Neurotypicals as Romantic Partners (humor)

Individuals with neurotypicalism have an intense desire for love and companionship, but their sensory and cognitive limitations, their need for indirect, stereotyped, or socially acceptable communication, and the overwhelming intensity of their desires can all lead to difficulties in establishing healthy, stable relationships. An estimated 50-60% of all Neurotypical marriages end in divorce, and countless dating and cohabitation relationships fail to remain stable enough to develop into marriage.

There is some debate over whether Neurotypicals are truly capable of loving an individual, or are only able to act out social rituals and demand emotional displays and support in order to feed their need for a sense of security and connection. Many people, however, report that Neurotypicals can be loyal and caring partners, if their special communication and emotional needs are properly accommodated. Loving a Neurotypical is hard work, but if you can brave it, you may be one of the few people who can provide a genuine version of the care, support, and connection that Neurotypicals crave deep down but often only manage to superficially simulate on the surface in their broken relationships with one another.

Neurotypicals are often unable to understand another individual's need for comfort and space, due to their sensory hypo-sensitivity and strong drive for interpersonal contact. They may overwhelm their partner with excessive physical affection, sexual advances, conversation, and insistence on spending time together. The partner of the Neurotypical may be driven to wits' end trying to meet the Neurotypical's insatiable needs.

Neurotypicals also frequently fail to understand simple actions, such as continuing to stay with the partner and perform basic tasks like sex and house-cleaning, as expressions of true love. The Neurotypical often needs specific, socially popular expressions of love, like fresh flowers, the words "I love you," a surprise date on the anniversary of when the two of you started being romantically involved with one another, and excessive moaning and groaning and flattery during sex, in order to really understand that she or he is loved. To keep your Neurotypical happy, try scheduling a specific time in the day or week, or a specific date such as a birthday or anniversary, on which you will provide a specific token of love, such as flowers, moaning and flattery during sex, or the words "I love you."

Remember, however, that not all Neurotypicals respond equally well to the same stereotyped gestures of love, and that their communication impairments make it difficult at times for them to tell you exactly which gestures make them feel the most loved, because they feel that you should "just know" these things. Experiment with different gestures, and watch the Neurotypical's response.

Neurotypicals can also be extremely moody and fickle, and may respond to one gesture of love one day but not respond to the same gesture of love the next day. Remind your Neurotypical partner that it is okay to ask for what they want, and that their need to ask is not an indication that you do not love them, and do your best to accommodate your Neurotypical partner's needs of the moment.

Also be aware that the primary gesture of love that reassures a Neurotypical the most could be something entirely outside your awareness of what you are doing. Try to open communication with your Neurotypical partner in order to understand what you are doing that makes them feel loved, and how you can do it more often, or whenever the Neurotypical needs it.

Understanding Closedmindedness

Closedmindedness is one of the most common known mental disorders. It is characterized by an irrational and excessive clinging to a single idea, a limited capacity for imagination when presented with alternative perspectives, and delusions that one's point of view is absolutely correct or that whoever disagrees with the sufferer is suffering from Closedmindedness while the sufferer him/herself is not. Approximately 100% of the population will suffer an episode during the course of a lifetime, although frequency and severity varies widely among individuals. It is roughly equal in prevalence among people of all races, sexes, classes, ages, nationalities, sexual orientations, and neurotypes.

It is popularly believed that some people suffer Closedmindedness more frequently and severely than others - e.g., older people, the poorly educated, and political conservatives. Current research makes no indication that these stereotypes are true: Closedmindedness has been found to be remarkably prevalent in all populations, although political extremists on either end of the spectrum may well be suffering especially severe episodes. Given that the delusion that the sufferer him/herself is unaffected by Closedmindedness while his/her "enemies" are severely affected is a frequent symptom of Closedmindedness, it is likely that those spreading the myth that Closedmindedness is more common among some groups than others are most likely sufferering an episode themselves.

The most severe episodes of Closedmindedness may be accompanied by sociopathic and criminal behavior, e.g. genocide and attempted genocide. Severe, sociopathic Closedmindedness is not as prevalent as the milder forms, but its sufferers can cause great damage to a community, especially if those sufferers happen to be in power and trigger severe episodes in equally powerful or less powerful "enemies" who progress to vengeance.

An episode in one individual is also likely to trigger an episode in another individual with whom the sufferer is arguing or debating. So while it is not caused by a physical infectious agent, Closedmindedness is socially contagious in much the same manner as laughter or a yawn.

There is no known cure for Closedmindedness. Episodes, however, are often temporary and spontaneously end on their own. Effort to maintain and make use of an open mind once an episode of Closedmindedness has remitted may help make recurring episodes less frequent and severe.

My Life with Neurotypicalism: A Reversal

I have neurotypicalism (NT).

Today I am letting you into my world.

I have a mild form of it, though. I'm able to analyze critically and, at least for brief moments, pursue or monologue about interests other than socialization. I'm also able to sometimes notice small details in things. Researchers at the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical say that most people with NT have Normal Personality Disorder (NPD) and vice-versa. (Actually, they say it the other way around, but whatever. Oops - that's an NT "catch phrase." Communication problem.) I don't have Normal Personality Disorder, hence I'm considered "high functioning." I'm glad I'm not low functioning.

