Hmm so how exactly do neurotypical people view relationships?
Because I’m always told that I have it all wrong 🤪
Apparently the neurotypical (who has been in relationship on and off with very few gaps their entire life) isn’t making this a priority because they don’t want to be alone. They’re also not doing it because it makes life easier AND they’re not doing it because they simply want it for themselves. The main point is that I’ll never “get it.”
Maybe this is a lesson learned that I should force myself to be in the next relationship if the opportunity ever comes around again, even if my partner can’t meet my needs. Perhaps it’s better to be lonely with someone than with no one at all idk
Snort_Owl [they/them] - 4w
Not an NT but my view is they see everything as transactional or status related. But i’m racist against NT’s
25
Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them] - 4w
It really sucks here in NT land, so many of us just don't give a shit about anyone else, but you are never allowed to call them out on their increasingly barbaric behaviour. A bit scared of starting an argument, but ND is a stupid label, it's basically just applied to people who can't handle the disgusting and toxic nature of capitalist society. Which should be most people, but apparently not, apparently I'm the strange one for caring about the people who can't handle it and I'm somehow in the wrong for making concessions for them to try and make their experience more manageable.
Not every NT is very transactional and status focused, but way too many of us are trained to be. It kind of feels like an NT is anyone who takes to being trained like a dog by the capitalist well and is molded into the person the capitalist class wants them to be, and the actual kind and decent person they could be is destroyed.
17
Hohsia [any] - 4w
😅 the more I entrench myself into the world, the more I’m beginning to believe that we can’t get along
11
Snort_Owl [they/them] - 4w
I think its possible its just NT’s automatically absorb the status quo without being aware of it and neoliberal ideology is atomised people with transactional relationships or desiring status signifiers but it doesnt mean it has to be that way. But to make a change then the current societal structure has to change.
9
purpleworm [none/use name] - 4w
This is an overly-essentialist account, and getting out ahead of it by calling it "racism against NTs" doesn't change that fact. People absorb the status quo to the extent that they view it as serving them and/or are rendered incapable of conceiving of an alternative. This means in NT society, there is a correlation between being NT and being "successfully" enculturated and with being ND and that not happening, but it's overwhelmingly for the same reason as this skew happens with every axis of marginalization rather than NT people being in any overall manner cognitively deficient or inherently more reactionary. The only sense in which I would call the correlation more meaningful is to the extent to which some factor resulted in someone being marginalized and the trauma of that experience put them much more firmly in the "ND" category, but that's causality going in the opposite direction and this outcome obviously doesn't apply to many of the conditions people talk about with this subject.
There are lots of ND people who are absolute establishment ghouls or some brand of maladjusted sicko (including on this board, where we get people with eugenicist attitudes toward NT people), and there are many NT people who are good comrades, because the fundamental issue is not that like half of humanity was born with a unique gravitational attraction toward evil. The problem is enculturation and class position.
To establish a democratic order to empower people, we cannot rely on a ruling elite of enlightened ND people to mold the culture and produce ideal NT people. We have no choice but to actually engage with them (not every single one, some are just firm class enemies). We do of course need to take intentional action to shape our culture, but it needs to be a collective decision or you're just creating a bureaucracy that bears its own class antagonisms against the new working class.
36
Nacarbac [comrade/them] - 4w
18
purpleworm [none/use name] - 4w
I appreciate it
8
Acute_Engles [he/him, any] - 4w
Not necessarily typical (ADHD) but i score so low on all the autism screeners.
Relationships(i am assuming you mean romantic, sorry if this is not the case) usually start because the people involved feel a mutual attraction based on appearance, personality or sometimes something unexplainable often referred to as a "spark."
This is almost always a feeling beyond or distinct from that which one feels for a platonic friend.
The reasons for continuing a relationship beyond this initial attraction are far more complicated and diverse than I could reasonably lay out in a reply. Do you have any more specific questions about it?
