My most-read blog post so far has been the one with the title A Year of Dating, so I figured I’d do another post about my reality of dating. Full disclosure: I’ve barely dated lately (and not so lately), so I won’t be able to do a fun recap of what it’s been like. I have, however, been wanting to explore how my neurodivergence amplifies certain struggles that neurotypical people are also familiar with, but possibly to a lesser extent.
There will be one or two entertaining facts based on my experience with the types of (cisgender heterosexual) men I, a cisgender heterosexual woman, have interacted with in my dating era*, so bear with me!
I’m sure that by now everyone’s somewhat familiar with the modern dating lingo that emerged because dating is largely app-based these days. The term I’m using most when relaying my experiences to my friends is ghosting. There are, in my humble opinion, a few stages of ghosting. First of all, there’s soft ghosting: it’s what happens when a (texting) conversation has been going back and forth and then all of a sudden it takes the other person a very long time – hours to days – to reply, so much so that you wonder if they had some sort of medical emergency. Trust me, I’ve worried about a ghost’s** health more than once. Soft ghosting is not permanent, it’s when the ghost reappears after a while, often with a very unspecific explanation as to why they disappeared on you – or, more realistically, no explanation at all. A promise to do better in the future is usually only offered after it has been pointed out to the ghost that they were in fact being somewhat ghosty (and there’s usually no changed behaviour attached to that promise). One could argue that there are a few stages to soft ghosting, depending on how long it takes the ghost to reappear and on whether they acknowledge that they did indeed disappear, or not.
The next stage represents the original meaning of ghosting: the ghost stops replying and stays away for good.
Sometimes, ghosts will no longer reply to messages but continue to watch stories on social media – this is known as orbiting and I will for sure, never in a million years, understand that one! At least be consistent in your lack of interest, please.
Despite being overwhelmed a lot in general, I’ve never been a ghost, because I know how shitty it feels to be on the receiving end of unexplained silence. Did I do something wrong? Did something bad happen to them? Are they being dishonest? Are they messing with me?
Instead of ghosting, I have occasionally texted something along the lines of “I’m currently struggling but I will get back to you as soon as things are better”, which I consider the only right way to deal with not being able to respond: just tell people! Tell them in a two-line text message. Record a 10-second voice message on your way to work/the bus/the laundry room. It doesn’t really matter all that much how you say it – just do it.
Neurodivergent and especially autistic people tend to have a strong sense of justice and therefore react strongly to being treated unfairly, and I can confirm that ghosting is among the top things to cause me distress and anxiety, for multiple reasons:
1. I don’t do well with uncertainty. Wondering what may possibly have caused someone to not reply to me takes up a lot of room in my already overflowing brain, because I generally look for what I did wrong first. I also tend to give people the benefit of the doubt (arguably for far longer than they usually deserve it), so I sincerely worry that something bad happened to the ghosts.
2. I have a very strong need for closure. I’m not saying I love being told that someone would rather not keep talking to me, but I will gladly choose it over being ghosted any day. At least that way, I have clarity and can stop wondering.
3. I need things to make sense. I will often ask for clarification – not because I want to be annoying but because I need to understand.
If someone tells me that they care about me and then proceed to disappear on me, then that doesn’t make sense at all: there is definitely a mismatch between their words and their actions.
Interestingly, some people are not just ghosts but proactive ghosts: they’re no longer very present in your life, you’ve made your peace with their absence and then all of a sudden they reappear on a messaging platform and stir up some drama (which you unfortunately respond to because 1. you’re not a ghost, 2. you don’t like unfinished things and 3. you need to understand), only to then ghost you. Can you believe the audacity? So, not only did they mess up your peace, you also don’t get closure.
I’m not gonna lie to you – I believe proactive ghosting deserves a special place in hell.
In addition to the apparently massive impact ghosting has had in my dating experience – I had no idea I was going to write this much about it -, I have been prone to get into unhealthy relationships, in the sense that they’ve been detrimental (to some degree) to the well-being of those involved. And no, I’m not the victim here, it takes two to tango.
As I’ve explained in a previous post, I occasionally enjoy some drama – as long as there is imminent-ish closure/resolution of conflict and it doesn’t end in ghosting, of course. I enjoy how it challenges me and I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’d probably be bored in a completely drama-free relationship.
In addition, a slightly emotionally dysfunctional partner makes it easier for me to unmask because it gives me the feeling that it doesn’t matter as much that I struggle in social settings: I don’t have to be as “perfect” – it gives me the permission to be more myself and to pretend less. At the same time, emotionally dysfunctional people will inevitably cause me to feel emotionally and/or physically unsafe sooner or later, so you can see how my attraction to emotional dysfunction might be a tad problematic.
In addition to this attraction, I’m a very empathic person. I rarely struggle with putting myself in someone else’s shoes and I have an almost unlimited understanding for all types of behaviours – even the “f*ckboyish” ones. I have a history of letting f*ckboys get away with a lot, because I always understand. I probably don’t need to explain any further why that might stand in the way of my inner peace.
Despite the fact that I’m also quite good at recognising (behavioural) patterns, I keep getting caught in similar ones, because I’m unable to not give people the benefit of the doubt as long as the explanations for their behaviour seem reasonable, which means that I never really know where to draw the line (in the moment – in hindsight this usually seems much clearer).
And then, last but not least, once I get into an unhealthy(-ish)*** relationship, I will stay. Not only because I’m too understanding but also because I’m not good with change. I need sameness and routines in order to feel at ease, even if that sameness (e.g. unchanged problematic behaviour) is actually hurting me. Getting to know a person takes a lot from me and once I get there, I’m not giving it up easily.
An additional challenge for me, when it comes to dating, especially in the early stages, is (un)masking. It’s literally impossible for me to not mask when I’m around someone I don’t know very well (yet), and running the “social interaction/acting like a normal/dateable human being software” takes up most of my capacity. I wrote about this back when I was clueless about my neurodivergence and didn’t understand why I sometimes lost the connection to myself and had no access to any of my thoughts or feelings in the presence of people.
Ashra Louisa, an autistic content creator whom I relate to a lot, explains it quite well in one of her reels:
This is one of the reasons why texting is very important to me, especially in the getting-to-know stage. It allows me to respond authentically because I’m not physically present in the conversation. This doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy face-to-face conversations – I do. But I have more difficulties with those (hence the masking) and I also get overstimulated quickly, so texting is an important way to keep the connection without draining myself, and I can’t go without it.
And I honestly never swipe right**** on any of the dating app profiles that say things along the lines of “not into texting because I live in the real world”. Fair enough, but also quite ignorant – I don’t mind if people have a preference for meeting up immediately instead of texting (those people are not for me then), but there’s no need to be judgmental about it.
Anyway, I now realise that this probably wasn’t all that much of a fun read but rather another quite vulnerable one (on my end), so I hope you were able to make sense of my writing. The part about ghosting must certainly be relatable enough, because who hasn’t been ghosted?! I’m sure even the ghosts get ghosted.
* Yes, that’s a Taylor Swift reference.
** I like to refer to the person doing the ghosting as “ghost” because I think it’s cute.
*** I might also stay in a healthy one for that same reason but I have yet to experience that.
**** “Swiping right” is the equivalent of liking someone on a dating app.
Carrot Days 