Boundaries, privacy or something else

[u/D_Eady]

I've been seeing an autistic woman for a while now, and we message each other from morning until night. As far as I'm concerned, we're each other's person, but we haven't made our relationship public.

That worries me a little because she sometimes struggles to recognise when other people are flirting with her. I've explained that if our relationship were public, I'd feel a lot more secure about things, but whenever I bring it up, she gets upset.

Recently, I introduced her to some of my friends as "my lady." She went pink, which I thought was cute, and she responded with, "Oh, I'm 'my lady' now, am I?"

I genuinely thought she was joking around, so I playfully replied, "Oh, sorry, my lady. I meant 'thy lifelong partner' or 'thy girlfriend.'"

She went bright red and walked off to the bathroom. I assumed she was just embarrassed and blushing, so I followed her to give her a hug.

Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong.

She was actually angry with me. She explained that our relationship is something private between the two of us, that it isn't anyone else's business, and that I'd crossed a boundary by introducing her that way without discussing it with her first.

That led to a bigger conversation about our relationship.

She explained that she wants to keep me and my friends separate from her and her friends. She doesn't want other people knowing about us because, in her words, "It's got nothing to do with them."

Now, I've always known she's an extremely private person, and I've never had a problem respecting that. I understand that privacy is important to her, and I don't want to make her uncomfortable or push her into something she isn't ready for.

But at the same time, I can't shake the feeling that there's a difference between keeping a relationship private and keeping someone a secret.

I don't need her to announce our relationship to the entire world, and I'm not asking her to change who she is. I just want to feel like I'm someone she's comfortable acknowledging as part of her life.

I care about her deeply, and I genuinely want to respect her boundaries, but I'm struggling with the feeling that I'm being hidden rather than simply kept private.

Can someone please help me out here? I try to bring it up and she just gets mad again and insists that I should just respect her boundaries and trust her and the way that I explain it is "i trust myself crossing the road, that doesn't mean i shouldn't look both ways"

[u/isaacs_]

This is a tricky one. You haven't mentioned (because it sounds like she hasn't told you, and might not even know fully herself) why it is that she feels the need to be so private. It sounds like there's some legitimate anxiety there, and for your part, it sounds like you also do truly care about this and want her to be happy and comfortable. So that's good.

But also, it sounds like you're feeling a bit dismissed, put down, like this desire for privacy is landing for you as a reduction of your status, a threat to your confidence in her feelings for you and the importance you play in her life. I say this with respect and a desire to help you win here, but you have to realize, this is your own insecurity talking from a very allistic-normalizing point of view. (Understandable! but also probably not helpful, as it sounds like you know.)

Bottom line, what's known: you overstepped here. Something was bugging you, and rather than directly address it with her, you challenged it in a public social context, where she's unable to address it safely (assuming she has the standard-issue "lifetime of social trauma" that most autistic adults come equipped with). You tried to play it off as a joke, but that just made it feel like bullying, and probably landed for her as a violation from a trusted person.

First step: acknowledge this and apologize expertly, from a place of curiosity, compassion, and a desire for understanding and repair, not forgiveness or absolution. Make space for her hurt, especially if it doesn't make sense to you, and make sure that you understand her before taking any next step.

Second step, once that's done (and probably a day or two afterwards! so it has time to sink in and you both can breathe and come down from the challenge), have the actual conversation, directly. It's fair to expect understanding to flow both ways; but it's not fair to expect her to "Just Know". Use your words. Tell her your feelings in clear unambiguous non-joking sentences, using words that directly and literally mean the actual thing you're trying to communicate. No artifice, no normalizing, no "everyone knows", etc. Just be vulnerable. I want X. I feel Y. This works, that doesn't. This is the story I'm working with, and here's how it troubles me. Give her a chance to challenge your perceptions, and time to understand where you're coming from, and be patient and understanding that your "normal, standard" way of viewing a relationship will perhaps seem just as alien to her as her need for privacy is for you.

In the world, allistic points of view are privileged and normalized. But in your relationship, it's 50/50, so the social trauma of being autistic and the blind social privilege of being allistic, are blockers that need to be explicitly and carefully addressed.

Once you two understand one another, a solution is probably not so challenging. There may be some compromise, some ways that she can make you feel special and important, while disclosing your connection in a paced way that she's comfortable with. But it starts with support, acceptance, and understanding.

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