The most significant obstacle autistic people face when dating
I’ll give you a hint. No, it isn’t sensory.
Consider this, nearly 90% of communication is non-verbal. You must remember this number isn’t plucked out of thin air, and many studies are behind this. Dr. Albert Mehrabian explains in great detail why communication is predominantly non-verbal.
I won’t detail the Mehrabian Communication Model because that isn’t the purpose of this article. However, I will explain how the high-level law causes autistics to be socially isolated.
A big problem that challenges Autistics is eye contact, which is pivotal for dating and levels of attraction for meaning.
According to Mehrabian, approximately 55% of communication is body language, and 38% do with tone and inflection, while as little as 7% do with the actual words. When this concept is applied to autism, a person on the spectrum misses 55% of the message in communication due to a lack of eye contact.
A person on the spectrum misses 55% of the message in communication due to a lack of eye contact.
I know this 7–38–55 sounds highly dubious. Mehrabian agrees with the challenges of this model. Instead, we need to apply the 3C’s for communication: context, clusters, and congruence.
We can view communication as seeking the context of the environment to gauge emotional states, interests, etc. Relying on only one method of this model dramatically decreases the accuracy of interpretation.
A date interpreting an autistic’s body language is the primary obstacle to neurotypical and neurodiverse dating.
A neurotypical person may interpret the lack of eye contact as a lack of interest, or the eye contact may feel inappropriate or uncomfortable. For the neurotypical date, it would be nearly impossible to surmise straight away the person they are dating is, in fact, autistic.
The eyes are the windows to the soul.
However, as autistics, we find it challenging to maintain eye contact or maintain what neurotypicals deem usual eye contact in social.
Lack of eye contact is a pivotal trait of being autistic. From a neurotypical perspective, either a lack of or socially awkward eye contact is always interpreted differently. With autism, eye contact is stressful, making it far more challenging for an autistic to mask and maintain their ‘eye contact tricks’.
Eye contact and tricks.
I don’t make eye contact; however, I cheat. I look at the person’s mouth and nose. It’s a cue for when I can talk and hides my autistic traits. In stressful situations or where there are too many sensory distractions, my eye contact drops so that I can concentrate on the words. So, I look down or entirely away.
It is fascinating to see how people interpret eye contact. For an autistic person, this is both part of our culture and a physiological survival mechanism. However, the way neurotypicals analyse these patterns of eye behaviour is as uninterested, not paying attention, and even ogling the ‘goodies’.
This is not the case; autistics have trouble maintaining a neurotypical level of eye contact. Maintaining eye contact is too much. Contrary to the neurotypical perspective, an autistic person is interested and trying to concentrate on the spoken words in the conversation.
It’s a considerable effort for us to stay focused.
Now, let’s take this perspective from an autistic perspective.
Let’s take a different perspective.
Our level of situational awareness when dating is non-existent compared to the neurotypical population. When an autistic person concentrates on blocking out sensory input, they lose eye contact and are only aware of about 10% of the communication that is taking place.
As a result, an autistic is missing far more than just communication, especially compared to what a neurotypical person could understand.
Think of it in this way. If you were to read only 10% of a book, what would your level of comprehension be?
It’s safe to say it wouldn’t be good.
You would lose the central theme and narrative and the nuance from experiencing the entire piece of literature.
As an autistic adult, there is so much effort placed on “functioning” and excluding sensory influences during social situations. In a stressful situation like a date, we miss context and give the wrong impressions.
In stressful situations, we go into survival mode. We try to limit sensory input and thus, miss much of the context.
In summary
Fundamentally, the most challenging issue for an Autistic on a date is maintaining eye contact.
The context for neurotypicals interpreting autistic eye contact is invariably incorrect. They may not know or accept an autistic partner, making dating even more challenging and terrifying for an autistic person.
An autistic who is dating will only be given one chance, and they will have no idea why due to the missed communications. This results from misreading eye contact and limited social context (the 10%), which is a crucial part of the romantic language that autistic people miss.
We miss the cues and, thus, miss the opportunities.
References
- Mehrabian, A. (2017). Nonverbal Communication. Routledge. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6016771-nonverbal-communication
- Michail, J. (2020), Council Post: Strong Nonverbal Skills Matter Now More Than Ever In This ‘New Normal’. Forbes. [Accessed 8 March, 2022]. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2020/08/24/strong-nonverbal-skills-matter-now-more-than-ever-in-this-new-normal
- Thompson, J. (2011). Is Nonverbal Communication a Numbers Game? Psychology Today. [Accessed 2 March, 2022]. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-words/201109/is-nonverbal-communication-numbers-game
