"Love on the Spectrum" new TV series

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There's a new 4 part TV series called "Love on the Spectrum" which follows a group of young people as they negotiate the dating scene.

https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the- ... 019/37043/

I've watched the first two episodes and plan to see the next two as well.

It plays weekly on free-to-air ABC TV (Australia) and is also available for catch-up viewing on ABC iview.

I'm watching it with my wife

It's on youtube as well. I watched the first two parts and absolutely love it. Is it an actual TV series? It seems more like a four part documentary. Great if it's either.

I recommend it to every WP member and I just saw the first two parts for the very first time today. I thought it was superb.

I'll have to check this out sometime xD

I asked my wife to watch the first part of the four part series. She agreed to watch it with me. It's a good sign and a testament to the quality of this series because she's now open to watching the three other parts in time.

Generally she's hesitant or even opposed to watching things with an autism theme because she says that for some time it seems to her that that's the only subject I've been wanting to watch. I guess there's truth to that.

I love it and very much look forward to catching up on it via YouTube this weekend

A few comments.

The one young couple they show seem much more "high functioning" than any of the other subjects. In fact I see no clear evidence the young woman is even on the spectrum, OTOH I would more likely believe that she is intellectually disabled. Several times she asked her fiancé for help with fairly basic vocabulary words. Their relationship seems to have begun when she saw him, thought he was hot, and promptly asked him out. None of the other women in the program seem remotely capable of such behavior. The fiancé is "obviously" autistic however high-functioning to the extent that his autism doesn't prevent him from being well-paid in a white-collar occupation. At least in the US, moving into a house on one's own at age 21 is unusually young. I didn't become completely independent like that until I was nearly 30 and then it was just a condo.

As for all the other subjects, unfortunately nothing I saw gave the viewer much encouragement. If I were that age and single, I would consider Maddi the most "dateable" but the men in particular seemed ill-suited to that sort of dating and the women didn't seem capable of knowing how to react if they did feel some degree of attraction to their date. I also have to say that I can't entirely agree with the idea of a formal dinner date, sitting face to face and quizzing the other person about their interests. In fact, I am not at all certain that "shared interests" are the key to a good relationship. TBH if I wanted to get a group of autistic adults to pair off and possibly start dating, I would just put them in a room, provide drinks to any so inclined, then ask the women to decide which of the men they could at least imagine themselves snogging, then take the lucky guy to a more private place and do exactly that. If any of those people don't feel ready for that, then they should re-examine their reason for wanting to "date" in the first place. Or else they should go with the arranged marriage approach (which actually succeeds more often than not — source: I work in IT and know a lot of Indians).

Max, so you're thinking a better approach would be to take people who have never dated, never had a relationship and certainly never had a physical or sexual experience with anyone and ask them to pair up and start making out?

The autistics in the documentary not only have zero experience in that area, they also naturally have extreme apprehension about it. I disagree with your suggestion in their case.

I believe there's a neurotypical standard that extends to sexual interaction like there's an NT standard of behavior, communication, etc.

It's entirely possible that autistics such as those being featured in that documentary may want to be in a relationship that bears little to no resemblance to "typical" relationships. As such, it's reasonable to assume some autistic couples may be perfectly happy being together and never consummating their relationship.

There was another autistic related documentary I saw this year about a young man who was gearing up to live in a group/community setting but in his own apartment. He communicated through most of his childhood through Disney movie quotes. He had an NT brother and NT parents. The young autistic man met a young autistic girl and they quickly spent a lot of time together and loved being in each other's company. They'd watch Disney movies together, go on walks, try their hand at baking cookies together (they failed at it by burning the cookies but dealt with the disappointment). In short, they were perfectly happy. The NT brother in a genuine interest in helping his autistic brother suggested to the autistic brother that he should take his relationship to the "next level" and kiss his girlfriend.

The autistic man took his NT brother's advice even though the autistic man in no way was stating a desire to kiss his girlfriend or lamenting any lack of progression in the relationship. What happened? His girlfriend was not expecting the man to kiss her out of the blue and without discussion or invitation and broke up with him. He was devastated.

