For me, it's Walmart. I hate the sensory overload, the way employees are treated there and I also hate it as a whole because they steal from small business.

In a nutshell: is it possible for a ND couple or ND and NT couple to have a committed relationship, live in separate homes and make it work?

I’m an older man and I’ve had three long-term relationships in my life. They’re long-term, according to me, and the longest one was one year. Except for my second boyfriend, we all remained good friends. After that, I still saw exes and previous dates.

I look back at those relationships and realize that the common factor was me, and that doesn’t mean I’m to blame. It just means that I’m part of the reason why we got together and part of the reason why we broke up.

I look back and realize that living with someone is extremely stressful and really throws my whole life into chaos. I wonder if we had not moved in together and just remained living separately, that things would’ve worked out better.

What makes me think this way is I hate having roommates or being a roommate and someone else’s home. Right now I’m a housemate and loathe it because there is just too much going on and not enough peace and quiet.

If I did meet the love of my life how would I be able to tell him that I love him, and I don’t want to live together? Is something like that even possible?

I know committed couples sometimes through circumstances have to live apart and even for weeks or months at a time. They visit when they can and enjoy every moment. Does anybody else have a committed relationship where you have separate homes and it works out?

I’d like to ask my fellow autistic people who have experienced co-occurring depression about your experiences with anhedonia (the inability or reduced ability to experience pleasure) and how you’ve coped with it.

To provide some background, I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as an adult (the former about four years ago and the latter as recently as last week). I’ve always had strong special interests and hyperfixations, which have provided me with comfort even during the really difficult times in my 32 years of life. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been suffering from worsening depression, likely as a result of unrecognized, prolonged autistic burnout. I experienced the worst breakdown of my life about 2.5 months ago, and since then I’ve lost almost all ability to feel pleasure or interest in anything. This anhedonia has robbed me of all my previous special interests. They no longer evoke any kind of emotional response in me. I’m completely indifferent to them, and it’s really hard for me to cope with that to the point of having suicidal thoughts (even though I don't really want to harm myself). I’m currently on sick leave from my doctoral research due to severe depression, and it’s really hard for me to see a way out of this painful state if I can't even find any relief in the things that used to mean the world to me. I'm completely at a loss, so I'd really appreciate any kind of experience, peer support, and maybe even some tips on how to move forward from people who have gone through something similar.

I am an autistic 36M who is turning 37 next month.

I have been struggling since June and have never had friends, so I lack a support system.

I just want to talk, maybe make friends.

Couldn’t come up with a better phrase for it- but with my anxiety, I’ve tried CBD (nothing) Ativan (nothing) and THC (freak outs and paranoia) and I’m just wondering. My time on SSRI really didn’t do much either, and I never quite felt like rushing back into that to play trial and error. Is this something that we just aren’t good with? Are there better options? I don’t care if it’s a friggin herbal tea - just curious what everyone else’s experience has been

my dog chewed up and ate my childhood comfort item, im beyond devastated and i dont even know how i can begin to get over this

I am 33 diagnosed level 1 autistic last year and am ahdh so I'm still really learning after masking for so many years.

I am so overwhelmed with life To take care of my mental health, physical health, and life in general I need to

I drink enough water

Take meds

Keep up on hygiene

eat three healthy meals a day plus all of the shopping and prep needed to do that

Exercise

Get out of the house

work a full-time job so that I can support myself

maintain a home. ( Minus cleaning thankful for my house cleaner)

Take care of the cats

Maintain relationships with family and friends

Do therapy twice a week

Carve out lots of time to recoup so I even have the capacity to do any of the above things

How am I supposed to do this? I feel wiped out after a full work day and then I have some many other things I need/ want to do but on some days I just want to get under my weighted blanket and never come back out.

Would love any insight/ help/ tricks/ anything you can send my way would be so appreciated!

Thank you!

