Do you find your role as an adult comfortable and natural?

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It's a developmental disorder, of course I have a problem with adulthood. I know people have life stages that they go through at roughly the same age but internally I don't feel like I belong in any distinct stage. Socially people are drawn to other people who are at the same life stage. You don't see 20 year olds wanting to hang out with 40 year olds. When I was a kid I had no problem hanging out with people 20 years older than me. As an adult I have no problem hanging out with people 20 years younger than me, but most people would see this kind of age difference as odd. 'Normal' people have some kind of internal sense of what stage they and others should be, but that is broken for me in some way. So it's not that 'adult' feels unnatural to me, it's that every stage people have expected me to fit into has been unnatural to me. If everyone were on the spectrum it wouldn't be an issue. As things are, it's the external expectations that cause me (and probably many of you) grief.

I'm sixty and still find it strange and difficult. What I have found though is as I get older and more depressed, I seem to be accepted more as an adult: The child in me is creative and joyous (and picked on because of this: Bullying is the means by which they try to force you to conform, by hiding inside, instead of standing out in the light (they don't like light because they are hiding from it - this means the light of understanding, intelligence and just being bright (hyperactive))).

In my case it's probably a mix of both it is largely the social difficulties and general interaction difficulties, also though even if I did have the ability to live the 'usual adult life' I don't think I would because its not appealing. The main thing is though I can't fake it i still come off as 'weird' to people and a large majority of the time no one takes me seriously because they've already judged me as 'mental' and thus someone to be mostly disregarded at least that is what it seems like.

The reason why I'm asking is because I'm not completely sure whether one should expect internal emotional growth throughout one's life or whether one will remain a teenager emotionally. Seems like one should expect the last part.

How would any therapist know what is normal for most people. By definition of their job they only deal with people that have psychological problems.

I feel like a little child, that is being forced to be a grown-up, and I'm struggling within this adult exterior and it would be just so nice if someone would come along and say, "it's OK there's been a mistake, you can go back to how you were". It has never felt natural to me being a grown up, although it's really odd because I was a serious child, that probably seemed like someone with an old head on young shoulders. I think that's what it is, we are ageless mentally in some ways, but we never quite mentally reach the age that we are supposed to feel adult.

The older I get the more confident and sure of myself I am. Around this age is when I actually started feeling like a man and can hold my own. No longer a young adult I guess.

Before this age I felt a bit vulnerable and insecure.

I can say always/always now. But I still don't do a lot of the normal things adults do because their values are extremely different then mine.

i don't think i have met very many adults who felt like they were totally grown up on the inside - many people retain some aspects of the inner child. it would be interesting to take a survey with NTs, as i think it is a fairly widespread phenomenon.

This.

A little while ago, I went around asking adults I know how old they felt because I wanted to know if not feeling grown up was specific to me/ASD or not. None of them were on the autistic spectrum. I received answers ranging from age 6 (my 65 year old mother) and age 32 (my 69 year old dad). My 39 year old husband said he felt about 16.

As for me, I feel about 12.

I will agree, but it is for two different reasons. I think there is a fundamental difference between autistics and NTs on this point (and it may be one of the distinguishing features) in that NTs (in general, but not all) reach milestones that they share with others and are used as maturing steps toward adulthood (e.g. first date, first exposure to drugs/alcohol, first job, first sexual experience, etc.) and these happened among them at about the same age, give or take a year or two. NT's may feel they are at a younger age, because that is where they feel more secure and are less vulnerable, but they have taken all the steps and learned the life lessons in becoming independent and fully functional adults. But with autistics, there is no social marker among peers to trigger these events (due to more social isolation or outright rejection), so we tend to be way behind on those milestones and feel much further behind emotionally and socially. They feel they are actually stuck at a certain age because the lessons have not been learned or understood.

No, absolutely f*****g not. I've never felt quite right in my life for as long as I can remember. It's always crazy for me to think of how old I am because I never feel like I am that age. I feel like I should be like 3/4 the age I really am, and it gets worse the older I get.

I've definitely grown up and become more mature, but I feel the world has not. Everything's still a popularity and "look at my toys" contest. I just wanna meditate and try to spread consciousness and enlightenment, and all anyone cares about is making money and watching sports and stuff. I want to meditate. i want to actually find myself, but I have no time to even search because if I don't go to work, I have no money, which means I then have no shelter or food... So it's like no matter what I do, I'm stuck in this fight or flight survival mode, and I can't get out of that and actually attain true peace. And to make things even worse, we're ALL in this same struggle, against one another, looking out for number 1, and yet we somehow expect that we can all prosper? This world is f*****g mad, and I don't want to be a part of it anymore. The older i get, the more I feel like I'm being pulled behind a speeding car by a rope tied around my teeth.

You might be right, although I don't think it's that conscious for aspies.

I myself always got along far better with kids than adults. However, even kids have ideas of what it means to be an adult, I don't. When I was a scout leader, all the other leaders AND the kids said I was actually more like one of the kids than a leader.

I'm still getting used to my role as a human.

I would quite agree, and I'd like to propose to add this: some people may also learn about some of those new experiences through 'osmosis', if you will; even if they themselves do not experience a 'milestone' like getting one's driver's license, or raising a child, they will see it around them in their social circle, and experience second-hand what it's like.

Whereas, if you're more isolated, you'll miss a lot of those maturity milestones, and have a harder time imagining what they are like.
This holds true for me, at least.

I agree with you, but I'm not sure they are all aware of the mental concept of "being a different age inside". To be honest, I felt puberty was a prison to me and I have never really got to accept this adult body I had been forced in. Mentally I've come far from the 6yo child you can see in my avatar but emotionally I'm still not far from him, I can get along with 6-7 year old boys pretty well. And I have problems answering the poll too, as I don't understand clearly the many different shades (mind that English is not my first language, but it only makes it a bit worse). However, I chose Often/Never.