r/AutisticBurnout

I'm an extreme perfectionist and optimizer. Starting from when I was a toddler and would already get very angry if I didnt manage to do something or make something work exactly as how I wanted it to.

I overthink and overoptimize everything that I encounter in my life. A comparison: a normal person rides their bicycle by just pushing the pedals forward hard. I ride my bicycle by applying physics:

• Air resistance squares with speed
• Kinetic energy squares with speed
• Rolling resistance is roughly linear with weight
• Gear ratios, friction losses as a percentage of the power applied
• Acceleration curves

And then with all those theoretical things, I do a second round of effort: reasoning with it to draw applicable conclusions.

• How fast should I cycle to find the balance between saving time and saving energy?
• How do I reduce rolling resistance even though I'm already at 99% of the maximum possible efficiency?
• Which route is the most efficient given variables abcde

And to be honest, all that thinking is so exhausting. I literally cannot stop it. And even on the bike in the moment itself I think about this stuff.

The bike is only one example among many.

Give me one random thing in life that is super simple and braindead and I will make deep science of it!!!

I know that to an extent it is good to properly understand things in life but I overdo it so much that I'm constantly running on exhaustion.

I’ve been in pretty severe autistic burnout for a while, and lately I’ve started wondering if my relationship is actually making it harder for me to recover and looking for some honest thoughts from ppl who are also going through life as AuDHD.

I’ve been with my partner for about two years. I also moved somewhere new without really knowing anyone here, and the move happened while I was already struggling badly with burnout.
For a lot of this time, I barely had the capacity to build anything on my own.

Meeting new people independently, going somewhere alone and repeatedly showing up, maintaining new friendships, texting people, making plans, dealing with groups — all of that required energy I just didn’t have. Sometimes keeping up with work and basic life was already more than I could manage.

Being next to my partner was basically the only way I could still have some kind of social life.
They already had the energy to go places, make plans, meet people, and maintain relationships. I could tag along when I had enough capacity. So over time I ended up knowing quite a few people through them.
But I wouldn’t actually call any of those people my friends.
They’re acquaintances. I’ve hung out with some of them many times. They know me and I know them. But at the end of the day, they’re my partner’s friends.
And I think that’s part of why I feel so trapped now.

Burnout made it incredibly difficult for me to build a life independently, so I survived socially by staying close to my partner and existing inside their social world.

But existing inside someone’s social world isn’t the same thing as having one of your own.

There’s a pattern whenever I’m with my partner and their friends. My partner gets absorbed in them very easily. They talk, joke around, tell stories, move between people, and seem completely at home. The relationships naturally revolve around my partner because that’s who these people are actually friends with.
And I slowly disappear.

It used to hurt because I wanted my partner to notice me more or help me feel included. I wondered why I couldn’t connect with everyone the way they could. I tried harder to join conversations, react to jokes, ask questions, seem interested, and generally be pleasant and social.

I spent a lot of time thinking this was something I needed to fix in myself.
Maybe I was jealous. Maybe I was socially anxious. Maybe I needed to get better at group conversations. Maybe my partner needed to include me more. Maybe when I recovered from burnout I’d finally relax and enjoy being around their friends.

But lately I’ve almost stopped trying.
And what’s weird is that I’m realizing I don’t even particularly want to be included anymore.
When my partner gets absorbed in their friends now, I don’t sit there wishing they’d bring me into the conversation. More and more I think, fine. Go talk to them. Have fun with them. I don’t want to do this.

I’ve started feeling resentful toward the whole thing. Sometimes even toward their friends, although I know most of them haven’t done anything to me.

I’m exhausted from living around a social world where everything feels like my partner, my partner’s friends, my partner’s plans, my partner’s connections, my partner being the person everyone actually knows and wants to see.
I feel like a satellite.

And after two years, I don’t think these people have somehow become “our friends.” They’re still their friends. I’m still someone who comes along.
I also don’t know what I realistically could have done differently.

