Do NTs even think about life milestones?

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I think a huge part of the problem in my inability to form age-appropriate friendships, date, have relationships, get a great job is the fact that I way-overthink these things. I posted about this before, but it deeply depresses me that I am "behind the curve" when it comes to hitting life-milestones.

I want so badly to date and have great relationships that are commensurate with my age......... I feel as much as 15 years behind my chronological age when it comes to the sum and quality of my experience with women. Its like I've only just begun to even dare try and chat them up.

To me, it feels like everybody else around me (NTs) just date and marry without a second thought. For all of the normal people I know, the fact that they date, have sex, and make money seems to be as natural and obvious as other things like hitting puberty.

In my case, I even think hitting puberty would have been something I would have not been able to do with AS......... but my internal clock had me do it anyway. If not for prompting from external or internal sources that AS was unable to ret*d, I'd still be a toddler or something......... :s

It makes me so upset though to see everybody else my age just doing everything and moving on towards becoming RESPECTABLE adults. Frankly my own apparent immaturity pisses me off. I know I have AS, but its so terrible just thinking about it. I feel like everybody else is "in" on something, like they are in the club or have some big secret to life that I've been left out on.

Its always been a big deal to me to project as a competent and respectable adult. Ironically, I behaved much like "a little adult" as a child, but as an adult, I'm regressing more and more almost towards infancy. Its odd in an way. When I was young, I thought myself to be by far the most mature of my peers, but now its by far the opposite........ i couldn't wait just to get out of school and try my hand at working. (but I'm horribly incompetent as an actually functional independent person) These days I go on like a 7 year old just on the computer all day and pursuing completely amateur range of interests.

I think my huge issue is definitely overthinking, which becomes paranoia. I can totally form a "plan of action" for things like job interviews........... but then I get to the social situation, and its like I lock up and become a totally different person. All i had planned to do in my head goes out the window.......... I start saying things unintelligible, stammering, that make no sense, or don't connect, and I blow it. I can never relax or "stay loose."

OMG I feel the exact same way and I was diagnosed late in life and now that I am older and know what my difficulties are-I think of everything I missed and things my peers did at 15,18,21,25 ,30,35 etc. I feel se left behind and I will never have the experiences that my NT peers have had-I have a memory but no "memories" through my life-I still watch cartoons and shows on Disney and Nick and sometimes I act like a child especially when I have meltdowns-I feel like a broken human being

yeah, I could've written that post myself. It's hard at times not to feel like you've failed at being a human.

Pengu1n, you have no idea what a relief it is to read your post. I have gone through, am going through and will likely continue to deal with the same problem for the rest of my life. I am so good at many things, but life isn't one of them.

I missed every milestone in adult life, too . Now I'm in my late fifties and often feel when I meet people in their twenties and thirties that they have met more of the traditional "adult" milestones than me, though I'm 20 or 30 years older than them . But I don't think the problem is exclusive to aspies; it can happen to others as well.

Yeah, I have definitely totally failed as an adult (I almost feel like I never even had a chance though) :s

Its almost amazing to me how far behind I was from the beginning and just how "screwed" I was by AS. Its almost unbelievable to me that I was never yanked out by some health-professional and just quarantined off from the rest of my peers. (I was so screwy-looking as a boy)

I'm NT and I do occasionally think of milestones. I may be an atypical NT, or possibly just what you might call a late developer. Family-wise I hade a pretty appalling so-called youth and perhaps this set me back. I don't really know. 

I didn't join the working world until I was about 30 and got married in my late 30s. I have achieved some important milestones which kind of shows it can still happen. but not kids. Couldn't cope with them.

Also, as a female some milestones are more strongly connected with human biology than for men. So between 30 and 40 pretty much every NTwoman who hasn't any kids is going to be thinking about this milestone one way or another.

Even if loads of my "peers" did all this 10, 15 years earlier. I don't really mind. I simply wasn't ready.

 I think it's normal to compare yourself to people your own age. But you have to compare like with like, otherwise you just feel inadequate.

I started to feel a huge pressure not to be single when I was about 30. But you know behind the curve really is fine. You can look at those ahead and learn from their mistakes. You are young. I didn't meet my partner until I was 34, and we have been together for 10 years and we will stay together for the rest of our lives. Around me now there are many people who married age 20, and they are now divorced. Most of my friends from schools are divorced. All of the couples I know that are together met later in life.

The geeky guys in my peer group at schools ended up with the loveliest wives. Late bloomers, especially Aspies can make very good partners. You want something to work and have thought about enough to take it seriously. Many men are so full of testosterone they can begin to think about relationships well into their forties.

