Hello. My whole life I've been afraid of marriage and children. Turns out I'm autistic female. I struggle very hard to cook meals for myself, or care for myself when I'm sick, or learn how to do a job. Basically I'm learning disabled but I'm functioning enough. I just suck really really bad. The expectations of a woman to be a wife-
Cook good, clean good, organized budget, organize mental load, and just handle childcare I struggle too much and my mind shuts down. I hate it. I wish there was medicine that can fix my bandwidth to do everything and learn how to cook really good and everything. I'm very behind.
So here's the question, knowing this, would you be okay with a woman like this being your wife?
There is a man who has shown interest in me but I'm afraid of being such a failure of a wife or mother, that I can't let myself date him. I honestly feel like a child.
I'm an autistic man, and i find myself to be highly dysfunctional in society as it exist, even if i can socially mask to appear normal. I believe that for the vast majority of autistic people, we are made dysfunctional and functionally disabled in a society that works against our needs at every turn and imposes expectations on us that our brains can't easily conform to without being incredibly exhausting. The act of Socially Masking to conform to neurotypical communication patterns on a daily basis can easily cause an autistic person to become incredibly burnt out if not go into a full shut down, which can last for years.
It sounds like autistic shut downs is a major part of what you have experienced. You can't stand social expectations that are essentially impossible for you to conform to, and people constantly misunderstand you anyways, and so you give up.
Being an autistic woman, you also experience misogyny, such as toxic gender expectations that you also cannot conform to. so its a double whammy, you struggle with any form of socialization to begin with, and yet are expected to conform to patriarchal norms and neurotypical norms.I am a strong believer in abolishing gender roles, and not relegating anyone to any specific task. I think people should do what they like to do and that all relationships should be built on mutual respect and reasonable boundaries. Women and Men should be free to do what they want without being harassed for "not conforming" gender norms.
My view is that autism is not the problem, its oppressive social norms that force people to "Be" a certain way, regardless of their needs that is the problem. It's a society that primarily relegates human value relative to how much someone "contributes" to a corporate society that constantly reproduces the same marginalization, patriarchy, bigotries and exploitation.
I say that we need a society where everyone can exist with dignity by default, where all human needs are met, and people are accomodated for relative to their specific needs. All toxic social expectation should be abolished. When people are allowed to thrive independently of other peoples expectations, people can actually find out what their passions are, and to develop those, and find their own sense of purpose for themselves.
As far as what would be an ideal partner for me:
for me, i don't really care about how "functional" someone is relative to society, or to toxic expectations. What i care about is someone who is highly relatable, compassionate, intelligent, really hates injustice and the suffering of others, roughly has principles similar to myself, and perhaps some other common interest. I would want someone to be comfortable with themselves regardless of social expectations, and not feel bound to these social expectations.
So while i don't really know you personally, i wouldn't judge you based on the things you mentioned. I wouldn't care about what you can "provide", It would come down to personality and interest for me. While i do think a healthy relationship does involve people doing what they can to help maintain things, i don't believe in keeping tabs, and i especially don't believe in "transactional" relationships. If someone has specific desires in a relationship, they should state those things early on, so people don't want their time trying to build a relationship with someone with different priorities.
if priorities, personality compatibility and interest match, both people have strong mutual respect and can communicate effectively with each other, that's what matters. so Communication and compatible goals are pretty much essential to any relationship.
I hope this helps!