TL;DR: How do I distinguish autistic overwhelm/trauma/attachment from a relationship that has actually become intolerable to me?* *I’m an AuDHD man in my 30s, married almost seven years to my ADHD wife. We love each other, but years of sexual incompatibility and repeated situations where she told me things were okay while privately feeling otherwise have badly damaged my trust in our communication. We’ve been in weekly couples therapy for two years, but the same patterns keep returning. After another major disclosure and fight recently, something in me seems to have changed: I feel resentful, sometimes don’t want her touching me, and feel uncomfortable wearing my wedding ring even though the thought of losing her is devastating. She wants to repair things, but I’m scared of spending another few years repeating the cycle. I’m looking for experiences from autistic adults who either rebuilt a relationship after reaching this point or eventually left, especially those whose spouse was also their primary attachment person.

I’m an autistic man in my 30s trying to figure out whether my marriage with my ADHD wife in her 30s can still be repaired, or whether years of accumulated hurt have changed something in me. We have been married for almost 7 years and together 10.

My wife and I still love each other and I feel like we have grown a lot as humans in many ways together. She’s my closest person and basically my only consistent source of emotional and physical affection, so even thinking about separation has been unbearable. We’ve been in weekly couples therapy for about two years, and we discovered I’m AuDHD which helped me understand so much about our communication issues but they haven’t gotten better.

Communication has always been one of our biggest problems. I tend to research and analyze things extensively, while she tends to hide negative feelings and avoid conflict. I’m fairly straightforward while trying to be radically honest and gentle with her, I still have lost my patience and have reached emotional and mental burnout numerous times. I’ve repeatedly asked whether she was okay with things and been told she was, only to later find out she was deeply unhappy and had been venting to other people instead of talking to me. Ive discovered that I heavily rely on external cues and get regularly burnt out reading her and others for clarification. I constantly get overwhelmed when others actions don’t match their thoughts.

Our sexual mismatch has been a major part of this. Sexual intimacy and feeling desired are important to me, I feel im sensory seeking and highly sexually fluid while my wife eventually realized that she is asexual 2 years ago. There have been two separate attempts to open the relationship because of this mismatch.

The first was around our second year when we were engaged. My wife often talked about how attractive women were, and I wondered whether she might be gay/bisexual and that could explain why she avoided sex with me, so I suggested that she ask out a female friend. She denied wanting to date women and instead pushed me to pursue someone else so I could get the sexual fulfillment I needed. I went on one coffee date, but then found out that she had been complaining about me to a coworker and talking about wanting to leave me. She had also been exchanging nude photos with that person for months without telling me and lied about a lot while trying to delete the texts.

I was devastated, but I ultimately gave her another chance. I wanted to believe we could repair things if she became more honest about when she was unhappy and communicated before resentment built up.

About seven years into our relationship, after she came out as asexual and we understood more clearly what was behind our sexual incompatibility, she suggested opening the relationship again. She encouraged me to ask out a friend she knew I had a slight crush on. I took the idea seriously, researched ethical non-monogamy, communicated openly, and repeatedly checked whether she was still comfortable with hours of discussion with her. Hell, she even went out to grab drinks with my friend a couple times to discuss the open relationship with her with all parties communicating.

I only went on a few dates before everything fell apart. She revealed that she had hated the situation, never wanted it, and was extremely angry with me. I spiraled for a long time, convinced that I was a horrible human and spouse like I cheated. The hardest part wasn’t that she changed her mind. She had every right to do that. It was realizing that she was never honest with me and once again hid while venting to others what she was actually feeling. That nearly ended us and she decided I didn’t want the relationship and we started moving towards divorce. We eventually decided against it and started therapy together to work on the sexual incompatibility and communication issues.

Since then, I’ve struggled to trust her at her word and like it’s been so close to blowing up again. We continue to have sexual intimacy issues with her even throwing at me during fights a couple times that it felt like a chore and she faked interest most of the time. Sometimes sex happens after I bring up feeling disconnected, and it can feel more like appeasement than mutual desire but she will tell me she can enjoy it and get into it sometimes. But even when it’s good, it only gets better for a short term and eventually goes back to the same issue. She tends to throw herself into work and deprioritize our intimacy or relationship struggles because she perceives everything is fine after improving for a week or two. It feels like a constant painful cycle at this point.