21
Hohsia [any] - 4w
To be clear, I have been in relationships, but it’s starting to feel like dumb luck. Every time I get into this spot where I regret leaving even though I know how miserable I was
Tbh I say “been in relationships” like two is a lot 🥴 I think I understand them for the most part, I don’t typically tend to have trouble socially except at times when I get deep into my own head. At those times though, I wonder how I did it and question if I ever will again. Not a great feeling
14
Acute_Engles [he/him, any] - 4w
but it’s starting to feel like dumb luck
My current wife and i each canceled one first date last minute before our actual first date.
It's all dumb luck, far as i can tell
15
Hohsia [any] - 4w
Met my last partner because they thought my post was interesting enough for a DM lmao
11
mathemachristian [he/him] - 4w
Apparently the neurotypical (who has been in relationship on and off with very few gaps their entire life) isn’t making this a priority because they don’t want to be alone. They’re also not doing it because it makes life easier AND they’re not doing it because they simply want it for themselves.
I mean I'm married for all three reasons. Why wouldn't I marry my best friend?? Seemed like no-brainer to us. I mean there is this person around whom I can be just me I wanna have them around every day of every year of my life, like of course I'll marry her. Idk hope that helps? Oh yeah also not 100% neuronormie
12
CerebralHawks - 4w
Not neurotypical, though I can fake it well enough, like at work. Though, I come home exhausted, mentally, from having to listen to people talk about shit that mostly doesn't matter.
So I was told by my mother, and I think my sisters may have agreed as well, can't remember if they said so as well but they may have. That I was either going to meet a woman/partner like me, or I was gonna get used, abused, and thrown aside. Well, I met one like me, and we're coming up on 20 years later this year. She's the weird one in her family and I'm the weird one in mine. We get along great. We've never had a real fight and we've never thrown hands once. She can name three times I raised my voice to her. I can remember two of them and she agrees I was justified in doing so, and I think many of you would as well.
Anyway, we're into a lot of the same shit, so we're basically just really good friends who enjoy living together, but we also love each other. No kids, though not for the lack of trying. We do okay with nieces and nephews from newborn up to about mid-20s in age, though we're always glad to give them back (or, in the case of 18+, watch them drive away) at the end of the day. Oh yeah, we're also both on the ace spectrum. We get down... when we feel like it. Which isn't as much as I'd like but it's exactly how much she'd like, and I have no desire to step out (cheat, whatever).
I can't tell anyone what to do with their life, but I think it can happen for anyone. Find a hobby and get involved. Fortunately, my wife and I met online, but we also met online talking about something we were both passionate about once upon a time. We no longer are, the winds of our directions change every few years, but fortunately, together for the most part. I've always been a reader, but I gave it up for the most part because I drive long hours — so I went to audiobooks. Wife read for a while, then she wanted to write. I knew I had to find the right one to get her hooked. I thought it would be Ready Player One read by Wil Wheaton. She read the book, but only the first one. I read his second book, Armada, and Ready Player Two as well. (Neither was great, but, no regrets.) Bought her a few of the books I've read. I wanted to get her into Mistborn. Well, I got her into Dungeon Crawler Carl. All it took was playing the first five to ten minutes (from the introductions of Carl and Donut to the start of the dungeon) and she was hooked. She's still in the first one, I'm in the second one. For my fellow crawlers out there, I'm on the third floor (the Overcity — carnival quest done, the one given by the orc lady started, fan boxes just opened) and she's just reached the second floor. (Yeah, so if you don't like books, but you like video games... you might like DCC. If you like books that don't really play by the rules (like Ready Player One or any Japanese light novels... like Sword Art Online, which DCC is a lot like, but profane and dirty), you might like DCC.
