Trying to understand

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I haven't been on WP for some time but here I am again trying to learn a few more things about AS.

While going through some threads a question popped in my head. I am from the Middle East and although life is becoming more and more open ( westernized ) and teen relationships are becoming more common , but in general , marriage is a FAMILY thing. A boy needs his mother or sister's help in choosing a girl for a wife.

As I undertsnad it , in the west a bo and girl can be friends and go to college together, or work together , and become boyfriend/girlferiend for a few years and then may get married. OK. If that is the case, I fail to understand the problems arising between him and her.

In some threads a woman is discussing her Aspie husband . First thing that comes to my mind is ( Haven't they been dating or working together for sometime ?? ) Isn't that a good period to know each other ?

My question is not about cultures, it is really about looking at AS from different angles and trying to understand AS and social relationships. So, during dating time or engement, was there not enough to indicate AS in the partner or what ? From what I undertsand about AS, an aspie will not cheat or pretend to be something else other than what he really is ..

I think a lot of people, whether AS or not, 'pretend' to a certain extent, to fit in with the society around us...for some of the time anyway. We learn what's 'normal' behaviour as children and get used to using adults/other people as models of behaviour. This isn't necessarily a negative thing, if it helps to fit in with society as much as is necessary to make a living etc. if we're lucky, although the pretence can be stressful/tiring.

Also, just because you know someone is Aspie (or whatever) doesn't mean that's it, sorted! Close relationships can be hard work sometimes, whether AS is involved or not, just look at the problem pages in magazines...

Incorrect assumption. Plenty of AS people try to mimic neurotypicals in order to be more successful. My own Aspie ex-husband took me out dancing and to parties when we were dating and paid lots of attention to me, but after we were married he dropped the act.

Acting has nothing to do with it. It's the illusion of "High Functioning" - that what comes naturally and easily to the neurotypical mind is an EFFORT to the Autistic. In the beginning of a relationship, when everything is fresh and exhilarating, one barely notices the effort in the midst of all the overwhelming excitement.

Like finding a brick of gold in the road, one picks it up thinking "What luck! I've found a valuable treasure!"; however, after several miles have passed one's thinking changes to "I'm sure glad to have found this, but I could really use a wheelbarrow". Finally, one eventually reaches the point at which the gold though still special, has become just a heavy weight. Is it no longer a valuable treasure?

Of course it is - but we aren't designed to carry the weight of another individual's emotional well-being forever. If you pair an Autistic up with someone who needs lots of personal attention, you're creating a disaster, because we simply can't supply that in endless quantities. For a while, yes, but not for long and certainly not forever - that's not an act - it just becomes mental fatigue.

It is effort for everybody, not only the autistic. The way you describe it, it applies to EVERYBODY. In every successful relationship there are milestones of "duty", where a responsible person realizes "I either do this, or it will mean it is over if I do not". The autistic just choose to move on with their bigger and better things after the infatuation phase is over. This is something that NTs without prior experience of a relationship with autistics have no clue of: that people are not worth the effort more than "special interests" to their autistic partners. I am sorry. I wish many of (usually "ex") partners of people here had the courage to reveal this fact that people do not come first about themselves BEFORE the NT partner chose to become intimate with them.

That is completely wrong. At least to me, it is. I'm sure many other spectrumers would agree.

I have had a few boyfriends. Granted, I did consider him to be "special interest", after all he meant the world to me! After the "infatuation phase", I would make even more effort to make him happy and make the relationship work. After all, after 'infatuation' comes 'love'. He was worth way more than any "special interest", even my most intense interest. I would drop researching my most intense special interest in a heartbeat if it meant spending time with my boyfriend.
I would always put my boyfriend before myself.
It was usually the NT boyfriend who dropped me in order to move on to bigger and better things. It is he who would put other things, like guitar lessons, or computer games, over me.


The NTs just choose to move on with their bigger and better things after the infatuation phase is over. This is something that Autistics without prior experience of a relationship with NTs have no clue of: that people are not worth the effort more than "social interests" to their NT partners. I am sorry. I wish many of (usually "ex") partners of people here had the courage to reveal this fact that people do not come first about themselves BEFORE the Autistic partner chose to become intimate with them.

