r/AutismTranslated

So many men on Hinge have been saying they go crazy for “slightly autistic women”, and I am just so tired of being misrepresented, infantilised and sexualised for a neurological disability which has affected my entire life.

First of all, the “slightly” part I think is offensive as. I am high functioning, but to fetishise a disability but only to a certain degree is insane. These men want a child in the body of a woman, but as soon as they start stimming and having meltdowns it’s “too autistic”.

And can we unpack WHY they want a “slightly autistic woman” too? Is it because we are stereotypically easy to manipulate? Because we are misrepresented as acting like children, and that notion is somehow attractive to them? Or is it because all of a sudden it’s now hot and trendy to rant about a hyper fixation for half an hour? Which one is it, boys?

I’m so tired of the dating apps when so many men are suddenly into the very thing that kept them away from me for my life, because now they can see the childlike tendencies autistic women can have.

i’m posting this here because i really need a safe, neurodivergent space to unpack this. i already got absolutely decimated on aita for asking this, so please go gentle on me! the comments got so hostile and angry. people were literally telling me that i don't deserve to have friends and that my friend should cut me out of their life forever over this. the real-life situation is actually 100% resolved. i apologized to my friend, paid them some money, and we are totally good. i am just trying to logically understand the "why" behind the social script so i don’t make this mistake again.

not able to crosspost but was posted to aitah within the last 24 hours if want to read OG post and comments. i did end up getting a bit snarky.

​i recently had a situation where i took a friend's offer literally, accidentally broke an unspoken rule, and ended up getting kicked out of their car over petrol money.

​once i realized they were upset, i paid them back immediately and apologized. but mentally, i am really struggling to understand the underlying logic of the social double standard here.

​i’m hoping we can analyze the social mechanics of this together. here is where my "autistic logic" is clashing with nt social expectations:

if someone invites you to their house for dinner, it is widely seen as a "gift of hospitality." asking your guests to send you £15 for the ingredients after the fact is considered incredibly rude and tacky.

if someone offers to give you regular lifts/car rides, it is apparently an unspoken rule that you must offer petrol money, even if they didn't ask for it upfront. taking the offer of a ride literally—without offering to pay—is seen as taking advantage of them.

​to my brain, both of these are "an offer to share a resource i own (food / a car seat) with a friend."

​why is one treated as a gift where asking for money is rude, but the other is treated as a transaction where not offering money is rude?

​how are we supposed to instinctively know which "offers" are actually free gifts, and which ones have a hidden price tag attached?

​i’d love to hear how you guys navigate these kinds of unspoken rules, or if anyone can help me "translate" the nt logic here without making me feel like a bad person for just taking someone at their word.

​thank you so much

Me and the autisic person that I clicked with. For some odd reason. When I am near him now, I can feel a buzz of energy on my skin. Depending if he’s making eye contact with me. Where he looks, it can go to my chest or to my face. Has anyone else felt that with their friend, partner or safe person that you click with. I’m trying to understand this. I’m autism and adhd. I know I’m under stress due to my sister health issues. But these sensations is a whole new territory for me.

I was wondering if you could explain this to me, when my likely autistic, alexithymic ex boyfriend told me he didn’t miss me, I now understand (and at the time I did, too) that he was simply explaining how his brain works. When he told me he didn’t think about me during his work day (I also understood what he was trying to say at the time), he was explaining his hyperfocus, the same attention he gave me when we were together, the most intense affection that I still remember with longing.

But how come he didn’t understand how hearing that could hurt my feelings? How come I could understand his intent, be he could not understand the impact? We talked about this for a while, he didn’t understand. I don’t think I necessarily needed him to understand, but at least knew to stop because it hurt my feelings.

What does it imply? It's really confusing 'cause I've met a lot of autistic people before, and they ask me this question most of the time. Is this like a radar thing? Like the gay-dar stuff?

Not because of anything Prosper did, they were great.

I feel weird and uncomfortable. I thought this was what I really wanted as the label. But now that I have it, it feels a bit limiting and incorrect. I don’t know if this is internalized ableism. I am very functional as I have a lot of routines and methods as well as constant research to achieve my goals. I don’t know. It feels like the end of a journey and in a bad/weird way. It feels wrong that it’s so solid. And I dislike the label suddenly, although I self-identified as autistic for at least the last 6 months. Part of me doubts it too. Maybe I faked things in the assessment somehow?

Has anyone gone through similar feelings?

I'm 50M and at a point in my life where things have just stopped working, and I'm trying to understand why. I apologize if I come off as ignorant--I actually am ignorant. I started learning about autism in an effort to support my son, who struggles pretty hard in school. He has an ADHD diagnosis, but people in the know have suggested that there are some indicators of autism as well. I've come to realize that autism is nothing like what I always thought it was.

