Are you naive in relationships ?

Post Reply New Topic

are you naive when it comes to men and relating?

or if you are bi or gay, are you naive when it comes to relating with others you may be interested in or who are interested in you?

anyone want to share examples or their experience?

or even how they have overcome their naivety?

Yes, when invasion of personal space and excessive eye contact seem typical of everyone you meet...picking up the *interest* signs is difficult. I've found pleasant chit chat (as I thought) has led to an unexpected tongue down my throat on a fair few occasions ...and of course there is the dark side to that which I don't need to detail

I am not so saw I can overcome who I am, but I now understand my reasons for my differences, being naive is just one of many, I guess as I grew I learned to change and adapt like we all have to, but if I had known as a young adult the rollercoaster relationship ride which at times seemed never ending, felt used, abused and spilt out many a time in the past, even guys use to ask me what was wrong with me, I had no clue back then...

I feel the biggest issue is often as children we get put down so much, we often end up with zero confidence and respect for self, I truly believe as with my life now with real understanding, if we were embraced for who we were when born we would have the confidence to live a differently able life on our terms not everyone else's and to me thats where the problem lies...

i am 46 and hilariously naive.
all i can really do is laugh at myself, othewise i might fall in a heap and not get up again.

No, not anymore, but I used to be many many years ago.

I think anyone be naive in relationships. I was naive in my first one. I met a guy on myspace who lived 40 miles from me and we finally met and the next day I decide to be his girlfriend and he played me a fiddle and I didn't even know it. He acted like he was motivated to get his lisence and get a job so I helped him apply for jobs and my parents knew at the end of April he was a leech. Then he slowly started to change after he got a job and he played mind games with me and I didn't even know it. I had to be told "it was BS" what he was saying and my ex also said the same about him. But lot of things he said I found hard to believe and my mom said that was because lot of things he says is BS.
So I was his meal ticket and he used me for sex because after I told him I didn't want it till September because it would be cooler out by then, he went to his computer right after that and stayed on and only got off when he showered, ate, or went to bed.


So I learned from that mistake and would make sure I don't make the same one again. I decided to look out for those signs my ex did and if I see them in my next guy, run.
I know some women go back to their men who suck because they are afraid of being single and that is stupid and naive or they tell them they have changed and promise them things will be better so they take their guy back and it turns out they haven't changed and they lied or they bribe them and they take the bribe and take the guy back. Sometimes women keep taking the same guy back because they keep promising them things will be better between them or they keep apologizing or they keep bribing them. But some women are too naive to learn so they don't ever dump the guy for good and never take him back no matter what he says.

I was very naive in the past. I wrote about it in a post in this forum on dating and AS/NT relationships. Also, when I'm comfortable around someone, I relate on the level of a toddler. I prefer it that way, because it keeps things light-hearted.

I learned how to listen to my gut. I learned how to listen to my heart. They're smarter than my head, so I tell my head to either shut up or go read a self-help book.

I'm still probably no good at telling when someone nice is attracted to me or not, but I haven't met anyone I want to encourage lately, so that doesn't matter.

When I was younger, I was incredibly naive. Not only was I generally naive anyway, but when in High School I had essentially no social life- (just my intense special interest), I had very little- well, basically no- experience when I went out into the big world. When a man was nice to me, or flattered me about my dancing, I seriously thought he was interested in my talent, not my body- (I was so literal, that never occurred to me). When I was in my early 20´s, I seemed to attract all these men who were very old- like, old enough to be my grandfather! People actually warned me about them, but I could never believe someone that age could be interested in me- I thought they were harmless grandfatherly-types. Luckily nothing horrible happened with these strange men, but I did have a lot of close calls. When I found out what these people were up to, I had to extricate myself from the situation somehow. Well, there was one scary episode in an almost empty youth hostel in Europe where I was almost raped, but I was able to get out of that one with logic and clear thinking...(long story...and that one was about my age...)

I think now I am no longer naive in terms of stalkers and weirdos. I have almost the opposite problem, I tend to be quite cynical and don´t trust easily at all. I realize I am not good at judging people instantly, so I tend to be extra suspicious.

I think my biggest problem with naivete, though, was that I believed all the stories people told me about love when I was younger. I truly believed that love would be the glorious experience many say it is, and as people act so obsessed about it...well, I guess I just built it up in my mind as being different than it really is. Basically, I´ve been disappointed in love and relationships, it´s not all it´s cracked up to be. This set me up for a big fall, and when I finally realized the reality, I felt deluded and disillusioned. Other people around me seem to be able to be both idealistic and realistic at the same time, but I guess I can be only one or the other. It took me years to understand some things that I guess everyone else knew all along, I gather- and now that I finally realize them- (just recently!)- in one way I´m almost sad that I´ve lost my idealism...I miss the belief in the dream I used to have. Frankly, I don´t really see what´s so great about love, and why everybody raves about it...unless there´s something I´m totally missing? Oh well, maybe it will take me 20 more years to work that one out....

I still feel like there´s something I need to resolve, or work out, in regards to love, sex and relationships. That´s why I write and answer so many posts about it.