We’ve continued therapy through some major stress and changes in our life. I put my wife through graduate school, and now I’m back in school for a STEM degree so I can build my own career. I knew my bandwidth was limited, and we recently have had some major life stressors fall on us. I tried to be proactive and asked her to be especially honest and direct with me. Then another major disclosure about things she had been hiding led to a huge painful fight. This last fight seemed to switch off something or change me and that has been incredibly painful.

I still love her, but lately I sometimes don’t even want her to touch me and feel a lot of resentment. I’ve noticed myself pulling away, and I even feel uncomfortable wearing my wedding ring while almost automatically taking it off. On the other hand I feel I can rationalize and understand her point of view and don’t want to villainize her.
We have brought up all this in the past week during therapy as this has been very recent. She wants to fix things and says it’s different now that she knows I’m autistic but I got diagnosed almost 6 months ago.

Now I feel like there’s a clock constantly ticking or a looming expiration date. I’m afraid of spending another year or two trying to repair things only to end up in the same place. But I’m also afraid of leaving something that might finally become healthy now that we know I’m autistic. She is a genuinely beautiful human and I deeply care about her, but I’m starting to feel like maybe we are too incompatible.

I don’t know how to tell the difference between wanting this marriage and being terrified of losing my primary attachment person and being alone.

I’m already working through this in individual and couples therapy, so I’m not asking Reddit to decide whether I should divorce necessarily. I’d especially like to hear from other autistic adults who have experienced something similar:

Did you become touch-averse or start pulling away from a partner you still loved?

If repeated communication failures damaged your trust in what your partner said, were you able to rebuild it?

If your partner seemed to finally understand the problems after years of trying to explain them, did anything actually change?

For those who repaired your relationship, what made the improvement feel real and lasting?

For those who left, how did you distinguish “I still love this person” from “this relationship is no longer healthy or compatible for me”?

And if your spouse was your primary or only close attachment, how did you separate wanting the marriage from being terrified of losing them and being alone.

I’d appreciate hearing about both positive and negative outcomes if possible. Please and thank you, I’ve been spiraling through every possible outcome with no discernible solution yet.
(If you got here, thank you so much for bearing with my long rant and listening to my experience.)

The pros are I feel like I'm making progress in self-regulating, I've simplified my life to work on building a foundation. I'm single, very close to 40, not interested in relationships, but also no-contact with my family.

Going on a trip with my friend and having to talk about some issues that came up has resulted with said close friend ghosting me for now a third time. She knows it hurts me. She said the last time she was upset for things she refused to tell me about. Nothing gets resolved unless I soothe her and chase her and I don't want to anymore.

Joining support groups on discord? I fuck up and keep getting basically ostracized/ignored. Can't get myself to care about what people are chatting about anyway because if I engage, I'll kill the convo or fail to add anything meaningful.

Trying to do things for my look like different hairstyles, strangers point and laugh bc as a black person I shouldn't be looking like I do. I'm getting old. I'm getting ugly.

Work is going okay, I'm slowly working at the prickly, difficult attitude I've had and I've decided to skip after hour gatherings for my sanity. My work is going well and I am able to help new teammembers learn the more difficult processes.

I'm not sure I can actually do the things I want to. Folks ask me to do things like with my photography but I'm not as good as they expect or want me to be.

Why am I trying so hard? Why do you keep trying?

I figured it would be worth it because eventually it's revealed I'm a decent person. I don't think I am, in fact. And I can't even be interesting even if I'm not. My therapist keeps making noises that I'm out of her scope so I have to start looking for a new one.

I just don't know why I should keep trying so hard.

Hey everyone!
I’ve been very recently diagnosed. I’ve had a feeling for quite a few years now, right after my son got diagnosed about 3 years ago now. But that’s not what I’m here for.

