I really like this girl so I want to help her. In the beginning our relationship was pretty good but I saw signs of some social skills problems. I thought she was just a little socially immature but I chalked that up to other reasons and felt maybe she could improve.
As she got more comfortable with me she actually got significantly worse. I thought she just was naturally not liking me and we weren't compatible but I soon realized she literally hit nearly all the symptoms of autism and not a little, to the max. I would bet my life on her being autistic so I'm not looking for anyone to cast doubt on my diagnosis. She's just good at hiding it as best she can and frankly, I had no prior experience with autism so I wasn't really trained to catch the signs. I don't think her parents are aware either (for various reasons) and she can't keep friends long enough for them to truly understand. I might be the only one with enough perspective to diagnose it. I asked her if she would be willing to go to a psychologist to help with her anxiety issues but she refused because she's scared of them.
Any advice on how to bring this up to her? I'm thinking maybe just tell the mom but I'm not sure the mom will believe me or do anything about it. The dad would be worse.
I was about to just call it quits on our relationship because it's def not working but I do think if she accepts she has autism and works with me it could potentially work. She's given 0 indication she thinks she has autism and she works in social work with disabled people and had training on autism so I suspect she's potentially in denial or scared of accepting it.
Looking for some advice.
Of all the potentially autistic women I know of, literally none of them have been resistant to self-diagnosing. They fricking love taking those dubious little "are you autistic?" questionnaires at least. There's also a whole genre of women who like to describe how autism in women presents differently and when they find those they've all been relieved to finally see themselves described more accurately than the diagnostics for male autists. Unfortunately they're also skew very heavily towards a delusional "women affected most" mindset, so it's also very likely to ruin a perfectly good woman with man hating if you stay hands off, because autists are also stupidly impressionable when they finally feel seen, especially the female ones.
Also, living with an autistic person is a different experience, be prepared for a lot of weird demands about food and complaints about regular moving around the house noises, if you ever reach that point.
I will also say, if you're thinking very long term, autistic women are not great mothers. The sensory sensitivity makes them terrible at handling the chaos of kids having fun, and since kids learn a lot of social skills be mimesis, you'll have to work extra hard to counteract them copying all the social faux pas and lack of eye contact from the mom. And they just don't seem to connect as well with the kids, probably the lack of eye contact again and not being able to read their body language when their communication skills are still developing. So they will probably let you down and not pull their weight in that aspect of life.
There you go.
Lol, well yes, that too. Just keeping things specific for the autists out there. 😜