Joe Biel - Autism Relationships Handbook, The: How to Thrive in Friendships, Dating, and Love

The A utism R e l a t i o nships Ha ndbook

H o w to Thrive in Friendships, Da ting, a n d Love

2021 Joe Biel and Fath G. Harper

This edition Microcosm Publishing 2021

eBook ISBN 9781621066224

This is Microcosm #485

Cover by Lindsey Cleworth

Edited by Elly Blue and Lydia Rogue

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Microcosm Publishing

2752 N Williams Ave.

Portland, OR 97227

https://microcosm.pub/htra

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Microcosm Publishing is Portlands most diversified publishing house and distributor with a focus on the colorful, authentic, and empowering. Our books and zines have put your power in your hands since 1996, equipping readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and bookettes about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice. What was once a distro and record label was started by Joe Biel in his bedroom and has become among the oldest independent publishing houses in Portland, OR. We are a politically moderate, centrist publisher in a world that has inched to the right for the past 80 years.

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Contents

Introduction

Part one

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF

introduction

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AUTISTIC (AND WHY THAT IS AWESOME)

history

Autism as a superpower

Chapter one

HOW TRAUMA FUCKS UP OUR SENSE OF SELF

WHat is trauma

how trauma affects relationships

addiction

Chapter two

DEVELOP YOUR VALUES

understand your feelings

Figure out your boundaries

HOW do boundaries work?

making boundaries

how to enforce your boundaries

Chapter three

understand your sexuaity and gender

Chapter four

learn from your mistakes

Part two

YOUR RELATIONSHIPs WITH other people

introduction

Chapter five

building blocks for any relationships

undestand and relate to their feelings

dealing with hurt feelings

figure out their boundaries

Chapter six

family relationships

Chapter seven

friendship

Chapter eight

queer platonic partnership

Chapter nine

dating

getting started

once you have a date

stalking

hookup culture

Chapter ten

relationships

new relationships

love vs. dependance

relationship rules

Chapter eleven

long-term relationships

living together

Chapter twelve

sex

sensate touch exercise

Chapter thirteen

healthy conflict vs. abuse

coercive control

autism and abuse

overcoming relationship trauma

the no test

signs of a coercively controlling person

RED FLAGS OF A MANIPULATIVE PARTNER OR EARLY

STAGE COERCIVELY CONTROLLING PARTNER

COERCIVE CONTROL STRATEGIES WIELDED

TOWARD LESBIAN, GAY, PLURISEXUAL, TRANS, AND

NONBINARY INDIVIDUALS

green flags

Conclusion

FURTHER READING

About the authors

Introduction

Welcome. We wrote this book to save the lives of autistic people.

Thats not overinflated ego on our part. In 2017, the American Journal of Public Health reported a study that the average autistic person only lives to be 36 years old. The leading cause of death is suicide because of social isolationnine times more likely than our allistic (not neurodiverse) peers.

Relationships, including friendships, are the biggest protective factor against dying by suicide. Other people in your life help you curb those feelings of loneliness and isolation while helping you keep pace in the rhythms of life with other people. Other people may not be able to fix everything that you are struggling with, but they can love and support you while you struggle.

Additionally, those of us who are neurodiverse are twelve times more likely than the general population to be the victims of abuse from parents, teachers, and other authorities. These experiences lead to substantial trauma and problematic attachment styles that get in the way of seeking relationships and friendships even though healthy relationships are the best medicine to help us to better be supported and understand these events in our lives. Not to mention, having other people around in our emotional lives keeps us safer because others who care about us are watching and protecting us.

Often this treatment manifests in the form of anxiety, depression, anger, addiction, maladaptive problem solving, trust issues, and trauma triggers that might not be helpful in the present for solving problems. Sometimes, when we need the most support, we lash out at others from fear of rejection. Pushing someone away before they surely will push us away is far safer for us, according to our traumatized brains.

Joe was diagnosed with autism at 32 and mentors half a dozen autistic young people. The number one topic that they ask about is dating and relationships. They want to know how to judge someones character, why their friends keep scattering, how to express interest, how to know if someone likes them, and how to know if someone has the same values as they do, i.e. is a good person. Of course, they rarely like Joes advice because these are not simple areas of personal growth. When you find stories in the first person throughout this book (e.g., I had this experience), thats Joe talking.

Faith is a therapist who works with numerous neurodiverse individuals. Two of her special focuses are trauma (which a lot of autistic people experience because of how neurodiverse people are treated in society; you can read about coping with trauma in her bestselling book Unfuck Your Brain ), and relationships (which you can read about in the sequel, Unfuck Your Intimacy ). She also happens to have a (now adult) child who is neurodiverse and would sob at night over how difficult and exhausting it was to understand other human beings, which of course made her want to punch the entire planet on a regular basis. Hopefully all of this means that she has a lot of wisdom to offer here, for the parts of your dating / relationshipping / intimacy that have to do with autism, the parts that have to do with trauma, and the parts that are hard for all humans (because sometimes its nice to know that the allistics are struggling, too).

If youre autistic or think you might be, this guide is for you. If youre single and happy with it, or single and dont want to be, or dating, or in a relationship thats happy or unhappy or you just arent sure how any of this is supposed to work, or between relationships, or etc this book is for you.

If you arent autistic, but you think maybe someone in your life is, this book might help you to understand them better and teach you how you might improve your relationship.

A common joke in autistic circles is about the horrors of the allistic (non-autistic) disability. It goes roughly like this: