my autistic boyfriend doesn't feel like my boyfriend half the time?

My son is the same age as your boyfriend. He struggles a lot with relationships and deals with his own crushing anxiety at times. When I was your age, here's what I wished I had known.

Men can often feel the weight of the pressures of society to take control, be in charge, the 'Man Up', all these things which can be crippling emotionally have an affect of forcing them to compare themselves and feel incredibly inadequate and also aren't allowed to show it or work thorugh it properly. They need a good cry occasionally. It can cause them to freeze or check out. They can lose all hope and crumble in to a small pile of sadness.

Females have these auto-pilot mechanisms sometimes driven by a window of time to find a suitable mate and hopefully procreate. It can also cause a great deal of stress, anxiety from being told all ways to compete, create a sort of 'blinding' effect hunting for a Responsible, Mature individual (one that looks like a super-hero type who says and does all the right things now he's 40 and been through a great deal). But this Default Switch is a trap and females will do/say/become anything for the other. They'll betray their closest friends, they'll put themselves in harms way, they'll sacrifce everything that makes them beautiful. It's not a 'Safe-Mode'. We often feel like we have no power.

This to say, you shouldn't run to rescue the other. Sometimes just becoming an inspiring, respectful human with good emotional and psychological 'boundaries' (something to google) can have an affect of the other doing the same. 

While there is more biology and more socially encoded doctrines at work here, it just makes for a mess. You're both so young! And without a healthy, well-informed and helpful parent or community around, these 'pairings' can just cancel each other out too quick when unaware of the forces at work to ruin us.

I'll list a few things which can help. 

1. What do you want - not from him exactly, but for your self? I would list 10 immediate things you'd like (to have and/or become) and 10 long-term goals. This may take a week perhaps to think about. 

2. What do you like to do when you're bored. Or if you feel you cannot afford this, are there alternate things to be done? Do these things. Would you be able to join a maker space? Or a book club? Second hand books are amazingly cheap! Do you like to sew? Can you make a pillow case out of an old T shirt or get one from a charity shop? Do small and important fun things every day. Create small rewards for your human self! 

2 and a half: invest time and kindness into another female friend. 

3. Everywhere I've looked, relationships require just a few things. This mutual 'chemical' bond (being attracted to the others scent, for instance), and building trust through reliability and respectfulness, and communication: the easist way to express is by asking if a thing helps or hurts. Does it push you away or make you want to be closer. Instigate kindness. Or humour, if you can: "How would YOU love to buy me a new pillow case???" You could go full scale Disney Princess vibes with this. 

One of the biggest factors in communication (besides it being excrutiatingly difficult) is learning that my telepathy powers and your telepathy powers are wanting, unfortunately. They're awful. They won't ever get better. I can't know if I don't ask and you won't know if I don't tell you. And Direct. Now, a big reason for a female Not Being Direct: he might dismiss me, which eatas away at my ability to trust he's open to direct communication. He might verbally reduce things which makes me beautiful or Uniquely Me, by questioning why I want a thing or why it's important. Here is where the confidence of a 40 year old woman is beneficial! I can stop those questions immediately because I have no desire to be reduced or be less attractive or less myself - that's his problem and I won't be intimiated by thought-less and pointless interrogation. You can respect me as a human and care about what feels important to me or not and I can move on. But NOTE: Wanting to do a thing and not being able to do a thing or feelling helpless and not good enough are different. 

But also learning to communicate before I've worked out who I am and what I want and before I've worked out what my expectations are and if they're unreasonable or just how much I'm misunderstanding and misidentifying... It's a LOAD of work you may do for the next 10 years or more. And you might feel helpless and trapped and completely unsure of how to navigate through life. 

Spend time become Uniquely You and learning to kindly communicate what you need! You are worth-while and worth spending time on and being open, reasonable, and becoming a worth-while partner. Inspire each other to next levels of human-ness. :)

i just woke up so won't reply in detail but i read this entire comment and i think i agree. i've been through a lot of terrible things in my life including abuse from the age of zero, and now i feel like if i don't step up and truly live for myself then why am i here? it's really hard to maintain that mindset though when my horrific past instilled vicious insecurities and trust issues in me, i kind of depend on my boyfriend to numb that, but of course it always creeps in again whether he's here or not

laraiesha said:

i kind of depend on my boyfriend to numb that

I would start to catch yourself with this, though. He's human, not super-human. Work out what he is capable of and willing to do to show support. Allow him room to grow as well!

If you can, see your GP and work out how to get occasional therapy to get all of this past nonsense to no longer have a hold on you. You don't want to rely on a chap who's still figuring himself out and doesn't have a PhD to help you navigate all the emotional and psychological impacts. This would be like asking him to work out if you had cancer: better done by a specialist.  Allow someone who's trained to help. I still meet with a therapist once a month. 

Excellent about the counselling! That is like gold. 

Anger "management' is an interesting term. One should be angry about injustice, abuse, a lack of feeling protected by those who were responsible... one should feel these emotions because they are real. 

I get angry at interruptions, at not finding words, difficultly googling a thing because never an AI and I got along. I get angry at sensory overload at blinding LEDs and cruel, presumptuous, arrogant behaviour.

Managing this when we live in a seemingly unfairly ableist society means having small indulgences and spending time on my own breathing it out. I would look at learning to assert healthy 'Boundaries' (do some googling or ask your therapist). Don't allow others to demand your attention whenever they wish -for example. Sometimes 2 people just need to sit down and write out where their 'triggers' are and agree to Help each other and not compound the Hurt.

Excellent about the counselling! That is like gold. 

Anger "management' is an interesting term. One should be angry about injustice, abuse, a lack of feeling protected by those who were responsible... one should feel these emotions because they are real. 

I get angry at interruptions, at not finding words, difficultly googling a thing because never an AI and I got along. I get angry at sensory overload at blinding LEDs and cruel, presumptuous, arrogant behaviour.

Managing this when we live in a seemingly unfairly ableist society means having small indulgences and spending time on my own breathing it out. I would look at learning to assert healthy 'Boundaries' (do some googling or ask your therapist). Don't allow others to demand your attention whenever they wish -for example. Sometimes 2 people just need to sit down and write out where their 'triggers' are and agree to Help each other and not compound the Hurt.