[93/366] being loved by someone autistic
Apr. 2nd, 2020 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistThis morning, miss_s_b told me "I remember you having written a blog post about what it feels like to be loved by an autistic person." She asked how to find it. I said that was a good question and I didn't know what tag to suggest but I'd try to find it myself. I couldn't (but I did tidy up some old tags and add a couple new ones in the process!).
This year my journal will be old enough to vote, so it might have easily gotten lost (it's not all tagged anyway; tags didn't used to be a thing and I went back and added a lot but I didn't get to everything). Or, I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't just something Jennie heard me talk about in person, or maybe on Twitter back when that was a thing I did...
It's been bugging me all day.
And, since I promised myself I'd blog every day and since it's Autism Awareness Day, I might as well write it now.
I have two autistic partners, and at least one autistic ex. And while everyone's different, I have noticed some patterns in what it's like being loved by an autistic person.
The only at-all-relevant thing I found in my search of old blog entries this morning was this one. It doesn't mention autism, but I think Andrew's autism contributes to this laser-like intensity and focus of his love for me.
Being loved by an autistic person seems like an honor. I've learne that the world feels very hostile to them, with good reason, and they've learned to hide a lot of themselves. "Someone you can be yourself around" is good generic advice in what to look for in a romantic relationship anyway, but it takes on new meaning when "yourself" is something you've been shamed or criticized for. Epecially since both of my autistic partners were well into adulthood before even considering they could be autistic and the previous explanations for their bevhavior that were conjured up by the people around them were much more hostile: "you're not paying attention," "you don't care," "you're not trying," "you're lazy," "you're weird"...and worse. These became ingrained and are still doing their damage, which is heartbreaking to watch. Being loved by someone autistic means getting used to reassuring them that such things aren't true.
There's a lot of trust involved generally. I feel like a mediator between the neurotypical world and the autistic people who love me. Autism can leave people lacking in confidence about their ability to reliably interpret social signals, so another kind of reassurance I find myself doing is "they don't hate you," "you haven't fucked everything up in this social situation," "it's okay that this doesn't make sense to you; it doesn't make any sense to us either, we're just used to doing things this way." I swear sometimes I can see Andrew visibly struggling with some baffling aspect of neurotypical society that I've tried to explain to him. I taketthe trust seriously: I'm careful with my words, and I don't say anything that I don't mean in these situations. I'm careful not to present myself as the expert on all things neurotypical, and remind them I can only give my opinions and my personal understanding.
Another thing I've learned from the autistic people who love me is how important telling the truth is. As Stuart is fond of saying, honesty doesn't have to be brutal, and people who pride themselves on "just being brutally honest" are usually savoring the brutality rather than the honesty. Stuart used to laugh at me telling Andrew to shut up in group conversations, and Andrew cheerfully going "Okay!" I'm not trying to be mean, and he isn't feeling criticized. He worries a lot about being overbearing, boring people, monopolizing conversations, that kind of thing, and he often looks to me when we're with people to make that judgment call because he doesn't feel confident to do it himself. Most of hte time, I tell him it's fine, you're fine, no one's bored and resentful. But that only works to reassure him (inasmuch as anything works) because I will also tell him when I've had enough. I think it makes it easier to believe me saying he's fine when he can trust I'm not just saying that out of politeness, because he knows I'd tell him to be quiet if that's what I was thinking. I think Stuart finds compliments from me a little disarming, because he's used to weaponized niceness and, as I keep reminding him, I am just saying what I think about him and I won't say anything I don't think is true. He says he knows, so that's good.
This can be taken to great lengths, and be used to really fine-tune conversations. It was with Andrew that I learned to say "I don't want you to fix my problems, I just want you to be nice to me" and things. He has been known to walk into a room where I am and announce "I'm sad and I need a hug." I grew up in a very Guess Culture, where if you were sad you had to ask someone how they were doing and hoped that they asked you in return (which was not certain) and that they actually wanted to know the answer (which was not likely). Being able to ask for the kind of interaction I want to have gave me the necessity and some of the tools to find out what exactly I did want, which I'd never thought possible before. I've gotten so good at, and so used to, this straightforward kind of communication that it's sometimes hard to go back to the ballet of indirectness, to not having what I say taken at face value. I swear I'm getting worse at communicating with my family, and it's frustrating when I want to tell them I've found a better way.
