Austistic Cousin Won't Leave Me Alone

I've been in a similar situation. But he was a "friend". He blamed me for his behaviour and claimed that contacting someone 24/7 is normal and I'm clearly a **** friend if I don't do this. In the end, I had to get someone to have a word with him. He finally stopped contacting me after 4 months.

Problem is that he's my cousin and I can't avoid him forever. I just want to get to a stage where I'll see and talk to him at family events only.

He does blame me for his actions. He says when I don't pick up it makes him insecure and then he worries he's annoyed me and then he starts crying! And then he'll send me voice clips of him crying or text me and tell me he's been crying for hours.

All over the fact that I couldn't pick up the damn phone!

Can't you get your aunt or uncle to speak to him about it?

Does he have any other friends / people he can talk to? It's not healthy to rely on one person for your happiness, which he appears to be doing.

I think you need to give him boundaries over what is and isn't acceptable.

Change phone numbers?

Aside from that you can either outright say that you aren't interested in retaining a friendship with him (harsh, imo), or just increasingly make your replies short and ignore the emotional blackmail.

I
I've done everything (except change number). I've told him over and over we weren't close, that we never have been, that I don't understand this 'obsession' of talking on the phone all the time, that I'm busy etc.

This is the routine: he'll call, I won't pick up. He'll text asking if he's done something wrong, stating he wants to catch up/talk. I'll try and wait a day or two to reply stating im busy sorry (basically go away) but sometimes he'll call again before I can even do that. And then he'll leave even more 'what have i done wrong? can we talk? i want to talk!!!! when can we talk?!?!!?' messages.

It's really getting to me

I've said it multiple times but he doesn't listen.

When I said it wasn't ok to call me every week, he'd wait exactly two weeks to call me again.
When I said it wasn't ok to call be at 6am (which he did sometimes!) as no-one calls before 10am (we're at uni) he started calling me at exactly 10am.

If I ask for space, he'll give me like a day longer each time and then message being like 'look I did what you said, did I do it ok? Can we talk now?' ..?!



I've done everything (except change number). I've told him over and over we weren't close, that we never have been, that I don't understand this 'obsession' of talking on the phone all the time, that I'm busy etc.

This is the routine: he'll call, I won't pick up. He'll text asking if he's done something wrong, stating he wants to catch up/talk. I'll try and wait a day or two to reply stating im busy sorry (basically go away) but sometimes he'll call again before I can even do that. And then he'll leave even more 'what have i done wrong? can we talk? i want to talk!!!! when can we talk?!?!!?' messages.

It's really getting to me

Speak to your parents and ask them to have a word with him?

If he texts just don't reply. Might seem a bit harsh but feeding people with contact can give the wrong impression. With autism it is especially hard for people to read social signals, you might just have to come out straight and say that you don't have interest in maintaining regular contact.

Anyway hope the situation sorts itself out.

Are you sure there's no other family members you can get to have a word with him? If not, harsh as it sounds maybe just don't reply to his texts or anything. It's quite possible this has happened to him before, maybe he started speaking to you after the person before you started ignoring him- you did say it just started randomly.

My other cousins avoid him at all costs and he's never bothered them with texts/calls. He actually doesn't care about them at all, whereas he is obsessed with me for no reason!

Ignoring would work if it wasn't for the emotional blackmail. Just now he texted being like 'I really need to talk to you, it's important and I can't revise for my exams coming up because of it'. When he did that before, he was crying over the fact one friend from uni hadn't replied to a text....!?

But part of me gets scared that something serious is going on and that he genuinely needs my help... What if I ignore him and he does something stupid like hurts himself? Or fails all his exams because he couldn't revise and talking to me would've solved that? He's making it all into things I then worry about and feel responsible for, and it's really unfair!

My other cousins avoid him at all costs and he's never bothered them with texts/calls. He actually doesn't care about them at all, whereas he is obsessed with me for no reason!

Ignoring would work if it wasn't for the emotional blackmail. Just now he texted being like 'I really need to talk to you, it's important and I can't revise for my exams coming up because of it'. When he did that before, he was crying over the fact one friend from uni hadn't replied to a text....!?

But part of me gets scared that something serious is going on and that he genuinely needs my help... What if I ignore him and he does something stupid like hurts himself? Or fails all his exams because he couldn't revise and talking to me would've solved that? He's making it all into things I then worry about and feel responsible for, and it's really unfair!

Yeah, I can see why you would worry. But then at the same time, this sounds like it's all really stressing you out, and you have a busy life and him phoning you so often is just adding on top of all that, and that with the worrying he gives you, I think it's all pretty harmful, you could end up quite ill. So it really does need to be sorted.

You said his autism is severe, does he have any care workers visit him that you could speak to? I think you might need to talk to a professional about how to best handle this without him getting upset and doing something bad. If you're at uni you could try the welfare officer, or if not maybe phoning a charity that supports families and friends of people with autism and they may be able to offer some advice. I know you don't want to get on the wrong side of your aunt, but maybe you will have to turn to your parents for help.

Maybe have a word with your parents or with your aunt and uncle and explain to them what's happening and how it's affecting you. They'll obviously understand better than he would and might be able to get through to him that he needs to cut down. He's more likely to listen to his parents.

You're not responsible for his behaviour. You could also block his number on your mobile?

The title of this thread... I appreciate the OP's disclaimer but it's just as discriminatory as The Sun's "1,200 killed by mental patients" headline.