I've also come to wonder whether I, myself, fall somewhere on the spectrum. I won't go into all the reasons I suspect this, because there's just one aspect that doesn't quite make sense to me, and that's my sense of compassion. I am often highly attuned to the people around me. This is both a cognitive and an emotional understanding of what people are feeling. I'm really good at being with people who are going through difficult experiences. I'd probably make a great counselor, if people weren't so damned exhausting for me. And this is the other side of it: after any kind of social engagement, it takes me a _long_ time to unwind afterword. I brought this topic up with my therapist last week, and she expressed skepticism about my fit on the spectrum. We're going to explore it further next time we meet.

I mainly wonder if I have the wrong understanding (and my therapist has the wrong understanding) about the relationship between autism and compassion. Do other people have experience with this? Or am I really just not fitting any profile on the spectrum and should focus my search for understanding elsewhere?

Hello! I am a 17-year-old(F). Last year, I made a friend in my yoga class who has been diagnosed with autism. To understand him better, I read various articles of WHO and many American and British medical/psychiatric/psychological ones. To begin with, I never realised that I was bullied as a kid in school until my class teacher and mum noticed and talked to me about it. Since childhood, I flap or move my hands in random motions whenever I got excited. I am the last one to understand the point of a joke in my friend circle. Though I have good friends now, I get exhausted talking to them or do not like spending much time with them. I dislike social gatherings. I quiet recently realised that I mimic the way people react, talk, laugh et cetera in social senarios. Just moments back, I realised the meaning of eye contact. I always thought that I had to lock my eyes into people's eyes, so often I get confused to look at which one (the left or the right). All this, takes up so much space in my mind that I realise that I barely listened to what the person in front of me just said. I have difficulty following commands. I often have to repeat them out loud to process it. I do stimming quite consciously and it helps me focus. I can talk about cats, dogs and other cute animals along with politics and education for a long time. I talk so much about them that sometimes my mother has to say, "Okay Hun, I get you. Can we talk about something else?" Then I just can't initiate a talk because it takes me some time to process what to talk about. I mean these are the only topics that I like talk to about with my friends and the people I know otherwise, I just stay quiet in that conversation. I do not like to wear traditional clothes, body hugging clothes, et cetera. I will cry or throw a tantrum (I am 17 years old) if you force me to wear it. I make sounds that are absurd. For example: Brrrrrrrrrrrr (I have fun doing it). Sometimes I do it out in public too and people give me weird stares or they just laugh. Few months back I have been very suicidal. I even tried to attempt it but failed. Just for you information, I have been diagnosed with depression at an early age of 12-years. There are so many other things, they are too much to type.

So to conclude, I would like to write that I suspect that I may have autism. I know possessing these traits does not necessarily mean that I am autistic. Therefore I will talk about it with my psychiatrist. I am too anxious and impatient to wait for the day when I'll meet my therapist. Just to let you all know, not 2 months back, I have been diagnosed with OCD. I have medications for it. Still the traits that I mentioned kind of make me concerned. If I have made anyone feel hurt, I beg your pardon. I did not mean to do it. Thank you for reading.

Please bare with me.. I feel like I have a few autistic traits. I had a lot of trouble with friends/friendship and teasing/bullying growing up. Some things that stick out to me was I:

- In 2nd grade, was confused on how to tell if someone was my friend, and wished I could sign a "friendship contract" in order to confirm whether or not someone was my friend.

- In 2nd-3rd grade, I would sometimes walk outside with t-rex arms. I think I was pretending to be a catgirl/horse. Did this until my mom's acquaintance told me my arms would get stuck that way if I kept doing it.

- In 4th grade, was fascinated with how my one friend would just "talk to people", and asked her for lessons on communication. (She just said idk, I just do it)

- Used to take really big steps in class because it was more efficent and I was worried about people looking at me.. Stopped when my friend asked me why I walked so fast.

- Used to sit outside, behind a bench, alone for lunch because I was scared of people looking at me. (why did no teacher intervene???)

- Was/am a "picky eater", as in I only ate things I craved, and have been underweight for most of my life and have a hard time noticing when I'm hungry.

- Was constantly asked why I'm so quiet/if I'm okay when I was just content listening to the conservation/zoning out. FINALLY learned how to engage enough to stop these comments.

- Had multiple phases where I was obsessed with something, but later dropped it. IE: research for hours about drug addiction, or rewatch kpop mv's for hours at a time.

