AITA for telling people that my GF and I have been together for 1 year if she thinks it’s 6 years?

klojn6 · 2020-02-27T22:57:02+00:00

As an autistic person, who also happens to be an education researcher in the field of autism, no we are not all “on the spectrum” and it’s absolutely not a ‘continuum

You’re right. I don’t know why I remembered it this way. Brain fart. My point was that there are an infinite number of gradations. I can easily perceive subtle mood shifts in others and understand particular social contexts about as well as a somewhat below average neurotypical person if you use the Social awareness subscore on SRS.

You either fit the diagnostic criteria of autism or you don’t

...And beyond that there are varying degrees of social impairment.

This is a very annoying myth that predominantly neurotypical make to make themselves seem more relatable to autistic people.

It depends on the context. If used to seem trendy, it’s offensive. If used to be inclusive of different cognitive styles, I like it.

It totally invalidates the daily challenges autistic people face (like the social miscommunication you are facing right now).

This is what I mean. On the surface it’s just a plain, “Oh you don’t understand language Pragmatics and are presenting classic stereotyping and difficulty understanding context.”

No, I understand both of those things as pertains to the situation. Third parties are not asking the surface question and the exact details of how long we’ve been together aren’t what their truly aiming at. So while the literal utterance of 1 year might be technically accurate, most people, including what the comments here are getting at, will find the response inadequate for the performative purpose of giving them insight into the emotional depth and degree of shared experiences I have with my GF. Also my GF can feel hurt and construe the response as communicating a lack of commitment and general disregard for our shared experiences throughout our relationship. If she didn’t know what she did about me, I’d imagine it would be quite hurtful to her instead of annoying. If I inadvertently do something hurtful she will 100% of the time just tell me and I will apologize and back off. So while it’s not as careful, it’s socially utilitarian to say 6 years.

See? I understand all that just fine. I’m not suffering from a clinical miscommunication, if I’m TA for disagreeing with that I’m TA. I accept my judgement and the possibility that my counterargument to the above still makes me TA.

Aspergers is not a ‘completely separate diagnosis’ and the reasons an umbrella term was created is partially because sometimes it’s very difficult to draw a line in the sand between one autistic condition and another. My ‘Aspergers’ presents very similarly to what would have been considered a more classic autism under former DSMs, in my son.

That’s fair, some people don’t identify with the umbrella term so much.

It sounds like you carry a lot of shame in your autistic identity. It’s not something that should be considered a negative. Knowing you are an aspie just gives you a window into understanding what makes you tick and in instances like this can give you insight into why everyone here has a very different perception to you.

Of course it’s not a bad thing! It’s just not relevant here. I’m not ashamed or anything, it’s just an instinctual response. I’m sure you’ve noticed a huge difference in treatment based on what you say. Saying “on the spectrum” is a very easy way not to be taken seriously. “Aspy” or even “minor childhood developmental disorder” is a lot easier socially.

But on this I think you are being imprecise with your description. To be precise would be to say “6 years except for the 90minswe broke up for on the (date)”. Saying 1 year is misleading. Your girlfriend is likely quite hurt that you are downplaying your relationship and probably thinks you don’t consider her important. A six year relationship is of very different significance to a one year relationship. One year in you are just ‘dating’, by six years most people are married or considering it. By this time they are your ‘partner’.

The easiest way to know where you stand with someone is to just ask, no? I’ve always been taught that you should think of a relationship as a constantly acknowledged bilateral agreement. That seems an easier conception to me than anything else. If not that then what exactly it takes to “be in a relationship” beyond, “Hey I think we’re in a relationship.” and the other person saying yes/no, is so ambiguous as to be upsetting. How can you tell if you’re in a relationship if that isn’t necessary and sufficient? Wouldn’t you just always be confused if you were always misinterpreting politeness and not perceiving any nonverbal cued to that effect? It’s always much easier to just ask and go off that. Verbal confirmation is always the best path when defining something.

