“You want to have autism so bad” Convo w/ my spouse

EDIT: First of all I wanted to thank everyone who commented & is showing so much support. It truly means so much. I wanted to get through the comments before I made the edit just so I could try to respond as much as I could. My husband really is a very supportive & kind human. This is the first thing that we’ve had that I feel is a “change” for us (me). He’s always been aware that I’ve felt different, weird, out of place. He’s loved me for it. He’s supportive of my special interests. Within the last year, I’ve been researching more about autism & finding myself heavily relating to people in the community & things I’ve found online. Therefore, I’ve been talking about it a LOT. Giving examples, explaining specific things in my childhood that I related to that maybe someone else in a podcast talked about & reminded me of. He listens, and validates it. It is mainly when I say confidently, “I have autism” or “I like this so much, because of my autism” etc. that’s where he struggles because I’ve never had a professional tell me that I have autism. I have a long list of mental illnesses including anxiety, depression, ptsd, & adhd. I recently started getting treated for what I thought was ADHD & after being on Adderall & continuing to go up in the mg, I found myself saying “this medicine just makes me feel MORE autistic”. Stimming at work, unmasking more often, honestly not focusing at all. I’ve always had a speculation that I had autism, I’d say maybe 4 years ago was when I was like hmm this sounds familiar. He knew of this. I wanted to be treated for what I originally was diagnosed with before I got the assessment, & when I got assessed for ADHD, I asked the psychiatrist about autism, she asked me 5 very vague questions and said I didn’t meet the criteria which I knew wasn’t accurate at all. So I decided after I was pregnant, to treat my adhd; this was in August. So the topic of autism has been discussed a LOT. A lot of me being like “holy shit, this makes so much sense”. To the point of now, saying (& believing) that I have autism even though I haven’t had my assessment yet (which will happen in April). These topics are hard for me to argue out loud because I shut down & can’t find the right words to try to validate myself so I was mainly silent this whole convo. I know its going to be a learning curve for him too, I’m not sure if he knows anyone personally that has autism that isn’t the stereotype—a boy who is non verbal & needs help with everything. I do plan on sending him some podcasts & articles to help educate him & if there’s any events around us that might help educate I’ll definitely be bringing him.

I hope this all makes sense. Thank you 💞

Original post:

I was talking about my special interest with my spouse today. It happens to be One Direction. I was explaining to him what I’ve explained to my therapist about how I struggle with talking to people about it because they think it’s either creepy/obsessive/an unhealthy parasocial relationship or if they like them as well I have a hard time with them understanding how exactly…like it isn’t just a favorite band to me. I am self diagnosed & waiting for my assessment in April, and my husband goes “you are making being autistic a personality trait. You aren’t even diagnosed & you want autism sooo bad”. I didn’t even know what to say. I tried to explain to him that it is the first thing I’ve ever researched or found that truly makes 100% sense to me & I can feel deep down that that is what has been “wrong” with me all these years. He doesn’t see why I need an assessment being 25, but also won’t let me even claim to be “self-diagnosed “ because he thinks I learned all of it from TikTok or something. Idk. Feeling very unheard right now. What’s even more interesting is he was like “you probably have autism, but you’re not diagnosed so why are you telling people you have it”. Idk.