By Emily Leclerc | Waisman Science Writer
Note: Ibrahim and Madelyn expressed that they did not have a preference regarding the type of language they preferred when being referred to. This article uses person-first language throughout.
At a Glance
- Building and maintaining relationships is hard, both platonic and romantic. For someone with autism, that task can be even more complicated. “Sometimes it feels like rocket science,” says Ibrahim, an adult with autism. (Jump to this content)
- The first big hurdle is access. Determining where you want to go to meet people and feeling comfortable entering a new space can both be challenging. There are lots of ways to work through it such as bringing someone with you, finding a group targeted towards a specific interest, or starting with building connections online. (Jump to this content)
- People with autism can often struggle with interpreting nonverbal communication and unspoken social rules. This can create misunderstandings and compound relationship building struggles. Working with someone to build your own social guidebook can help individuals with autism practice how they want to respond and present themselves in social situations. (Jump to this content)
- Struggles with building relationships and the social challenges individuals with autism face can make them more vulnerable to abuse, manipulation, and intense struggles with relationship loss. Some of the best ways to help mitigate those risks is to focus on awareness, prevention strategies, and building resiliency through strong coping strategies. (Jump to this content)
- There are no rules for what someone’s relationships have to look like. They can be anything as long as all parties are happy, safe, and consenting. Individuals with autism can have a wide variety of needs in their relationships and they have the right to foster the connections that best suit them in whatever form that takes. (Jump to this content)
Relationships are hard. It’s part of why there are countless books, podcasts, and blog posts about how to build, maintain, and keep relationships. But even with access to that endless sea of information and advice, building healthy, valuable, and long-lasting relationships, both platonic and romantic, can feel like a herculean task.
Wanting connection, wanting relationships, is a core part of what it means to be human. The drive to foster deep social bonds is inherent in humans. “Human beings have a need and a desire for connection. It is part of how our brains and bodies work. There are physiological and biological responses to building connections that reinforce and reward that behavior,” says Madeline Barger, MS, LMFT, BCBA, CST, lead behavior analyst in the Waisman Center Autism Treatment Program’s Teen and Young Adults program, licensed marriage and family therapist, and AASECT certified sex therapist. “Everyone needs healthy relationships, deserves them, and has a right to them.”
Even with that drive and need, navigating today’s social landscape to find friends and partners has a multitude of challenges. For someone who is on the autism spectrum, finding and fostering relationships can be even more complicated. “Sometimes it feels like rocket science,” says Ibrahim, an adult with autism who has worked with Barger.
Popular media, like the show Love on the Spectrum, has started to bring increased awareness to the hurdles that individuals with autism often face when endeavoring to build connections. But even with that new awareness, the road can be long and full of bumps.
Figuring out how to take the first few steps
Autism is a developmental disability resulting from differences in how the brain is wired and is characterized by difficulties with social and communication skills and restrictive or repetitive behaviors. Every individual with autism is impacted differently, with a diverse list of symptoms that can range greatly in severity. With social communication being a core area that is affected, autism adds another layer of complexity to the already complex skill of building relationships.
The first big hurdle is access. That is easier for people who are still in school as that grants you access to all of your peers. It is much simpler to start building a friendship with someone you are guaranteed to see every day. Without the regular proximity of peers that occurs when in school, finding places to meet new people and build those relationships can feel almost like a second job. And for individuals with autism, that first step and starting point can feel formidable.
“Time and access, for any adult, whether it is a tired parent, someone living on their own, or someone who just wants to meet people, is a big deal. Like, how do I start this,” Barger says. “Where is the space in my life for this? How do I find people that I might be able to and want to connect with? Then you add the idea of disability where there can be a lot of stigma and judgement and then the effort to go make a friend or join a social group becomes even more monumental and heavy.”
Figuring out where to go to socialize mixed with the potential risk of judgement, stigma, and rejection can be a paralyzing combination. Being treated poorly because of their differences is unfortunately a reality for many individuals with autism. “I have the lived experience of people not being so kind to me in the past and being outcast,” Ibrahim says.
It is impossible to know whether or not someone will be accepted by a new group of friends. The resulting fear and anxiety, that is often reinforced with poor previous experiences, can make entering a new space with unfamiliar people feel incredibly intimidating and challenging. “Many clients have talked to me about worries about being judged and other similar feelings,” Barger says. “That doesn’t mean there is a lack of interest or desire to socialize, it just means we work on ways to manage that because being judged by potential friends is upsetting and scary.”
There are many different ways to work towards being a little more comfortable and confident entering new spaces. Barger is always the first to say that it is a very individual process and it may take some time to learn what works for each person. Maybe it is bringing someone else with you. Maybe it’s intentionally seeking out a space targeted towards neurodivergent individuals. Maybe it’s finding a group focused on a niche interest. Or maybe it’s starting first with building online friendships. Meeting people online can be a good option for some as it has lower social demand than interacting with others in person. It can be an opportunity to build confidence before endeavoring to build in-person relationships. Barger emphasizes that it’s important to find what method works best for each person to help them get in the door.
Unfortunately, the fears of judgement and rejection don’t always stop after addressing the initial anxiety. Even once a friendship is established, Ibrahim and Madelyn, a young adult with autism who has worked with Barger, continue to be very selective about who they tell about their autism diagnosis. “I still don’t tell all of my friends, even the ones that I love. Some of them know this about me, the ones I feel safest with, and some of them don’t,” Madelyn says. Ibrahim is the same with only a select few people in his life being privy to his diagnosis. The vulnerability in opening up to someone about being on the autism spectrum can be daunting and is not always met with a kind reaction.
