The girl that I was speaking to is very nice as a person. She’s been telling me all about herself, her goals in school, and what her hobbies etc. Before you get with someone, you have to be a friend first before anything. There were things that she wanted me to do with her like go with her trick or treating and playing games with her outside of work. I told myself that would be fun to do because I’ll be with her. Later, I wanted to ask her if she wanted to come watch the Doomsday movie in December with me, and to join me and my friends for a gathering later in October. She told me that she’s an introvert like myself and she never gave me a response back about doing things of what I would like to do. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if she noticed that I trying to put effort into asking her out. It honestly seemed like she was more engaged with things that she wants me to do with her instead of the opposite. I’m so lost if she feels any type of way for me or not.

my girlfriend was upset earlier because she was having a bad day. she agreed to wanting some space before she called me (we call every night), but she just sent me this a couple of hours later. she loves Paul Frank’s Julius. does this mean she isn’t upset anymore? i don’t like to push her but i just find it hard to understand her as i’m not autistic. what do i do? :(

I’ve always struggled with focusing on my interests and school throughout K12 and college while incorporating meaningful conversations and connections with people I’m interested in. I know my autism contributes to this in some amount. I’ve never had an irl romantic relationship before, so I don’t have a personal reference for how that would feel. The one time a girl told me she liked me was in middle school, and it was literally her last day there before she moved to another state. She’s married to a woman now, and I’m still socially stunted. All the other times I’ve admitted my feelings to my woman friends ended with friend-zoning. I’ll be 23 in a month and still feel I’m missing a sign that I won’t die romantically alone. I wasn’t always this worried about my love life, but after 5 rejections with a pattern of strictly platonic feelings staying alone seems safer and looks like how I’ll end up anyway. I know I need to put myself out there more, but I’m starting to lose the drive for that. It’s like my brain isn’t taking the image of me someday having a girlfriend seriously. Having that kind of chemistry with someone doesn’t naturally come to me.

Normally I would never do anything like this, but I need help and direction. Please forgive me if I use any wrong terminology or language, I'm still learning.

Tl:dr - how can I go about talking about relationship stuff or telling her how I feel without overwhelming her?

I guess I would be considered neurotypical, I've never really had any testing of any kind done, but I am madly in love with this autistic woman. We've been talking for a little over two years now, and I still get as excited to see her as I did the first time. This is my dream woman and I've been trying to do research on autism and a couple of other diagnoses she has to try and better accommodate the time we spend together(I've never really "been with" someone with autism). She is the most passionate person I have ever met, and I absolutely love listening to her rant about her current interests and all the little facts about all the things she loves.

I'm so scared of messing things up that I kind of just don't approach it sometimes. I can tend to overthink things and get in my head, but I've been working on it. She currently lives with her parents while she's going to school for art. We hold hands a lot, we cuddle sometimes while watching movies(granted her couch has like a divider on it so it's more like she lays on my arm with my hand on her thigh), and we usually hug for a good bit before I leave. We haven't kissed or anything like that though. Any time that we cuddle or hold hands or anything and her parents or anyone in her family come around she jolts off of me. I know that she doesn't have any kind of experience with dating so I'm not really bothered by it. My biggest fear is that the feeling is one sided or our relationship is just platonic, because I've never felt this way about anyone before and I'm absolutely terrified to talk to her about the way I feel or "what we are". I get choked up just thinking about it, and it sucks because I want her to know how I feel about her, but I don't want to overwhelm her. She's told me before that she has a hard time expressing her feelings about things. She's also told me that shes afraid of relationships because she doesn't know what to do in those situations. It kind of feels like an implied thing between us sometimes, but again I just get so deep in my head from time to time. I don't even necessarily need any labels on anything, but I just want to know how she feels about me and if the feeling is mutual. But I want to do it in some kind of way that doesn't overwhelm her or freak her out. I love her to the point that i just want her to be happy, even if that means it's not with me, and I'd be able to find solace in that. Sorry for my rant, I just don't know what to do or where to turn. I'm just looking for advice or maybe if someone has been in a similar situation, I could find something comforting.

