I can relate to a lot of what you say.

My life story was like this. When I was in primary school, yes, at age 6-9, typically, boys play with boys and girls with girls, but when I reached upper levels and we had to do dancing, the girls would typically look like a bird had pooped on their fancy hat if they had me for dancing partner. That intensified at high school. I began to think I didn't belong in the Australian community and once I started learning Japanese, I acculturated myself into that. I wanted to be like Gavan McCormack, an Australian historian, who specialised in Japanese and had a Japanese wife. I became blinded to anything else,

I didn't have my first real girlfriend until I was 25, and with others, I had been trying to open doors that remained permanently locked. I remember one woman (she wasn't Japanese) who it took some dishonesty on her part to uncover the truth. I was having a new battery fitted to my watch and the jeweler was in a shopping centre. I needed to go to the bathroom, and I saw someone who looked like her standing talking to someone. She had long, black hair, when I met her, but this woman had shorter hair that was dyed dark brown. I noticed she had the same watch, too. Surely, this wasn't a coincidence! I rang her that night, and she asked if I'd seen any movies lately. I hadn't. I asked if she'd been that day. She said she hadn't and I said, "I saw someone who looked like you outside the cinema at the shopping centre, today." There was deathly silence! I never contacted her again, after that.

My first real girlfriend was not a good mix. She was very superficial, and she wanted to make love from the beginning. The thing was, what she found arousing and what I found arousing were totally different.

I know, I can be intense in a relationship, and can be intense with anything and everything I do. Everything has to be in a set order.

I remember, when I was 21, a guy I knew said that his sister rang him because her husband had contracted, in his words, "Some bug from East Asia." I asked him if he'd been travelling, and my mother told me I was stupid.

I also remember, I was offended when I told my mother that my uncle asked how I was, and she replied, "What did you say? Sick in bed with the doctor." And, I replied, "What? Do you think I would sexually come on to my doctor?" (It's another story, but as part of my intensity, I was unhappy with my parents' doctor and wanted to change, and I wanted to find an Asian doctor. (as it is, now, my GP is Chinese, my rheumatologist Sicilian-Australian, my cardiologist is Chinese, gastroenterologist is Australian, and so are my nephrologist (she has an autistic nephew) and neurologist. I will say, though, with changing doctors, I remember a woman standing behind me in a bank queue, one day, and she was talking to another woman, and she said that she had been living in Singapore, and while she was there, her husband got a type of fever. I thought she meant he got sick, and so did the woman she was talking to. But she said, "No, not like that. It's a term used in some Asian countries for European men who fall for younger Asian women." So, in other words, he divorced his Australian wife his own age, and married a younger Asian woman. It wasn't like that with changing doctors. I had been unhappy with my parents doctor, after I had seen one when I was ten. (What distressed me was, to use an analogy, I knew a man once, who had a Nissan Patrol, and he used to start off in second gear, and go straight across to fifth, when he had enough speed up and he later complained of a "knock in the engine." He took it to a mechanic, who took it for a drive and said, "I can't see anything wrong with it." And, this man tried to climb the Great Dividing Ranges, towing a caravan, in fifth gear, and wondered why he was losing power! It was the way he was driving it that caused the problems. The WAY this doctor was doing the exam was hurting and I couldn't explain it to him. Then, when I was twelve, my mother forced me to see this doctor, in a non-emergency situation, and I knew that I had to take responsibility for my own health when I was older. She tried to do it, again, when I was 13, and sneakily did it when I was 14. So, I wanted a change.). I said to my mother that, to me, it was no different to having a Commodore as a company car, and when you retired, even if you were given the car as part of your retirement package, you didn't like it, so you sold it and bought a Mazda 929. She said, "But that's cars. This is people."

My autism diagnosis (by a psychologist with Chinese heritage) has given me a greater sense of self and I find that around my fellow autistics, I am happier and more content.