27, the magic number?

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I remember reading somewhere in a book that those affected with Asperger's syndrome have a social/emotional age that is about 2/3rds of their actual age.

If so then part of the problem with those of us who haven't turned 27 is that our social/emotional matches aren't even legal yet, unless they're an aspie, and the gender ratio is not particularly favorable there unless you're a girl. So many have to aim for someone on a different plane until that 27 range.

These are generalizations, just stick to the main idea, the implications of delayed social/emotional age in the context of L & D.

wow, that's a very interesting thing to know.
i think it explains my would-be cougarish tendencies. i'm 19 but i find myself bonding well with high school kids. i want to re-do high school all over again...

27 is an age I associate with Saturn's return.

Saturn return

I definitely got a lot 'better' around the ages 27-30.

Between 2/3 and 3/4 supposedly (so - 17/24ths is definitely possible as well ).

I don't trust this figure in looking at myself in a global sense because I think it only covers certain aspects. Structural maturity? Genetic maturity? Those are possible, as in our development in that sense may be slowed. Emotional/core maturity though? No. Generally speaking, right now in my life, I'd be hard pressed to see myself dating a girl much under 25, mainly just where I'm at in life, what I want, and who I can actually relate to.

The real struggle we face though - while our emotional maturity may be at our age or, due to our struggles, somewhere past our age, our nervous systems and chemistries almost force us into functioning a certain way (as indicated quite a ways younger), that causes all kinds of dissonance, struggle, and really rather than putting us in an age group it makes us technically right for no age group in particular. Pretty much we end up in the 'odd sizes' dating crowd and the very point of it is that no one really fits a developmental stereotype well (and the odd sizes crowd of course runs the gammit everywhere between aspies to intellectual NT's to late 20's/early 30's fast lane NT's, artsy types, nerds, typically people who are a little bit of several of these).

Despite being a generalization, that sounds like a reasonable generalization.

I was just telling someone that if I could go back to high school now, I'd finally be able to understand what's going on in the minds of ninth- and tenth-graders, about six years after the fact.

Here at college, I am the youngest of my friends, but only by a couple of months. But I'm a sophomore in college, and most of my high school friends are graduating this year. I'd go further and say that they've all surpassed me in maturity in the past year, as they get girlfriends and become more independent.

I know I was an itty-bitty kid until my late 20s so there could be something to this.

It makes sense. I'm 42 but people sometimes think I'm around 25. It has only been in the past few years that I've even begun to understand social interaction.

I dont know about emotional. But I heard that the average aspie has the social wirng of an NT 2 year old. At first I thought it was nonsense but spending time around a 4 year old boy I know made me realise that he actually had better social skills and theory of mind than me. It concerned me quite a bit.

I think my emotional age is close to my own though. I have been through a lot, I certainly have not had an easy life.

I would agree with this because I'm 27 & am extremely immature in lots of ways. I chat with high-school kids sometimes. We have similar interest in music(I like Disney pop), TV, comedy ect & I feel most of em are more mature than me in lots of ways.

I'm 28 and watch a lot of iCarly, so 2/3rds is optimistic high for me.

...I dunnno... I feel like, even if we're stunted in this brand of maturity, we're missing an important variable. See, I think the growth process of emotional maturity slows down over time. I think that you mature more between 18-21 than you do from 21-24, than you do from 24-27, etc. I think this is true because living in social society has a finite amount of accessible ideas to learn. As you get older, the ideas become more nuanced, more difficult, less practical, less necessary. It's less 'worth' learning, and so we don't, and our modern human maturity process starts to slow down. So an NT gets all the low-hanging fruit, looks around and sees everyone else has similarly limited prospects for growth, and so they all cumulatively give up. If you're 'on par' with everyone, and lacking a deficit, then why strive for more maturity?

Compare to people on the spectrum. Well, all of it's harder for us, but our basis of 'acceptable level of maturity' is derived from comparison to everyone else. meaning that while others may have effectively slowed or stopped maturing(due to a commonly shared 'level' of difficulty/practicality), we potentially continue to fight through that difficulty to reach parity with everyone else's 'level.'

So, if we imagined it like a graph, our maturity vs time graphed line is a lot more gentle of a curve, closer to linear. Compare that to an NT, I presume they'd mature quicker, but also level-off sooner.
If this kind of variable that I'm imagining is true, has a lot of implications. Assuming that an ASD individual continues to strive despite the difficulty, then by nature of the NT 'levelling,' we can catch up later in life.

That's my hope, anyways. I'm not content at staying at 2/3's the capacity of my friends.

...Boy, I hope any of that made sense...

That kind of makes sense. I'm 31 and most of the people I associate with are probably 19 - 21ish.