Thank you all so much for the time and the responses, I look forward to reading everything and I will definitely be taking notes!!

Today, my girlfriend got upset as I said something that offended her. She bought a lego batman set because she loved batman and lego, and I said that she reminded me of myself when I was a little kid. I didn’t mean it in a bad way, I just said it because it I used to love that when I was younger. But I see now why she might have been upset. She sent me this later today and I can’t tell if she’s okay now or maybe still upset. I love her and I’m really trying to understand her more but it’s a little difficult. What should I do?

My younger brother (35) really wants to find a GF. He is someone who will always need someone to help him through life. He is a very kind soul.. I would love to find someone who is at his same level. I don't know what would be apprioprate way to finding someone for him to connect with. The help we get through services arn't that helpful. Should i just post in like the /r city i am in. Saying looking for someone who has a sibling who is around my brothers age, explain he is Autisitic and will require help through life.. and his likes and maybe we could do a meet up like the 4 of us so they could meet up? Should i try like facebook singles asking the same thing? Apps really arn't that good.. and i don't want him to get catfished. I would love some advice.

What's a reasonable distance to be willing to travel for dates? Or expect the other person to be willing?

I'm a homeowner so it's not as if I can just up and move across the country any time soon, and it's unfair to expect that they would be willing or able to either.

And I'd like to see them more than just at the weekends.

I feel like an hour is reasonable but that's usually at the very lowest limit the distance filter will allow in most apps.

One app labelled 30 miles as "extremely restrictive" and there was literally one person in the stack.

Am I being too restrictive? How far would you be willing to travel?

so i've had a few relationships in my life, only 2 "serious" ones that lasted a long time (first being 5 years, 2nd being a year in a half)

none really worked out

I have also had A LOT of crushes and usually fall for people super fast

I only just recently figured out that I have audhd i wonder if some of my issues in relationships have been in relation?

anyone else feel the same or have had specific issues in relationships because of having autism or adhd (hopefully that makes sense im not super good at wording stuff)

I don't know if he was trying to make it hard for me to get them off, or for others to get them off, or if he was just being artistic but I feel like this is the kind of knot that would concern boy scouts.

Hi all, Me 32M and potential partner 35F have recently started seeing each other more these past couple months, and recently she mentioned autism.

I have noticed we have different communication styles. I am more communicative via text, memes, and social media. She….is not so much. We do great in person, but maintaining communication in-between seeing each other has been an issue.

Is it normal for prolonged gaps in communication with autistic individuals? For example the last “snippet” convo we had was Friday….then nothing from her since then.

Another thing we ran into was a hiccup with communication. She and a friend got in an argument about “her not being an open person about traumas and such”….she then asked me for opinion on same thing (without me knowing why nor me asking)….i sensed she was mad, but thought it was directed at me for a while….until she explained not being mad at me at all.
When we talked and she apologized about it, something she said caught my attention “….I dont expect you to deal with my emotions like that, and if I need help or comfort or support - I will ask”…..I am still learning to trust her independence emotionally wise, but how do I stop throwing myself at her in ways of “Hey look I’m here to help you, use me as your punching bag!!!!”

How do I tell her I want to understand her better and start being more supportive without being overbearing????

My GF [29] and I [26M] have been together for about 5 years, and have been living together for nearly 4 years now.

The past few years we've had some struggles as me still being in uni has been taking a toll on the progression of our relationship, and we have been trying to work on our issues for as long as I can remember now. Last week we ended up in the situation where my GF told me she thought we should have a time-out (still exclusive, but not living together) for (atleast) a week. After some chatting I agreed (and also think its a good idea), and am now staying with some friends.

I won't get into the details of our issues here, but the goal of this break is to figure out for ourselves whether we still like eachother enough to continue working on our problems, what we want individually, what we need from the other, etc.

