9 Guidelines For Dating With Asperger's

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That is really what I'm talking about. Women are expected to be courtesans - nurturing the intellectual and emotional needs of the man.
To do this is draining and a lot of work.

^ Courteseans? This... this is so BS.

isn't that a mutual expectation? (the daily basis part is exaggeration)

What otherwise a couple have to do?

Just staring at each other?

One of the main reasons of divorce issued by women is the emotional negligence by the husband toward the wife - I think I've read this is reason #1- so this expectation is two ways, really.

If that's true, then it only proves my point that relationships are hard work (which I think I made in another thread.) But either way, relationships are hard for both partners and I would venture to say, especially autistic partners because of the very nature of autism.
As a woman, people expect me to be better at social things, the expectations are higher than they are for men. And the stress to meet them greater. Unless you just say screw it and go off by yourself.

Which why I don't understand this "camouflage" theory so many articles about aspie women talk about (personally I think it's just a common urban myth, pseudo-scientific belief) - if it's more expected from women to be social, then AS should be more obvious on women, no?

No, for a variety of reasons but mostly because at the same time from early childhood girls get much better training in how to deal with their own as well as other people's feelings. Even in autistic women, this more thorough and indepth training makes "passing" easier for short periods, but takes great concentration and energy to pull off and creates anxiety and stress and depression over time. If you would actually read through that metafilter thread I posted it would help explain the different emotional expectations our culture has for women and how it effects our daily lives and all our interactions with other people. It's worth reading, it's very informative and eye-opening.

Yes but women are genetically more social, which gives even autistic women an edge. Also, as a man, you may not be aware of the overt and covert training women undergo to be aware of and responsive to other people.

It has really twisted me. Everything I have been encouraged to do is contrary to my natural behaviour.

We're looking at the same information and interpreting it differently: I see women as being more capable of compensating for the problems of autism. Which explains why they go undiagnosed.

I don't get that either. When all the caring is one way it harms both partners. The one caring sees what they're doing as a duty that isn't really appreciated. The one receiving the care finds it hard to appreciate because they can sense the resentment.

I think that all this talk of "AS is different in women" does not make much sense to me.
After all, "having AS" IS "having the symptoms and behaviors of AS" - AS is not a kind of independent entity that exists even if you don't have the symptoms associated wth AS (yes, AS is suposed to be a neurological difference with genetic roots but still no proof, for all practical effects it is a behavioural condition, defined by symptoms ONLY).

Then, if you don't have visible symptoms associated with AS, meaning if you pass "under the radar", with parents, with everyone, even with the expert psychiatrists, even with yourself for decades lol ....then you don't have AS..

If you still think you have something despite all that, then they should create a different diagnosis for you, ie. "Women's AS" or "Camouflage AS" or something, hell, AS doesn't even exist anymore in DSM too. lol

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 09 Mar 2016, 2:51 am, edited 3 times in total.

Want to add, that I don't have much faith in psychiatry all together after reading a lot about it, I think most of it is pseudo-scientific crap, so I don't have much faith in the validity of AS altogether, it's all a theory with little evidence.

I would regain my faith in it once it becomes a medical diagnosis, existing in real medical books, Rett Syndrome was in DSM before for instance then they removed it and moved it to medical books after they found out its genetic cause (but doesn't mean it may happen the same for AS/HFA).

This is the only thing that I agree with the Scientologists.

If you spend any amount of time with the same people (like when in school or with family, or in a workplace) then passing for short periods doesn't help you and your relationships are effected because you can't keep "acting normal enough" around the same people all the time. After a very short time you get tired, your concentration wanes, and you slip and your autistic traits show through and your relationships suffer because of that. Because we are expected and pushed to act so counter to our nature (be outgoing social butterflies when we are naturally introverted, be chatty about feelings and interactions rather than about facts and information, be always aware of and responding to the feelings of those around us, etc.) we can only keep it up for very brief periods before it becomes apparent to those around us that our true natures don't match what is expected and we are judged, and misunderstood, and corrected, and penalised, and shunned, and people back away from us or lose interest because they can't make any sense of how we're naturally put together because it doesn't match how they are and how they expect us to be. We get the message constantly that we are somehow not living up to this standard of womanhood, and our deficiency confounds and frustrates those around us.

