u/babypossumsinabasket

Let’s say you really like LIKE a guy but his previous relationship status doesn’t seem sufficiently resolved. Like, he says it is but little things don’t match.

Let’s further say that you have never experienced a real long-term relationship so you actually have no clue about any of the rules, and you aren’t sure if you are being paranoid or not because your “gut instinct” is heavily compromised by dating-related trauma. I’m using the term “trauma” here accurately. I’ve experienced awful things while out here trying to find my soulmate.

I guess what I want to know is have any of you successfully navigated a similar situation?

I need advice and I specifically want advice from other girls on the spectrum because if I ask NT women I know the responses are going to assume I have some inherent ability that I don’t have and I’m too tired to defend myself.

Can anybody help?

Thank you if you read all of this.

I’m going to assume that my social clinginess is borne from a lifetime of scarcity, because I remember experiencing this as a child too except it was with friends. If I managed to make a friend I’d want to do everything that I read best friends do together until the point that I’d become annoying and this would be communicated to me. As an adult I am much better at suppressing friend clinginess but it’s still a real problem with romance. If I fall I fall very, very hard, and it seems like it’s usually to a disproportionate degree. I have tried requesting to take it slow but that doesn’t seem to change my underlying emotions. I still want to latch on to him like one of those birds that rides around on rhinoceroses. This sounds funny and light and cute but I am 37 so I don’t believe that it actually is. Is this relatable to anyone else?

I have a therapist so I’m not looking for layperson therapy advice. I really just want to know if this impacts anyone else too.

I legit kinda feel like Gollum with the one ring except instead of a piece of jewelry it’s a man. And also I am not a cave-dwelling goblin in a loincloth. But the intensity of the attachment feels the same.

I’m going to be super vulnerable for a minute and admit that lately I have actually resorted to just typing in “I’m lonely” into the AI and see what suggestions for activities it gives me. Or support. I do not like this.

How are you all making friends? Dating? Does anyone in here actually have like a spouse or a bf/gf? We get those, right? This is a serious question.

Editing to clarify I’m actually talking the most about dating. I have friends and family. What I don’t have is an intimate partner it’s kind of eating at me.

I think I might be genuinely losing it. I have a formal PTSD diagnosis and I’m assuming this is related.

My memory is so bad and the disassociation is so bad I’m beginning to doubt my own judgement about things that I never doubted before.

How do you insulate yourself from this with minimal damage to your life? Any tips? I’m in therapy. I mean I need help on how to navigate reality when I straight up do not trust my own assessment of it. I feel constantly paranoid and on edge. This isn’t normal for me.

Please DM me. I have a formal accommodation request on file and a documented disability on file. My manager flat-out will not help me. I don’t know how to navigate this.

Please DM me if you have any experience navigating this. I’m good at my job. I’ve never had problems quite like this before. I’m having a hard time not finding it to be targeted and intentional.

Is there a ever going to be a point where you hit your stride and you’re genuinely loved for who you are, and you have a best friend you can text every day, and a boyfriend d who loves you, and everything feels like it isn’t tearing you down constantly with bullshit?

I am genuinely asking if this phase exists.

I can’t do this anymore. I keep saying that hoping someone takes it seriously and helps me make something change, and it doesn’t.

I can’t figure out if it’s like an over-correction to experiencing bullying in the real world so they take it out on their peer group, or if they’re really just kinda…

shitty people masquerading as tolerant and enlightened.

I feel like maybe it’s worth reminding yourself sometimes that people on the spectrum can still be real bitches too.

Literally the thing that would fix 95% of my problems IMMEDIATELY would be getting a second job to alleviate a lot of the financial pressure and I just literally cannot get it to happen. It’s insane. It’s actually insane what the employment landscape is like and it’s doubly insane how everybody acts like there’s something deeply wrong with me for being so constantly stressed about it. Like I’m ungrateful (what?) or in some way unhinged for wanting to pick up more work so I can live comfortably. Literally people act like I’m defective for articulating this desire and it’s like are you all actually okay?

Severe financial stress is a PRETTY neurotypical thing and we don’t all need to clutch our pearls and be concerned that people experiencing it are some freakshow monsters for crashing out about it. Not everything is a disorder. Some things are a PRETTY REASONABLE response to prolonged exposure to stress.

