“Autism is not something that can be switched off when it may be an inconvenience to festive planning.” – Literally Speaking Blog

“Aspies struggle to multi-task and are often forgetful. Sometimes I have seen my boyfriend read my texts and then just forget to reply because at that moment in time he was pre-occupied. ” – Night_Shade917

“I have found that because people with Asperger’s have such an intense focus on a certain thing, which is mainly their special interest. Their intense focus immerses them into their own world where they will sometimes block out any social interaction. They often lose track of time whilst doing this and sometimes they don’t realise how much time has passed since the time they last talked to their partner. They often do this because of two reasons; Aspies have intense focus on one thing which means that they struggle to multi-task. He might just be getting distracted or pre-occupied with his special interest. Also, if he is focused on the conversation and nothing else, you’ll get better replies because the only thing he’s focused on is talking to you. However, if he’s pre-occupied you won’t get a lot of answers out of him due to his attention being focused on his special interest most likely. The second reason why the Aspie might do this is because of sensory overload due to stress, something bothering them, bad days at work or school, socialising or just feeling overloaded because of their day. This isn’t always the case though, sometimes they just want their space and solitude. Whatever you do, please don’t take this personally. Aspies really don’t mean to do this, but it’s something they sometimes have to do in order to relax and get rid of their stresses. Sometimes NT’s will think that their partner is ignoring or avoiding them or it may come across as if he has forgotten you, that really isn’t the case. They see it as a way of relaxing and relieving them of their daily stresses or they just simply get distracted. This is NOT done with malicious intent. They don’t do this on purpose to hurt you in any way at all. They often don’t realise they’re doing it until you point it out, but some Aspies are quite open with this and others are not, it varies from person to person.”  – Night_Shade917

“I don’t like planning ahead if I’m busy with stuff. My “busy with stuff” is stuff some people take for granted. I have to “plan” for pretty much everything, but in my thought process it’s not necessarily planning to me, but it is in fact planning. So, to, let’s say, go to the store, I gotta “plan” so much, that it becomes overwhelming, it gets to a point where though I naturally wanna plan everything out perfectly for the future, I have to make myself only plan for that day or possibly the next, as that’s the only thing you have control over. What happens when I plan for days and months in advance is, it usually cannot go according to plan, and if I involve other people in my plans, I’ll break promises inadvertently, as there will be things that come up that I don’t account for. So as much as I love planning ahead and thinking of all the cool things I’d like to do, I don’t really think about things in the “3 years from now I’d like to do _____.” Even people asking if I’d like to do something in a week or two overwhelms me, as I don’t know what’s going to be going on in a week or two. So as far as the planning thing, it’s best if you wanna plan things out, just ask him about a day or two in advance, probably don’t surprise him and be like “I wanna see you in like an hour” but then also don’t try to make giant week in advance kinda things, just be like “so tomorrow or the day after, wanna do _____” and see if it works.” –1000Knives