I'm sure it's not true of all autistic folk, but Andrew and Stuart both have extremely highly developed senses of right and wrong, of justice on a grand scale, and they absolutely cannot set that aside for one second. They both are deeply, personally affected by national and international political developments, which you can imagine has been to the detriment of both their mental health in the last few years. They don't care only about people close to them or similar to them, as a lot of us do because we've put up mental boundaries to keep us safe. Autism isn't a lack of empathy -- in cases like these two, it's an excess, a firehose of empathy they can't turn off even when it's rendered them non-functional. They can't stop caring about people, and they aren't necessarily limited by how well they know those people or how many characteristics they have in common with them, as most of us (i.e. neurotypicals) tend to do. It's like they're staring into the sun, and you're prety sure that's not good for a person but you can just stand nearby, not look at the sun, google remedies for people who have, and remind yourself that people get to make their own choices.
Being loved by an autistic person means really really believing that people really are different and that different choices are best for different people. We're all taught this as kids but I think most of us subconsciously limit it to "people are different heights, that's an okay way to be different," or something. When I watch people's reactions to Andrew telling them he's tired instead of just saying "fine" when they ask "how are you," or when he says that his best vacations are at home because if he liked somewhere else better he'd live there instead, I can tell that some diffrences are really too much for most people. Even me: after sixteen years I find myself applying neurotypical standards to him and worry he'll be upset if I don't get him a birthday gift or something.
There are so many things we assume we all share, but we don't, and we don't have to. I think this is one reason these two cis straight guys have a lot of queer friends (and, y'know, a partner who isn't even of their preferred gender these days): you get a long way just by not assuming everyone is the same. Plus I swear that they missed out on a lot of the more toxic masculinity just by being incompletely socialized at all; a lot of the worst cisheteronormative crap didn't make any more sense to them than other neurotypical traits they didn't understand or mimic. And the resultant childhood bullying and ostracism I know they both faced when this socialization didn't "take" is likely to have given them even more in common with the queer friends they would find much later in life.
Anyway, I could probably go on but this has gotten long enough as it is! Yes sometimes they do go on a lot about music or Doctor Who or airplanes or comics or whatever, but even at their most trainspotter-y stereotypical, they're enthusiastic and energized in a way that I've always found appealing. It's pretty good, really.
miss_s_b told me "I remember you having written a blog post about what it feels like to be loved by an autistic person." She asked how to find it. I said that was a good question and I didn't know what tag to suggest but I'd try to find it myself. I couldn't (but I did tidy up some old tags and add a couple new ones in the process!). This year my journal will be old enough to vote, so it might have easily gotten lost (it's not all tagged anyway; tags didn't used to be a thing and I went back and added a lot but I didn't get to everything). Or, I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't just something Jennie heard me talk about in person, or maybe on Twitter back when that was a thing I did...
It's been bugging me all day.
And, since I promised myself I'd blog every day and since it's Autism Awareness Day, I might as well write it now.
I have two autistic partners, and at least one autistic ex. And while everyone's different, I have noticed some patterns in what it's like being loved by an autistic person.
The only at-all-relevant thing I found in my search of old blog entries this morning was this one. It doesn't mention autism, but I think Andrew's autism contributes to this laser-like intensity and focus of his love for me.
Being loved by an autistic person seems like an honor. I've learne that the world feels very hostile to them, with good reason, and they've learned to hide a lot of themselves. "Someone you can be yourself around" is good generic advice in what to look for in a romantic relationship anyway, but it takes on new meaning when "yourself" is something you've been shamed or criticized for. Epecially since both of my autistic partners were well into adulthood before even considering they could be autistic and the previous explanations for their bevhavior that were conjured up by the people around them were much more hostile: "you're not paying attention," "you don't care," "you're not trying," "you're lazy," "you're weird"...and worse. These became ingrained and are still doing their damage, which is heartbreaking to watch. Being loved by someone autistic means getting used to reassuring them that such things aren't true.
There's a lot of trust involved generally. I feel like a mediator between the neurotypical world and the autistic people who love me. Autism can leave people lacking in confidence about their ability to reliably interpret social signals, so another kind of reassurance I find myself doing is "they don't hate you," "you haven't fucked everything up in this social situation," "it's okay that this doesn't make sense to you; it doesn't make any sense to us either, we're just used to doing things this way." I swear sometimes I can see Andrew visibly struggling with some baffling aspect of neurotypical society that I've tried to explain to him. I taketthe trust seriously: I'm careful with my words, and I don't say anything that I don't mean in these situations. I'm careful not to present myself as the expert on all things neurotypical, and remind them I can only give my opinions and my personal understanding.
