We have spent a life time trying to live up to others’ expectations
What expectations do we have of others ?
This has to do with autism and relationships. We have all read about our repeated failures to live up to the expectations of others regarding performance, behavior, productivity, ability to do all the things that society usually expects of “normal” or neurotypical individuals. We all know the frustration, self blame and shame, anger, disappointment, and distress over the ways we fail to do things others expect of us.
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Many of us have been punished repeatedly, ostracized, blamed, shamed, bullied and pressured in so many ways over our failures to live up to the demands, requests, requirements, and requirements of others in every- day living.
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This goes for relationships of all sorts, too. Friendships, co workers, schoolmates, and social encounters in the general public as well as interactions within families, romantic relationships, dating scenarios, interactions with anybody at all are always up for judgement by others.
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In the several forums for adult autistic individuals which I attend regularly online there is a constant theme of sad reports on the difficulty of finding friendship, finding romance, Struggling relationships or complete lack of them. Of course this goes back to the diagnostic criteria we must meet to get our autism diagnosis. We do struggle with relationships.
I also see a pattern among some of the complaints and distress.
I wonder how much rigid thinking applies to our own expectations of what friendship “is”, what romance “is”, what true love “is” and I suspect that many individuals in these threads have very rigid ideas about this topic.
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Do we expect physical perfection and idealize what the partner in “true love” must look like?
Do we expect constant attention and attendance on our wants and needs, whether partner, friend or family member, expecting them to act on our demands and wishes and feeling hurt if we are not the complete focus of the other person?
Do we expect absolute exclusion of all others in favor of our own presence? Do we feel jealous and try to control whether the partner or friend does things sometimes with other people and you are not included??
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Do we spend time idealizing all the things we will do, how it will be, what will happen when we spend time with that person? Are we disappointed, hurt, enraged if the actual experience does not happen the way you want it to, or if the other person refuses to do the things you want them to?
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See the phenomenon of “limerence” in the way we think about others and the unhealthy ways we may come to have some of these ideas and ideals.
There are lots of explanations of limerence in depth if you use any search engine on the internet.
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Sometimes friendship and romance, even business relationships, relationships with family, neighbors and others we encounter are not at all what we want them to be, not what we believe they should be, or what we expect. Do we have realistic ideas about relationships?
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It does work both ways , regarding this idea of living up to expectations.
Do your expectations for interacting with others keep you from having healthy interactions and relationships ?
It might not be just “them”.
Autism Expectations
Published
OldLady With Autism 
This is an uncomfortable truth in my opinion. Thank you for asking the question and thus raising the issue. I’ve read forums about autism. Partners (mostly women) complain bitterly about their autistic husbands or boyfriends how these are cold, emotionally stunted, or utterly incompetent to any love and empathy, while putting the onus on their wives or girlfriends for all the strive in the relationship. On forums or pages for autistic people it’s often the other way around. People complaining about being misunderstood, rejected, unfairly blamed etc by their partners, friends of coworkers for this, that and the other.
The double empathy problem plays a part here, I am sure. But it could be something more, like you ask. I think limerence is a good example. And because our autistic social communication skills are somewhat out of kilter, our expactations might be off. This could either be innate to autism or due due to external factors. Like years of misalignment with neurotypicals and subsequent isolation that lead to poorer socialization. Good socialization (in childhood and adolescence) is needed to develop realistic expectations.
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This article was food for thought. Especially ‘limerence’, a new word for me. I had to look it up. I suffered (and probably trauma ) from it starting around age 4. I had anonymous ❤️ crushes on neighborhood and school boys (I am female) who never knew they were the target of my ‘admiration’. It continued many many years, until I retired and became a homebody.
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My son, who has ASD, does not fit all of the pigeon holes associated with Autism, which makes it hard when he acts inappropriately because people find it hard to tell. We find ourselves explaining his behaviour for him. It can be really tough.
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