intimacy
April 1, 2024
I’m struggling with something kind of silly.
Maybe you’ll understand. I’ll try to explain it by recounting an interaction I had recently at work.
So I’m at work and I’m having a rare moment when I am actually seeking interaction with other people. If you are also on the autism spectrum, you might recognize this tendency. While I rarely actively seek out other human interaction, when I do, it’s usually pretty in earnest. Now that I think of it, that probably makes me come off as a little too intense. I don’t know, I guess I was experiencing one of those fleeting desires to connect.
Anyhow, I’m having a conversation with a co-worker and I think it’s going swell. I’m maintaining what I believe to be an appropriate level of eye contact. I think I’m effectively masking the physiological thunderstorm that’s happening beneath the surface because I can tell by my co-worker’s expression that I’m not doing weird things with my body at the moment. The back and forth is ebbing and flowing seamlessly. And then it happens. There’s a gesture or an expression - something my co-worker says or does with absolute certainty, as though they have come to an obvious and natural conclusion. . .and in an instant, I am totally lost. There was something in the undercurrent of the conversation that I never even saw. There were dots that they were connecting that I am completely oblivious to. Now they’re looking to me for commiseration, and I haven’t the faintest clue what to say or do. And in an instant, they have lost all interest in the interaction.
Another missed opportunity to connect.
So, what do I do, then? I run. I mumble about some task that I need to get to and I run. And instead of being left with a desire fulfilled, I’m left with confusion, anxiety and disappointment.
Sometimes living with neurodivergence is like being a walking contradiction. You want to connect, but you can’t tolerate the intensity of intimacy. . .or, you don’t understand or experience intimacy in the same way that neurotypical people do, so all of your efforts to connect miss the mark. Each subsequent effort seems more and more impossible because you can’t figure out the puzzle that everyone around you just knows and assumes you know too.
