I think many of the difficulties in maintaining relationships as an autistic and/or AuDHD adult have a lot to do with how gender is perceived and the social norms around it. I'm a hijabi Muslim woman in Indonesia. There's a lot of expectation in my own culture for women like me.

My one and only non-platonic relationship as an adult was with my ex-fiancé. He's also AuDHD, like me. But a lot of his issues were more about him being socialised as a man his whole life than about his neurodivergence. So he never had issues with outsourcing emotional labour elsewhere. Since he was engaged to me at the time, I did the emotional work twice over for both of us in the relationship. We came from different backgrounds. He's American. I'm Indonesian. He was racist and didn't even know it. I kept pointing it out to him, but he didn't think he was racist. Clearly, as the only adult and politically literate one with integrity in the relationship, I had to end it.

If there is one thing I learned from my failed relationship and years of therapy, it is that relationships, platonic and non-platonic, don't have to be complicated. In the end, our disability and trauma are our responsibility to manage, and we have to make things work for the relationships that we want to keep. The details of "managing and making things work" are more or less about our communication, our willingness to be in the relationship, and our own principles not to compromise our morality or values (in my case anyway). But that's just me.

Another thing I should point out is that disability cannot be separated from structural issues. In the global power structures of racial capitalism, whiteness and its variants across the globe set the field people are moving in, and when white people don't name that, they end up universalising their experience. I just wish more of them named the exact difficulties they experienced in maintaining relationships as adults. Otherwise, being the dominant group on the internet, either on big tech platforms or on the fediverse, they end up universalising their experience.

It can be alienating when you have been conditioned to think in terms of exceptionalism and hyperindividualism your whole life. Try to be more structurally aware. Perhaps you'll see more similarities with others around you than you would if you avoided naming the exact reasons for the difficulties in maintaining relationships. Working on your trauma and navigating your disabilities don't make structural violence disappear. Poverty may persist when you are surrounded by better company. Racism and structural misogyny may still persist the moment you have a better paying job, a better partner, or are surrounded by better friends.

Stop individualising structurally engineered problems. Start having class consciousness.

But hey, that's just me.

#actuallyautistic #audhd @autistics @actuallyadhd
#materialist #disabilityjustice #neurodivergence @disability #disability #relationships #autism

A quotation from Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Essay (1927-10), “A Note on Eugenics,” Proper Studies (1927)

More info about this quote: wist.info/huxley-aldous/79966/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #aldoushuxley #eugenics #humancondition #humannature #materialist #obedience #passivity #people #population #servitude