Reading is not a good hobby to meet people in. Dungeons & Dragons, however, is a great one. You might think it's rolling dice and playing with numbers. Any D&D player will tell you, it's really about sitting around bullshitting most of the night with your friends. You don't have friends? D&D brings people together. Join a D&D group, you will make friends. Also, D&D is very simplistic. Anyone can play it. Kids can play it. When D&D got that way (it wasn't before), a spinoff/competitor was created called Pathfinder. Basically the same thing, but more numbers and more technical stuff. I've never joined a Pathfinder game, but I assume those guys spend as much time bullshitting as we do. You like more sci-fi than fantasy? There's Starfinder. I'll give you one guess who makes that. There's also Cyberpunk 2020. If that sounds familiar, it's the basis for the video game Cyberpunk 2077 and has a lot of the same shit. It's like playing Cyberpunk 2077 but with a pen and paper and dice. You can even be a "Media" (those guys with camcorders strapped to their face, there were a couple in the video game). They're dorks, but they can do some neat shit. Just be warned, any tabletop that isn't D&D is gonna have a lot fewer players. This won't matter if you're in a big city, but in a small town, you may be limited to D&D. The exception is, if you wanna play cards. For that, the king is Magic: The Gathering, but if you're a Disney kid, Lorcana is pretty popular, too. It's Magic: The Gathering but with Disney. Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh are still played, but if you prefer anime, you may be able to find a Weiss Schwarz table. That lets you pick one anime and build a deck from it, and compete against fans of the same anime, or different ones. There are Weiss (white) anime which are cute and have "technical" play styles, and there are Schwarz (black) anime which are cool and have powerful moves. I'd start with the Schwarz side before trying Weiss. But the two can play against each other. And it's by anime, so while Anya Forger is easily the cutest anime character ever (four year old girl, pink hair, horns, big green eyes with nothin' behind 'em... dumb as a box of rocks), SPYxFAMILY is most likely a Schwarz set due to her "mom" being an assassin and her "dad" being a spy. Anyway, all these games will get you around a table with some like-minded people. Most of them will be men, so if men is what you're attracted to, you're gonna have an easier time. There are some gals who play, though. I did my part — I tried to get my wife into it. Tried to get one of my nieces into it. Neither of them dateable, but hey, I tried bringing women into the fandom. We all gotta do our part. So if you got a sister, a female cousin, someone you wouldn't date, but maybe she's a gamer, and you wanna lead by example? Go be the change you want to see in the world.
Otherwise... I dunno. Maybe I just got really lucky.
12
starkillerfish [she/her] - 4w
What
10
Hohsia [any] - 4w
Haven’t you heard this notion that neurodivergent people “just don’t understand why people get into relationships?”
9
Le_Wokisme [they/them, undecided] - 4w
sometimes i don't know why some people pick the partners they pick, but not relationships period as a philosophical thing
15
starkillerfish [she/her] - 4w
Never. But for context basically all my friends are neurodivergent and in relationships. So my data is skewed
15
Nacarbac [comrade/them] - 4w
I think what matters most here is the degree of self-examination performed by the speaker, and not NT/ND-ness. NTs might have it harder here, since when it's easier to fit in you don't need to evaluate the situation in the same way. NDs would seem more likely, depending on many factors, to be encouraged to perform more self-evaluation of "normal social behaviours". In broad strokes you could say that kinda thing, but it's not that meaningful, I'm not aware of anything suggesting differing introspective capacities to any degree that matters - we're all temporarily conscious sparks lit up by our brains to solve odd problems of eating new seeds, navigating liminal spaces, and flinging poo. It'd be a bit silly to get hierarchical about it.
So this specific person, rather than some generalised Person, might just never have thought about it that much - there's nothing wrong with being in-tune with your drives and going with the flow. And since they haven't shone much light on it, when some probable drivers - material and embodied desires - are structured into words and passed back to them, it's jarring. It sounds bad, society/media (usually) teaches you that you really are just supposed to get it in some ineffable, transcendent, ideal way... that has nothing to do with anything as base as material desire.
Maybe. I'm just telling a story that sounds about right to me.
10
HexReplyBot [none/use name] - 4w
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Who cares? The only people you need to justify yourself to are the ones you decide matter to you.
If you can get what you want out of life (within an ethical framework of course) then it doesn't matter what other people think the "norm" is. Chasing normal is a fool's errand.
