Avoid noise, play mini golf, cast your net wide: Ellie

From making small talk to missing social cues, the road to romance can be rocky for those with ADHD and autism. Here are some tips for how to navigate it

It is safe to say that, when it comes to dating and relationships, I’ve never had an easy ride. I’ve always been the one who cares more, the one who is “too intense” and the one who winds up getting hurt. I wear my heart on my sleeve and, as a relatively newly diagnosed autistic woman with ADHD, there are two words that have followed me around and haunted me throughout my entire life: “too much”.

Until recently, being “too much” was a source of great shame. I spent my teenage years and early 20s trying to navigate dating and relationships while missing a key piece of information about myself – that I was an autistic ADHDer. I didn’t know that I was prone to feeling things much more deeply than most people, or that masking made me a chronic people pleaser. I didn’t know that I had a social disability, or that my dopamine-seeking brain might look for stimulation from problematic places (or people). I thought that my too much-ness was just a result of being unlovable, broken or a “bad dater”.