NT runs in my family. Everyone in my family has it too. Most of them worse than I do. It was quite a crazy experience growing up with that. Raging emotions everywhere. The littlest things would set each other off. I wasn't set off as much by a lot of them, especially when it came to the rigid rituals of "politeness." I'm lucky I'm not more severely afflicted. I'm not sure if I would be able to function in the world otherwise. I certainly wouldn't have been able to land myself a good autistic boyfriend - I would have driven him absolutely crazy were I lower functioning, having Normal Personality Disorder and other common complications.

The Triad of Impairments, according to the diagnostic criteria published by Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical, are social impairments, communicative and imaginative impairments, and restricted interests.

The social criteria don't seem too bad...if they were to diagnose me as a child it would probably be (1) and (3), maybe (4) sort of but I mostly only played with my little sister.

My strongest communication and imagination symptoms from childhood were probably the overuse of imaginative irrelevant activity, and repetition of catch phrases (mostly in adolescence, though I still do it sometimes - e.g., adopting "kick ass!" from South Park as an expression of happiness when something went my way, and using "The Bomb" a lot in high school to refer to something I really liked.) I'd say that I relate to these symptoms more than the social ones, though in traditional Neurotypicalism the social ones usually get more weight - you need two of those, but only one of each of the others.

I have a good deal of problems with limited interests and sensory impairments as well. Especially the lack of awareness of parts of objects. It's really frustrating when you're staring at a set of wallpaper, and you start to "fill in the blanks" in it and see ghosts...I've heard that's common with NT, seeing things that aren't really there, but when I talked to some Aspies about it, they said that it actually didn't sound all that NT...but the really NT part was wondering why the hell I saw different sets of patterns in two sets of wallpaper that looked EXACTLY the same. It took me, like, 20 minutes to figure out that the wallpaper that had different patterns from the rest of it was upside down. It's hard living without that fine detail perception, being only able to see how those pieces of wallpaper were the same.

I also tend not to notice, or care about, small changes in my environment. People with NT are extremely lax and out of it sometimes. We're really off in our own little world, like Temple Grandin says. Most of the people she works with have NT, so she had to study it, to understand why people couldn't see things that were obvious to her and to the animals she worked with.

And stereotyped body movements...well...it turns out NTs do have them, but only in very small amounts and in very limited ways. Anything beyond this, we don't care for, or it weirds us out. The little ones we do, though, we can tune out easily.

My senses are very weak. I'm not sure if they've always been, but they've been that way for a long time. I don't feel the pain of shirt tags most of the time, or fluorescent lights, and I have almost no desire for deep pressure. When there's chaos I can usually deal with it or space out. I have no strong texture preferences for my food. I can eat just about anything as long as I like the taste. My autistic boyfriend, on the other hand, has a much more refined sense of texture and will not eat the foods that just felt wrong to him as a child.

And my Theory of Other Minds isn't always very strong either. My communication breaks down sometimes when I've made a TOOM misjudgment and put myself under stress. My boyfriend is actually very affectionate - he always enjoys it. I'm not as much. Sometimes I get bored of it. But for a long time, I assumed that his wanting it all the time meant that he needed it, and that if I denied him - it was only mild affection after all, like holding hands and cuddling - I would be too cold for him. I also thought that he'd want "more." 'Cause I assumed he'd be like a guy with NT usually is. After a while, cuddling isn't enough for them. But I'm not ready for "more" yet. So I was getting all anxious whenever he wanted to cuddle, and trying to deny him a little but not too much, and I was communicating too indirectly, not saying "NO" when I needed to, just saying "not now" or saying nothing, just making a grunt and a gesture. And then a few minutes later he'd ask again. And what's worse, I even repressed my own need to say NO, thinking that I shouldn't have it because it's not normal for a person to not be open to hugging (but since then, other NTs I've talked to have reassured me that it actually is normal sometimes), and started nagging him about little things instead...acting just like my sister who has a more severe form of NT! I knew then that something was wrong. I talked to people about it, and realized what I needed and that I needed to say it directly. Everything got better after that.

I still wish I had a better TOOM. It's really hard to understand how my boyfriend thinks and feels and senses things. I have to ask him so many questions, and even talk about things to my friends and have them come up with questions to ask him.

Sometimes I wish that I could be cured. Other times, I'm happy to be able to change activities very quickly, experience the "pseudo-simultaneous awareness" described on ISNT as a common comorbidity of neurotypicalism (sometimes it's interesting and helpful to feel like I'm processing two emotions at the same time when I'm really just feeling one and rememberin the otehr), and to be relatively insensitive to nagging irritants like tags, fluorescent lights, different food textures, hair-washing, and nail-clipping.

I think those of us with high-functioning neurotypicalism can contribute a lot to society, if we're given the proper accommodations, like not having too many details to keep track of, and jobs where our flitty attention and dull senses are assets or at least not major deficits. People with low-functioning neurotypicalism, however, are known to be dangerous and violent - bullying, neglecting, and even killing autistic children, and softentimes other neurotypicals as well. It would probably be a good thing if LFN were cured.

Note: this post was inspired by an autistic blogger's rant about autism communities where the constituents buy into the mainstream theories too much and see themselves in terms of their "symptoms."