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Need help understanding neurodiverse partner

NAS94922
1 month ago
  1. My boyfriend and I have been dating for over 9 months. He’s very bad with dates and is often not that organised, this doesn’t necessarily bother me as I understand he struggles with this kind of thing and I don’t mind being the main organiser. However, recently he came back from a trip earlier than he expected, we haven’t seen each other in over a week. I asked him if he wanted to hang out earlier than the scheduled time we had (about 4 days later) and he said that he’d be too tired - I assumed this was a social battery thing and didn’t press further. However, he then mentioned that another friend had asked him to hang out and he was probably going to do that. 

  2. This is very confusing to me as in my NT brain if I hadn’t seen my partner in over a week and I was able to see them earlier I would take that opportunity. I am also confused as to why he is prioritising his friend in this situation - my NT brain automatically assumes he’d prefer to hang out with him than me, but he tells me all the time that I’m his priority and that if he had the choice between hanging out with me or other friends he’d choose me every time. His actions aren’t reflecting his words. If we had seen each other a couple days before this I would be completely understanding but we haven’t. So I guess I need help understanding why his ND brain thinks this way? I’m not upset with him, I just want to understand him better.
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  • 1 month ago

    Hey! I have a friend and he is diagnosed with autism, ocd and alexithymia. I can exactly tell you what the reasons for my friend would be to act like that. He often has the urge to say things back to people even without meaning it, because he trained this behaviour and got so much used to it. For him it would be that he would argument with still being on that trip, originally. So the time would be away from you, which would mean for him that you calculated that in so his time is kinda free to spend with others. My friend does not usually miss people. For him its enough to exchange 5-6 messages a day to have his "closeness bar" filled, even with people he is in a relationship. He has a very low need for contacts even if he really likes a person, as he knows the person is there and all is fine.

    The way you phrased what he said it appears that you might require more attention than the friend. Maybe (thats an assumption and maybe very wrong) he has to partly function in the relationship which is exhausting for him. It has nothing to do with how much he likes it, its just a general thing.

    Maybe when he is with you he knows the evenings get late and he was too tired for that and with his friend its a quick thing and maybe he didnt see that friend in a while and wanted to spend a smaller amount of time to keep the friendship going? I know my friend does that. He tries to spend with all friends a roughly set amount of time so he wont lose the friends.

    I think there are too many options.

    But one thing: My friend chooses what he does according to rarity, not people. That means if he could spend time with me, which he usually did very often, almost daily, and we set it up, he would cancel me for going to a BBQ with other friends. The reason for that is that the BBQ is less often than seeing me. Has 0 to do with how much he likes me, its just a logical choice for him depending on what he usually does more often.

  • 1 month ago in reply to NAS95419

    This is not my post but thank you for your reply, which could make me cry as i do understand my BF better now , and it is such a relief

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