I was watching the netflix documentary about rubik's cube on netflix with my wife, and you see this autistic kid (rubik's cube champion), who doesn't speak until he's three, being friend with a much more socially accomplished other champion, and you can see him over the documentary looking at his friend and learning. I saw that and I suddenly realized that my whole twenties, that's exactly what I did. I read books and copied other people and wrote notes about social rules and practiced and practiced. I also started speaking at age 3 or 4 (my parents weren't really worried because I grew up bilingual and apparently it's common for bilingual kids to speak late).

I did take a few autism tests here and there, but always thought "oh they're just meant to make you feel special when you score high, that doesn't mean anything. plus i make good friends everywhere I go". When I told my wife she was like "who thinks that scoring high on an autism test is something people want", and we both took some of these tests. On one of the more widespread one (https://embrace-autism.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/ ), I scored 43, while she scored something like 12. My mind was absolutely blown. I started reading a few books and joining a few autism communities, and it might sound trite, but it's the first time in my life that I felt like I joined "my" community. So many of the stories and anecdotes I would read were like "finally I read something I can relate to".

I am looking for an official diagnosis (not simple) without too much effort, because I find most of the value in now being able to articulate so many of the things that puzzle me, or the conflicts I might have with my wife, or behaviours of mine, and mostly not being ashamed anymore. It's been extremely liberating, and it provides me with better words and verbs to tackle difficult situations.

Wow 43 out of 50 is rather high. I fell under the the suggested threshold of 32 and got 29.

I have similar memories of my 20s trying to learn how to behave in a social setting. But I also remember things clicking at some point and that part of the world stopped requiring so much effort.

Thank you for sharing. I hope you're able to get your diagnosis.