Confession

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Hey guys, there's something I sort of need to get off my chest, and I'm really hoping maybe some of you lovely humans will have some advice for me. So, I'm a 22 year old adult with Autism. I live alone, although my father and stepmother still pay my rent and most of my bills. I'm also queer, and for my fellow Auties who are queer, you know that it's next to impossible to meet a partner of the same sex in person, much less if you're also Autistic. So I online dated for a while, but then, I guess I messed up. My dad blames me anyway, and I wound up accruing a stalker. Honestly, it wasn't even that big of a deal. She found my personal Facebook, and contacted people asking for my address. It was scary, but that was as far as it ever went. My dad doesn't see it that way. He banned me from online dating, and kept changing the rules on me, first saying if I was paying my own internet, then my own phone bill, then if I was receiving no financial support from him at all I could go back to online dating. He may be correct that I do have a pattern of falling for a certain type of people, what he has wrong is that it's because I'm naieve because of my Autism and lonely. The truth is, he and my mom had an extremely dysfunctional relationship, and I picked up some baggage of my own from this, but ever since a second incident which took place a few months after the first about six months ago, I have made an active effort to change myself for the better and force myself not to date those types of people, even if I might be drawn to them. A few weeks ago, I got a job, and it has moved things in a good direction for me. I voluntarily took on my own phone bill, and my dad and stepmother stepped off of some other stuff they were doing that was honestly pretty controlling. I even got myself a new phone. My dad finally says he's proud of me, and implied that he'd maybe eventually let me go back to school, (yeah he made me drop out, that's a whole long story,) anyway, I may have made a bit of a misstep. See I talked to him about renegotiating some rules and boundaries now that I have my own money once things are stable with my job, (I might be switching to another job which I've already got lined up, because for reasons that don't have anything to do with me personally, I don't think I'm going to stay at this current job much longer.) Anyway, my dad brought up online dating, and made it sound like he was firm in his rule but the decision really belonged to my stepmother, because she makes all of the rules for me now for reasons that again are complicated and kind of sucky to be honest. Anyway, I said I wanted to bring up renegotiating it now that I'm paying for my phone and internet, among other things and he said I could talk to her, but then well... here's where I did something I probably shouldn't have. I got impatient, and I sort of... Did it anyway. I basically asked my best friend to give me the push to do it because I really wanted to, but rule-breaking and deception is impossible for me unless there's a good justification, i.e. the rule is morally wrong, or I'm breaking it for somebody else's benefit not my own. I don't think that in my entire life I have ever actually broken a rule just because I wanted to... And then actually hidden my deception and like kept it going like this. Now I've been on four apps for a few days. Talking to some really cure girls, maybe a few dates in the works... And I was happy, extremely paranoid about every little tiny thing that they could do that could be even vaguely construed as a warning sign, and hypervigilant of trying to find somebody my dad would approve of, but happy to at least have a chance of finding a partner, and not have to keep going to queer clubs like I'd been doing because that's really not my scene and basically just meant I was having a lot of casual makeouts with girls who upon further inspection turned out to have mental health disorders that I honestly don't necessarily personally have a problem with, but my father has made crystal clear I'm not to be dating people with serious issues, and I'm really trying not to land myself into trouble with him, or any more life and death scenarios, (there has been more than one unfortunately.) Anyway, a combination of factors have forced me to examine what I'm doing here, and I'm starting to worry I'm doing something wrong, and feeling very guilty. I'm going to see him tomorrow because it's a religious holiday and he's invited me to dinner, and he's being pretty nice to me these days. How can I sit in his home knowing I'm deceiving him, breaking his rules and lying by omission straight to his face? I know neurotypicals do this all the time, and frankly, I really thought by now I could too, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe I really can't overrride my hardwiring, and maybe what I'm doing really is wrong. I think this whole post I just keep layering on the justifications, and that's because I'm grasping at straws here. Part of me says that I'm an adult doing a normal thing that adults do that brings me happiness and it's none of my dad's business, but another part of me says he pays my bills and I should follow all of his rules and now I'm blatantly breaking one and hiding it, and that feels wrong, and I have no idea if I'll manage to get through tomorrow without getting caught or just confessing myself. It doesn't help that this holiday is part of a holiday that's about guilt and sins and confessing them and all I can think about is that I have a huge whopper of "disrespecting thy father" to atone for, and I'm still doing it, so how can I possible atone for something I'm still doing. Maybe I should just delete all of the accounts. But I don't want to especially when I already have people who want to go out with me, and I want to go out with them too. I'm so torn here... Maybe what he doesn't know won't hurt him, but what if I mess up again...

It's your live. But nobody can real help you with that because it's always you who will bear the consequences.
No one here knows you and your dad. May be he just wants you to have some children one day or may be it's a religious thing of him. We can't even say whether you can talk to him freely. It would be the best.

Well, I have to admit that, I was actually hoping to read some sort of juicy story confession, but I will definitely take acknowledging that I am most-definitely lovely and all other such definitely truthful compliments !

Anyway, this world upon which we find ourselves is now such that, financial-instability does not make for a good support-structure to any kind of relationship. If you're dependent upon your father for life's necessities, and such dependence is placing restrictions upon your freedoms that you cannot handle, then it would certainly be a good idea to come up with a good (but stable) plan and strategy for achieving independence/self-dependence (good luck with that in this day and age for any of the recent generations who have not managed to move out by the time they're 16-18).

Anyway, the engaging of activities between adults that makes them happy is not a sin/crime, provided that it does not inflict some kind of injury/suffering/harm/damage upon others. You may need to develop the art of negotiation better. Basically, instead of «seeing someone behind his back» as you put it, make an effort to show that you're demonstrating «self-responsibility» by doing the things that will better help you achieve some financial-stability, such as registering at various employment-agencies and calling all of them up every Monday morning to ask if they have any work/job-assignments available for you. This way, you can use it as a «negotiating/bargaining chip» so that, even if he is paying parts of your life-expenses, that, because you're exerting a dedicated effort to be able to cover such «bills» on your own, perhaps he can ease up his restrictions on letting you be able to see someone of your choosing.

Anyway, until you are completely independent, you remain by definition, and for all intents and purposes, a minor (and one's physical-age should not be confused with one's mental-age, emotional-age, spiritual-age, psychological-age, etc). Your father will likely continue to view you as a little girl who struggles to take care of yourself until you can prove otherwise which is why I strongly suggest the employment-agency method which is actually one of the easiest ways to join the work-force and gain experience (and until you gain experience, you are basically... inexperienced).

Job-hunting should definitely be a skill to develop. Otherwise there is always the «welfare» route... although you should first make an effort to support yourself, but if there ends up being some medical and/or psychiatric-reason that you cannot be independent, then it is taken into consideration and counted as evidence to approve social-aid.

That is all I got time for, for now. <hugs> and good luck to you !