Arthur 1d ago

A question for my autistic friends. Many autistic people struggle with social interactions and forming relationships, which is why they often feel lonely and isolated. I’d be interested to know how you usually go about making new connections, whether they’re friendships or romantic relationships.

I’d appreciate it if you could boost this so we can get more responses. 🙏🏻

#ActuallyAutistic #Autistic #Autism #Neurodivergent #Neurodiversity @autistics

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@autistics @autismunicorn
Regarding friendships, I formed some through the traumatic experiences of middle school and high school (made friends with other similarly neurodivergent queer people though some of us didn’t know about being queer at the time, myself included). I’ve formed other friendships through college, with student organizations aligned with my interests and/or identities.
And nowadays I build physical reality friendships through a network effect, of them being a friend of a friend and hanging out through that before eventually being friends with them directly, along with attending hobby-based spaces and hobby-based events

Regarding romantic relationships:

  • my first good one was very strongly by chance. We met at a 2 day learning workshop in a physical reality space, and were among the few young people there. We conversed during the breaks. Exchanged contact info at the end of day 1 and messaged a lot that evening. on the evening after day two, we went on our first date. We still keep in touch on occasion, but each time feels meaningful
  • my second good one was met through OkCupid. Would i recommend that specific service nowadays, I don’t know. Both them and I infodumped a lot on our profiles, which helped with the initial vibe checking. While we’re long distance with regards to physical reality nowadays, we interact pretty regularly
  • my third good relationship, I met her on the fediverse first, we became online friends, then physical reality friends when I moved to Seattle (as she already lived in the area) and then, after a few months of having physical reality interactions, I realized that I had unaddressed romantic feelings, and told her, and as it turned out, she also had similar feelings towards me, so we started “dating”, and then some number of months later, started using romantic relationship terms like girlfriend and such

All the spaces that I make these meaningful connections in are ones where my autistic camouflage is down, either deliberately or accidentally in a good way. I’m not necessarily dropping the camouflage for every interaction in all of the spaces I’m trying to make friends in, I try to feel the vibes of the space and people first

Mar 24 at 11:26pmWeb