Did you receive a very late autism diagnosis/realisation?

The chance of being diagnosed as autistic in the 1960s and 1970s, if you did not have intellectual or learning disabilities, was essentially zero. So for me bemoaning the lack of an early diagnosis is somewhat futile. However, I think that if attitudes to autism had been more advanced back then I would have had a rather easier life and I could have avoided some of the long process of developing work-arounds in order to cope with life. For example, I could not work out why I had zero ability to create romantic or sexual relationships. I knew I was basically kind and considerate, could flash out the occasional witty or funny remark and that I was physically on the attractive side of average. However, I had no success. It eventually struck me that I could not reliably sense if someone of the opposite sex found me attractive or not. I just did not have that ability, without that instinctive knowledge, making any sort of advance is just extremely risky. I did some research on non-verbal communication, facial expression and body language, which helped. In the end I decided that I just needed to be extremely courageous and risk rejection. Eventually, courage and persistence paid off and I have been married for 28 years. Had I known that I was autistic at an earlier age, I suspect that I would have not had such a long and difficult time figuring out what was going wrong.

The chance of being diagnosed as autistic in the 1960s and 1970s, if you did not have intellectual or learning disabilities, was essentially zero. So for me bemoaning the lack of an early diagnosis is somewhat futile. However, I think that if attitudes to autism had been more advanced back then I would have had a rather easier life and I could have avoided some of the long process of developing work-arounds in order to cope with life. For example, I could not work out why I had zero ability to create romantic or sexual relationships. I knew I was basically kind and considerate, could flash out the occasional witty or funny remark and that I was physically on the attractive side of average. However, I had no success. It eventually struck me that I could not reliably sense if someone of the opposite sex found me attractive or not. I just did not have that ability, without that instinctive knowledge, making any sort of advance is just extremely risky. I did some research on non-verbal communication, facial expression and body language, which helped. In the end I decided that I just needed to be extremely courageous and risk rejection. Eventually, courage and persistence paid off and I have been married for 28 years. Had I known that I was autistic at an earlier age, I suspect that I would have not had such a long and difficult time figuring out what was going wrong.