I think I am having trouble communicating with my boyfriend due to my autism
For context, I am autistic and my boyfriend isn't, but he does have ADHD. I also posted this story on r/relationship_advice but I figured it might be good to tell other autistic people about this. If this isn't the right sub for this or if you think it might be better somewhere else then please let me know!! I just feel really at a loss. I am not sure if I am just not understanding something or if this is just a weird situation outside of my autism. So here is the story:
This morning we were texting each other like normal. About work stuff, art, mentioning he was working tonight, just average things. Between texts I was scrolling on instagram and I noticed that my friend that I have known since the beginning of high school just got engaged to her boyfriend of a couple years. Which is great for her! They went hiking for the proposal, the ring was stunning, I am happy for her. So I texted my boyfriend saying that my friend just got engaged and how weird it was seeing other people's milestones in life. He has often said similar things while on social media before, but usually about career stuff and not relationships. He just acknowlegded what I said and told me they were probably on a different trajectory than I am. Which obviously is the case, as is the case for everyone. I told him that I was my friend's "fake boyfriend" in highschool as a joke, obviously me and her are both into men, this was just to get a random guy to leave her alone. His response was "Oh I see." I don't really know what that meant but I didn't think it was bad.
(My boyfriend and I met in our 20s so we don't really know a lot about each other's high school experience.)
I move on and say it really doesn't matter all that much and that I don't even really talk to anyone from high school anymore let alone use Instagram or Facebook often enough to see posts about people's lives. He asked me why I was telling him any of this. Which made me confused, I was just talking to talk. No real reason. I say random stuff to my boyfriend all the time. Yesterday I asked for his opinion on random tiktok drama because it involved a musician and he is a professional musican himself, so it isn't like we never talk about things outside of the basics. So I tell him that I was just sharing it to talk and that there wasn't a real reason and he said that it sounded like I "feel like I need to be engaged right now." Which to me was CRAZY because I absolutely do NOT need to be engaged right now. I don't think there is a specific engagement age or that I am late for some deadline. Plus I have only been with my boyfriend for about 6 months and we don't live together. He knows how I feel about people who get engaged after only a couple months, how it is crazy to me. We have talked about this before because I was telling him about how crazy it was that my cousin moved to another state with someone and now is engaged in less than 6 months. How wild it was to me that anyone would do something so quickly. He even talked to me about his friend's sister picking out baby names with her boyfriend after only a few weeks and we both agreed that was crazy. So I don't know what I said that made him think I was trying to hint at anything like that.
I start to get the feeling he is upset with me or about our conversation or maybe upset about something different all together? I really don't know. So I apologized which seemed to make things even worse. He told me I am not taking responsibilty for answering him/his texts and that don't seem to care and that I made him very uncomfortable. Which he didn't say anything about before so I honestly had no clue anything I said had even made him uncomfortable. He then told me he is leaving for work and we can talk later. I was confused and tried to just apologize but I don't really think I did anything wrong. I don't know what he was upset about or what made him uncomfortable? I don't know what I wasn't taking responsibility for? I do understand that my apology might not mean much if I don't understand what I am apologizing for. It was more of a panicked response to it clicking in my head that something had upset him and I obviously don't want him to be feeling bad or uncomfortable about anything. He gets off work in about an hour and honestly I don't know what to say to him. I don't really understand if what I said was really that bad or that uncomfortable.
It just feels so weird. I have struggled with our communication before due to my autistm so I am not sure if that is what is going on here or maybe something else? It feels awful not being able to tell if I am just bad at communicating...