I didn’t have the capacity to build a whole separate community while barely functioning through burnout. Sometimes I feel ashamed that I don’t have my own people here, but I remember how little energy I’ve actually had. A lot of the time the choices felt like going somewhere with my partner or staying home alone because I couldn’t make myself do anything else.
So I stayed close to them.

And that probably protected me from much worse isolation for a long time.

But now I’m realizing how dependent I’ve become on one person and one person’s social world.
And right now my social capacity is almost nonexistent anyway. I don’t really want to talk to anyone.
If someone talks to me about work or something I’m genuinely interested in, I can sometimes engage for a little while. But small talk feels almost physically impossible. I have nothing to say. I can’t think of questions. I can’t perform interest. Someone can be perfectly nice to me and all I can think about is wanting the interaction to end.

So when I think about somehow going out and building my own community right now, I genuinely don’t know how I’m supposed to do that. I can barely socialize.
I’ve also been trying to mask less around my partner. I’m not forcing myself to laugh as much. I’m not automatically producing enthusiastic responses. If I’m exhausted, I let myself be quiet. If I don’t want physical contact, I’m trying to actually say that instead of tolerating it.
This has been causing problems between us.
My partner experiences the change as withdrawal. I can understand why. Sometimes I’m affectionate and engaged, and then later I’m almost completely silent and don’t want to talk or be touched.
But from inside my own head, I feel like I’ve spent years overriding myself.
Respond to that. Laugh. Ask a question. Don’t look annoyed. They’re excited, act excited. Your partner wants attention, respond. Everyone else is talking, say something. You’re being awkward. Fix it.

I don’t have the energy to do that anymore.
And underneath all of this I’m finding something that scares me:
I really, really want to be alone.
Not just for an evening.
I keep thinking about what it would feel like to have my own life again. Waking up and deciding what my day looks like. Working. Following my own interests. Going somewhere alone. Talking to someone because I find them interesting. Going home when I’m tired. Eventually, if I ever have the capacity again, making connections that are actually mine.
Honestly, right now I mostly don’t want people at all.

I want quiet. I want to work and recover. Small talk feels impossible. Making new friends sounds exhausting.
But somehow being alone still feels more like myself than constantly being around my partner’s social life.
When I imagine getting several days completely to myself, I feel relieved. I feel happy.
When I imagine going back to our normal life together, I feel heavy.
And lately I keep wanting to break up. Really badly sometimes.
Then I get scared because I don’t know what my life would look like afterward.

I’ve been with this person for two years. I’m living somewhere that still doesn’t fully feel like home. I’m badly burned out. My partner has been one of the only people I’ve consistently been able to stay connected to through all of this.
If I leave, it’s not like I have my own close group waiting for me.

I know people. But I don’t really have my own people here.

And that’s such a weird thing to realize because I’m scared of being isolated if we break up, but I already feel isolated now. I technically know people. I go places sometimes. I’m around people. But it feels like my partner has a community and I’ve been surviving by standing inside it.

I still love my partner. They’ve also genuinely helped me get through a period when I could barely manage things on my own. That’s part of why this is so hard.

But I don’t know if I want to be in this relationship anymore.

I can’t tell if I’m so burned out that any close relationship would feel suffocating right now, or if burnout has just taken away whatever energy I used to have to make this relationship and social life work.

Has anyone been through something similar?
Did you reach a point in burnout where you couldn’t do small talk anymore and basically wanted everyone to leave you alone, including your partner?

Did you start resenting your partner’s friends or their whole social world even though the individual people hadn’t necessarily done anything wrong?

Did you ever go from desperately wanting your partner to include you more to suddenly thinking, “Actually, I don’t even want to be included in this anymore”?

And if your partner was basically the only person you could manage to stay connected to during burnout, what happened as you recovered?

I’m especially wondering about the relationship part. I don’t know what to make of loving someone, being terrified of losing them, wanting to leave them, and feeling so much relief and happiness when I imagine being on my own.