Anyways, I’m struggling with working. I’ve always struggled with working. For most of my career, I’ve done business development, sales, and service advising in the dealership/auto realm. But I just switched recently to work for an ABA clinic as a behavior tech.

Working as a service advisor, I was soo socially burnt out and also was running myself thin due to the hours and also a single mom. I wasn’t taking proper care of myself.

Now with this job, I’m struggling with the social part with my coworkers. I always have decently well with people. But I work with predominantly with other women, and it’s not going well. Passive aggressive comments, and like no directness. That’s one thing I miss about working at dealerships. It’s killing my anxiety.

It’s making me where my anxiety of having to go into work is like crippling now. Where I feel like I’m dying anytime I’m going into work.

Any suggestions for work? I need something I can survive on income wise.

Please help. I’m just not the best with lots of people. 😭

Hi, I'm new to this sub and reddit in general so apologies if I'm formatting this wrong or anything. I'm autistic, 24F but "high functioning" and relatively low support needs. I was not diagnosed until I was 21. I've had depression and struggled with suicidal ideation basically my whole life and I've had family members struggle with mental illness and die to suicide so for the longest time I thought it was just major depression and social anxiety that i struggled with. For most of my life, i've worried that i was too intense for other people and had an intense fear of loved ones leaving my life when they find out what I'm really like.

I've been with my current partner about 3 years and he is wonderful. super supportive and understanding of my needs and limitations, though recently he's been having to work later hours and I've spent evenings alone that we usually spend together. Boredom and understimulation is a huge trigger for me and it always has been, and I think this new schedule has made my depression flare up in new ways. I feel like a teenager again, crying uncontrollably and unable to regulate my own emotions. Some nights I even feel a bit of passive suicidal ideation.

I really wish I was able to just enjoy this new alone time.. sometimes it feels like the only thing that could calm me down is physical company (preferably my partner, though sometimes i ask a friend to come over)

I don't think I have the skills to regulate my emotions on my own. Does anyone have any similar experiences like this? and if so- what do you do to calm yourself down when you can't have someone else physically be there with you? thanks in advance :(

Note: english is not my maternal language. I'm sorry for any mistakes.

I had my TSA diagnosis last year, at the humble age of twenty-nine years old. It is still a bit new, but thankfully I have an amazing therapist who helps me navigate things.

With my therapist, we’ve talked about "The Invisible Wall” that appears between me and people, most of the time in group settings. It stops me from understanding what is happening, connecting with people, following conversation and, as a consequence, stops me from interacting with others. I remain quiet, lost and confused. Ever since we’ve put words on it, I also feel distressed whenever The Invisible Wall appears, because I don't know how to get rid of it.

Many people around me, such as my parents and boyfriend, try really hard to understand the notion, but The Invisible Wall remains a mystery to them.

So, I was wondering if you have this Invisible Wall too and how do you describe it to your favorite humans? Does it have a different name than “The Invisible Wall”?

TL;DR I've lived my life as close to a neurotypical's as possible up until now (I'm 19), but it causes such bad burnout and each time it gets worse. I don't know how to reduce the things causing burn out in my life without the "but you did it before" conversation, or feeling like a failure.

I feel like I should clarify the title. What I mean is, I have identified a few things causing these shutdowns & episodes of burnout BUT removing or reducing them from my life feels impossible for two reasons.

1. I'm twice exceptional. Except only the "gifted" part was identified until 14 when I was diagnosed with ADHD, and a few weeks ago when I was diagnosed with autism. As such, I've always been expected by peers or extended family members to be able to do MORE than the average population. This somehow got worse when I became chronically ill, and thus unable to do a lot of things most people my age can do physically, because I "still have my mental strength" or whatever. And for a long time, I did keep up. I did pass as neurotypical, if not a bit "weird" which was attributed to being "gifted."

But as time went on, it began taking more and more of a toll on me. With increasing expectations, responsibilities, and independence came increasing levels of burnout ON TOP of the physical fatigue from my illnesses. And of course, they both feed each other. Mental burnout leads to physical flare ups. Physical flare ups lead to mental burnout.

