Is She Autistic?

Post Reply New Topic

I know you aren't therapists, but at least it will be cathartic for me talk about the signs that one of my former girlfriends - the one who is my most important former girlfriend - was autistic. You can tell me if you think there is good reason to believe she is on the spectrum.

-She had no identifiable friends. She had lots of acquaintances, but in the six months that she and I were spending time together, she never mentioned the name of a friend that she spent time with, I never saw her with anyone, and she never introduced me to any of her friends. Instead, she spent a lot of time with her family (who she lived with), and she often excluded me from her family's activities, even though her parents obviously liked me.

-She was 24, had never had a boyfriend, and had never kissed anyone.

-She was very sensitive to touch. She would not kiss me at all during the six weeks of our official dating relationship. She would jerk her face away from mine if our faces were ever close. She acted irritated when I snuggled with her or rubbed her back. She was a little better with touch when I allowed her to initiate it, but anytime I initiated, she acted agitated and would pull away.

-She was brilliant in math and science. She graduated summa cum laude in mathematics with a double major in honors physics.

-She was very uncomfortable with situations that she could not directly control, and she seemed to want to control everything about our relationship. She usually rejected my ideas for dates, and instead strongly preferred to do activities that she suggested. Her date ideas typically took place at her house with her family close by. Our dates usually lasted less than two hours, at which point she pretty much threw me out of her house. She didn't want to see me more than about once a week.

-She said things to me and to other people that were rude, insulting, and belittling. I don't know if she knew how she came across.

-Her words were often very inconsistent with her actions. For example, she was the one who initiated our relationship, but she told me that she wanted to date me even though she didn't have romantic feelings for me.

-She lied a fair amount. She even admitted she had an honesty problem.

-She was emotionally unstable, sometimes acting friendly and happy to see me, other times treating me with hostility for no apparent reason.

I think there's good reason to believe she's on the autism spectrum. What do you think? This relationship was very confusing for me. I had thought previously that she was a narcissist, which I think she might also be, but autism seems like the best description so far.

Personally, I'm reading that she was just not that into you, based on what you've said.


But she's an ex now, so it doesn't matter. Move on from it.

Why would she ask me to be her boyfriend if she wasn't interested in me? A very dark interpretation of her behavior is that she only intended to use me for whatever emotional purposes she had (though I'm not sure what those are) and that she warned me upfront that she only intended to use me. But that's very dark, darker than I'm willing to believe.

Sounds more like bipolar than anything else. To me the Jekyll-Hyde behavior thing is a dead giveaway.

I wondered about that too. She had something going on, that's for sure.

I would either say bipolar or borderlined personality disorder.