Many young women think they want flash harry, NT women (me) can be really dumb about men when younger, and they only realise they are really looking for intelligent, thoughtful, kind, caring (and therefore sexy) when they are a little older.

You will be there being the perfect antidote to the a***holes they have known.

Perhaps, but I think most "late bloomers" and Nice guys still go on dates and at least chat to women when they are younger. I've had virtually no practice at all for "the big game" Heck, I don't even know how to cuddle, kiss, or how to make love in a manner that women find appropriate.

I agree with most of what you say, but I really don't know how I will diametrically switch from being a complete nobody to suddenly in an extremely satisfying relationship with a gorgeous babe at age 35. She would think it totally odd anyway how I have no idea what I am doing in bed. (I do not think I would be confident enough to go at it without worrying I was doing something incorrectly)

To the right woman you're the jackpot mate. You are a 'blank page', who wants to be told what to do. Fantastic! You aren't even going to pretend you have a clue because Aspies are crap posers and crap liars. You have no fixed ideas and no enormous ego telling you that you already know it all. You are a guy who stands there and says "tell me what to do". Jackpot!

You are not a cocky bastard who thinks he is the bee knees, who has spent his years of wasted experience never bothering to even ask women what they want.

Every man and woman are different so experience is pretty useless often. Or its irrelevant to a new individual. Talking and interest and being open minded are all that matter. Read a few good sex guides, become interested. Make your interest her and not you, and I promise you you will be a breath of fresh air.

You already care and you havent even met her! When you meet her, make her body your special interest.

I didn't get my first boyfriend until I was 20. I missed out on typical teen stuff in my teens. I did want to babysit, I did want a boyfriend and dates but couldn't get any. I tried getting my first boyfriend when I was 17 and that failed. Now today I will sometimes joke about it by telling people how not to get a boyfriend and I tell my story about how I tried to get one but I might not say I was that person who did it.

I did get married at 23 and had a kid at 25 so that is pretty young. My parents were older than that when they reached these two mildstones. My husband was in his 30's when he reached these too. He had other mildstones he never reached either until he met me.

I did think about these mildstones a lot in my late teens and when I was 20 wondering when I was going to get my first boyfriend, when I was going to lose my virginity, when I will have kids and if they ever will happen. Then I wondered that again at age 21 when I was single except for the first boyfriend and virginity part.

I find I already do very much care for my ideal prospective girlfriend. I don't even know her identity, but I know she will be one lucky woman.

Hurray for the Penguin. He'll flap his arms, sing songs and sit with deepest loyalty on the egg

Even if you do meet the milestones on time or sooner, there are often issues there besides that, making you feel that you've somehow 'missed the boat'. I just did a couple of summer jobs, when I was at uni. I did feel somewhat unusual for this, but it was more like feeling spoiled than anything else, although I didn't even know how to start applying for jobs. I was never a teenager, doing typical teenager things, so I missed that milestone. The only time I did anything remotely typical was when I was 16. I had a friend who suggested we should go to an under-18s disco and ice-skating. Her whole purpose was to pick up a boy and I managed to attract a few too. I had 2 boyfriends, for a few days/weeks, then I met my future husband. We were introduced as we were so alike. Had I not been fortunate enough to meet him, I don't know what my life would be like today. We married when I was 21, a week after I'd started work. Our daughter was born 11 years later. This was the only time that I worried about milestones, as she might never have come along, but she did, eventually. Even after the 11 year wait, I was still 'on time'.

But, I still don't feel like I've become the person I'm meant to be. I was hoping that these 6 years that I've spent not working, whilst my daughter is small, would help me to get my head in order and decide what I really want to do with the rest of my life, but I'm not much further forward. My situation becomes even more real when people around me do things that I feel I should maybe be working on. One of my peers has just started back at work, after a similarly long break. She's doing something similar to my old job (not even related to her old job). It's strange to think that she's more cut out for that than I am, when I have the experience behind me.

I'm hoping that my boat just hasn't come in yet.

I've hit 2 in the past year but can feel like this a lot. I have my first graduate job at 30 and just got married but have been together 10 years. Biologically I have hit the point of children but in my head feel younger and I feel really young to be married! I got my first (and other) boyfriend/partner at 18 and first job at 19 but that was in a sandwich shop and the type of job other people had about 3 years before. I feel panic about who will be pregnant on facebook next and panic that people now have children rather than babies and feel left behind.

Well the way I see it I am not competing with NT's......I don't compare where I have gotten in life to how far an NT of the same age may have gotten because thats two different things. What is normal development for me is not normal development for NTs and whats normal development for them is not normal development for me.

don't know if this makes any sense.