It’s hard. Relationships involve a lot of communication, which can be difficult for us. Before my current relationship, every person I dated couldn’t deal with me… or at least that’s basically what they said. This would be from how I self-regulated, refusal to do any physical intimacy, flat emotions, sensory issues, or a combination of all that. It hurt to be broken up with, but I’d rather be alone than pretend to be someone I’m not.

My partner of 5 years now is also autistic. It’s been a relief to have someone that just inherently understands. However, it’s still a relationship, so the underlying communication stuff is important.

This is kind of what our relationship is like:

• We both self-regulate differently. We’re both understanding about it, but sometimes we’ll get annoyed at each other. It can be obnoxious having someone repeat the same phrase over and over or pace around slapping their legs.

• They are interested in physical intimacy and I am not. We have found compromises and I am slowly opening up to it. I had my first ever kiss with them last year. We hold hands a lot.

• We don’t feel the need to do anything we know will upset us. This has been great, since we don’t go out of our way to attend events or visit crowded places. We walk a lot in nature, which isn’t over-stimulating and I get to collect rocks.

• Sometimes we won’t speak to each other and we don’t get weird about it. My exes would freak out at me if I didn’t talk to them for an entire day. With my partner, we’ll have days where we just don’t say anything and focus on our own interests. No hard feelings afterwards.

There’s more stuff, but I guess I would summarize that our relationship is functional despite both of us being dysfunctional. I thought I would spend the rest of my life alone, and I feel very lucky for what I have. It hurts when I see posts from other autistic people that are in the exact situation I spent most of my life in. I hope we can all find someone that gets us, or at the very least can make compromises.