[quote JacketPotas]@SpiderInTheBathroom @SpiderInTheBathroom thanks for the insight. The not wanting to let people down and the lack of being able to plan too far ahead is very much the case with him. I just struggle to understand it as it feels like he’s not interested, yet in other ways he’s very keen.[/quote]
Of course you struggle to understand it. You're NT. Your brain works in a completely different way.
But he can't understand it or think about it like you think about it either.
It's not that he is being unfair or unkind or selfish. He just isn't able to do what you want him to and forcing him will cause him mental and emotional distress.
Imagine you can't speak Italian. Someone important to you is speaking Italian to you. You can't understand what they are saying. You might pick up the odd word you recognise but you don't understand it. It doesn't matter how loudly or slowly they speak to you; how upset/frustrated they get because you don't understand them; how kindly or sympathetically they look at you - you just don't understand them.
Now imagine that they are saying that it's you being unwilling to listen to them or if you only listened harder you'd understand. If only you tried to understand them. If only you could see how important what they were trying to say to you was.
You not understanding them is not willful on your part; it's equally frustrating to you that you don't understand. You're trying really hard. You're focusing on the words they are saying and might even be able to say a few back to them. But you just don't understand what they're saying. You sense their frustration but are equally frustrated because, if they were able to say exactly the same thing in Ebglish, you understand them perfectly well so the barrier in communication is just as much theirs as it is yours. But they really want you to understand what they are saying and you're just not and its really important to them. And it's tiring trying to concentrate and pick up words you might recognise and and work out the context from that...
That's how it can be when you're autistic and NT people are trying to say things that make perfect sense to them but don't make any sense to you.
This is the best way I've found of explaining it to NT people.
It's notbthat he's not keen it's just that you're expecting his brain to work like yours and it doesn't. And you want him to want what you do, in the same way that you do and he doesn't.
Other people's suggestions of how you can approach it are well intentioned but won't work either. They might work with an NT man but are unlikely to work with him.
Ultimately, you have to decide whether it's a risk you're willing to take. If he gets a permanent job, you can proceed with moving in together, if he doesn't, we'll, it would be very unusual for him to change his mind.