Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi there everyone, new here!
Bit about me - I am currently a 23 year old self diagnosed high functioning Autistic female who is currently on the very long waiting list for an assessment.
I was wondering if anyone else here feels the same as me and weather its common for this community
I have no desire whatsoever to be in a romantic relationship. All my friends and family are either married or seeing someone and I seem to just not have any desire for it, although strangely I do feel jealous when seeing it, even though for myself I just don't see it ever happening. I guess its more due to my social issues than anything else. I don't find other people interesting, when people talk to me its like its going through one ear and out the other. I have really never plucked up the courage to go on dates without a stiff few drinks first. Same goes for friendships. I have friends yet really I couldn't care less if I lost them or never saw them again. I'm not a mean or distant person, I just really don't need social interaction to live a full life.
I feel perfectly happy living alone, being alone and having a solitary life with my pets! Anyone else feel the same? Or am I bad person who needs to change...
Thank you so much for creating this thread. I find its existence, and the responses given in it so far, more consoling than you will ever know. I have some specific thoughts and experiences to relate when I can find the mental energy to adequately articulate them, but for now am just recording my gratitude and giving the thread a 'bump' so I don't have to dig quite so deep next time (I first spotted it a few weeks ago, and it's got rather buried since then) to find it. The anxiety that feeling anomalous in not wanting to actively seek out any old relationship just to tick a box and fit in (society and 99% of media and cultural outputs bash us over the head relentlessly with coupling up as the prescribed, near mandatory, 'right' way to be) has caused me a lot of stress, and two breakdowns, in recent years. To explain, I'd have to expand at some length and I feel too drained right now. But again, thank you for helping me find my tribe within a tribe on this forum, and I hope you're doing well.
I've always struggled over the years making friends, had a few relationships, some lasted longer than others. I'm on my own and 69 later this month, so wish i'd tried harder. When people use to ask why don't you get married, i always use to joke back saying ...... My house is my house, i'm not going to share it with some woman who may leave the top off the toothpaste : leave the toilet seat down, and leave her dirty knickers in the sink !! People would laugh and not quiz me again. I'm sure lots of people thought i was gay. I became a workaholic using that as a excuse why i wasn't going out, when i think the real reason for not going out was autism, i just found it to hard. As i said, i'm almost 69 and i sit here some days wishing i tried harder when i was younger. Dirty knickers left in the sink would have been a small price to pay, for to have some company, just someone to talk to. I've got a Paddington, but teddies don't talk back.