I’m also so sick of how the hiring landscape is basically an elaborate humiliation ritual. And I know some people are just refusing to participate in it but I am actually going out there and debasing myself because I actually want the work and it’s still not yielding any results. And when I crashout about it people either (1) act like it’s a disproportionate reaction (it’s not besties, it’s not), or (2) like I’m just failing to be grateful for what I have. I AM GRATEFUL.

JUST

HIRE

ME

PLEASE

AND

THANK

YOU.

It could be big, like being overtly lied to and cheated on, or small, like being passed over for a job or not invited to a party. Or perpetually misunderstood.

It’s a low-grade tension that feels like you very much want to cry and in fact could at any moment. You feel like you have lost something or someone dear to you but you haven’t. You don’t understand and can’t identify the feeling. But it is very unpleasant.

What would you call that?

Edit: yes I was formally diagnosed with alexithymia.

I’ve jokingly referred to myself as delulu but I don’t think I actually am, I just feel like I constantly hunt for the silver lining and get so hopeful about these little signs I think I see that portend good things to come, and then they don’t, and I get really crushed. Like, embarrassed, actually, because I feel like I sound like a child. I’m 37-years-old.

So many of my other behaviors that I would classify as socially abnormal or at odds with my age turned out to be a function of Asperger’s. I was curious if this is too.

I don’t even have the energy to talk about any of it. I’m just tired at my core. I’m trying really hard and it’s consistently not good enough, which isn’t like a “oh boo hoo I’m not good enough” thing, but actual unsolicited feedback.

I’m not a bad person. Obviously I’m flawed like everybody else but I’m not a fundamentally bad person and I’m so fucking tired of all of this.

I feel pretty hopeless lately. Like in a real way that permeates all the gratitude journaling and therapy and hopeful thinking I engage in. I’m experiencing some genuinely dark thoughts that are mostly situational and a reflection of my own inability to adequately care for myself.

I do not need to be told what to do. Again, do not tell me what to do. Please just share what you’re doing now and in what specific areas of your life it’s helping.

Does anyone else literally dread weeknights and weekends? Like, because you’re alone? For reference, I’m in my 30s and I’ve had this feeling since about middle school when activities stopped being orchestrated by parents and were more peer-initiated and spontaneous.

I’m joining activity groups and trying to make friends and stuff but the thing that still gets to me is how dead the “fun” hours feel and I noticed the dread I get surrounding them is kind of starting to creep into the non-dread hours. Like I said, I am slowly attempting to fix it with group activities, and I am determined to meet my husband this year (channeling Charlotte York lol), but I actually feel myself dreading the weekend and I’m wondering if you’ve ever experienced that and if it goes away? I start to get anxious around like Thursday afternoon and it makes it pretty impossible to be productive on Friday because I’m so stressed about what I’m going to do to avoid The Solitude. If you went through this, did it go away when you had a big friend group or a boyfriend?

Is this just a me thing or have you experienced it too?

Also, I’m comfortable with my own company, I have a bunch of solo hobbies and stuff like that, and I enjoy engaging with them, that’s not my issue.

I feel like a bad person for feeling this way, but I’m tired of being the keeper of everybody’s difficulties and then in the end I’m STILL just sitting there alone at the end of the day. I absolutely loathe self-pity but I feel little bit like an outside dog sometimes. Like I’m just staring through the window at other people having…stuff. Interactions. Relationships. Things like that.

I genuinely feel like I have a lot of love and enthusiasm and compassion to bring to the table but I can’t figure out how to GET to the table. I have an OT, I actively strategize, I’m not blaming others for my shortcomings.

I’m just lonely. That’s all.

I always assumed if the dream meant anything then it would “come true” without my hand in it.

What’s your experience?

And I hope at the end of it when you’re unwinding that you feel loved and safe.

I went my entire 30+ years on this planet without ever hearing that, in fact quite the opposite, and now I’ve heard it twice in the past month from two different people.

I’m so burned out I’ve lost the confidence I used to have in my intellectual capabilities and I frankly do not even want to get out of bed.

Sort of had a hard week and I don’t have anybody to talk to.

I don’t mean in your brain. I’m not asking how long you spend thinking about it. I’m asking for how long do you feel the body response that the dream produced? If it was a happy dream that made your chest feel light, how long does that feeling last? If it was a bad dream, if you ended the dream “dead” and holding someone’s hand on the ground, how long do you feel their hand in yours for the rest of the day? Or whatever?

I’m asking you personally. I’m not asking for advice.