Might autistic women not be the best match for autistic men?

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I'll try to respond to this. So by empathy I don't mean the ability to intellectually understand that another person has feelings and may be hurting inside or even the ability to act on that understanding by showing consideration or trying to be kind to that person.

It's actually a couple of things. One is the ability to just "connect" with other people, for example to be energized by interacting with a group of friend or just "fun people". It would seem NTs' oxytocin levels are heightened by such interaction and they can suffer if deprived of it. A lot of them suffered grievously during the COVID-19 lockdowns whereas in my case for example I was quite happy to be warm and safe in my cozy house and interact with my coworkers online.

Another aspect is the ability to sort of synchronize one's emotional state with another person, so that if that person experiences emotional distress you can comfort them by words, facial expression, non-sexual physical contact, etc. This is a painful subject for me. Good as I will claim my marriage is, the truth is that there have been times when my wife has told me she just needs to have people around her to talk with and having me around doesn't do the job i.e. I am important in her life but there are things for which she needs other people. Along with this is the natural understanding that a partner must hear things said the reassure them regarding one's feelings e.g. being periodically reminded that you love them etc. or know when they need a special gift to make them feel better and what sort of gift will work. So I posted in GAD how I believe some people diagnosed with ASD mostly have Sally/Anne deficiencies whereas others' symptoms are mostly due to sensory issues (of course this is a very crude summary of the situation) however I think those with sensory issues might in fact have fairly strong empathy and might object to being told they can't due to their autism.

I guess to make a valid point I would say that even if one is one the spectrum, one still benefits from having a highly empathetic partner even though one might not share that degree of empathy. So in theory if both people are on the spectrum there's a real challenge.

If I were single, I would certainly not easily decline the opportunity for a relationship with her:



Interestingly, I think I can recall some backstory about her having once been romantically involved with Commander Will Riker, a character who apparently was never seen to smile. Coincidence?

You do realize that Star Trek is a show, right? (Deanna Troi ends up marrying Will Riker, but I digress.)

People with autism can be highly empathetic.

Deanna would be my pick if I could have a relationship with any Star Trek character. Kes would be my 2nd.

My girlfriend is very empathetic but she finds it very draining after a while. It doesn't help that she's a major people pleaser until she reaches her breaking point.

To start, I would briefly mention that not only did Troi marry Ryker, but Ryker is in fact a pretty personable fella, known to smile, laugh, joke, and occasionally play jazz trombone.

Which, more relevantly, made me think of Lt Reginald Barcklay, who very much fits many markers for autism, and who also has a relationship with Troi, albeit a doctor / patient one - the fact that she can empathetically understand all about him makes him like her immensely, but the fact that she understands him doesn't make his behavior any less draining or tedious to deal with from her point of view - particularly in the beginning, when his behaviors are much more maladaptive and disruptive.

In the case of two autistic individuals, it depends, really. If both parties have needs that work well together, then yeah, maybe it could work swimmingly. But suppose one individual needs attention and validation, while the other needs space and separation - or one tends to talk a lot, but the other prefers silence. There needs may be at odds with each others'.

What is it about autistic women that a guy would likely find unnattractive though? It's been mentioned on here that autistic people more often do not like to exercise, but is that the only reason the poster would find them unattractive likely?

Even in that sense, it seems to me that NT's are likely to be best able to "just connect" with culturally similar NT's, but much less so with autistic people -- or, for that matter, with people from other cultures or even other subcultures, or other assorted oddballs. With autistic people, especially, NT's often have difficulty understanding autistic people's body language, which makes it harder for them to "just connect" with us.


There are things for which you need other people too. Were that not the case, you probably wouldn't be posting here on Wrong Planet.

I don't think it's reasonable for any two people to expect to be able to satisfy all of each other's needs.


In which of the above two categories would you put yourself?

The "Sally/Anne test" has been widely criticized. One issue is that what it tests it may actually be primarily an issue of language development, i.e. one's ability to understand recursive sentence structures such as "Sally thinks Anne thinks X," rather than some deeper ability to recognize that different people have different thoughts.