Another thing I've learned from the autistic people who love me is how important telling the truth is. As Stuart is fond of saying, honesty doesn't have to be brutal, and people who pride themselves on "just being brutally honest" are usually savoring the brutality rather than the honesty. Stuart used to laugh at me telling Andrew to shut up in group conversations, and Andrew cheerfully going "Okay!" I'm not trying to be mean, and he isn't feeling criticized. He worries a lot about being overbearing, boring people, monopolizing conversations, that kind of thing, and he often looks to me when we're with people to make that judgment call because he doesn't feel confident to do it himself. Most of hte time, I tell him it's fine, you're fine, no one's bored and resentful. But that only works to reassure him (inasmuch as anything works) because I will also tell him when I've had enough. I think it makes it easier to believe me saying he's fine when he can trust I'm not just saying that out of politeness, because he knows I'd tell him to be quiet if that's what I was thinking. I think Stuart finds compliments from me a little disarming, because he's used to weaponized niceness and, as I keep reminding him, I am just saying what I think about him and I won't say anything I don't think is true. He says he knows, so that's good.
This can be taken to great lengths, and be used to really fine-tune conversations. It was with Andrew that I learned to say "I don't want you to fix my problems, I just want you to be nice to me" and things. He has been known to walk into a room where I am and announce "I'm sad and I need a hug." I grew up in a very Guess Culture, where if you were sad you had to ask someone how they were doing and hoped that they asked you in return (which was not certain) and that they actually wanted to know the answer (which was not likely). Being able to ask for the kind of interaction I want to have gave me the necessity and some of the tools to find out what exactly I did want, which I'd never thought possible before. I've gotten so good at, and so used to, this straightforward kind of communication that it's sometimes hard to go back to the ballet of indirectness, to not having what I say taken at face value. I swear I'm getting worse at communicating with my family, and it's frustrating when I want to tell them I've found a better way.
I'm sure it's not true of all autistic folk, but Andrew and Stuart both have extremely highly developed senses of right and wrong, of justice on a grand scale, and they absolutely cannot set that aside for one second. They both are deeply, personally affected by national and international political developments, which you can imagine has been to the detriment of both their mental health in the last few years. They don't care only about people close to them or similar to them, as a lot of us do because we've put up mental boundaries to keep us safe. Autism isn't a lack of empathy -- in cases like these two, it's an excess, a firehose of empathy they can't turn off even when it's rendered them non-functional. They can't stop caring about people, and they aren't necessarily limited by how well they know those people or how many characteristics they have in common with them, as most of us (i.e. neurotypicals) tend to do. It's like they're staring into the sun, and you're prety sure that's not good for a person but you can just stand nearby, not look at the sun, google remedies for people who have, and remind yourself that people get to make their own choices.
Being loved by an autistic person means really really believing that people really are different and that different choices are best for different people. We're all taught this as kids but I think most of us subconsciously limit it to "people are different heights, that's an okay way to be different," or something. When I watch people's reactions to Andrew telling them he's tired instead of just saying "fine" when they ask "how are you," or when he says that his best vacations are at home because if he liked somewhere else better he'd live there instead, I can tell that some diffrences are really too much for most people. Even me: after sixteen years I find myself applying neurotypical standards to him and worry he'll be upset if I don't get him a birthday gift or something.
There are so many things we assume we all share, but we don't, and we don't have to. I think this is one reason these two cis straight guys have a lot of queer friends (and, y'know, a partner who isn't even of their preferred gender these days): you get a long way just by not assuming everyone is the same. Plus I swear that they missed out on a lot of the more toxic masculinity just by being incompletely socialized at all; a lot of the worst cisheteronormative crap didn't make any more sense to them than other neurotypical traits they didn't understand or mimic. And the resultant childhood bullying and ostracism I know they both faced when this socialization didn't "take" is likely to have given them even more in common with the queer friends they would find much later in life.
Anyway, I could probably go on but this has gotten long enough as it is! Yes sometimes they do go on a lot about music or Doctor Who or airplanes or comics or whatever, but even at their most trainspotter-y stereotypical, they're enthusiastic and energized in a way that I've always found appealing. It's pretty good, really.