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.
Autism or not, this right here is your problem. In my experience in relationships, if your woman doesn't humble herself and say, "I'll do whatever you want babe. Whatever you think is right.", then it's just going to go downhill over time. If she gets mad at you over not remembering something or a miscommunication, you need to make sure she understands that her expectations are unreasonable. Don't ever apologize for something that's not your fault. The communication problems that you brought up will probably be a lot easier to tolerate if you can just get her to admit that she's wrong or made a mistake.
Personally I'm skeptical that counseling in itself has real benefits, especially since autism has no known cure. Many psych professionals have a tendency to lean feminist too, so definitely do not let her talk to a therapist about relationship problems.
I think the definition and symptomology for autism has been expanded to an almost absurd level in the last decade or two.
And there's nothing even resembling a coherent and measurable definition or explanation of what's going on with the brain afaik.
Analysis is almost purely centered on observable behavior, with only a hodge podge of convoluted and inconsistent neural-physical evidence.
Not that I'm saying it doesn't exist. But I've seen time and time again people refer to just about every possible quirk or problem as autistic now. And I think it's pretty damned absurd.
Yep, pretty much every disorder that is diagnosed based on behavior suffers from the same problem. Except in severe cases, which are easily recognized in childhood, I think people would be better off if they just stopped trying to diagnose everything as a disorder.
Yeah, I'm well aware of this. I don't really think the relationship is going to work but I still care enough about her to want to help her if possible even if she can't be relationship material. The "being right about everything" is also a young person thing that tends to drop off a little with age as people start to realize it's bad for socializing and doesn't matter but an autistic person might never change in this way. Not sure.
My geriatric mother is still like this. She'll bring up shit I did as a teenager to "win" arguments.
If you think women will just age out of their solipsism, then you're going to have a bad time.
Autists do have a reputation for being very arrogant, but they don't have to be. She could change, but a meaningful change would probably require some emotional event, something that really slaps her in the face and makes her realize, "I need to change myself or else nobody will want to be around me."