She was hitting on you.

The only time I’ve ever had someone approach me asking about my autism was from a fellow autist. Twas a good talk.

Sort of. It’s more like “I think I’m doing well socializing then I’ll find out later secondhand they think I’m a fucking idiot child and mocked me after I left.”

And then I’m tired as hell to try again.

That’s literally how I find my people. You know by how they say it if it’s judgmental or endearing… or you don’t and you just have to ask.

Many years ago, I was working together with a girl my age for about 3 months and I had decided pretty early on that I didn’t want to impress her, but that I would use the time to work on smalltalk and such. It was a factory job with lots of boring tasks, so there were lots of opportunities to entertain each other.

After 2½ months, I felt like I was doing better than I’ve ever done in my life. Then she hit me with the sentence: “I don’t think any girl would want to go out with you, because you don’t talk enough.”

So, basically worst case: That’s genuinely what she thought.
‘Best’ case: She was trying to hurt me, but well, she still knew which wound to poke into, so I guess, I wasn’t doing that great either way.