I've only recently begun to think I may be autistic. Ten years ago, for example, I remember looking at an autistic boy in my class and feeling an affinity with some of his behaviour but also jealous that he had an explanation why he is like he is, whereas girls don't get autism so it wouldn't fit me.
Since then, my DD got diagnosed at 20 so I know a bit more about autism in women and girls now. She says I'm obviously autistic, but clearly that's not a diagnosis!
I was musing on my past this morning. I discovered at age 15 that I don't make eye contact by a teacher who told me, when she was telling me off and insisted I look at her because it was rude not to.
There were other things I learnt to do because they were important to other people. At age 18, if I don't go to the pub, I get called weird, so I go, but I can't see how people are enjoying it because I spend too much time listening to the music, so I struggle to follow the conversation.
I make some friends at university but I don't keep them. I'm not sure why. I don't understand a lot of things about people, but I begin at this time to be a little more forgiving towards myself of my oddities.
When I met future XH, he was hugely sociable. I really enjoyed being taken somewhere new every weekend to meet a new group of people in a new relaxed setting. There was no difficulty fitting in because as his GF I was just accepted.
I think he quickly became my yardstick of what a "normal person" is like. He wanted to get married. I'd never thought I would, so it was a surprise, but if he wanted to I thought that was probably enough. I thought it would be an interesting experience!
I ignored warning signs because he wasn't bothered by them. It was just a "goodbye shag" with a previous GF he hadn't actually broken up with just drifted away from, a year after we started going out. And it's normal to talk about how hot she was that night with his friend, which I'd overheard. (At the same time he was not sleeping with me yet because he now wanted to save himself for marriage.) That confused me a lot, but he was so relaxed about it, I didn't feel I could make a fuss.
Was I still just trying to pass as a "normal person"? And I'd just picked an unfortunate role model to follow. Twelve years of confusion and upset later, and with even lower self-esteem than I had had at the start, I recognised him in articles about NPD. By that time I had access to this wonderful nest of vipers and that was the beginning of my escape.
So was it an attempt at fitting in to a life I didn't understand, do you think? Or have I misunderstood masking? Maybe I was just extremely passive and autism doesn't come into it?