachment:
Leif Ekblad (2018). Infatuation and attachment : How do they differ in autism and neurodiversity? PsyArXiv, doi: 10.31234/osf.io/dw4u2, https://psyarxiv.com/dw4u2/

Asexuality:
Leif Ekblad (2018). Asexuality : A possible background and how it relates to autism and neurodiversity. PsyArXiv, doi: 10.31234/osf.io/stpma, https://psyarxiv.com/stpma/

Neurodiversity linked to Neanderthal admixture:
Gerit Pfuhl & Leif Ekblad (2018). Neurodiversity traits linked to Neanderthal admixture. PsyArXiv, doi: 10.31234/osf.io/w4nh5, https://osf.io/w4nh5/

I know being desperate is off-putting but I don't really get why. Desperate people tend to be more accepting & less critical of their partners which I consider a very good thing. I really like the idea of a desperate woman. In theory it seems like a desperate woman would of been much more likely to actually give me half a chance & would put forth more effort into making the relationship work. I was very willing to give most any woman a chance as long as she didn't have kids & wasn't much older than me(I had no problem with much younger thou).
For some reason I don't get close with friends except online & I like it that way. The only people I really wanted to get close to were my girlfriends. Maybe part of the problem is that people tend not to care about being & staying good friends. They may care when they spend time with each other most days but 1ce they don't see each other as much for whatever reason, they both move on & lose touch. That's some of why it's hard to have friends outside of work & skewl. I had some close friends online but we lost touch. Some of it is very likely that they started spending less time online cuz so-called "real life" got in the way & since we were communicating less often they just moved on to other people that they see in person or online more.
I think part of the reason Cass was interested in me was actually cuz I was desperate. I was more accepting of women with disabilities & so-called issues & problems which she has but I have more than my fair share of that too which was why I struggled so much to get relationships.
I guess your rite that making friends from work could potentially be dangerous. I couldn't make many friends outside of skewl & work except online cuz my main interests were things like listening to music(NOT going to concerts thou), web forums, watching TV, & playing video-games. There really isn't very many things to do with others offline where I'm from except sports, clubs/bars, & hunting & fishing. It also didn't help that I cant drive & lived in a rural area & my parents gripped about needing to bring me places.