DazyDaisy wrote:
Since I have an autoimmune disease I am ready to inform people, generally, only about it and use it as an excuse for the things I hate doing as an (officialy still undiagnosed) autistic person. Things that are exausting for me.
Should I openly admit to a potential partener about my autism? Probably should and I will if they have already accepted me with my disease. But most healthy man are not that ready for it, although I don't have a visible disability.
The problem in my country is that adults can not be assessed for autism nor get the diagnosis. Only children with severe autism. So hardly I will find another middle age Aspie..
What I am not ready is to pretend that I am just like any other regular woman. The expectations would be too high and now I'm old enough to realize I can not do masking for too long anymore. For me it is even better to be alone for the rest of my life.
You summed it up perfectly when you called autism spectrum disorder an invisible disability.
Even though, as I indicated on my last post, the occasional joke will go over my head, I (in most cases) come across as simply a tad quirky/socially awkward. The vast majority of the population would never guess I'm on the spectrum.
Then even in the case of the joke the woman I had my last date with made (which went over my head), I'm pretty sure the only reason my response freaked her out was because she never would have suspected I'm on the spectrum (so, from her point of view, there's no reason I should fail to get the joke).
You're right when you say masking is exhausting. The fact those of us with a mild autism case are able to mask is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, the outside world isn't going to immediately know we're autistic. But on the other hand, this comes at a cost: Neurotypicals will expect we'll want to do all the same stuff they want to do.
This makes it hard for us to maintain friendship *or* romantic relationships. As an example, a friend in the past got fed up by the fact I had no desire to go bar-hopping with him.