Post #2031132

@KaCi Speaking to your opening question, I think part of it is how we have grown up in NT-land and learned their ways, and so we have a default NT perspective on relationships, and that doesn't really work for us. You know how the Double Empathy Problem works, well, I think that two autistics who are still figuring things out are interacting by default NT social rules, so each is masking to perform the right signals for an NT relationship, and so is the other person. It's like two native English speakers trying to talk in French after they took one year of high school French class. Or like two gay people trying to date using straight dating rules. Neither person can ever relax and be themselves, and that's a poor foundation for a relationship. You mentioned feeling a good connection with other AuDHD folk and I think that's a good sign. All my best friendships and relationships have been with other ND folk, even though I was unaware of my neurodivergence back then. My problem was I had no clue I was ND so I didn't understand I was working with a different toolset and goals than pop culture educated me to believe was how every relationship should work. But I did manage to find some cool ND friends along the way and some of those lasted a long time but none of them knew they were ND either so it was fucking hell to have a big disagreement and not know why we were fighting about something. Still, it beats hanging out with allistic folk who are really just putting up with me.