The emotional experience of women with AS

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I'm a big crybaby.

I related to a lot of what the OP wrote. As a child, I was often teased and tormented at school, because I didn't behave like the other girls. I openly adored books, ideas, and classical music. The other girls at school liked pop music, mocked anyone that liked learning or raised their hand too frequently in class. This treatment gave me one message loud and clear; hide your intelligence, pretend to like what everyone else did, ( at least until you got home) or they would beat you up. This caused some deep seated psychological problems that haunt me to this day; and instinctive fear, when someone observes that I seem to be weird or different. It is as though I feel I must expect punishment, for being myself.

yes, isn't it a fabulous post? I am totally blown away with the truth and sensitivity of his understanding. Especially about not being DXed and forever having to be compared to other, normal, women. And not being able to bear children, that too.

Thank you Diamonddavej, thank you so much.

Merle

Later edit: I think the crux is being DXed and not being DXed, too. Children that grew up with someone knowing their issues have a much different life than children growing up and never knowing. . .

I remember a girl that wouldn't even go into a library because they were 'too nerdy.' I used to spend most of my lunch breaks in there. Of course I didn't share that bit of knowledge with the girl.

I must be unusual, for an AS female, or any female, for that matter.

My experience is exactly like yours, hartzofspace! I thought I was the only one like that. OP's description I can relate to.
I constantly felt the pressure to conform and was depressed when i couldn't until I befriended a few nerdy girls when I was 17. Attwood or was it Asperger said aspie girls are "little philosophers." I liked english literature at an early age (considered early in my country) and read Darwin at age 15. Can't take modern music and like Rachmaninov. What are your favourite books/music/ideas btw? Or if it's too public you can PM me.

my brother is a year younger than me (we are both on the spectrum though undiagnosed). he was a 'nerd'. I was a 'little b*tch'.

that pretty much sums up the difference in how our parents treated us. your description of your experience rings true for him too. my mother pretty much busted her behind getting him through community college to get his graphic arts degrees (he is an unbelievably talented artist, that is what he does for money). thanks to her pushing, he has had a successful life. he is not rich but he earns a living wage.

my failure to respond appropriately to her expectations led to some pretty devastating feedback from her during my childhood. it still does. I have posted quite a bit about it here. so I won't go into it again, but for me you really nailed it. I was deeply compassionate and empathetic with animals. but i fail miserably at the mutual faux-nurturing that females are expected to do for each other. I don't care-take well. He doesn't care-take at all, but that is fine because he is just 'himself'. Etc.

I relate all too well to what the OP described. From about 10-11 years old that pretty much sums me up and my attempts to fit in have caused me anxiety, self-abuse, eating disorder and a loss of personality. I'm nostalgic about the part of my childhood where I didn't know I was different and didn't care, just happy in my own world with my books and fantasies and being an animal-games. But when I approached puberty something happened and I became more aware, I started longing for friends and for a couple of years it worked out pretty well, because I was in a very small class (17 kids) with only seven girls, all of whom where of different ethnicity, culture or religion, so everyone stuck out in their own way. Then came highschool. Then we moved (horror). Then I discovered that being pretty seemed to make up for personality flaws and became obsessed with my looks (and my weight of course). Later in high school I sought out the outsiders and we had our own destructive social group including drinking smoking and cutting yourself (I know, very emo, but this was more than ten years ago). I only had one female friend and she was more effed up than me. After school I haven't had any real friends, just boyfriends (one and then my husband).

I often wish I had just stayed uninterested in socializing. That would have saved me so much heart ache.

Yes, that's me in a nutshell. I was pretty much fine with who I was until relatively recently. Throughout my childhood and teen years, I was bullied, I was aware that I was different, but I had the attitude that the world was wrong and I was right and they could just shove it.

However, now I am 28, I still live on my own. My little sister is getting married to a guy I liked, but he didn't like me. She keeps telling me that I am weird. That I dont' dress like I should and I am getting more and more upset, but no one seems to understand. I feel like she is ashamed of me. I freak out when I go clothes shopping because I am obsessed with finding something that looks good on me, but which is also normal enough for me not to look like a freak. It's really difficult for me.

