Autistic Hedgehog

I honestly have no idea. I imagine even among those of us who are bothered by strong smells, what those smells are differs a lot. I mainly used smoking as an example because it’s one of the most common strong smells to encounter, especially out in public, and thus one of the easiest to avoid exposing people to. 

Um…yeah, that is pretty ableist. And generally no, you can’t. If you know what to look for you might see some signs, but these are things like an unwillingness to make eye contact or stimming behaviors. And it’s important to note that none of these things are guarantees that someone is autistic. 

If you’re concerned about potentially upsetting someone with autism and are hoping to find a way to avoid that, a good rule of thumb is to respect everyone’s boundaries. Don’t yell or scream or make other loud noises, don’t touch or hug people without their permission, avoid dousing yourself in perfume or smoking in public (we have a tendency to be very sensitive to smells) and if you see someone you suspect is having an autistic meltdown or is stimming, don’t stare and don’t judge. 

after they said they didn’t wanna talk and try to sit with them anyway. I’ve told him I’m too busy with school and other activities to hang out, but he just keeps asking. Plus, trying to understand how to speak with him and be friends with him is extremely draining for me because I’ve never had experience with this before. I don’t want to dump him because of who he is, but I also can’t deal with a friend right now who makes me more tired than I already am. Am I an awful person for thinking this?

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Wow. Loaded question. I’m sorry it took me so long to answer, but this one is kind of hard for me on a personal level. I had to take some time to think about it, because my knee-jerk reaction is a pretty angry one, and that’s not necessarily fair. We all have feelings that might seem awful at times, but in the end, what makes someone a bad person or a good person is how they act on their feelings. No one is such a saint that they never think a bad word about another person. 

I wish I had a bit more information. Have you actually hung out with him, or did you say you would and then keep blowing him off? Let’s be clear: None of us, no matter how lonely we get, ever want anyone to say they’ll hang out with us just to make us feel better. Not if they’re not going to follow up. Whatever else, please don’t ever do that, no matter how bad you feel for someone. I can see that you meant well, but in some cases it really does more harm than good. Too many of us have experiences with people who were insincere in their friendship, who used us as entertainment or punching bags or various other things. Not saying you’ve done that, just letting you know that it honestly is better at times to leave well enough alone. 

Now, where I run into a problem in terms of telling you whether this is so awful of you or not is that I don’t know this kid. I look at the behavior you describe and to me, it can be explained both with autism and with the kid just actually being a bit of a jerk. We can be jerks, after all, and usually it has nothing to do with the autism. I see the thing about the text messages, and it could be that he’s just impatient and thoughtless and doesn’t care about whether it bothers you–but I also know that autistics struggle to communicate in modes like text. We have so little to go on and we can panic really easily when we don’t hear back from people, because we can’t begin to guess what you’re thinking. (This is even worse for those of us who have been burned before, because it’s very easy, due to how those circumstances often play out, to assume the worst.) As well, some of us get a bit clingy when we find a friend–heck, some of us get a lot clingy–because we’re used to being lonely. Me personally, I’ve had to learn to have acquaintances and casual friendships, and I often find those exhausting, because either I really like someone or I don’t. I don’t do inbetweens very much.

As I’m autistic and female, I don’t know what to make of his behavior with the girls; it could be an intersection of the social problems autism causes and male privilege. (Perhaps someone who actually qualifies for male privilege can give some feedback on this, because I don’t know how it works; I just imagine it has the potential to cause major issues.) It could be he’s genuinely an asshole who thinks he’s entitled to their company. It could be that they haven’t actually been clear enough with him–we’re all different levels of literal, generally–so he keeps trying because he really, really wants to reach out. In other words, it may be that no one is communicating clearly with him.

Allistics have this habit of dancing around what they want to say, because they’re taught (girls especially) that straight up saying something is impolite. It is not okay for autistic people to overstep other people’s social boundaries and make them feel uncomfortable–like ignoring them when they say they’re not in the mood or don’t have time to talk–so this isn’t meant to excuse any bad behavior, but a lot of times we simply don’t know we’ve overstepped (our boundaries can often be very different from and more fluid than allistic boundaries, which causes further confusion). We don’t read other people that easily, and implying it doesn’t work. You have to straight up tell us what you mean. This is why I struggled with this question at first. People never, ever told me their problems with me. Not even my friends. They just stopped talking to me without explanation. I was never given a chance to fix it. And I’m not in denial here: There were times that I was, unquestionably, far too clingy. I wish I had known then, wish I’d been given the chance to fix it. Now I just don’t make friends very much, and any friendships I do have are very tentative and quite distant. 

If he’s really making you uncomfortable and not having respect for your time or personal boundaries (or those of others) have you told him this? When you tell him you’re too busy, do you say “I am too busy with X, Y, and Z to hang out right now” or do you do that thing allistics do and say “I have X, Y, and X…”? Whenever you are trying to communicate, say what you mean, not what you think is polite. If you talk to him about this, tell him exactly what’s bothering you. It might upset him, but if he cares, he’ll understand and trust me, if he does care, he probably doesn’t want to be a pain in people’s asses. He just needs to know. If you haven’t given him this chance, you should. If you’ve been as clear with him as you know how, and he still steps all over your boundaries, perhaps he just doesn’t care, and no one is obligated to be friends with someone who doesn’t respect their feelings. We’re autistic, yes, but we’re human and that means we’re all different kinds of people: good or bad, respectful or rude, kind or mean.

I guess what I’m saying with all this is that the only person who can answer your question, really, is you. And it requires you to be honest with yourself, to a degree that may be difficult. Have you really made the effort and you simply can’t reach him, or, upon realizing there would be effort, did you decide you didn’t want to make it? Most of us are aware that we’re not always easy to deal with; remember, we have to deal with ourselves all the time, and believe me, you will probably never be more frustrated with an autistic person than we can get with ourselves. Unfortunately for us, we meet far too many people who act like they’re willing to make the effort to understand, then give up before they’ve really tried. And I’m sorry, but to me, that is pretty awful.

(Just a note to my hedgehogs: This was really hard for me to write, as I had to deal with both the way I’ve been treated and the way I’ve acted. The latter is often hard for me, because it forces me to acknowledge that I’ve made mistakes and that, even though I didn’t really quite understand what I was doing, that didn’t mean I had some excuse to not learn to behave better. I tried to explain it as best as I could, because I absolutely do not mean it’s okay for people to think autistics are just weird and horrible–I’m genuinely talking about the boundaries that are not okay for anyone to cross, but I know it might not have come off this way. I hope I haven’t offended anyone, and I’m very sorry if I have. If anyone has any idea how I can better handle these situations, please let me know. Now I think I need to go cry a little bit, because I hate revisiting this stuff.)