5
quickenparalysespunk @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 4w
sounds like you had a painful experience. I've been there. i hope the aftermath doesn't overwhelm you or stay with you longer than you want.
it sounds like you are hinting at what I've come to believe, which is that the type of NTs who tend to rely ideas/phrases like "you just (don't) get it" or mutual understanding via atmosphere... they don't actually "get" as much as they think they do. some NTs, smart NTs wouldn't rely on such things without articulable .
I'm convinced the "getters" routinely misinterpret various intrinsically ambiguous stimuli as highly specific evidence for whatever opinion to which they happen to be predisposed/primed for at the moment, evidence which they nevertheless could not explain if they were asked.
i feel that as members of society, we are often asked to believe that many in the "mainstream ", who could be thought of as NT extrovert follow-their-heart type of people, seem to have the ability/tendency to osmose understanding as through magical or telepathic communion. the research held up for this idea states the purpose as evolutionarily lubricant for societal cohesion, which is plausible enough, but the researchers often neglect mentioning how frequently getters misinterpret each other. personally i believe their hit-or-miss rate heavily implies their "mutual understanding" is constructed of uneducated guesswork.
again, i don't mean to condemn all NTs as Miss Cleo worshippers nor as blood type fortunetelling adherents, etc.
TL;DR
the only way for humans to really understand and connect with each other is to be vulnerable (when it's safe) and openly discuss our perceptions, beliefs, and feelings in shared language.
4
Spacehooks @reddthat.com - 4w
Lol I found if someone says "you just don't get it" then they just didnt think about it themselves to put it into words or don't want to say it out loud.
Anywho here is my take:
A relationship is mutual arrangement to benefit both parties. You both need to get something out of it and what ever those "things" are needs to balanced. It doesnt need to be the same thing or one thing but what is being provided needs to be equal or more value in each other's eyes.
Example: I do all cooking and cleaning in my home but my SO does many advance things for me i cant do. Some ppl dont like that arrangement and that's fine. I enjoy doing those chores while my SO hates them. it's not 1 size fit all.
Example 2: I have almost crippling high sex drive while SO has non existent one. This stresses our relationship but my SO is my best friend who I trust with everything. THAT has more value to me then sexual needs.
If being with another person is not providing more benefits than stress than its not worth it. Like ppl getting abused because too afraid of being alone or trying to stick it out for kids. In my mind thats madness but in their mind they are lieing to themselves and/or think there is still a mutual benefit or things will get better.
Bring alone with terrible or incompatible person is way worse than being alone but humans as social creatures fear that loneliness and it skews decision making. Don't force something if you are happy as is but you should take chances and see where things go if an opportunity occurs. Things could go bad yes but it could also end great.
Hohsia in neurodiverse
Hmm so how exactly do neurotypical people view relationships?
Because I’m always told that I have it all wrong 🤪
Apparently the neurotypical (who has been in relationship on and off with very few gaps their entire life) isn’t making this a priority because they don’t want to be alone. They’re also not doing it because it makes life easier AND they’re not doing it because they simply want it for themselves. The main point is that I’ll never “get it.”
Maybe this is a lesson learned that I should force myself to be in the next relationship if the opportunity ever comes around again, even if my partner can’t meet my needs. Perhaps it’s better to be lonely with someone than with no one at all idk
Not an NT but my view is they see everything as transactional or status related. But i’m racist against NT’s
It really sucks here in NT land, so many of us just don't give a shit about anyone else, but you are never allowed to call them out on their increasingly barbaric behaviour. A bit scared of starting an argument, but ND is a stupid label, it's basically just applied to people who can't handle the disgusting and toxic nature of capitalist society. Which should be most people, but apparently not, apparently I'm the strange one for caring about the people who can't handle it and I'm somehow in the wrong for making concessions for them to try and make their experience more manageable.
Not every NT is very transactional and status focused, but way too many of us are trained to be. It kind of feels like an NT is anyone who takes to being trained like a dog by the capitalist well and is molded into the person the capitalist class wants them to be, and the actual kind and decent person they could be is destroyed.