I don't know who to tell about how I feel. I don't want to be seen as a negative person. I have good friends who have listened to the same old story for the past few years and I feel as though I sound like a broken record. I say they are friends, but not the way an NT would have friends. They are in orbit around me, not connected to me.

I feel left out alot. For example, I have a small group of acquaintances, I like them, they like me. One of them had a party and invited everyone, but me. To make it worse, I have a huge crush on the one that had the party and left me out. I don't know how to be accepted. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. People tell me that I am a nice person.

I think that because I know alot of people, it is assumed that I have alot of friends. But I don't. I am very lonely. I know these people, but I see them all once or twice a year. No one invites me out, apart from one of my friends and her husband whom I don't know what I would do without. Her mother is also very kind to me, but she suffers from depression and I don't like to burden her too much.

Sorry, that was a bit longer than I meant it to be, I'm a bit upset today.

I'm self diagnosed so I'm not sure if have a right to give input, but I don't fit that at all. Maybe I'm an exception, I don't know. The whole idea that females were supposed to be people-oriented and caring went right over my head until I was quite old - 15/16ish. Even when I was aware that females were expected to focus on caring and empathizing, I didn't feel that applied to me. I didn't feel that a lot of things applied to me, really. It wasn't that I consciously rejected them; I listened primarily to my own reasoning about the world; what others thought was secondary.

That said, I never really identified that much as a female. I was a person who happened to have 2 X-chromos and a vagina. I always felt more 'hybrid' or 'androgyne' than really female. I found it simply odd when other girls asked when I wanted to have kids or when I thought I would get married. I just thought 'Uh...what...Me? Get married? Babies? Oh yeah...I'm a girl. Girls are supposed to want babies.'

So no, my core isn't broken.

That does seem quite accurate. There were, however, many times in my life where I'd have periods of apathy about the opinions of others. However, many times, I've been told that I'm supposed to be the nurturing one in a relationship, and cannot live up to that expectation. I do not understand my emotions, but I still have them. Many of them are negative and can be incredibly explosive.

There does seem to be a lot of pressure to be a social creature as a female. I was also hyper-aware of a lot of the bullying/teasing, but had no idea how to make them stop.

While I would definitely not describe myself as an extrovert, I have spent way too much of my life examining why I haven't "fit in" better, why I can be lonely (and anxious to boot) in a roomful of people, etc. I'm "nurturing" toward my own children, and I've chosen a career in the medical field, which kind of combines caretaking with my scientific interests/obsessions, but that's never been the primary focus of my life and I've been told I'm "like a man" in that respect, which strangely unnerves me because I don't have any sense of being masculine (or feminine, just a person).

The fear of failure is another thing that has been a part of my life since I can remember.

~Kate

I'm self diagnosed too but these are right on the nose for me....

I'm just starting to understand the whole AS thing and it's like a huge weight being lifted that maybe I'm not really broken, but just different. Maybe it is okay not to care that my nails aren't manicured, that I don't like parties, and that it makes me ill to think of talking in front of group. Maybe it's okay that I don't call people out of the blue to say "hello" or remember to send birthday cards to extended family.

I'm wondering if I can let go of the guilt (and subsequent anxiety, exhaustion and illness) of not feeling normal doing all these things, if I'll end up a better wife and mother with more (okay, at least some) empathy for the things that really matter to me.

Thanks for posting this... it's nice to know I'm not alone.

Very interesting. One of my two undergrad degrees is in philosophy, and I've been interested in it since I was a kid/teen. The friends I've had over my lifetime have all been either males or fellow nerdy females. I never "got" the "popularity" thing and took a lot of crap for not hiding my intelligence (even from my own mother). Fortunately for me I got ignored rather than bullied at school. When I saw what kind of bullying some of my classmates and friends took, I was happy to be ignored.

~Kate

Yeah, my Mother told me that guys don't like intelligent girls and my sister would get married before me. Which came true, annoyingly.

I ended up quiting high school and hanging out at the city library all day instead. I was much happier there by myself surrounded with books.