Autism Has Affected All Of My Relationships

Having a disability that directly impacts my ability to socially engage with my species has been incredibly hard.

Learning I was autistic did not open up a world of long lost skills that would solve anything — it just made it painfully more obvious.

What’s extra complicated is that I don’t know if I would change it even if I could.

I recently received feedback that the reason I was having issues with yet another institution was because I didn’t know how to “fluff up” my words. I was baffled. I have used AI specifically to solve my autistic speech to avoid this, and I guess it quite literally is unavoidable no matter how I mask.

It’s true I could take training courses on how to fluff up my speech. But from the depth of my soul, I really don’t want to.

The idea of padding my words with meaningless fluff about how someone’s weekend went — when I just want us to see eye to eye — feels remarkably tedious. Not to mention I don’t care what their answer is, and I can’t hide my facial expressions or tone to save my life.

I could disclose that I’m autistic and hope for context or grace. Sadly, that rarely works, though it’s always on the table.

The reality is that autism affects my relationships. With institutions in particular, I’m often singled out for missing a social norm or being perceived negatively.

With personal relationships, I can be seen as cold or uncaring or uninterested (especially by non-autistics).

It’s hard to have a disability that’s perceived simply as being an a**hole.

Maybe what I’m doing really is the same action that an allistic a**hole does. My partner told me recently, “What you say does sound rude/mean/etc, but I've learned over the years that that’s not actually what you mean.” I guess my speech requires advanced interpretation or something.

Yikes.

But according to autistic norms, I feel like I’m a pretty considerate autistic person — if you know the context of how my brain works.