Introduction inside

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Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 86
Location: Netherlands

17 Feb 2012, 10:23 am

Hallo allemaal (Dutch for "Hi everyone")!

I'm a 25 year old guy from the Netherlands. I'm a software engineer by profession.

Just a few months ago I made a friend who pointed out I might have Asperger's (he's an Aspie too). I never really looked into what AS is, but when I read up on it, I recognized a whole lot of myself in it.

Up until then I just thought I was weird and crazy (which I probably still am, but at least now I know I'm less likely to turn into an axe murderer XD) so just the fact I might have AS was quite a relief actually. Not sure yet if I want to get diagnosed or not though.

Throughout my life people always considered me different, though I figured it was probably because I'm gay. I guess in hindsight most of the differences were AS based. I always thought I was quite socially capable, I never actually realized I'm approaching the social aspects of life in a different way than most people.

Only recently while I was dating a guy did I notice that I don't seem to understand a lot of the rules on dating and relationships and a whole blob of misunderstanding and miscommunication pretty much caused the guy to stop dating, though I guess he wasn't compatible for me to be anything more than a friend anyway then

In my new mission to better comprehend relationships and its rules and games, I stumbled across WP. After consuming literally hundreds of posts in the last few days I decided to sign up and share my experiences and hopefully get to understand a lot of things better.

I figured this would be an introduction of only a few lines, funny how I end up typing a whole lot instead. Better-late-than-never disclaimer: this post contains a lot of text and no keyboards were harmed in the making of this post :wink:

Also, whoever finds a grammatical error in this post gets a cookie, I'm really really OCD on grammar :lol:

Tsela
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

Joined: 3 Jan 2011
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 70

17 Feb 2012, 10:40 am

Hoi! En welkom! (van een homo Fransman die ook in Nederland woont :lol: )

Your experience pretty much parallels mine (the fact that I'm gay too might help :wink: ). I always thought I was just "weird and crazy", and that I was sociable but shy, until I attended a presentation about Autism and I realised I had to be on the spectrum.

I would get diagnosed if I were you. The Netherlands are a pretty good place to be as an AS person, and you can get support once you get diagnosed. I've only started getting support (was diagnosed 8 months ago), but it does help, if only to understand how I myself react to events. You can even get support at work if necessary (at least at my company I do).

Anyway, welcome here!