Positive Relationships are Possible for People on the Spectrum - Love & Autism

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Fine ...cheers!

Boo I agreed with your sentiment in the first place. To spend half of one's life in companionship is a battle half won. The first half has been spent alone and that can't be changed.

Remember also that the first half of adult life is by far the best half. In the years between 54 and death body and senses fail. Not only that but by 54 their looks have long since faded. They will never enjoy each other in the beauty of their youth.

Whether or not they compare their age of partnering to their peers is something known only to them but for me such comparisons are an inescapable reality.

I'm 54...and my looks haven't faded!

I am not sure my looks have started yet.

That's most auspicious. By the time you're 65, you'll be in your prime.

Hey, we just got married last year (him at 60, me at 66), like somebody else said, there's (little or) no drama and our whole community finds it inspiring that we are happy and hold hands all the time. I wish I could have dispensed with all the attempts in my earlier years and just waited until I was happier with myself, as I am now. I find it ever so much easier to just be accepting of the way he is and the way I am. I think when you finally get to 60, a lot of stuff just doesn't matter any more, you can just enjoy whatever there is for what it is. Stuff we don't do well together, we still support each other by staying out of each other's way. By the way, our sex life is great. And thank goodness we can't have kids. Been there done that and now I wouldn't have the patience, I'm having way too much fun pursuing my own interests.
I say good for them. Congratulations and felicitations.

And not only that, I disagree that the first half of a life is the "best". Sure it was fun, but so is this. And my looks are apparently still attractive enough to appeal to a lot more people than I can possibly deal with, not that I have a lot of time for that sort of 'fluff'. Sure I have to pay more attention to my health, but that's not a bad thing. At least now I see the benefits of stuff like figuring out whether I have low stomach acid or not! It's a mini adventure in itself! And now if you'll excuse me, I want to go launch a boat.

how lovely. what a nice story!

It happens more often than people think.

Just open yourself up, guys and gals!

lots of men die at 60-70 so no is like they have 10 years left. and they missed out on all the youthful stuff others got.
I want all the youthful relationship stuff. not old couple sitting in a house. I want kids as well. can't have kids over 50.

sorry but all that I want out of a relationship can only be had between 16-35. glad if the rest of you can enjoy the other stuff alone and never have the younger stuff. oh wait you did get tot enjoy the younger stuff. like telling a blind person they didn't miss out on anything. bulshit. sure they can live happy lifes but telling them they didn't miss out anyting. idk like seeing their lover, seeing the beauty of this world. no they missed out on a lot.


also never heard of the assumption aspies don't want a relationship, just the assumption that aspies are horrible terrible people and should be avoided for relationships.

I'm hoping that we do represent neuodiverse relationships...but as the host, I don't control the messages of those that speak, we only can wait and see. We have 8 speakers of 10 with autism and I've selected these people to present on what they feel is important to share as it pertains to love & autism. David Finch is in Autism-Neurotypical marriage with two kids, Anthony Ianni is a first time dad. Stephen Shore, married for 27 years to college sweetheart. Lindsey Nebeker + David Hamrick, both presenting are engaged and soon to be married 30 somethings. Of course, you all know Alex Plank. Then Dr. Peter Mundy and myself are not on the spectrum, but will present clinical/research.

I'd love to hear opinions on who I should invite next year....We are already planning. We strive for neuro-diverse messaging within our Love & Autism brand.

I don't know who to invite either, but I'm planning to publish some key aspects of neurodiverse relationships. The first one is about asexuality, and how this is not related to low libido, but to feeling disgusted by the neurotypical relationship behavior, and especially by regular sexual intercourse. This is gender biased too, so many more neurodiverse women than men self-identifies as asexual.

Then we have the "love obsessions", forming stronger than normal attachments too fast, which often leads to a lot of suffering when the other party has already moved on. Typical dating can easily trigger this.

The inability of neurodiverse men to approach and make contact with women they like is another important aspect. I don't think it is possible to overcome this with training only, people need effective strategies in order to cope with this. It's not an absence of a social skill, rather the presence of a more or less innate behavior that blocks approach behavior.

There is also the trait to not be able to process interest in real-time, so aspies might understand that somebody showed interest hours, or even days or months after it happened, and thus missed the opportunity. This, too, is not an absence of a social skill, rather the presence of a more or less innate behavior that blocks processing of interest information.

Last, there is the eye contact behavior that is so important in order to catch interest in other neurodiverse people. It's really simple because neurodiverse people prefer to only look at those the like, and not looking at those they don't know or dislike. This has been misunderstood in autism research for years, and people have been put to tests with strangers they have no connection to in order to "prove" that autistics dislike eye contact, which is completely false. Exploiting this is key to understanding whether another neurodiverse individual is interested or not.

In my experience eye contact has the experience of creeping women out.

Yes, incompatible women. My hypothesis is that lack of eye contact in neurodiversity is caused by being accused of staring / being creepy early in life, but this "programming" is not functional and should be re-learned in a more appropriate way.

There's different kinds of eye contact.

One is called "staring."

The "proper" one is the eye contact where you are indicating your interest in what the other person has to say in conversation. It's difficult for Aspies to delineate the two without over practicing.

This is where NT's have to meet the Aspie half way. the NT has to inform the Aspie when he/she is "staring" in a nonjudgemental manner. The intention, in this case, is not to "stare." It is to reflect the conversational eye contact which comes naturally to NT's.

Yes, because it creeps NTs out.



That's not proper for me. I have learnt to do it when necessary (general social contexts), but I refuse to do it in the relationship context because it is not proper for me in that context.



No, that's not enough. NTs should ignore this, and let neurodiverse people do it as much as they like because this is an important part of neurodiverse socialization and identifying interest in potential partners. As a neurodiverse individual, it is possible to learn to do this in a way that won't come out as creepy by NTs, but this should not be required. Ignoring is much easier to do than re-learning to do innate behaviors so they suit NTs.

Also bear in mind that when the Simon Baron-Cohens eyes-test is used with optimal alternatives, "staring" is the very best way to get big differences between neurodiverse and neurotypical people, and it is neurodiverse people that think many NT facial expressions are stares. In fact, a big reason why some autistics have problems with facial expressions is because they think NTs are staring at them and because of that they won't try to match the facial expression with what it might mean through practice.