😅 the more I entrench myself into the world, the more I’m beginning to believe that we can’t get along
I think its possible its just NT’s automatically absorb the status quo without being aware of it and neoliberal ideology is atomised people with transactional relationships or desiring status signifiers but it doesnt mean it has to be that way. But to make a change then the current societal structure has to change.
This is an overly-essentialist account, and getting out ahead of it by calling it "racism against NTs" doesn't change that fact. People absorb the status quo to the extent that they view it as serving them and/or are rendered incapable of conceiving of an alternative. This means in NT society, there is a correlation between being NT and being "successfully" enculturated and with being ND and that not happening, but it's overwhelmingly for the same reason as this skew happens with every axis of marginalization rather than NT people being in any overall manner cognitively deficient or inherently more reactionary. The only sense in which I would call the correlation more meaningful is to the extent to which some factor resulted in someone being marginalized and the trauma of that experience put them much more firmly in the "ND" category, but that's causality going in the opposite direction and this outcome obviously doesn't apply to many of the conditions people talk about with this subject.
There are lots of ND people who are absolute establishment ghouls or some brand of maladjusted sicko (including on this board, where we get people with eugenicist attitudes toward NT people), and there are many NT people who are good comrades, because the fundamental issue is not that like half of humanity was born with a unique gravitational attraction toward evil. The problem is enculturation and class position.
To establish a democratic order to empower people, we cannot rely on a ruling elite of enlightened ND people to mold the culture and produce ideal NT people. We have no choice but to actually engage with them (not every single one, some are just firm class enemies). We do of course need to take intentional action to shape our culture, but it needs to be a collective decision or you're just creating a bureaucracy that bears its own class antagonisms against the new working class.
I appreciate it
Not necessarily typical (ADHD) but i score so low on all the autism screeners.
Relationships(i am assuming you mean romantic, sorry if this is not the case) usually start because the people involved feel a mutual attraction based on appearance, personality or sometimes something unexplainable often referred to as a "spark."
This is almost always a feeling beyond or distinct from that which one feels for a platonic friend.
The reasons for continuing a relationship beyond this initial attraction are far more complicated and diverse than I could reasonably lay out in a reply. Do you have any more specific questions about it?
To be clear, I have been in relationships, but it’s starting to feel like dumb luck. Every time I get into this spot where I regret leaving even though I know how miserable I was
Tbh I say “been in relationships” like two is a lot 🥴 I think I understand them for the most part, I don’t typically tend to have trouble socially except at times when I get deep into my own head. At those times though, I wonder how I did it and question if I ever will again. Not a great feeling
My current wife and i each canceled one first date last minute before our actual first date.
It's all dumb luck, far as i can tell
Met my last partner because they thought my post was interesting enough for a DM lmao
I mean I'm married for all three reasons. Why wouldn't I marry my best friend?? Seemed like no-brainer to us. I mean there is this person around whom I can be just me I wanna have them around every day of every year of my life, like of course I'll marry her. Idk hope that helps? Oh yeah also not 100% neuronormie
Not neurotypical, though I can fake it well enough, like at work. Though, I come home exhausted, mentally, from having to listen to people talk about shit that mostly doesn't matter.
So I was told by my mother, and I think my sisters may have agreed as well, can't remember if they said so as well but they may have. That I was either going to meet a woman/partner like me, or I was gonna get used, abused, and thrown aside. Well, I met one like me, and we're coming up on 20 years later this year. She's the weird one in her family and I'm the weird one in mine. We get along great. We've never had a real fight and we've never thrown hands once. She can name three times I raised my voice to her. I can remember two of them and she agrees I was justified in doing so, and I think many of you would as well.
Anyway, we're into a lot of the same shit, so we're basically just really good friends who enjoy living together, but we also love each other. No kids, though not for the lack of trying. We do okay with nieces and nephews from newborn up to about mid-20s in age, though we're always glad to give them back (or, in the case of 18+, watch them drive away) at the end of the day. Oh yeah, we're also both on the ace spectrum. We get down... when we feel like it. Which isn't as much as I'd like but it's exactly how much she'd like, and I have no desire to step out (cheat, whatever).
