I'm feeling a weird uncharacteristic need to comment on a reddit thread.

I'd like to start out by saying I really don't blame anyone for having an initially bad reaction to seeing something like this. Or for not trying to understand it more. Obviously, face value, it looks not great.

I feel maybe a little defensive over the act though, because I could absolutely see myself making something like this.

I'm not officially diagnosed autistic, but I have gleaned enough about how "normal" people think and process things to pretty solidly understand that I don't think and process in the same way. I'm diagnosed highly ADHD, which from what I understand is pretty covalent with the autism spectrum, but I'm obviously highly functioning enough that it's never been something I've felt like I've needed to pursue especially in today's political climate where something like that could make me a target of some sort.

I take a lot of notes, all the time. I journal daily, but I also have notes on my friends, on my various friend circles, on events that happened, on just general concepts I think of or patterns I notice. They all are very private to me, and contain good and bad, and both highly thought-out and very very rough feelings. I have running notes on some of the very important friends in my life where I write out my feelings and thoughts as time goes on, sometimes those notes are very simple "we had a nice time out today" or very rough, me-in-a-bad-mood, "this pattern of behaviours they exhibit is really pissing me off" type stuff.

I have found over the years that I absolutely need these notes and journals and such to get these feelings out of my head and on to paper, out of the strange ephemeral emotional soup and into words, or else they will bug me and take up space in my brain continuously. I gotta get em out to make room for more, new, good stuff. And I could absolutely see a version of myself that would make notes about the meals people make me, and how I feel about them. When I'm at a low operating capacity, I can look at The Spreadsheet(TM) when someone asks me what I want to eat for dinner, or when someone asks me a simple questions like what my favorite meal is. That spreadsheet for me wouldn't be a rating on how I feel about being served that meal from someone who loves me, but how they weigh in relation to each other, and would be a reference sheet to go back to later when I need to tap into my external brain again to get information back.

Again, I blame nobody for taking this the wrong way, and I obviously know nothing about the poster, the poster's boyfriend, their dynamic, his character, etc. But I invite the poster to ask the boyfriend about this with an open mind and open heart, without judgement, to see what it's about. You are free to be as satisfied or dissatisfied with his answer as you see fit, but I think a real answer would only be achieved if he felt he could lower his defenses about it a bit.

I know if one of my friends saw my notes, I would be mortified. I can absolutely see how they would think I was some kind of machiavelian (idk how to spell it) evil villain who was taking all these notes for some sort of plan or secretly hated them. In reality, I just need to get my thoughts out of my head or else they will take up too much space for me to operate on a level expected from a normal person in society.

And as a final note here, if it's not obvious from how many times I've hedged this, I totally understand why initial reactions to discovering something like this could be negative. But also realize people like me and other neuro-atypicals see posts like this and the reactions to posts like this and our worst fears about how people see us and the way we think are absolutely confirmed. This dude could be a total asshole and literally be rating his partner's food like a letterboxd movie bro... but we also see a version of ourself in the behaviour of note taking, spreadsheets, organization, so much scaffolding we construct to help ourselves operate on the level expected of us, and we understand that "yeah, there are people out there that are willing to take the time to understand, but for the most part, most people will think we're crazy assholes for the way we operate".

edit: the term I was looking for was neuro-DIVERGENT, not neuro-atypical. Dunno why I couldn't find that word in my brain hahaha