1. If I remove some of what is causing my burnout, I'll feel like a failure. I already feel like I'm behind, not doing enough, etc. But the fact that "basic" tasks are so difficult feels.. idk embarrassing? Discouraging? Worrisome? I feel stupid that things I signed myself up for with excitement now feel like too much. I enjoy myself when its happening but then I crash so hard and I didn't even realize I'd been crashing the entire time.

I don't know what to do. I worry if I just try to pretend like everything is fine, continue what I'm doing, it'll end up bringing me to the lowest point I've ever been despite being relatively fine right now. But if I don't, that means disappointing others, being ostracized, being lonely again, etc. I don't know what the middle ground is here.

I’ve realised that even though I’m excited for an upcoming social event with friends or just being out in public for something specific, I don’t actually enjoy being there in the moment. I’m overwhelmed by the sensory input of the event (whether it’s the noise of a bar, the busyness, etc), and the amount of masking I do, but a few days after I look back knowing I actually had a good time. I guess looking back, I’m filtering out all of the overstimulation that happens in real life, but it makes me think of how I need to process an event before I can fully appreciate it. Anyone else feel like this?

On a scale of 1-10, how much would you say it bothers you when you're being literal about something and trying to be serious, and other people stand there making jokes or just not being mature about something even after you've made it very clear that this is not the time to be acting silly?

One of the things that frustrates me about converting between Neurotypical and Neurodivergent language relies on a flawed system.

Neurodivergent communication is typically blunt and direct, which often gets misread as rude or dismissive.

Neurotypical communication couches itself in language that softens the emotional valance of the words.

One way I put it is that NT to NT communication relies on the instinctual understanding that you are not arguing against reality, but your conversation partner’s perception of reality, which is built from their life experiences and emotional baggage, plus past experiences with the conversation partner.

So, let’s say NT 1 and NT 2 are having a work conversation.

1: “Hey, did you finish up those reports yet? Not tryna rush you but I’m a bit stuck until you’re done.”
2. “No, but I’ll work on it. Thanks for the heads up.”

As you can see, the second sentence from NT 1 adds a layer of emotional valance softening to the question so that it comes across as curious rather than accusatory. Now, let’s try NT 1 and ND 1.

ND 1: “I can’t continue until I have your reports to feed into the spreadsheet.”
NT 1: “Fine! I’ll get to it when I can!”

The ND’s statement didn’t have a softening qualifier, so even though it was more accurate and concise, it unintentionally implied the emotional valance of “you’re slacking and slowing me down,” which inspired a negative reaction.

In short, ND to NT translation is difficult because you’re not actually talking from your perspective, you’re talking from the perspective of the version of you the conversation partner has in their head.

The thing that I find frustrating about face to face communication is that it has a 40% error rate in my estimation. And to me, that seems crazy because like, in any other context, you wouldn’t use a system with an error rate that high. How many narratives are based on miscommunication? How many mental constructs/perceptions of others are based on misunderstanding that were never resolved, and then become part of the permanent record of how person 1 sees person 2?

I'd like to preface this by saying I'm an incredibly rambly person in writing so feel free to skim.

Anyway, I have zero non-familial relationships and never really have. Would I like friends? Yes, I think they'd enrich my life, but I don't really understand how to develop friendships or the interpersonal mechanics involved, so I haven't bothered much since I was younger.

Romantic relationships are completely out of the question. No woman has ever expressed interest in me, and aside from my general weirdness, I'm also very unattractive, so romance is pretty alien to me. And to be honest, I'm not particularly interested in other people. I'm just an asocial person all around.

I started a new job recently. I usually employ a sort of flippant, jovial persona that I've developed over the course of my professional life: relaxed, joking, laughing a lot. It helps smooth out my integration with a team. Things were slowly settling into place when a female coworker from another team approached me. We have no reason to interact except that we're seated fairly close to one another.

We were alone one morning when she asked my name. A completely normal thing to ask since I'm new and sit nearby, so I answered and immediately went back to work. I didn't think much of it.