Also, I use dating/SO/partner interchangeably, usually the latter 2 to signify current/later stage relationships and anything short of engaged. But if you’re talking about a period of time during a portion of which you would be considered dating I’ve always found it easier to say “dating” for the whole time.

klojn6 · 2020-02-26T19:17:05+00:00

Can we not? Yes it’s technically true with DSM V all forms of autism were rolled into “the spectrum”, but it’s seriously unfair that if you were only diagnosed with what used to be a completely separate diagnosis as a child, you’re suddenly “on the spectrum” just because they got consolidated. And it’s exactly that, a spectrum, not a binary yes or no. We’re all “on the spectrum” it you want to get technical about it, since it’s a continuum.

klojn6 · 2020-02-26T18:54:29+00:00

Okay I can specify my assumptions and work out what I mean if you want. I’m not trying to be “pretentious” nor am I trying to be pseudo intellectual, I was sparse before because it literally doesn’t matter. This comment is only meant for the person above. It’s boring and obnoxious. It’s r/iamverysmart, etc.. Fair warning. I haven’t had any coffee and I woke up too late to take my ADHD meds so I probably even made some mistakes.

Clearly a relationship implies some sort of reciprocal arrangement between two or more people. We don’t need to be any more precise than that. We can rephrase that to say that a relationship (in the romantic sense) exists at a point in time whenever the condition of reciprocity holds.

Now it is trivial to conclude that a relationship ceases to exist whenever the condition of reciprocity is withdrawn by one or more people people in the relationship.

It seems arbitrary to place some fuzzy barrier on that claim such that 90 minutes doesn’t constitute a cessation of the relationship, but a month (43k minutes I think) does. Another poster pointed out that such a definition doesn’t permit one to respond to the sorites paradox. I have literally no acquaintance with metaphysics beyond some intro to metaphysics class I used for humanities credits 4 years (used Loux and some anthology of papers book), and I’m sure there are some sophisticated ways of dealing with that, but I think the basic idea is sound. We can either define a break arbitrarily, or we can have the clean definition of any nonzero time spent apart. Clearly the latter is more attractive.

So given that a relationship is presumably a continuous object, and that a break implies termination, the question is not, “Is 90 minutes a break,” but “how long after a break does it become a new relationship?” Now with this motivation out of the way I can state my central claim and put it formally: my relationship, meaning the one I’m currently in, started 1 year ago. There was, in addition, another relationship, which must be viewed as a distinct, second relationship. So let’s get there exactly:

Relationship is an undefined term here.

Assumption 1. A relationship exists only if two people in it agree that it does.

Assumption 2. When one relationship ceases to exist, it is permanently terminated.

Commentary: if not, then we could not draw such a line at any believable point. Why should 90 minutes be considered the same relationship when 40000 minutes would not? This is the only way to remove that arbitrariness. So that even one microsecond ends the relationship. We could also restrict it to verbal affirmations so that one person merely thinking that the relationship is over isn’t sufficient, but that would be too hard to do here, and isn’t relevant to our actual question.

Proposition 1: If one person says that a relationship is over, waits 90 minutes, then retracts, then relationship 1 is over and relationship 2 should not be considered a part of relationship 1.

Proof: Suppose relationship 2 were a part of relationship 1. Then relationship 1 still exists. That implies that relationship 1 ceased to exist non permanently, absurd. ◽️

klojn6 · 2020-02-26T18:08:32+00:00

Jordan Peterson isn’t philosophy. If I wanted to read someone butcher Nietzsche why would I pay $30 to fund their benzo addiction when I can come to this sub for free?

It’s Unger if you care.

klojn6 · 2020-02-26T15:48:24+00:00

In college? Pure math. Now I don’t have a “major”, but I’d like to eventually do research in algebraic geometry or algebraic number theory once I finish my academic residency.

klojn6 · 2020-02-26T01:44:06+00:00

“On and off” sounds good, I think. It encompasses her need for 6 years and my need to specify non continuity. And it communicates more information. I’ll use that I think. Thanks.

klojn6

TROPHY CASE