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59 year old and not assessed

m21ian

Hi, yes, I'm 59 and I've never benn formally assessed for Autism, and nowadays I have learned to adjust and have coping strategies for social situations, and the avoidance of the same. I have a partner, and a 10 yo daughter, I have a good job and on th eoutside all looks rosy - but that's not the whole picture is it.

I have no "mates" - in my whole life I have never ever instigated a social meet-up with a friend, the ideas of having to meet 121 or in a group for a regular social chit-chat both scares and makes me feel trapped. People have tried in the past to form matey relationships, but I have always batted them away, or failed somehow.

That's ok - I ma not lonely - I have plenty of friends/associates at work and I can handle that as the relationships are defined by where we are and what we do and it never overlaps into out-of-work so it's all good.

My childood was . . . odd. So were my teens, and my 20's and right up into my mid 30's I was still struggling. When I was 23 I worked in a open plan office and several of my workmates took it upon themselves to role pay "sarcasm" for me as I just did not get it. Funny looking back, I was just cosidered eccentric and I have played on that all my life - making a joke out of it witghout ever knowing what "it" was.

I dropped out of school when I was 17 as it was all getting too much, found jobs where I worked on my own, then over the years moved into jobs where i worked around people. I used to apologise to people wh sat near me because I couldn't talk small talk like  everyone else, ha ha, I can now but it's taken a long long time.

Later I moved into freelance working because that meant that I could move on when I found myself socially floundering - as everywehere I went I found a small number of people who liked me for myself, an equal number of peoole who really disliked me for the same reasons, and a whole raft of people who I just confised, or whatever.  

My partner wants to get married, but I can't do that as it fills me with dread, she wants me to have a party for my 60th: no thanks, she wants me to go out with friends on my own - that will never happen. I not unsociable but anything that centres on my and might illustrate the gaping hole in my social network I have to avoid, and protect the illusions and barries i hae built around me.

I am considering applying for a diagnosis, not for myself, mostly for my partner (although she doesn't know) but I'm afraid of opening up to a GP for fear of being knocked-back, like I said I now how coping strategies so that is what they wil see - not the me inside or the historical me who almost 60 years of back story.

I dunno.

Someone tell me - what am I thinking?

Parents

  • Martian Tom said:

    PS  Just out of curiosity... if you were to get a diagnosis, why do you think that you probably wouldn't tell your daughter?  I ask because autism is usually inherited.  I wouldn't suggest for one minute that your daughter might have inherited it.  But since my diagnosis, I've discussed a lot of these issues with my mother, and she 'understands' them in a way that many others don't.  She has such traits and behaviours herself, but has never spoken about them before.  I'm pretty sure, therefore, that I have inherited it down the maternal line.  On my father's side too, though, there have been some interesting instances.  His brother, for instance, had some behaviours that some of the rest of the family disliked him for.  They always referred to him as 'the odd one.'  It makes me wonder if there's something on both sides!  Anyway... just thought I'd ask.  My own brother, incidentally, is neurotypical.  One of his daughter's boys, though, has some interesting traits.  She's talked about getting him assessed before he starts secondary school.

    Hi Tom,

    The inherited thing is part of my concern. My mother had her own issues, again she was considerd "batty" and eccentric by everyone (including myself and my brother); my brother (4 year older) has been signed off work since he was 35 for mental health problems (which he never discusses with me fully, but I remember from our childhood that he had issues fitting in and went "off the rails" in unfamiliar situations). I have also observed that my daughter has social issues - but I understand that children are "works in progress" and she is only 10 so I am not overly concerned at prersent.

    My partner on the other hand is a stark contrast to all of the above, she's at her best in social situatioins, makes and keeps friends easily, builds and connects with social frameworks naturally and effortlessly. At times I feel that I don't deserve her, almost that I have "cheated" her by not disclosing at the start of our relationship that I might have "issues" - but how could I because it was only in the last 4 or 5 years through the internet that I even became aware of Autism and the symptoms - until then I just assumed that I had personality issues that I needed to address, and which I told myself I "would" address at the start of each year and then by the end of the year realise that nothing had changed. Sound familiar?

    I started off these forums saying that I wanted an assessment for my partner, I was wrong, I reaise now that I wanted it for myself. I am not ashamed in any way shape or form of being tagged as Autistic but at the same time I am now not sure that it would do me any help outside these forums.

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  • Martian Tom said:

    PS  Just out of curiosity... if you were to get a diagnosis, why do you think that you probably wouldn't tell your daughter?  I ask because autism is usually inherited.  I wouldn't suggest for one minute that your daughter might have inherited it.  But since my diagnosis, I've discussed a lot of these issues with my mother, and she 'understands' them in a way that many others don't.  She has such traits and behaviours herself, but has never spoken about them before.  I'm pretty sure, therefore, that I have inherited it down the maternal line.  On my father's side too, though, there have been some interesting instances.  His brother, for instance, had some behaviours that some of the rest of the family disliked him for.  They always referred to him as 'the odd one.'  It makes me wonder if there's something on both sides!  Anyway... just thought I'd ask.  My own brother, incidentally, is neurotypical.  One of his daughter's boys, though, has some interesting traits.  She's talked about getting him assessed before he starts secondary school.

    Hi Tom,

    The inherited thing is part of my concern. My mother had her own issues, again she was considerd "batty" and eccentric by everyone (including myself and my brother); my brother (4 year older) has been signed off work since he was 35 for mental health problems (which he never discusses with me fully, but I remember from our childhood that he had issues fitting in and went "off the rails" in unfamiliar situations). I have also observed that my daughter has social issues - but I understand that children are "works in progress" and she is only 10 so I am not overly concerned at prersent.

    My partner on the other hand is a stark contrast to all of the above, she's at her best in social situatioins, makes and keeps friends easily, builds and connects with social frameworks naturally and effortlessly. At times I feel that I don't deserve her, almost that I have "cheated" her by not disclosing at the start of our relationship that I might have "issues" - but how could I because it was only in the last 4 or 5 years through the internet that I even became aware of Autism and the symptoms - until then I just assumed that I had personality issues that I needed to address, and which I told myself I "would" address at the start of each year and then by the end of the year realise that nothing had changed. Sound familiar?

    I started off these forums saying that I wanted an assessment for my partner, I was wrong, I reaise now that I wanted it for myself. I am not ashamed in any way shape or form of being tagged as Autistic but at the same time I am now not sure that it would do me any help outside these forums.

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