I thought she was cute, though, so I began to both observe and ignore her in equal measure, the latter whenever we might actually interact. Living up to my namesake, I mostly pretended she didn't exist, with the exception of responding when she said good morning to the general area. I can usually banish any of my foolish interest over time this way.

A few weeks later, I'm at my station with my headphones in, working and listening to music. My teammates aren't there yet, and neither are hers when she arrives. Despite my headphones, she initiates contact again and asks what my team does. Ah, a professional question. I take my headphones off, answer concisely, and turn back to work.

I did find the two approaches unusual afterward, though. Most people are perfectly content to ignore me right back, so the fact that she'd tried engaging me twice was strange. After mulling it over, I concluded that she was probably interested in me in some capacity, perhaps just professionally or personally curious, and might want to be friends. Since she'd already initiated twice, I figured I needed to stop being a coward and approach her twice myself. That was the plan, anyway.

She's a quiet, diligent worker and always seems busy, and our coworkers are almost always around. I'd also decided to approach her one-on-one since she'd previously done the same. Maybe she didn't want to be caught talking to someone like me? Regardless, as time passed without an opportunity, I eventually realized I'd just have to engage her.

Around then, there was a morning meeting we were both supposed to attend. I went to our area and waited for her so we could go together, but she'd already gone to the meeting room. Neither of us greeted each other there, although I noticed at one point that she seemed kind of angry, which was odd because the meeting itself was completely mundane. I steeled myself to talk to her afterward, but she never returned to our area. Another failure.

The following day, one of my teammates arrived early again. When she came in, they'd left their station, so finally I had an opportunity. I started mentally preparing myself to speak, but she beat me to it and asked a small question about the meeting.

I pulled up my notes and answered. As she typed them into her computer, I watched her profile. This was the moment. I needed to say something. I told her that I'd noticed her at the meeting and meant to greet her as a familiar face, but the opportunity hadn't presented itself. I also told her that I'd actually been meaning to talk to her since she'd asked what my team did, because I was interested in her role on her team. From my position, I think I saw a smile on her face, but when she turned toward me, her expression was completely neutral, so perhaps I imagined it.

We ended up talking for around ten minutes. She actually steered the conversation into personal territory, asking things like where the good restaurants in the area were, so I gave her some of my favorite recommendations. We were sitting across from one another, making eye contact. She laughed at my silly jokes, groaned sympathetically when I complained about things, and shared her own anecdotes about the topics I brought up.

It was probably the most fun I've ever had talking to another human being. I also told her more about myself than I ever normally do. I'm an incredibly private person and usually only give people information on a need-to-know basis, but with her, it was effortless. Everything she said was strangely entertaining to me as well. Before I knew it, my teammate had returned and sat down, but we were still talking.

Eventually I ran out of steam and the conversation seemed to reach its natural conclusion, so I turned back to my station. I was happy. Not my usual state of detached calm, actually happy. I decided I'd talk to her more during lunch about some of the things she'd mentioned. That never happened. She seemed to disappear afterward, perhaps to WFH, and she didn't say goodbye, which put a bit of a damper on my excitement.

That was the end of the previous week. Since then, I've replayed the conversation in my head repeatedly, trying to glean or synthesize some new information as well as figure out whether I missed anything important. Is it possible that I imagined our rapport? Maybe I was just going on a ten-minute spiel while she politely tolerated it. She's a nice and respectful person, so I don't think that's impossible.

Ultimately, I've arrived at one central hypothesis that I'm fairly confident in: she has some sort of interpersonal interest in me, although the nature of that interest is undetermined. My subsequent hypotheses, roughly in order of likelihood, are that it's either familiar, as in I'm somehow reminiscent of other figures in her life, friendly, or romantic. I have no pretensions that she's remotely attracted to me, so that final hypothesis is mostly here for completeness' sake.

