To think his behaviour at the zoo was OTT?

@Rizzo8 Do you carry heat pads/belts, ibuprofen and plenty of water and have a banana before going on days out with your bf? Manage expectations and symptoms before a flare.
Gentle exercise, such as walking around the zoo, is beneficial to endo, even stage 4.

Your bfs reaction wasn't OTT. Imo he handled the change of plans in the middle of them, very well. It isn't the first trip out so you are aware of his needs to complete a task (see every exhibit), he is fairly predicatable based on that.

You're being unreasonable expecting him to change without issue for your illness that you can manage but isn't as predictable.

Maybe you shouldn't be together if you think he's OTT for being autistic.

I like to think there are some people who come to threads like this one who are interested in hearing the neurodivergent point of view. Even if there's one person reading who sees my post and starts to think about things differently it's worth it.

It is sad though. Every single person who has said to me that they accept me as I am really means "I accept you until something happens that doesn't fit with what I perceive to be normal behaviour".

Why didn't you go back to hotel and leave him to finish at the zoo?

Because people have experience of people.

Oh, good. Another thread designed specifically to bash autistic people. This shit is getting old.

Exactly, what i was going to say.

@Uselessatbeingaperson

But why would someone's mind automatically leap to this?
Mumsnet truly is bizarre at times.

I’m not autistic but if I go somewhere on holiday I have to see everything. It might be the only chance I have to go there.

My DH has a chronic stomach complaint and diabetes but he manages these himself. He also goes round museums at a faster pace than me. He spends a lot of time sitting in cafes waiting for me to come out of a museum or ruin, and has been known to go back early to our hotel. But he always says it’s my holiday as much as his. If he suddenly became really ill, obviously I would look after him, but we have an agreement and code so that I know when he really needs me or when he can tootle back by himself.

So I have sympathy for your DH. Obviously for you too, and he did come back with you. But in doing so he did miss out on something that was important to him. If you have a chronic condition that can flare up, you need to work out between you how to handle it when it happens again.

Wow, my eldest daughter has high functioning autism and I cannot for one second imagine a more fiercely loyal and amazing partner.

It's when people call illness when they don't want to do something. People who only ever have a migraine on a Monday, or a D&V when a night out with people they're not keen on rolls round.

A convenient flare up?

I've never even suffered from this, but WTF?!

Wow. Some people here are painfully ignorant of endometriosis, you’re going to really have your eyes opened if you ever develop it.

If you are going to stay together you are going to need to work out accommodations for both of you. I have multiple health issues and have an autistic child. As a family we have to make plans - sometimes complicated - to make sure everyone's needs are met.

If you know you could have a flare at any time you need to have a plan for when you have had enough. If you know your partner needs to finish his visit to the zoo you have to have a plan for that.

In this case you needed to plan your day so that you could have headed off when things got too much and he could continue.

Wouldn’t this solution have catered for both your needs? Why does your need to rest (I have CFS, so understand) trump his need for completion? You’re not joined at the hip.

I think the OP and partner need to understand each others needs better and decide on how to deal with things like this so in future it is easier .

It is hard though, and I can see why relevant. Being in a relationship with an autistic person can be really hard, my ex-husband is autistic, and it can, depending on the person, require a lot of work to be understanding and accommodate their extra needs. My ex struggled to understand social cues so I used to be on edge in a lot of situations (maybe as much my problem as his). It's not easy and whilst you love who you love, getting into a relationship with someone who is autistic means you need to be prepared for that.

I now have an autistic daughter (not with my ex) and again it's hard. She is not severely autistic, probably would be described as high functioning and she's great, like all parents I wouldn't change things, but it is difficult. It is a set of additional needs. And to be fair, given the nature of this site as being somewhere we come to air problems, if this is what you base your judgement upon then yes I can see how it looks terrible from the outside looking in. There are stories of people being happy with autistic partners, there are stories of people being happy parents to autistic kids but you won't see them on a forum used primarily for advice.

I don't really get the problem. You wanted him to leave and comfort you, he left and comforted you. It's ok for him to also be a bit unhappy about having to do so. The end result here is that he did exactly what you wanted, and you are still not happy. Man can't win.

It isn’t about his wanting to see the whole zoo, or you being in pain and needing to leave. What he struggled with is plans suddenly changing.

Rightly or wrongly, this is how life with him will be. So you can’t change him, and you need to accept this if you are going to stay together, and stop making it A v B. You may have to do what you need to do (go back to hotel) and let him do what he needs to do (see all of the zoo)

Autistic learning is different. Autistic people can find it more difficult to apply learning across different contexts. Most also have some degree of difficulty with cognitive flexibility, which means it can be harder to do things like assimilate different points of view and imagine things being different to how they are. This is why it's harder to cope with sudden unexpected change.

Yes, you can learn to respond in a NT way to things. I have done that, because I was taught that my autistic reactions weren't ok and I was not diagnosed as a kid, so nobody knew why I was that way - I was just "oversensitive" or "difficult". So I just hid everything through shame about being like that.

My autistic brother, who was diagnosed, was given much more leeway and his behaviour never corrected, because autism. He has never learned to cope as an adult and can be really awful to people when they don't do things how he wants or things don't go to plan. He has no life skills to cope and self medicates with drugs and alcohol.

The difference between how autistic boys and girls are identified and raised IME (worked in educational and child/adolescent and family therapy settings) is still quite evident. Boys still get far more tolerance than girls do and are generally expected to mask less. Possibly, hence why OP's partner doesn't mask as much as she thinks he should.

Neither model of raising autistic people that I experienced is healthy. You can't ask us to always mask all our feelings AND do the right thing with a smile, so the NTs around us never have to deal with our emotions because they're too intense and weird for them, but it's also not okay to be shitty to people because something doesn't go your way and perfectly fine to teach an autistic child not to rage, hit or yell or say nasty things.

Needing to go home early because you feel ill does not = being shitty. Expressing disappointment does not = being shitty. Both things can exist and be accommodated - and will need to in this relationship if it's going to work.

YANBU.

My carer invented the 'Universal sashh rule', this means that at any point when we are out and I need to sit, go home or whatever that is what happens.

You need something like that.

I have arthritis rather than endo but I imagine they are similar in that they are unpredictable.

Literally no reason at all for you to post this. It wasn’t the topic of the thread. What a hateful low life you are. An autistic person would probably never deliberately post something so vile and offensive. They may inadvertently offend on occasion but would never stoop to the this type of low level behaviour on purpose. Please don’t have children there’s a chance they may inherit your disgusting personality traits.

Are you the person who posted about him insisting on walking when you want to take the bus? It sounds like this relationship isn't working very well...

Do you know how incredibly unhealthy and detrimental masking is?

That's what autism is like in some people though. I know sometimes I get a plan fixed in my head and I don't realise it's there until something happens to contradict it. I've been in similar situations before where such a plan has been in opposition to the needs of someone I care about and when that happens it's deeply frustrating. I can see the response I want to give, that I need to give in order to be a caring human being, I just can't 'get' there. Unless you're neurodivergent and have been in that situation you have no idea how difficult it is.

It's not a bloody death sentence. Maybe do some actual research instead of finding all your info on Mumsnet. The autistic spectrum isn't something to be terrified of, there are plenty of wonderful, smart, funny, successful people who happen to be on the spectrum