The point? They were happy with the dynamic of their own personal relationship as it was even if it would be viewed as immature or childlike to most people. I don't think relationships should be assumed to have to necessarily follow a standard trajectory.

Without giving a lot of explanation, I happen to disagree. There may be a few autistics who are asexual, especially women. I don't think this applies to any of the subjects of this program. Otherwise I don't think autistics are different sexually from anybody else, but many have been deprived of sexual contact due to their disability. Of course, some autistic women have been sexually taken advantage of, but that is an entirely unrelated discussion.

I really enjoyed watching these.
There were certainly some cringeworthy moments, but I think the program showed the reality of the dating scene for people on the spectrum.

Can’t watch.

All reality tv shows are often staged tho and fake af.

Ugh, I never liked "formal dinner dates" either. However....


They're not "THE key," but, for me at least, they've always been ONE of the keys. If nothing else, they're the key to being able to spend enough time together to determine whether people are sufficiently compatible in terms of things like worldview, habits, general attitudes, etc. -- which also ARE among the absolutely necessary keys to a good relationship, in my opinion.


Most people, including most autistic people, especially women, do NOT want to jump into bed immediately with someone they just met, even if they are attracted.


Perhaps it works well in a culture where it's the socially expected thing, and where marriage is primarily about property and forming a bond between extended families, rather than primarily about romantic love. Another prerequisite for arranged marriages to have a reasonable chance of working well is for both members of the couple to be part of some relatively small, cohesive community in which the matchmaker personally knows everyone and has a good basis for figuring out who is likely to get along with whom.

Neither of these is true in the modern West, except in some small insular religious subcultures. So, arranged marriages might conceivably work okay for Western autistic people if the autistic community were much better organized and more cohesive than it is now.

However, even in the hypothetical future case of a much better-organized and more cohesive autistic community, I think a better idea than arranged marriage might be some kind of arranged courtship, with the matchmaker as a common confidant for both people, so that, if/when either person wants to take things to the next level but is too shy to say so directly, they can tell the matchmaker instead, and the info gets passed along only if the matchmaker has determined that the desire is mutual. This could take a lot of the awkwardness out of dating, it seems to me.

Mona, I have more response to your comment, however by "snogging" I don't mean what you apparently think I mean. I mean what NT high schoolers would routinely do at a party. A HS girl would do it with a cute boy 5 minutes after meeting him, just because she thinks he's cute. If NT people can do this as teenagers, then certainly the people in this documentary should be able to have that experience in their 20s ( if they want, which admittedly many won't).

EDIT please Google the definition of "snogging". This began as a British term but now that everyone has read Harry Potter I expect all English speaking people to know what it means.

Oops! Not everyone has read Harry Potter. In particular, I have not read it, although I've heard a lot about it. I also never encountered the word "snog" before. And indeed I apparently jumped to a wrong conclusion as to its meaning.

However, even given it meaning as defined by the Oxford dictionary, I would still say that most people (especially most women) would not want to passionately kiss someone they just met, either.

Of course, a significant exception would be high-school-aged or college-aged kids who just want to experiment and find out what it feels like. For them, a get-together for the specific purpose of experimenting with kissing, along the lines you suggested, might be a good idea. But it's unlikely to lead to a serious relationship, it seems to me, although it might in some cases, if the people turn out to be otherwise compatible as well.

'Shared interests' is a myth, they're not that important for relationships.

https://www.artofdatingnyc.com/relationshipmyths/

This article doesn't deny that common interests are desirable, but just says that other things are more important: "The most important element is not what you do together but how you interact together." I agree with that, but I nevertheless think common interests are important too, at least in modern Western society.

In many traditional societies, common interests probably don't matter at all, because the men spend nearly all their time with other men, while the women spend nearly all their time with other women; hence a husband and wife don't spend much if any time in each other's company other than sleeping together.

On the other hand, in modern Western society, courtship involves spending time with each other doing things that are supposed to be fun for both people. Additionally, in the long run, even if it's not the single most important thing, bonding over shared enjoyment of one or more common interests does help to stabilize a relationship.

Also I think the importance of common interests varies from one person to another. For some people, such as myself, it's extremely important. For others, less so.