For the pedants like me who remember the earth being under 5 billion years (4,54 billion) old, life is almost as old (3,5 billion), so the simile holds.

5 million years ago we had megasloths, sabre toothed tigers, and sharks — sharks are eternal.

No worries, and thanks for clarifying!

Neurodiversity. People with traits in common with asd, adhd, giftedness, etc.

I would never date the way you describe, so I will refrain from passing judgement if any wrongs are being done.

However, it sounds like you have multiple reservations and preferences, especially around physical intimacy, that aren’t being communicated until they are crossed or become an issue for you. It’s impossible to say from your description if he’s particularly insensitive to your communication, but strengthening your communication skills will help you avoid these situations regardless of the recipient.

Perhaps you would appreciate practicing being more active in asking and steering your interactions, perhaps better checking in with yourself about when and where your boundaries lay, sometimes it’s about speaking up or getting confirmation that you’re heard, or simply treasuring yourself. With a broad array of tools, you will be able to navigate more situations and people. With skill and practice, you shouldn’t have to ever have your boundaries accidentally crossed, and also more easily handle situations where they might be disrespectfully challenged.

I would perhaps also recommend looking into ND friendly dating/relationship strategies. Regardless if you’re ND or not yourself, the tools and strategies support people in conveying boundaries, managing expectations and being clear in communication — before incidents happen.

The universe moves in mysterious ways — expect the unexpected (reasonable takes on Lemmy, who’d’a thunk).

Depending on the context, it doesn’t.

In my area there’s a contrast between neurophysiological handicap (meaning loss of function due to brain structure) and neurodiversity (meaning differing function due to brain structure), with the former including dyslexia, ocd, schizophrenia, asd, adhd, etc, and the latter also giftedness and non-pathological/on-the-spectrum type of differences.

As to why not everyone falls into neurodiversity, that’s because we choose the meaning to give to words, and having another word for “everyone” is currently less useful than for “people with slight brain variations that have a lot more trouble in society than they did just a generation ago”.

Giftedness, including rare high iq as required for Mensa membership, has a lot in common with neurodiverse brains. Neurodiversity is however commonly defined as a pathology, and giftedness is not yet understood as a hindrance to a functioning everyday life, and as such doesn’t meet one of the basic criteria for pathology.

Subjectively, I commented on how calm and pleasant a couple of my social medias had been before reading the news about 14 hours after the strike.