Regular reminder that being an asshole is not a symptom of any form of neurodivergence. (You can replace “neurodivergent” with depressed, anxious, bipolar, etc. and the diagram works equally well)
ETA: social faux pas, awkwardness, and genuine symptoms of neurodivergence don’t make you an asshole. I shouldn’t have to say this? An “asshole” is someone who enacts a pattern of abusive, controlling, harassing, and/or harmful behavior with no remorse or concern for how other people are affected.
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Chances are he thinks this is what it means to be a male friend. That doesn’t make it right of course but that’s probably what’s going on. This is likely due to him being abused as a child in some way and now he thinks it is normal to abuse others.
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Hot take, no one should be more lenient to neural divergent people because we should be lenient to everyone. If someone’s actions are weird to me but don’t cause any obvious harm then I’ll be “lenient”, as weird of a word choice that is. If someone’s actions are weird to me and may hurt me or someone else then I won’t offer any leniency. Just as I wouldn’t offer any if their actions made sense to me and were still going to harm me or someone else. Just because someone else is different doesn’t mean I need to tolerate their abuse. I’ll use more patience when a neuro-diverse person is causing harm but it’s not a carte blanche to abuse people.