Positive Relationships are Possible for People on the Spectrum - Love & Autism

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There's different kinds of eye contact.

One is called "staring."

The "proper" one is the eye contact where you are indicating your interest in what the other person has to say in conversation. It's difficult for Aspies to delineate the two without over practicing.

This is where NT's have to meet the Aspie half way. the NT has to inform the Aspie when he/she is "staring" in a nonjudgemental manner. The intention, in this case, is not to "stare." It is to reflect the conversational eye contact which comes naturally to NT's.

Yes, because it creeps NTs out.



That's not proper for me. I have learnt to do it when necessary (general social contexts), but I refuse to do it in the relationship context because it is not proper for me in that context.



No, that's not enough. NTs should ignore this, and let neurodiverse people do it as much as they like because this is an important part of neurodiverse socialization and identifying interest in potential partners. As a neurodiverse individual, it is possible to learn to do this in a way that won't come out as creepy by NTs, but this should not be required. Ignoring is much easier to do than re-learning to do innate behaviors so they suit NTs.

Also bear in mind that when the Simon Baron-Cohens eyes-test is used with optimal alternatives, "staring" is the very best way to get big differences between neurodiverse and neurotypical people, and it is neurodiverse people that think many NT facial expressions are stares. In fact, a big reason why some autistics have problems with facial expressions is because they think NTs are staring at them and because of that they won't try to match the facial expression with what it might mean through practice.

I can understand younger folk's concerns about spending half their lives alone but, unfortunately, that's the way things can be for a lot of us. I once saw a scene on TV once where this guy was floating in outer space (in a suit) with no hope of rescue. He was kind of a strange dude and his attitude was, “Well, here I am.” Pretty much neutral, just acceptance of his current situation.
I was happy to hear that this older couple met and found happiness. I met my wife at an Aspie support meeting too when we were both in our fifties with both of us having been alone for 95%+ of our adult lives. I am now 60 and she's 57 and we are very happy. Sure, we regretted not meeting a lot sooner.
When I was younger I wanted children very badly but the right person never came along. Now that I'm older, I wouldn't have the energy to keep up with young children. Not only that, I no longer have that desire and I'm even kinda glad that I never had any. There are so many things to worry about in life and not having any kids is that much less for me to worry about.
The important thing here is to embrace the present, and appreciate the fact that two older Aspies have fallen in love and gotten married, and are glad that they did!

That's right. There is no sense in complaining about it anyway. Every way you look at it, it is still better to meet somebody in the 50s than never meeting anybody.

My son is 14 and I have made it my mission to find him friends. Amazingly enough, although he is homeschooled, he now has at least 2 very good friends. One is a guy a year older and the other a girl a year younger. He is in LOVE with the girl and she is with him lol They get along so very well. When you ask either of them why they love each other they both say that they have many things in common, they can talk to each other, they understand each other, etc. Funny that they are so young and seem to know much more about what it takes to have a good relationship. It has been a year since they met and they still "love" each other. They claim they will get married haha. I have to say that as an AS mom, without a doubt, relationships with NTs have been disastrous for me, including my current relationship. When I see how well these two get along, I hope that although not anytime soon, they are able to continue their relationship or if not, find someone just like each other later on. I do think that AS/AS relationships will work much better. From my viewpoint, the NTs have NEVER truly understood me no matter what they claim, but the one AS relationship I had could read me like a book and just truly understand and be compassionate when I was having a rough day.

just read this "There is also the trait to not be able to process interest in real-time, so aspies might understand that somebody showed interest hours, or even days or months after it happened, and thus missed the opportunity. This, too, is not an absence of a social skill, rather the presence of a more or less innate behavior that blocks processing of interest information." and well, this is so very true.

An older male friend at work always made fun of me and would tell me "X, even the gay guys like you and tell you they'd ask you out if they weren't gay and you can't figure out when a guy likes you? you think they're just a nice friend who comes to your office and brings you lunch everyday? or a guy who tells you he wants to have kids with you and you think he just wants to have kids but because he didn't specifically say he love you, you think he just wants to have kids with you?" lol but yes, missed opportunities is an understatement...

whatamess I think your mission is commendable. I find it alarming the number of parents who are aware that their kids have AS yet give them no extra help and just expect them to figure everything out for themselves. I think you, however, have got AS parenting figured out.I agree entirely. I've observed this phenomenon many times. As you say it can take months or even years yet sometimes even a few moments delay can be all it takes.

Maybe this is the case for some people, but it's demonstrably not true for all autistic people, as many of them have never had their eye contact called creepy as people noticed they didn't make eye contact from the get-go. I can say I didn't make eye-contact as child not because people extinguished staring, but because I simply found no purpose in doing it. Now my eye contact is described as normal, but very intense. There is definitely a difference between making eye contact and staring at a person you are interested in.

For all the people worried that they won't find love until they are 50 who are young now, I think we should keep in mind that nowadays the world is much different now than it was 50 years ago, and I bet lot of it isn't just age and probability, but I think it's much easier for an aspie to find someone compatible than it was in the past.

I hope so.

In 2010 I read about a Down's Syndrome guy called Otto Baxter whose carers made a campaign to legalise prostitution for the benefit of disabled males who have no hope of finding a girlfriend. Sadly, it came to nothing but when Otto was 25 years old, he somehow found a girlfriend. I've been to his hometown and if you live there, you wouldn't meet anyone because it's a remote village with mainly older and married people.

Summer 2010 - http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/833933 ... sex_taboo/
Jan 2013 - http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourto ... e_at_last/

But I am nearly at 30 years and don't have one female friend who is single, and 9 years ago people always said "A girl will come along when you're not looking". 9 years later, their predictions were wrong. So I have come to accept that there is no woman for me after all, even though there was a woman for Otto Baxter.

One thing that doesn't make a difference, as experience proves, is prayer. No matter how many times or how deeply I prayed, no higher being answers back.

For what it's worth, it'll take me less time to unlearn everything I grew up learning about love and relationships than it will to satisfy my need for love, intimacy, close company, belonging, etc. So this is the unfortunate reality - people with Autism are discriminated against, yet society don't want to recognise that discrimination takes place.

Have you tried religious dating sites?

>Have you tried religious dating sites?
If you know how dating sites work, they're just huge networks working together and supposedly sharing data from their users. In other words, those niche dating sites are just tentacles of some larger network (e.g. Cupid Media) and are the same as signing up to the master site while selecting your niche in a drop down filter. If I'm going to try a dating site again (it won't be the first time), I'd rather go with Match/eHarmony/DatingDirect and make use of their filtering system.

Nevertheless, I tried meeting girls in church (a big young church with more women than men) and didn't get far. As soon as I got to know someone, they went off to do missionary work abroad. Like evangelist churches in general, they gave me the impression that they don't want men meeting women.

Now, here is a good principle for life: The end of delusion is the end of disappointment. I'll get used to accepting I'm to stay alone than win over a woman who has too many men (many who are better at talking and persuasion) to choose from.

It's difficult, but not impossible. I met my husband at 26, and got married at 29.I didn't have much dating experience, but enough to know what qualities to look for.

Great article. It looks like I will have to wait as well. I am 38 and am still on the same level mentally as a teenager. I am older but I feel like going out and doing things that teenagers do on the weekends. Most of my friends are early 20s. The girl that I feel is who I was meant to be with is 18. It's hard not to tell her how I feel because it would be so awkward. I will just have to continue to wait I guess.

In our age range that may be true. But there are sports cars, motorcycles, alcohol and hard drugs. They work great as an equalizer to balance the gender ratio out.