Be that as it may, I'll accept that by "Sally/Anne deficiencies," you apparently mean more-than-normal intrinsic difficulties with figuring out what other people are thinking or feeling, beyond just difficulties with understanding people who are different from oneself.

Anyhow, there are at least two other important categories of autistic people you didn't mention:

(1) Many of us have attention difficulties. Many autistic people have co-occurring ADHD, and many other autistic people have attention issues that don't necessarily fit the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. Many of us, including myself, have difficulties with multi-tasking. I attribute many of my social difficulties to my difficulties with multi-tasking.

(2) There are also quite a few autistic people who (with or without sensory issues, and with or without attention issues) are hyper-aware of other people's feelings, but have difficulty figuring out how to respond.


As I explained above, people with sensory issues are not the only ones who might object to this.


I don't agree with this, even if we are talking about those of us who truly lack empathy. It seems to me that two people who lack empathy are more likely to be patient with each other's lack of empathy than a person with more empathy would be. Also, in this case, a lack of empathy can be compensated for via training in active listening and learning to be assertive without being aggressive.


I would say that there are challenges because autistic people are all different from each other as well as from NT's. Another source of challenges is that many of us have developed mood disorders and/or personality disorders in addition to being autistic.

So there's certainly no guarantee that we will get along with other autistic people just because we have autism in common. Nevertheless, at least for some of us, I think there is much greater potential for mutual understanding with at least some other autistic people than with NT's.

^^well I guess we'll leave it at that.

EDIT:

The things I post on Wrong Planet are things that I literally can't talk to anyone else about.

Last edited by MaxE on 19 Mar 2023, 9:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

My understanding was that he met some women who were autistic but unattractive. I mean they were unattractive to him autistic or not. Their autism didn't make them unattractive. Their appearance, body type, etc. were what turned him off.

Oh okay, I see. Thanks.

Well after thinking about it, maybe telling Bottleblank to pursue younger women is not the best idea, and maybe just persue women in general, that would fit his personality and IQ level would probably be better.

I don't think that people should get another on autism alone because this doesn't necessarily mean that they're compatible as partners. If one is a devout christian that likes to read the bible everyday and the other smokes weed everyday and wants to shake their ass on OnlyFans, I doubt they'd work out.

This totally makes sense. I just thought that having a partner that is also autistic would be a huge advantage in my experience.

Well said. I think an autistic seeking out an autistic partner is just a jumping off point so to speak. They could probably at least relate somewhat to feeling like an outsider some & having various struggles & issues in life even if those struggles & issues are very different. Their autism might help them find each other & be willing to consider giving each other a chance but there would have to be more than autism to keep their relationship going past a couple dates. We also shouldn't limit ourselves to fellow autistics due to autism being a small minority & some areas have very little autism awareness & few things that are autism friendly. It's very hard to randomly find fellow autistics offline when the area has very few things that interest autistics & the autistics don't know they are autistic or they are trying their best to mask in order to avoid negativity & trouble.

Clearly not, whether it is a workable situation is going to depend a lot on the degree to which your needs can be coordinated without it turning into a feedback loop.

I'm not really sure what the deal with my wife is, her insistence that all social interactions be based on a rigid list, the huge amount of effort put into putting up appearances and her apparent inability to comprehend that I might not agree are not exactly NT beliefs. But,they're also possibly any number of other things as well. And she does come from a culture that seems to be more focused on appearances to begin with, making it even more complicated.

It makes for a situation that just sucks much of the time and why it's probably best to not even try an autism-autism relationship unless everybody involved is on the same page about the ground rules and what is expected behavior as the regular rules might not make much sense in some areas.

I think being on the same page about ground rules & expected behavior would be very helpful for any romantic relationship any autistc person would get in regardless of if their partner is another autistic, has some other disorders, or is a normal stereotypical NT

Maybe the autistic-autistic coupling is a « blind leading the blind » case; therefore may not be the best match.