- Sometimes do things that are unintentionally funny. For example, I was clothes shopping and just put the money down on the counter before he said the total because I calculated it. The worker thought this was super funny. Or asking a security guard for a "fake badge" (it was actually a paper badge), which he seemed very amused by. This may be anxiety/the pandemic ..idk..

But I feel like I also have trauma from growing up black and "ugly" (mainly due to not knowing how to take care of my hair), being super poor, having a single mom, moving schools constantly, etc.. It's hard for me to know honestly what's normal, shy girl/anxious behavior and what isn't. My only friends I seem to make now too are usually neurodivergent OR suspect they are.. What do ya'll think?

I feel like crap because my family genuinely hates me. Every time I have tried to hang out with them, they leave the living room and avoid me. They are always talking crap about me. My mom once said she couldn't stand me. Her and my Dad always make fun of me for everything. It makes me upset.

As for my siblings, they've always done the same thing. They were always jealous of the attention I got from my parents as my mother once told me.

Everything I say is used to mock me. I can't tell the family ANYTHING.

Well, now one of my siblings is getting married and I'm pretty sure her husband will be welcomed into the family and treated awesomely. This complete stranger, treated better than an ACTUAL member of the family and they see nothing wrong with it!

I'm sick of being different. I don't know what it is, but negative treatment from other people has always followed me since late childhood.

I went to dr.s that laughed at me for speaking and I was just a child. I did nothing to them. I don't have to utter a single word and people hate me. "I don't want to be in line behind HER!"

It is really making me fed up!

I don't think I want to even try getting a diagnosis. They say hand flapping needs to be present during childhood, but I never had that. Just aversion to spaghetti and hating having my pictures taken because of the flash.

I am just too scared to get tested for fear that I won't be diagnosed.

I’ve been trying to get my head around autism, and I’m finding myself a bit confused by how it’s being described online.
I keep seeing traits presented in a way where both ends of the spectrum seem to point to the same conclusion. For example:
struggling to read social cues → autistic
being very attuned to social dynamics → also autistic (but “internalised”)
Same with things like empathy, sensory awareness, etc. It sometimes feels like both a trait and its opposite are being used as indicators.
I don’t mean this in a dismissive way at all. I’m genuinely trying to understand. I can see how broad and varied autism is, but I’m struggling to see how clinicians distinguish it in a way that doesn’t become circular.
For those of you diagnosed (especially later in life), what made it clearly autism for you rather than just normal variation in personality or sensitivity?
I’d really appreciate hearing how this actually makes sense from the inside, because right now I feel like I’m missing something.

I’m in the process of understanding my autism more deeply, and I’ve been struggling with how to navigate accountability around meltdowns in relationships.

I want to be clear that I’m not trying to excuse harmful behavior or avoid responsibility. I already recognize that my reactions can impact others, and I actively reflect, apologize, repair, and try to identify escalation patterns so I can handle things differently. What I’m struggling with is how to communicate the escalation process to my partner in a way that doesn’t sound like blame or deflection.

For me, my meltdowns usually build over time through overwhelm, miscommunication, sensory stress, emotional flooding, conflict loops, or feeling misunderstood. I tend to ask a lot of clarifying questions when I’m trying to process something, but that can sometimes be perceived as arguing, being controlling, or refusing to let things go.

As escalation builds, I can become repetitive, emotionally reactive, panic, cry, shut down, interrupt, raise my voice, or desperately try to make myself understood. In severe moments, it can escalate into physical outbursts directed at myself or my environment.

I am getting better. A lot better.

I fully understand that my behavior is still my responsibility. At the same time, I feel like I’m trying to explain that these moments don’t come out of nowhere, and that understanding the interaction patterns leading up to escalation could help prevent harm earlier. But when I try to talk about those patterns, it’s often interpreted as me avoiding accountability instead of trying to improve things collaboratively.

How do you talk about escalation patterns, triggers, and relational dynamics without it sounding like blame? How do you balance accountability with wanting the other person to understand your internal experience too? And then how do you repair the relationship after a meltdown/conflict?

Hi all

For a while now I’ve been really confused about whether I am someone on the spectrum or whether I just have really bad social anxiety. I have always struggled with communicating with people and how people can so easily talk to and make friends. I believe I am very sensitive to people’s moods and bodily gestures and tone of voice, but struggle with things like sarcasm and do feel as if I am subconsciously monitoring myself in social interactions to give the ‘correct’ responses. I constantly worry about whether I am saying the right thing, how I come across, whether I will be rejected, etc. I know there is a lot of overlap between the two conditions and I was wondering if anyone had any advice or suggestions or had a similar experience? TIA :)