From social blueprints to self-confidence: building skills and resilience
Compounding everything can also be some of the challenges that individuals with autism face with social skills. Verbal communication is one skill but often where individuals with autism struggle is with the different forms of nonverbal communication and understanding all of the unspoken social rules. “I compare it to – you know in Excel when it will autofill in the rows with numbers? That’s neurotypical people’s social skills. For my social skills, it’s like I have to manually fill in every single number. You can learn but it takes a lot longer and is a lot harder,” Madelyn says.
Body language, social cues, social conventions, and unspoken societal social rules can often be more difficult for individuals with autism to follow and interpret. Typically developing individuals often don’t realize how much nonverbal communication they are engaging in and responding to during conversations. It becomes an innate skill that plays out almost entirely subconsciously. It can feel like neurotypical individuals have a cheat sheet for all of the unspoken social rules that individuals with autism never got.
This can lead to conversations requiring significantly more thought and energy for individuals with autism as they have to expend extra processing power to keep the rules in mind and interpret the nonverbal communication. Unintentionally or unknowingly breaking the unspoken social rules or misinterpreting nonverbal communication can also play into fears of judgement and rejection.
“I think a big part of friendship is reading body language and picking up on social cues. I’ve definitely learned some of it but it is still really challenging for me,” Ibrahim says. “And people sometimes have this kneejerk judgmental reaction to me because of it. Then people don’t always take the time to get to know me.”
Learning and developing these skills is a common area for Barger and the individuals that she works with, including Madelyn and Ibrahim. They will work together to build their own toolbox and guidebook for what they want to do during different interactions and conversations and what social cues and rules to be aware of. The services Barger provides are a part of the larger Autism Treatment Program at the Waisman Center, that serves individuals with autism from preschool to young adulthood.
Barger utilizes a variety of methods to help her clients put together a social toolbox and build confidence in their abilities to handle different social situations. It all depends on what would be most helpful for each individual person. The methods can include talking through how different conversations could go and how they would want to respond, writing a script or putting together a list of notes, providing examples of how others have communicated during different social interactions, and role-playing.
“There is also almost a social structure that we can lay out for people to fill out as they want,” Barger says. “And thankfully over the years it has become less about this is what socializing should look like and more about here is a framework for how to advocate for yourself and you plug in the content you want.”
Having to more deliberately learn and work on a variety of social skills has the potential to sometimes lead to individuals with autism and other disabilities having better and more adaptive skills than neurotypical people, Barger says. Needing to consciously spend time thinking about and working on these skills has the benefit of giving individuals more space to improve and develop them in ways that others might not. “Now I almost run circles around neurotypical people when it comes to socializing because I’ve had so much training from loved ones, Madeline [Barger], and the Waisman Center in adapting to a neurotypical world. I also have spent a lot of time actively thinking about the social choices I make,” Madelyn says.
Today, both Ibrahim and Madelyn have built supportive, loving, and deeply valuable networks of people around them. They truly cherish the relationships in their lives and spend a lot of time and energy nurturing their friendships and partnerships. “I don’t take my relationships for granted. I am very serious and intentional about them,” Madelyn says. “I really care about my friends. Like really care about my friends.”
With that depth of care comes a unique ability to genuinely empathize with those around them. They know how hard it can be to find people to connect with. How hard it can be to suffer unkindness, isolation, and rejection from others. How important it is to strive for inclusion and acceptance. “Nobody deserves to be alone. Everybody deserves to connect with somebody,” Ibrahim says. “Experiencing unkindness and being outcast has convinced me to make sure that I don’t do that to anyone. It has made me a lot more compassionate for people.”
The unfortunate flip side of the coin is that struggles with building relationships and the social challenges individuals with autism face can make them more vulnerable to abuse, manipulation, and intense struggles with relationship loss. Barger says that the best ways to help mitigate those risks is to focus on awareness, prevention strategies, and building resiliency through strong coping strategies. Talking about what signs, behavior patterns, and red flags to be aware of, strategies on how to protect yourself, and how to grieve the loss of a relationship in a healthy way are all ways to help prevent abuse. Barger also works with her clients to intentionally cultivate ways to find joy and happiness outside of their relationships so that if they were to end, it wouldn’t feel as though their entire world has caved in. Resiliency and protection strategies are an equally important part of a social toolkit alongside all of the social skills.
Redefining relationships
There is often this idea that friendships and other types of relationships are supposed to look a certain way. That they should have this specific structure or that particular form of connection. That they should fit into this one specific friendship box. Not only is that limiting but it also devalues the wide diversity of ways relationships can look.
Every person has the right to decide what they want their relationships to look like and how they want to go about cultivating them. Individuals with autism can have a wide variety of needs in their relationships and they have the right to foster the connections that best suit them in whatever form that takes. “The freedom to just be yourself around someone that is accepting of you is an intoxicating and liberating thing,” Madelyn says. There is great beauty in that diversity.
Learning to be open and accepting of different kinds of connection not only benefits individuals with autism but everyone else as well. As long as there is safety and consent, friendships, partnerships, and relationships are yours to build as you please. And their shape is entirely up to you. “Understanding that there are so many ways a friendship or relationship can be is something we should be doing with everyone all the time,” Barger says. “I truly think that the autism community really teaches everybody else how to do that and it is a beautiful thing.”