I have had an irrational fear of rejection for as long as I can remember. I have feared being disliked – of being unloved – even by those whose love should be the most reliable.

It led me to keep a part of myself back from everybody – that non-binary part of myself that suffered from a gender dysphoria.

I hid the more telling aspects of my neuro-divergence behind a mask that almost felt like me but required constant effort to maintain. It required effort to maintain and left me feeling as though I was standing behind an invisible force-field that isolated me from other people.

This caused my husband to be angry that I wasn’t “honest” with him about who I am. I don’t think he really understands what it was like in my brain, nor do I think he ever will.

This caused a few people to doubt that I have Autistic Spectrum Disorder (“you don’t act autistic” or “you’ve never had a problem before”). This is a rejection in itself because it denies my experience of life and the world and relationships. Such invalidation is disheartening, to say the least, and leaves me wondering whether I need to make further changes in my life … changes that might leave me lonelier – or maybe less so.

I have a history of rejecting people before they reject me. One of my biggest regrets is not trusting my Nan about my sexuality at the time when I was first coming out as gay. I avoided her because I was afraid that her religiosity would cause her to reject me. Several years later I told her; she was wonderful and loving. The embodiment of Christian love should be. She and my husband became friends. He even looked after her for a period when she first developed dementia.

I rejected my karate Sensei when I came out also. I simply vanished from classes and refused to talk to him. I wrote to him many years later to apologise. His reply was polite, but not effusive. I suppose that it has been a long time.

These days I am very open about who I am. My husband thinks that I am sometimes too open and unboundaried (which I guess is a different problem). With most people my attitude these days is if you don’t like who I am, you can fuck off.

I’m not a spiky, aggressive, difficult person. I accept people as I find them and try to make no judgements. I expect the same from others.

That is despite my fear of rejection, not because it’s gone away.

I still fear not being liked, but I won’t be held hostage to that fear.

That’s a different fear—the fear that my marriage might not be sustainable. Maybe it’s because my husband cannot fully accept my neuro-divergent identity, or because he cannot move past our long and difficult history. Perhaps instead of reliving that past, we may need to choose to start again – each on our own.