I can't tell anyone what to do with their life, but I think it can happen for anyone. Find a hobby and get involved. Fortunately, my wife and I met online, but we also met online talking about something we were both passionate about once upon a time. We no longer are, the winds of our directions change every few years, but fortunately, together for the most part. I've always been a reader, but I gave it up for the most part because I drive long hours — so I went to audiobooks. Wife read for a while, then she wanted to write. I knew I had to find the right one to get her hooked. I thought it would be Ready Player One read by Wil Wheaton. She read the book, but only the first one. I read his second book, Armada, and Ready Player Two as well. (Neither was great, but, no regrets.) Bought her a few of the books I've read. I wanted to get her into Mistborn. Well, I got her into Dungeon Crawler Carl. All it took was playing the first five to ten minutes (from the introductions of Carl and Donut to the start of the dungeon) and she was hooked. She's still in the first one, I'm in the second one. For my fellow crawlers out there, I'm on the third floor (the Overcity — carnival quest done, the one given by the orc lady started, fan boxes just opened) and she's just reached the second floor. (Yeah, so if you don't like books, but you like video games... you might like DCC. If you like books that don't really play by the rules (like Ready Player One or any Japanese light novels... like Sword Art Online, which DCC is a lot like, but profane and dirty), you might like DCC.
Reading is not a good hobby to meet people in. Dungeons & Dragons, however, is a great one. You might think it's rolling dice and playing with numbers. Any D&D player will tell you, it's really about sitting around bullshitting most of the night with your friends. You don't have friends? D&D brings people together. Join a D&D group, you will make friends. Also, D&D is very simplistic. Anyone can play it. Kids can play it. When D&D got that way (it wasn't before), a spinoff/competitor was created called Pathfinder. Basically the same thing, but more numbers and more technical stuff. I've never joined a Pathfinder game, but I assume those guys spend as much time bullshitting as we do. You like more sci-fi than fantasy? There's Starfinder. I'll give you one guess who makes that. There's also Cyberpunk 2020. If that sounds familiar, it's the basis for the video game Cyberpunk 2077 and has a lot of the same shit. It's like playing Cyberpunk 2077 but with a pen and paper and dice. You can even be a "Media" (those guys with camcorders strapped to their face, there were a couple in the video game). They're dorks, but they can do some neat shit. Just be warned, any tabletop that isn't D&D is gonna have a lot fewer players. This won't matter if you're in a big city, but in a small town, you may be limited to D&D. The exception is, if you wanna play cards. For that, the king is Magic: The Gathering, but if you're a Disney kid, Lorcana is pretty popular, too. It's Magic: The Gathering but with Disney. Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh are still played, but if you prefer anime, you may be able to find a Weiss Schwarz table. That lets you pick one anime and build a deck from it, and compete against fans of the same anime, or different ones. There are Weiss (white) anime which are cute and have "technical" play styles, and there are Schwarz (black) anime which are cool and have powerful moves. I'd start with the Schwarz side before trying Weiss. But the two can play against each other. And it's by anime, so while Anya Forger is easily the cutest anime character ever (four year old girl, pink hair, horns, big green eyes with nothin' behind 'em... dumb as a box of rocks), SPYxFAMILY is most likely a Schwarz set due to her "mom" being an assassin and her "dad" being a spy. Anyway, all these games will get you around a table with some like-minded people. Most of them will be men, so if men is what you're attracted to, you're gonna have an easier time. There are some gals who play, though. I did my part — I tried to get my wife into it. Tried to get one of my nieces into it. Neither of them dateable, but hey, I tried bringing women into the fandom. We all gotta do our part. So if you got a sister, a female cousin, someone you wouldn't date, but maybe she's a gamer, and you wanna lead by example? Go be the change you want to see in the world.
Otherwise... I dunno. Maybe I just got really lucky.
