Understanding Autism: Why I Keep Following Agreements Even When Others Break Them or Forget About Them Altogether
When you agree a standing arrangement with me, I will probably keep following it even if you have clearly forgotten, because it is the only way that things make sense to me.
The story is told of a couple who had been married for many years. They were very happy together, but there was one thing which had bugged the wife for a very long time. Her husband never told her that he loved her. Eventually, she could stand it no longer and confronted him about this oversight. The husband was very surprised and asked her in return, “Did I tell you that I loved you on our wedding day?” “You did,” she replied. “Well then, I’ll let you know when the situation changes!” answered her husband. There is no record of the wife’s reaction.
It sounds silly, but as an autistic person who often struggles to navigate the neurotypical world, I often find myself in a similar position to the husband. For example, imagine I have to go somewhere with the same group of people every week. We agree that to ensure we arrive on time, we will leave at 6.30 pm. This level of planning is great for me as it is clear and leaves nothing to chance.
But what tends to happen is that for the first few weeks, we all meet on time and go as planned. But then things change, and I seem to be the only one who does not get the message. Perhaps we are consistently too early when we leave at 6.30, or the traffic is bad at that time. Maybe one of the other people in the group has another commitment and will struggle to be there at 6.30. There are many possible reasons, and the change could be very sensible. But it is usually left unspoken! I will continue to arrive at 6.30 until somebody explicitly tells me that the arrangement has changed.
All too often, it feels like neurotypicals have some sort of psychic connection by which they communicate these changes. It is probably in the same way that they know that an invitation that says 7 pm means not a moment before 7.30 pm and ideally about 8 pm, while another similar event must be arrived at by 6.45 pm at the very latest.
When you make a regular arrangement with an autistic person, be it a time to meet or the way something will be done, they may well stick to it rigorously until told otherwise and be very surprised that you do not have the same approach. It used to happen with cooking Christmas dinner with my ex-wife. Every year, we would divide the tasks so that I would cook the meat and potatoes, and she would prepare the vegetables. So, a few days before Christmas, I would ask her if we were going to take the usual approach this year. And every time, she would have no memory of what we had done the previous year.
Neither of us was wrong or unreasonable in this scenario – it was just another illustration of how different our brains were. When you are struggling with much of day to day life, as I do, you look for these anchor points and stick to them. They can be brief moments of certainty and security amongst the constant chaos and randomness of the neurotypical way of doing things.
While my memory has never been great, and is getting worse as I get older, I always remember these anchors that help me to navigate life, especially with others. I have so many experiences where I do what I think is sensible in a situation and find it to be very different from the accepted norm, that when I know that something works, I stick to it.
If you make a regular arrangement with an autistic person, please understand that they will likely follow it to the letter until you agree otherwise. Repeated failure to honour your side of the agreement is unlikely to be enough for me to understand that what we previously agreed no longer stands. I need you to tell me. We can then make a new agreement, and I will be fine once I have thought that through. But do not expect me to guess that you want to meet 10 minutes later by just being late every time!
This need for clarity and having things spelt out may seem unnecessary and annoying to you. But the truth is that there is very little in life that is obvious to all of us. I learnt this the hard way when I was trying to help my children with their maths homework. I have always been good at maths, so I could just see how the equations worked and how to solve the problem. Explaining how to do it to someone without this implicit understanding was, therefore, extremely difficult.
We seem to be born preprogrammed to think that everyone is exactly like us, when nothing could be further from the truth. Get a group of people together and you will likely find that almost everything in the world that you think is obvious is not to at least one of the others.
When you are autistic, being that odd one out who does not know what everyone else thinks is obvious happens a lot. I am generally fine with this, and I would rather you explained things that I do know than make assumptions, because it will not be long before an assumption of my knowledge or understanding is misplaced. But if we make a standing arrangement, please understand that I will keep following it until you tell me otherwise!
If you want to learn more about how it feels to be autistic or how to support autistic family members, friends, and colleagues, please subscribe to my substack to see all of my insights. If you would like my expert input to your project or organisation, leave me a comment or message me.
Another banger! 🙏
I do this too.