Dealing with Autism and Singleness · 2:25am Apr 9th, 2021
So, apparently, April is Autism Acceptance Month, and I felt led to share my experience with autism as it relates to a huge part of my life right now, my singleness. When I finally accepted that I had autism back in late 2019, some questions that came up pretty early in the process were “Was that why men weren’t finding me attractive back in college? Is that why no one seemed interested in pursuing me? Was I just too weird?” I had dreamed of marriage and having a family of my own since I was in high school. I had even wanted to adopt. I dare say that I even felt called to adopt. When I accepted my diagnosis, I couldn’t help but wonder what it meant for those dreams.
So, I’ve been living with my family through all this, and I’ve made it incredibly plain to them how important getting married and starting a family is to me. Unfortunately, as well-meaning as they are, my family didn’t seem to understand how precious that dream is to me and how frustrating this season of singleness is for me. They would tell me how I definitely wasn’t ready for marriage yet and that if and when I find someone is completely out of my hands. If that wasn’t frustrating enough, my autistic traits seem to inspire even more discouraging comments out of them. “You’re not going to be able to live with other people let alone a husband and kids if you keep staying this rigid.” “If you married and had kids now, you’ll either drive them crazy or they’ll drive you crazy.”
Further exacerbating my frustration was the fact that I had recently signed up for an Instagram account to support an artist friend of mine. Well, a bunch of my old friends from college found me on there, and I learned that many of them had married and had children since I last saw them, even the ones who were single the last time I saw them. Now, I don’t regret supporting my friend, and I’m happy that I was able to get in touch with my old college friends, but I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of my friends and their families. I felt like I was watching other people live out my dream while it was slowly dying in front of me.
As bad as watching other people live out my dream and doubting it will ever come true are, honestly, the most frustrating part about being a single, autistic person is the feeling that no one understands you, that no one sees you. You wonder if anyone else feels lonely whenever she goes to bed at night or if anyone else feels the fear of having another dream destroyed by autism or if anyone else just feels totally completely stuck in a seemingly hopeless situation. Thankfully, I was able to find something on YouTube that made me feel understood. Even though the person in this video is a neurotypical man, many of the emotions he described totally captured my situation. The loneliness. The intense desire for intimacy. The feeling something is wrong with you. The jealousy towards happily married people. The anger towards God for making you single (and autistic, in my case). The temptation to just give up and settle. Furthermore, the fact that his dream of marriage and a family finally came true for him after waiting so long gives me hope that maybe even with everything going on in my life trying to kill it, mine can come true as well.
Please feel free to comment below if anything I described sounds like something you are going through. Thank you for reading.
Aye, I know what I you're facing. I'm facing the same.
As fellow autistic person like myself I can see where your coming from. Growing up with autism is hard sometimes people don't think before they say something that will offend you. And evertime go to sleep I have trouble sleeping and sometime I think of why people teats us differently that we want to be normal like the rest but nobody is perfect no one. But their good things growing with autism your family and your trust it friends to understand you.
Hey there, I’m autistic as well, and I’ve felt similar things that you described; I felt like my life was going nowhere without having a proper job, staying with my parents because I am unfit to properly take care of myself, even jealousy over married friends. I knew two of my friends who had gotten pregnant, one after high school and one during high school, the latter if I recall correctly had to drop out to care for her baby. I wondered why my life had hit a complete roadblock, but then my parents and my best friend told me that everybody’s lives go at their own pace and that I can’t force my path forward when I want it to, so now I’m just living my life doing my best to help around the house, and I even started a polygamous relationship with a girl on this site. For now, I’m content where I am.
I hope this helped in some way.
I know exactly how that feels.
You’ve expressed very well how I’ve felt for so long! As a guy at 34, I suspect I might have some of that neurotypical-divergent autism, but was told that I couldn’t be fully diagnosed. It’s okay though, because God has been using that to teach me and mold me, and it’s all for His glory. Nearly 12 years in the desert and finally coming out of that