Personal Relationships

I had been thinking that I was getting good at working out what was going on in social situations. That I had mastered what I needed to, or got as good at it as I thought I would or needed to. Then I had a recent experience that made me realise I hadn’t at all. All I had learnt (and the results are still inconsistent), was to recognise some of the games people play and to analysis peoples behaviour using theories I have gained by reading books on popular psychology.

I think this is because I’ve been focused on social situations as the main area were the autistic person’s lack of people skills becomes most obvious, assuming this is were they are most important. I haven’t really looked at the impact of autism on my close personal relationships.

In personal relationships I only manage by keeping people at a distance. So I have friends, but I don’t see them very often. There isn’t very much emotional investment. I think this is the big difference between social and personal relations. Personal relationships involve a greater emotional investment.

Emotions are difficult for me. It all started to go wrong when I reached puberty. Before then, I was just thought of as an odd, but bright child. Then puberty came along and I became an odd, but bright, unhappy teenager. Puberty is a difficult time, not just emotionally, but because we are maturing socially. Making friends is no longer as simple as running up to someone in the playground and asking them to play tag with you. Being autistic puts you at a disadvantage to your NT peers.

So puberty is difficult for two reasons. You are dealing with lots of new emotions and having to navigate an increasingly complicated social world. Being autistic and undiagnosed there was no way I was ever going to cope even reasonably well. This was a very difficult and dark time for me. I’m still amazed I held it together without doing something silly.

I have matured emotionally, to some extent since then, but in stressful situations I often feel as did when I was a teenager. I used to think this was my fault, that it was something I was doing that had meant I hadn’t grown up like other people. This was reinforced by my families treatment of me, e.g. not being given responsibilities, not being included in decision making, not being kept informed of events. (Although this did change for a brief period after my mother died).

The problem was also the lack of initiation on my part, which is autism related. So I am caught in a situation with no exits. I won’t be treated as I want unless I stop being autistic, which without a brain transplant isn’t going to happen.

I think the reason I’ve been focused on social situations rather than personal relationships is that the personal side of things often feels just to painful to be worth risking. This was an unconscious decision, but when I look at how I have led my life this is definitely what I have been doing.

I have also to some extent excluded emotions from my study of social situations and also from my own behaviour in social situations. The reason for this being that I don’t handle emotions very well, I often don’t know how I’m feeling and I’m also confused about how much emotion is appropriate.

I recently went to see a lawyer who wrote a letter of complain to my healthcare trust because my mental health team had refused to see me. When I read the letter she’d written there were several references to the emotional impact the situation was having on me. I thought this was a bit odd at the time. But I trust this woman was doing a good job and that this is how people do and should behave. I see now that this is something I need to bring back into my interactions with people. I think I have been focused more on the other person and understanding them than looking at myself and working on how I behave. Probably because this is harder to do.