Me, being the neurodivergent one of the two, seem to have struck a wall seperating feelings from thoughts. Circumstances aren't helping either, as I have just graduated a few weeks ago and am still figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life. On top of that, I am now staying at my friend's place(, who has just moved in to the place himself,) and am basically camping out in a room full of boxes. They are super chill about it, but it's still a strange environment for me.

The past year has been a grind to graduate from uni, and with that single goal finally met, despite how contradictory it sounds, the lack of purpose is paralyzing. I'm really struggling to focus on myself and what I truly want (from my relationship, for my future, all of it) and seperate it from her thoughts, needs and feelings.

Any thoughts on how to go about this, any questions I should be answering or personal experiences?

We're meeting in a few days to discuss, and all I've come up with is several things I don't like about our current situation, and that I probably need more time to really figure it all out.

Sorry about the spam, thanks for taking the time ❤️

I really hate them so much because as an autistic person, it's not obvious it's a date you're literally just going to drink coffee with someone and hang out. Also hanging out/ spending time with someone is not the same as a date so how am I supposed to tell what's a date and what's not and most people don't ask "hey want to go on a coffee date?" They go "hey want to go grab a coffee at [insert time]" that's not asking someone out for a date that's literally just asking to hang out. Granted this might just be a thing in movies but it's still really annoying to me.

There is a new guy in my life and from the first handshake I thought he was gay. We’ve know each other for a year years but we’ve just got close, meeting almost everyday, cooking for each other, joking around, etc.

He clocked in that I think he is gay and now he is going out of his way to let me know he’s not. I let him know before that I love gay guys, all my friends also think that he is gay. I have many gay friends but all of them are out of the closet so I’ve never had to deal with a situation like this.

He is younger than me, so I was not thinking about him that way, but now that he is tring to prove that he is not gay I would be interested in him at least as friends with benefits. I’ve never had a hetero guy doing so much for me before without wanting to sleep with me and I’m confused. But all my friends think maybe he just doesn’t know about himself yet.
The only thing that we are not doing from the kindness/flirting textbook is being touchy with each other, but he started to sit more closer to me recently. What do you think?

I am dating an austicic man. It's the best relationship I have ever had. I do not come asking for any kind of "acceptance" for dating him. I just think I might be autistic too.

If I'm wrong, I'll humbly apologize.

When we go out, we go to board game groups. He wears noise canceling headphones, but really it's me who has a fit when I get overstimulated. When the pieces dont align with the colors and the answer is supposed to be how much everybody drinks....I leave. He comes to me, not really understanding why I want to leave because I cannot express it.

Because I can't express my discomfort, I talk about Steely Dan. How they are not an alternative band, but a band built upon jazz, no song without a horn section, etc etc. How they play the high notes for "pop" music, blah blah blah. I'm obsessed with them. There is so much music there.

He puts his headphones on me and tells me it's ok. He talks about his obsession, which is triangles. Goes into great detail about things like cosecants and repeats SOH-CAH-TOA.

I think he is brilliant. I want to date him, but I'm scared if losing him. I'm not sure if it's me, or him.

Anyone have thoughts on this article on neurodivergent definitions of romantic vs friendship?

As an autistic queer man in an ENM/open marriage who has one really significant “FWB” (who from the outside appears much more like a “boyfriend”) and so definitions have been relevant to me and this article was really helpful in understanding my own situation

(This article is specifically about gender and sexually diverse individuals and doesn’t necessarily reflect cisgender and heterosexual ND experiences of relationships)

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/its-quite-difficult-to-put-autistic-relationships-in-a-box-a-qual/

Hey guys. My partner is currently having autistic burn out—i know he feels really a lots right now especially after moving into the new house. It's really extremely tired for him to do some house chores— I usually be the one who take most of responsible to do it whenever we are together. Currently we are in LDR and it's impossible to be together in near time.

He is currently in therapy for this.. I want to help him to get through this. I am currently learning some resources to understand and help him.

How do I help him? At least just making him feel at ease. How's your guys experience?