Another area where I remain naive is in not experiencing a relationship where I've actually been in love. I've been thinking recently that it's related to gender identity issues, as well as AS, and that's why it hasn't happened. Maybe if I'd met androgynous people in the past (men or women), especially on the spectrum, I wouldn't be left wondering about this. Perhaps that's why I often felt shut down, physically, in relationships; I was being typecast into a female role and, until recently (when learning about my gender identity and AS), was too naive to know what exactly was making me feel so wrong. Oops, sorry dear, I didn't know my gender .

I was in love, once. Not with anyone I actually dated, but I felt a heart connection with someone else, someone who didn't want to get involved for his own reasons. I cried for years. Then a psychic told me to contact him, I did by email a couple of years ago, and after a week or so of chatting, I realized it would have gone nowhere. If only he'd let me get to know him at the time, I could have got closure.

outlier: I have also rarely been in love, and usually when I have had feelings for someone, it´s been someone who I was never in an actual relationship with, but all in my head. In all of my relationships except one, I had trouble feeling the feelings that I was "supposed to be" having. I spent a lot of time TRYING to be in love. Well, as I mentioned on another thread, another way in which I was naive was that I didn´t realize sex would, in most cases, automatically lead to a relationship, and that things would not really be talked about. I often found myself trapped with someone, like a long hole that was pulling me deeper and deeper in. I wasn´t really sure how these things were happening, and therefore couldn´t control the situation. For years I internalized my problems, and wondered why I couldn´t have the proper feelings. And since it generally would end up that the man would criticize me a lot and tell me everything I did that was "wrong", I started feeling worse and worse about myself.

I also think it takes some idealism to fall in love. That was why, when I was younger- although it didn´t happen often- at least it was possible. I feel like now that I know what human nature and relationships are really like, I just can´t seem to be able to fall in love anymore. I guess it could also be a defense mechanism...who knows.

I guess I wanted to elaborate a bit on my original post, because after thinking about it, I realized what it was I wanted to say. That is, I guess I was very naive in that I did not understand that people can have their own agendas in relationships, and that when agendas clash, it can end up being something like a fight. (There is a song by Pat Benatar called "Love is a Battlefield", which I think is an apt description). When I was younger, due to the way it was described to me, I just assumed that anyone who used the word "love" to me would genuinely have my best interest at heart. But this is not true: most people are thinking more about what they can get out of the relationship. I went into relationships totally unprotected, because I didn´t realize I had to protect myself. I have learned that being in a relationship takes a huge amount of self esteem, much more so than being alone. I am amazed that people can actually do this, and that they like it.

But back to the "agenda" thing; I realize now that there were hints of it when friends used to talk to me, or when I read books, but I just didn´t pick up on them because I had my own beliefs. But once again, I think it was one of those innate things that most people seem to just "know". I never figured this out because it wouldn´t occur to me to use someone for my own purposes, or to do it in the name of love. But just like the pecking order, I guess it was just one of those things that people do, probably somewhat unconsciously.

I think I totally am... I kind of just expect that things will go the way they're 'supposed' to. I've always just felt that people who love eachother do everything for eachother's hapiness and always want to be around eachother and have lots of sex and I fully expected that this would be what happened.

Reality is very different.

Wow, there are so many traits similar to my own mentioned whenever there are threads concerning autistic women.

Morgana and Anemone, you both mention love occurring outside of relationships. I've only loved once (also not in the context of a relationship), and am vulnerable to relationships occurring mostly in my head with those I'm attracted to, even in my thirties. It's really hard to catch when it's happening. I guess I assume the other is thinking the same things as me and it feels shocking when they display otherwise, even though I know that, rationally, this cannot be so. This contributes greatly to my naivety, and so closure becomes very important.

Morgana: Trying to be in love is another thing I relate to; especially if someone expressed it towards me. It relates to the AS in that I'd sometimes try to have other feelings I was "supposed to" have; e.g., as a child, someone once said I must feel sad and lonely, but I didn't, and so I tried to summon those emotions. Also, like you said, there's often an agenda there that goes unrecognised. For instance, some would express love then ask for something in return. The request would usually involve some repulsive act, which I would refuse to participate in. It would create dissonance in my mind, because, like you said, if they professed love, then surely they should have your best interests at heart. I don't think this situation is specific to AS, but can be much more pronounced in it.

About requiring some idealism to fall in love: I had more of that when younger, yet did not experience love until my thirties, when I had already lost much of it; so I'm the opposite way round. It coincided with my adult brain fully developing, so I may have simply been not mature enough to process it before, when any intense emotions felt were purely for fictional characters. Does anyone else remember the age they became capable of love? Was it around age 30?

i actually think with me, the personality of the person is secondary to the aspect of object adoration.
so i am quite autistic (dictionary sense ) in how i "love." It is probably for the most part, a narcissistic pursuit. developmentally delayed and lodged in pre-adolescence. perhaps even infantile.

It is about MY relationship with the object of my desire. (person/thing.) and i am fine with that. Shallow? Hmm...maybe ... but that is ok too. shallow with depth, because the accompanying analysis is akin to the intensity of a special interest...which is what i love.

the problem is when it is not reciprocated.. not with the actual process itself.
and those who are capable of the reciprocation have always been ASD and relate to how i operate. that is when it has worked, albeit briefly.