Aspergers has recently been brought up in a tangible way. My therapist suggested that I likely have it, and I was really glad I wasn't imagining it all. I was kind of born in that weird pocket of time where Aspergers wasn't really acknowledged yet, so I'm part of that group of socially inept probable-Aspies who never got diagnosed as children. So I had to discuss it with my mother.
My mother is trying to understand Aspergers Syndrome. She really is. But when I tried to explain it to her initially, her first reaction was "But you have a lot of friends," followed by "I was shy at your age, too."
I do have a lot of friends. But it's...different. I don't know. I feel like I have to find friends with the same interests as me, so they will want to be around me. And I don't know how to deal with them and I'm afraid I'm going to make all of them angry at me, so I just try to be accommodating. I'm kind of that way with everyone. I don't know how to deal with other people and retain myself, because I have trouble knowing if people like me, and I have an irrational fear that people will get tired of me and leave. Or maybe it's not irrational.
Then she researched Aspergers and realized how well it fit me. And her reaction was "I see how some of these things fit. Sometimes you do things that I think are uncaring."
...great.
She is also really concerned with how I'm ever going to get a boyfriend now. My only close male friends are gay. I rarely find things to discuss with other guys in my life. Which is to say that I haven't really looked that deeply. I would like to have a boyfriend at some point, but it's not really my priority right now. I'm afraid I wouldn't want to spend time with him and I would forget about him or something. I also don't have the heart to tell my mother that I identify as asexual/graysexual.
Has anyone else had similar problems?
15 Aug 2012, 1:21 am