Woman here are constantly talking about the various different ways our relationships are effected by our autism and our inability to "keep our autism to ourselves" and to act sufficiently normal outwardly. It would seem you're just not listening or you would see the preponderance of evidence all over these forums every day that women in fact can be autistic and it can create hurdles to our relationships and social interactions in various different ways you apparently don't understand and therefore don't "believe in". Your need to constantly question the validity of women's diagnoses is suspect; it makes me wonder what kind of psychological baggage you may be carrying about your own diagnosis for you to be projecting this level of doubt and disbelief so irrationally.

That's not a woman-only specific problem, introversion is always penalized, our non-social tendencies are socially penalized all the time, all people are pushed to be social, they even require it in many job listings (even if it's not sales!).

In many times, I have to play being social, socially interactive...etc

It's not like us boys are born with AS printed on our foreheads while you aspie women don't; many of us though to be shy, having "weak personality", sissy or whatever...etc.

My parents never thought I may have autism; (but they thought I may had some kind of retardation at first or mutisim).

If men don't have this problem then why we are members here?

Anyway, I find the idea of insisting that this "social expectation" and 'pressure to camouflage' is a woman-only problem is kind of ....insulting to me, because it kinda dismisses what I went through simply because I am a male.

In fact, where I live, the school education starts at a very young age, at age 3, unlike the Anglo system of education, the 2 pre-school "kindergarten" years were mandatory and we had a specific curriculum, we did have 'books'. Autism wasn't much know in the first of 80s.

Unlike the kindergarten in your anglo countries, kids don't simply play games and stuff, but we had to interact with the teachers, we were having daily "lessons" like "Letter: A, Letter B", "Numbers", colors, drawing a certain theme, and whatever...

And were supposed to learn songs and engage in theme, to engage in role-playing and to learn 'appropriate' social behavior like body language, eye contact, engaging with peers...etc - and mostly, we were expected to talk (in 2 languages in fact), which I had a delay at.

I really was thought to be mentally impaired for not talking; at the end of the year there was a test assessment they did on kids, a kind of series of games/puzzles/role-playing/drawing from which they assess whether the little boy or the girl can pass to the 2nd year, or to stay in year 1 or to be sent to special education program - I passed to year 2 since I passed ALL puzzles/games except the talk since I was mute, they were puzzled at that.

Regarding 'appropriate' social behavior learning, there was including the appropriate body language, for instance I was kept told to "look in the eyes" while she (the teacher) talked to me, teacher of year 2 was always upset at me and thought my avoidance of eye contact was a sign of disrespect/impoliteness, and I was always made an example for this; so beyond first year of elementary I have learned to look in eyes, I have learned how I am supposed to engage socially with peer and teachers, and you still tell me I didn't have to camouflage because it's a girl-only thing (because some non-scientific articles said so) . Have you ever been autistic boys yourselves?
....

Is that what you believe? Do the skills you learned in school lessen your experience of autism?

That's not very supportive considering that this is an autism support forum. You really think people who have had success with masking should not be considered autistic?

It's not a women only problem, just women are more prone to fall prey to it.

Ok I see your point now, it never reached to a natural level for me.

I had a constantly tremendous social pressure to learn those.



If this 'masking' becomes too natural for them, then it's no longer a masking - it is a cure.

AS = symptoms of AS, one can't exist without the other.

Ask any psychiatrist on that.

Me neither.

Does that ever actually happen? My psychiatrist said I wasn't autistic when he first met me. After a number of sessions, he said I was suffering a bout of "residual" autism. Like I had slipped back because I was too distraught to mask.

I think this view is wrong and illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of autism.