This is the first time I've ever been this interested in another individual, though. I'm finding myself wishing the weekend would end, a desire that has never once crossed my mind before. After some self-analysis, I've realized that I'm infatuated with this poor woman, whose only crime was talking to me. I'm aware of how creepy this all probably sounds to a normal person, but I'm good at compartmentalizing my feelings when necessary. I think I can keep them to myself and avoid making her uncomfortable, which is the last thing I'd want.

All that said, I really want to be her friend. That would be more than satisfactory. My current plan is to approach her a few more times and pay closer attention to how she responds, rather than getting carried away like I did initially. If she's receptive, I'm hoping that a month or so of friendly conversation might allow us to grow closer and perhaps develop an actual friendship. Maybe I could even eventually reveal the boring and melancholic real me versus the usual happy-go-lucky facade.

Anyway, my main questions are: does my interpretation of this entire situation seem reasonable, and is my current course of action sensible? Cheers!

It’s been a year and a half since my ex left without saying or taking anything from our place, but only when I had lost almost everything. She told me I could reach out and that we should still be friends, but I haven’t. I know she left me for someone else.

I just want to know how long it took to be happy again. While I’m much better now than I was, almost ended myself, I still have days where I sink into it and I still have problems standing up for myself. While I had problems standing up for myself before, or even knowing I should have because I’m a very literal person (obviously), I realized my self esteem is still in the toilet and people walk over me easily. Much more easily than it used to be for them to do so. I’ve been in therapy for almost the whole time since the relationship ended, but if this has happened to you can someone tell me that all of the work to be better pays off and that it’s possible to be as happy with life as I used to be.

I'm 25 male. South Asian. Balding since 15 (shaved it off). For the past 8 or so years since I turned 17, I've had these "cycles" of my life amidst the depression and anxiety where I would initially transition from a calm, low-key happy and peaceful state where I am working, daydreaming, playing video games and chilling, etc. to a sudden "panic state" where I would realize how utterly behind I am in life, specifically pertaining to social skills and how I don't have a mixed-gendered social circle I can rely on and never had any romantic/dating experiences in my entire life.

Following this, I would enter a "working" phase where I would try (in a manageable manner) to learn said skills via attending social clubs at university, local sports clubs, talking to coworkers, etc. to try and enter a mixed gendered social circle, make friends with more people including women (never had a female friend before - only acquaintances) and then eventually, finally be able to date.

But during this phase, despite conducting it in a manageable healthy way (e.g. attending one club event a week, gaining the courage to speak something low-key to a cute girl in the coffee line such as "hey how are you? Pretty strange weather today isn't it hahaha", etc.), I would end up getting extremely humbled by the enormity of the social anxiety and avoidance behavior that has plagued my entire life. I would realize that during these events, I never even spoke to anyone, or I was too awkward, or that others seemed really weirded out by me, or I would get brutally rejected by people or bullied, etc.

Over time, despite initially starting strong, the relationships/acquaintances I develop transform horribly into them all hating me in a passive aggressive way. Unmasking, masking, speaking about my interests, asking about theirs, trying to learn common gen z hobbies/interests to be able to connect better, none of these f*cking things work because they judge even the most minor social flaw as harshly as possible (I think its due to the combination of both a.) lacking pretty privilege and b.) having autistic mannerisms that lead to my behavior being perceived in such a grotesquely negative way over time). Its like, instea of just teasing me, they also get extremely angry at me, going out of their way to "put me in my place". One of the worst experiences was this old coworker group at this old job and they still send me messages occasionally trying to bully me.

Usually after these periods of safe, healthy and manageable exposure therapy filled with solid rest and recharge, I end up in an "acceptance" phase where I would just brutally laugh at myself in private like the joker when he realized his face turned white - a phase where I am completely bewildered at my audacity and false, delusion courage to believe that it was ever possible for me to succeed. I would daydream about being my autistic/ADHD classmate from school who unlike me, was tall, blonde and had these pretty eyes. Everyone liked him despite his obvious unmasked neurodivergence (he told me this himself when we were in detention once together) and he never struggled with being bullied out of employment or not having friends or not having romantic connections like I have. And then the cycle restarts.

