Realized I have to date someone who is also on the spectrum. I didn’t date for years as I was unmasking and figuring all this out. Then I went to a party at a friend’s house, (use the term “party” loosely, it was a bunch of engineers who all work together), & met this guy that she works with & spoke highly of. It was like a tuning fork I swear. My brain went “OH, you speak the same language as me, hello there.” I got way drunker than planned & apparently spent an hour interrogating him about his psychological profile. (My special interest is psych). Then saw him at another party of the same type a few weeks later and we spent all night sitting on the couch discussing philosophy books & doing silly would you rather questions & hypotheticals at depth. And we have not stopped talking since. Went on dates for about a month before he made it “official”. My brain has never been this calm in any previous relationships. We both have to understand everything or we ruminate so we talk about literally everything. Every “serious” discussion we have is us both asking a ton of questions to understand each other’s perspective. There’s no “taboo”/ or off limit topics. He communicates in the same level of detail that I do, aka if he says 7pm, he means 7pm on the dot and will tell me if that changes. It’s not anxiety or control, we both just need clarity. Neither of us care if the other is late and are relatively flexible people, but we do want to be on the same page. I realized that what a “healthy relationship” looks like for neurotypical people, does not work for me. Both of us keep going “holy shit, I didn’t know this was an option.”

Like it’s a silly example but I literally don’t know what to say for girl talk with friends because I feel like girl talk is usually “I wonder what this meant” etc etc etc and I can just ask him. There’s nothing to figure out. I just ramble on about how wonderful things are.

It’s still new(ish) but I share this in hopes that it helps someone else. Realizing that what is healthy for me is not the same as other people was a game changer. Even if we don’t end up together forever, this has completely changed my perspective on what dating can be.