The acting/pretending/effort thing is one factor.
Another is people changing over time.
Another is people just not knowing themselves very well.

A lot of relationships are between people with vastly different backgrounds. They meet, hit it off, go crazy about each other, and don't bother to notice that their goals, their expectations, their day-to-day lives, their hopes for the future, their values, etc., are completely different. There's this emphasis on falling madly in love, love at first sight, etc., that's frequently the exact opposite of compatibility. Passion that may or may not turn into something that you can actually live with. "Fireworks" and whatnot that die out, or burn you.
In other words, the western way you learn different things about each other before getting married.. but not necessarily more. A lot of people are acting from the time they meet somebody up until their wedding night.. maybe through their honeymoon..
Hence the whole "love is blind" thing.
In some ways, I wonder if we're not starting to actually go the other way. Apparently one in every eight couples that got married last year met online. A lot of those on dating sites and stuff, places where you go to meet people based on compatibility, wanting the same things.. Almost going back towards the whole arranged thing.

I don't think there's a single right way to go about it, whether NT or AS. It depends on what you consider important, what things bother you, what things you can't live without, what things you can compromise on.

Way to blame the Autistic for any relationship they enter into that fails. Everytime I see someone claiming to be non-Autistic post anything about a relationships with an Aspie that didn't work out, its always the Autism that's to blame. We're cold fish, we don't care about people, we're robots incapable of real emotion - I have yet to see one of these supposed NTs say "Well, I know it was difficult for them, but I didn't make it any easier."

Nobody likes to take responsibility for a failed relationship, but blaming it on the ex-partner's autism is just another way of avoiding the notion that SOME of the problem might have been YOU.

You are in no position to assume this. And for the last sentence, that exactly what I said. As a responsible person (above 30, which is a factor when talking to 20somethings up in this thread), I did recognize my own duties and worked on them. You are not doing autism a favor when showing that autistics only wait "the good" to be brought and presented to them on the silver plate, without effort.

You mention the "wheelbarrow". In fact this is quite illustrative. When you perceive a need for wheelbarrow, just get the wheelbarrow. Dropping the "treasure" is an inferior solution. It's this "I am dropping the treasure because I choose to not get a wheelbarrow" that we are discussing here about.

Whitecrow, your initial post blamed Autistic people and Autism for relationships that include an Auitstic person going belly up. You claim that it is Autistic people who find others less important than their interests and drop them or effort in respect of them, and you wish Autistic people would make this clear to non Autistic people at the outset of their relationship.

Willard described something that applies to everyone. He did not claim that only Autistics find that there is no effort in making extra effort (that it is done without thought or forethought as a natural consequence of the “highs” of finding someone) at the outset of relationships, but that over the longhaul, no one is on their best “new relationship” behavior forever. That applies to everyone, ask any relationship expert. Relationships with no Autistic person involved routinely fall apart with “you’re not like you were at the beginning” being a much cited reason. It’s all about expectations and adjusting them to take in the real person you are involved with, rather than that person flushed with exceptional hormonal responses to a new relationship.

My partner and I have been together for over 10 years. I know couples where neither person had Autism who have been married and divorced in that time, evidently with both parties citing the other person had changed and no longer gave them the same level of attention or made the same level of effort in respect of them.

Frankly you are in no position to know that every Autistic person behaves the way you describe (I know that they do not), nor can you realistically assert that no one without Autism behaves in the manner you claim we all do. If you chose your relationship poorly, if you failed to get to know your partner well enough to make such judgments, that’s not my fault and it certainly does not mean anything about every Autistic person alive. What you are doing is prejudice and the word we have for people who engage in such prejudice is "bigot".

It astounds me that someone would have the indecency to come to an Autism support site to post their prejudice and bigotry, making offensive and untrue claims about every Autistic person, claims they cannot possibly be in a position to know are true since they are untrue, and then would suggest someone else was in no position to make particular statements.

In future, if you want to denigrate an entire and varied group of people on_the basis of a single characteristic such as disability, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, perhaps you should find a hate site to post at instead of a support site.