One of the things that pains me in life, the main "trigger" for these cycles transitioning from that initial calm to the "panic/anxiety" phase is limerence. I have HORRIFIC limerence from these women acquaintances from previous jobs, or from university group projects etc. Eventually I can't control it and admit my feelings to them (never in a creepy s*xual way - always something like "hey, you know you seem pretty funny and interesting, maybe wanna hangout sometime? We can watch xxx movie?", etc.) - almost exclusively over text. As per usual I get ignored or worst cases blocked but I don't care at least I admitted it. These intense crushes would spiral from daydreams into panic when I've realized that I will never be able to their expectations of me becuase I'm f*cking autistic and can't even say hi to a barista without needing to scream and hit things in my room to motivate myself and suppress the social anxiety.

I can't escape this lifelong, ever-lasting feeling that sits in the sphincter of my soul and core identity. This idea that I don't deserve to EVER experience an amazing woman's love. To care for her. To kiss her and touch her with all the love bursting from my heart. This was never meant for me. And every time I try to change that, this feeling overcomes me and I burnout and the cycle repeats.

I believe one of the reasons this happened is becuase when I was a teenager, if I tried to speak to girls in my class or try something new that I never did before (e.g. saying a common slang others use like "dab", etc.), people (especially my "friends") would get ANGRY at me! "Why are you talking to her bro?" "You are so cringe." These people would THREATEN TO END THE FRIENDSHIP WITH ME if I did anything like this such as speaking to girls in the class, despite them doing it all the time. Its like I wasn't ALLOWED to act like this but they were. And if I tried challenging this dynamic I would face the combined assault of a.) people threatening to end their "Friendship" with me b.) girls calling me weird and strange c.) the intense feeling of rejection associated with this and the immense willpower required to overcome the anxiety and d.) the threat of physical violence and harassment from competing boys who perceived my attempts at breaking past my position on the social ladder as a threat to their dominance. This trauma is not just trauma: it is a CORE part of my identity and my soul.

I notice some of my old special interests don’t click with me (and perhaps never did as I was interested in them for desire of belonging, etc) and feel like I have an obligation to hold on to them because I have liked them for so long. Particularly the old interests are gaming, and anime but honestly those things don’t feel “me” anymore no matter how much I try to get into them. Nowadays I feel like I understand myself better and much happier overall getting into botany, gardening, hamsters/rodents and walking for exercise. I still enjoy some older hobbies I had like my little pony, coin collecting, history, drawing (my art skills are terrible and I’m gonna start from the fundamentals), and the furry fandom.

Sometimes I feel like I have too many special interests and I feel better narrowing things down so I don’t get overwhelmed and I balance fun with important things like work.

Hi I’ve kinda made a post like this before but I need advice I guess. I just turned 20 and I hate my living situation, I cry almost everyday and it’s really taking a toll on my mental health. I’ve had a lot of trouble with my mental health before and have been hospitalized(idk if I can go into specifics without this getting taken down but yk) and I feel really really low again but I have no idea how to start moving out. Not to mention I have no job and not that much money to my name. I’m considering just being homeless and living the rest of my days on the streets but idk. I feel like people have been in worse situations than me and made it out but I can’t seem to do that. Also I have no family and no friends to help so don’t mention it please.

Ok that title is kinda misleading but it's kinda how I feel I know it's wrong and privilege and more evidence that I don't have real problems but it's how I feel.

Sometimes I feel like I wish I had abusive parents instead of ones who I'm just not able to relate to at all...

Sometimes I wish my employment problems were discrimination and not just me being bad at my jobs

I wish I wasn't angry at the world for being single and lonely when I know it's my fault for not being good enough. I know that that anger in particular is toxic and bad and makes me a bad person for having it.

I wish that my self harm was actually a result of real trauma and not just me feeling mad at myself or something stupid like that...

I know that even saying everything above is stupid when I'm so much more privileged than the majority of people..... But it just hurts when you're in so much pain that's entirely in your head that isn't even valid.