How long do you wait . . .

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. . . to tell a person you're interested in about your AS?

After you meet someone you're interested in, how long do you wait before you tell them about your AS? Do you want to bring it up right away so that they might have a better understanding of you and not hold it against you if you make "mistakes", or do you wait a long time until you do get close and and bring it up then?

I wouldn't mention AS until you're already in the relationship. If you're just starting to get to know each other, you could mention that you need some practice socializing, and stuff like that, but the term AS might sound bad, so early. You don't want to scare her away by telling her you have a "syndrome", when it's the symptoms who make you who you are anyway. After all, the term AS is meaningless to most people anway, so why risk the relationship with a meaningless term?

It can wait til your sure you're compatible, and dating.

I accidentally told her on our first date...but strangely enough she didn't mind, she's very understanding about it too!!

Tell her if it comes up in the conversation/becomes relevant to what you're talking about. I probably wouldn't say it straight away, I'd wait to get to know the other person better first before telling them.

My boyfriend knew before he met me as my friend told him. But he was willing to be understanding about it and the fact that he started seeing me regardless just shows that there are some great people out there. However, if you feel in your gut that you shouldn't tell them until later on, then don't.

Be extremely weary of labels. People like to use labels so they don't have to think about what's really going on.

Personally I think it should only come up if it's a natural part of the conversation. If you just met someone, I don't know how natural having a 'special' talk would be.

i'd tell anyone who'll listen, a lot of people don't seem to know what it is though
otherwise people might assume i'm "normal" & that would be untrue

I don't until long into something, if at all, given that instead of certain traits being recognised as being part of me, they are then seen as part of AS.

The problem with this is that it differs from person to person and that you kind of need to play it by ear - something that people with Asperger's are notoriously bad at doing.

There's a few schools of thought over this, and one main one I see often on here which I'm going to make a point of disagreeing with.

One idea is that just make sure everyone you know knows about it so it's not a surprise to anybody. However this doesn't necessarily work if it's obvious that you have something off about you because the person will already be wondering what's up rather than just letting the whole thing pass them by.

Like I said, it depends from person to person.

One thing I would advise heavily against is the 'tell them as soon as you meet them and if they can't handle it they can f**k off for being close minded' tactic. Not everyone knows what Asperger's or even autism is so you have to give people a chance here. It's not fair to just drop something that might be a bombshell on them and then throw them out just for being ignorant about it, because ignorance is not a crime.

You know when the time is right. Most times I have told people, they ask what it is... Then I am stuck, so I tell them how it affects just me. That way, it applies to me only as everyone is different