Not only that, but people see the other person in a better light early on than they do later, and are more welcoming of advances, affection, and overtures early on than they will be later. And a person who has been told "leave me alone" all their life, confronted with a partner that starts showing annoyance as the "high" wears off, will be more reluctant than a "normal person" to try to give affection or speak or whatever might "drive them away" in their minds.

What Willard said is exactly this:

"that what comes naturally and easily to the neurotypical mind is an EFFORT to the Autistic"

It was me who replied that the way he described it applies to everybody. Effort is required from everybody. Success in relationships does not come miraculously to NTs.

Yes, I stand for my opinion that dropping a person just because someone's hormones as you put it wear off is a jerk behaviour - that's all.

And yes, if someone intrinsically has no motivation to keep the relationship growing because there are things bigger and more important than their responsibility to the person who let them to become intimate part of their lives, he or she should do the ethical thing: inform the partner about that. If they know that about themselves from previous their relationship(s), it should be articulated to the new person. That again would apply to all, in ideal world. But some seem to have excuses. Some say excuses are medical.

Relationship experts in fact do not advertise serial relationships. Quite on the contrary. Harville Hendrix is known by "You stay through the worst. Because after it gets to the worst is when it gets to be better". The whole compatibility story is more in the area of folk psychology (why isn't there peer-reviewed studies that would dig into compatibility?).

@pandd . What? Turning the meaning all upside down? How rude. I hope you get something positive out of applying nasty labels.

The "you’re not like you were at the beginning" only happens to people who set out for casual relationships, but in the process find themselves in more serious circumstances than ever thought they would allow (yes, manipulative, immature people). But this thread was started not about seekers of casual sex. The question was about dating that presumably precedes marriage. The serious, courting type relationship of, in my understanding, multiple years - not weeks, not months. Whatever I said applied to these long term relationships.

crispy: excellent question

willard: wonderful answer. the wheelbarrow anology is beautiful and so true.

whitecrow: your words are just offensive

pandd: i agree with everything you said. thank you for saying it for me.

When an aspie is growing up ignorant of any difference, he / she must deal with life using unsuspectedly flawed data. Many of us do that, with varying degrees of success. In my case, it was half a century before I cottoned on. So, it's possible to be clear-minded people of high intelligence and still be blindsided by new information.

The undesirability of aspergers disorder stems from the instinctive prejudice with which the sufferer is treated by "normal" society.

Lots of people don't court each other for years before getting married. If they are old enough, mature enough, then the courting relationship is one of months, not years. (Even weeks, sometimes, but I do think it best to take long enough for "months" to apply.)

So what? Being poor makes things that come naturally and easy to a rich person difficult. It’s also a factor often implicated in relationship problems and breakups. Does this mean it is fair to suggest all poor people are somehow problematic in relationships and should warn any prospective partners of this?


So what? Such behavior has nothing to do with ASDs; it is common and widespread among the general population. Whole books have been written on the subject of reinvigorating relationships in danger of falling apart because the “spark” (aka euphoria inducing hormonal activity) has “worn off” (returned to a more typical hormonal balance). Using this as some basis to launch prejudicial and bigoted attacks on people on the basis of their disability is not merely abhorrent, it is also intellectually lame.

But should they only do this if they are Autistic? As already indicated, many people with Autism do not behave this way, many people without Autism do behave this way. Some people who behave this way are Chinese. How about you go to a support site for the ethnically Chinese and make these same kinds of statements, replacing “Autistic” with “Chinese”? Or would that be bigoted?

I have no idea why you imagine “serial relationships” have anything to do with this discussion.

From these comments we can deduce that you are no expert in relationships. Funny that “you are not like you were in the beginning” is so commonly heard by marriage and relationship experts. Do you think it is common for people to seek in depth advice for their casual relationships?

Right, like a couple of friends of mine, neither or whom are Autistic who got together, got married and have since divorced, each claiming the other is not like they were when they got together?

Meanwhile, my partner and I do are doing just fine. Apparently as an Autistic person I am both able to put in the effort needed to sustain a relationship, and was able to “pick a winner” too. If you failed to “pick a winner” that’s not anyone’s fault but your’s to be quite honest with you. I am significantly impaired in empathy and non verbal communication, so if I can manage to “pick a winner” goodness only knows what’s stopping you, but it’s not other peoples’ Autism, that much I do know.