Disclosure of ASD in particular when dating

I have been I have been masking most of my life when socialising and when dating. I was diagnosed in my 60s, nearly a year ago. Masking is sometimes subconscious and sometimes conscious. I have found it freeing to recognise the needless tension I can create when making agonised choices between masking and unmasking, some of which turned out to be the wrong choices. I don’t date anymore, but I mask in social situations if I think it will help me to fit in. 

I think there can be too much pressure put on people to unmask and/or mask, and it can make people feel unworthy when they can’t achieve a fully masked/unmasked state. I’m also not convinced that anybody, autistic or non-autistic, can be fully authentic in all aspects of life, masked or unmasked, but that is delving into a deeper question that has occupied much of my mind for decades, probably because so much has been written about authenticity and purity of intention from psychological/religious/spiritual/sociological perspectives, and these are things I grapple with.

Non-autistic people can use a form of masking in social contexts too. Many autistic and non-autistic people do things in private that they wouldn’t dream of doing when socialising in public or on a date. Society has imposed expectations on people to behave a certain way and masking is part of a human condition that is full of contradictions and tensions. 

Martin said:

Learned behaviour that becomes subconscious is not lying or any of its synonyms. If this were so, then players of musical instruments would be 'lying'.

That would come under acting or pretending then - they may be playing Vivaldis Spring Concerti but they are not Vivaldi, nor are they the season of Spring.

These people are acting music to put it in analogous terms, much as autists are acting like neurotypicals when they are inherently not them.

It is a matter of what you label it is all I'm saying - the masker is not the thing they are masking as.

perhaps it is not playing the instrument that is masking - it is what piece of music one plays and, if the music is composed by someone else, the manner in which one plays it?

Learned behaviour that becomes subconscious is not lying or any of its synonyms. If this were so, then players of musical instruments would be 'lying'.

Martin said:

I do not see masking as a 'form of lying'.

We are exhibiting a behaviour that is not authentic to us so we are essentially being an actor for that situation.

I guess you could use words like faking, acting, pretending or whatever instead - it is just semantics.

I do not see masking as a 'form of lying'. I see it as a necessary survival strategy, which eventually merges into one's personality, becoming an integral part of it.

TheBlackSheep said:

now feel that in most situations I must tell someone I have ASD.

I would say this is a subject for after 5 or 6 dates - I've experienced so much uneducated stigma about this that I'm reluctant to disclose unless it looks like things are going to get serious.

I will say that I "don't" do things like loud bars because I struggle to filter out conversations, or that I've never been great at articulating complicated emotions even though I do feel them. 

This helps you choose your meeting grounds so you can be more authentic - quirky even and use your more natural personality to win the partner over. Because you are being reasonably authentic then the avoidance of a label such as autism means you are not lying to them.

Certainly leave off masking as much as you can - this is a form of lying about what you really are in a way so it is a poor groundwork for a relationship. Only use it when you have to in order to avoid being pushed towards burnout or meltdown.

That would be my advice.

I'd be up front about it, I am with potential friends and I would be with potential romatic partners too, I'd rather get it out of the way and not having hanging about like a guilty secret. Also if someones going to go all stupid about it, I'd rather know sooner rather than later, before I've put to much emotional investment into them.

Very interesting, getting the cogs turning in my head. Thank you for sharing much appreciated 

I was diagnosed at 59. For me, my masking/camouflaging has become an integral part of who I am. Apart from exhaustion, due to over-socialising, masking causes me no discernible distress. The concept of unmasking is essentially meaningless to me. My wife got me, my masking and my autism as a package. We met decades before I had any inkling that I might be autistic. Outwardly my camouflaging is essentially seamless most of the time, so I have never had any dilemma to face about whether or not to mask or whether or not to reveal my autistic status. Such is the wide range of the autistic lived experience.