Trying to explain severity

Seeking Advice

Long story short, a crime happened a few years ago where we were both victims but from two very different angles of the events, so she knows only the tip of the iceberg and doesn’t realize how much danger she was into nor how much damage it made.

Anyways, I have tried for many years to tell the story but basically was unable because it was too heavy to tell, and I ended up handicapped by said crime/traumatic events. Said friend is also autistic and it feels like she doesn’t understand the nuance and severity at all, but also not the nuance around it like the impact it has on our relationship and my health. She doesn’t realize how her actions also impact my health due to these events, creating involuntary harm as she doesn’t seem to grasp at the first sight that I’m struggling or that she shouldn’t do/say/behave a certain way.

While she understands it was serious, she seems not to understand what rhe severity actually implies and the consequences of that and how that really affects my day to day to an extent she doesn’t understand nor know or realize.

Said handicap has a severe impact in our relationship in the sense that I basically can’t socialize like everyone else, on top of being autistic too, so I have a delayed processing in social interactions, making it worse. So…. I don’t want to be an excuse, but it’s the truth and I don’t know how to explain her everything, as she sort of has this idealistic perfect expectations of me I can’t meet because I’m handicapped.

Summed up with her very narrow emotional bandwidth, it’s basically getting so entangled that it risks breaking our relationship apart while we belong together in peace with dignity.

Any ideas or tips how to explain this best?

Posted Jul 9, 2025, 4:05 AM UTC · edited

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