What
Haven’t you heard this notion that neurodivergent people “just don’t understand why people get into relationships?”
sometimes i don't know why some people pick the partners they pick, but not relationships period as a philosophical thing
Never. But for context basically all my friends are neurodivergent and in relationships. So my data is skewed
I think what matters most here is the degree of self-examination performed by the speaker, and not NT/ND-ness. NTs might have it harder here, since when it's easier to fit in you don't need to evaluate the situation in the same way. NDs would seem more likely, depending on many factors, to be encouraged to perform more self-evaluation of "normal social behaviours". In broad strokes you could say that kinda thing, but it's not that meaningful, I'm not aware of anything suggesting differing introspective capacities to any degree that matters - we're all temporarily conscious sparks lit up by our brains to solve odd problems of eating new seeds, navigating liminal spaces, and flinging poo. It'd be a bit silly to get hierarchical about it.
So this specific person, rather than some generalised Person, might just never have thought about it that much - there's nothing wrong with being in-tune with your drives and going with the flow. And since they haven't shone much light on it, when some probable drivers - material and embodied desires - are structured into words and passed back to them, it's jarring. It sounds bad, society/media (usually) teaches you that you really are just supposed to get it in some ineffable, transcendent, ideal way... that has nothing to do with anything as base as material desire.
Maybe. I'm just telling a story that sounds about right to me.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Who cares? The only people you need to justify yourself to are the ones you decide matter to you.
If you can get what you want out of life (within an ethical framework of course) then it doesn't matter what other people think the "norm" is. Chasing normal is a fool's errand.
sounds like you had a painful experience. I've been there. i hope the aftermath doesn't overwhelm you or stay with you longer than you want.
it sounds like you are hinting at what I've come to believe, which is that the type of NTs who tend to rely ideas/phrases like "you just (don't) get it" or mutual understanding via atmosphere... they don't actually "get" as much as they think they do. some NTs, smart NTs wouldn't rely on such things without articulable .
I'm convinced the "getters" routinely misinterpret various intrinsically ambiguous stimuli as highly specific evidence for whatever opinion to which they happen to be predisposed/primed for at the moment, evidence which they nevertheless could not explain if they were asked.
i feel that as members of society, we are often asked to believe that many in the "mainstream ", who could be thought of as NT extrovert follow-their-heart type of people, seem to have the ability/tendency to osmose understanding as through magical or telepathic communion. the research held up for this idea states the purpose as evolutionarily lubricant for societal cohesion, which is plausible enough, but the researchers often neglect mentioning how frequently getters misinterpret each other. personally i believe their hit-or-miss rate heavily implies their "mutual understanding" is constructed of uneducated guesswork.
again, i don't mean to condemn all NTs as Miss Cleo worshippers nor as blood type fortunetelling adherents, etc.
TL;DR the only way for humans to really understand and connect with each other is to be vulnerable (when it's safe) and openly discuss our perceptions, beliefs, and feelings in shared language.
Lol I found if someone says "you just don't get it" then they just didnt think about it themselves to put it into words or don't want to say it out loud.
Anywho here is my take:
A relationship is mutual arrangement to benefit both parties. You both need to get something out of it and what ever those "things" are needs to balanced. It doesnt need to be the same thing or one thing but what is being provided needs to be equal or more value in each other's eyes.
Example: I do all cooking and cleaning in my home but my SO does many advance things for me i cant do. Some ppl dont like that arrangement and that's fine. I enjoy doing those chores while my SO hates them. it's not 1 size fit all.
Example 2: I have almost crippling high sex drive while SO has non existent one. This stresses our relationship but my SO is my best friend who I trust with everything. THAT has more value to me then sexual needs.
If being with another person is not providing more benefits than stress than its not worth it. Like ppl getting abused because too afraid of being alone or trying to stick it out for kids. In my mind thats madness but in their mind they are lieing to themselves and/or think there is still a mutual benefit or things will get better.
Bring alone with terrible or incompatible person is way worse than being alone but humans as social creatures fear that loneliness and it skews decision making. Don't force something if you are happy as is but you should take chances and see where things go if an opportunity occurs. Things could go bad yes but it could also end great.