Relationship trouble: my promises mean nothing.

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Hi everyone, I haven't posted in a very long time, but my girlfriend made me come back here to get help of some kind.

Here's how it usually happens:

1. She wants something. Current example: she wants me to take her to a baseball game. She's from Europe and has never been to one. I told her I'd take her to a minor league game if I can't manage to get a couple of cheap seats at a Dodger game.

2. Twelve hours later the whole thing slips my mind and I go back to living life in 18 hour increments.

3. Three weeks later. "You said you were going to take me to a baseball game!"

4. And I go "what? You still want to do that?" Or I might not have any recollection of it to begin with.

She's fed up. It keeps happening. In fact, returning to this board to get advice is one of those promises I never fulfilled, until now (at 3 a.m.) because she demanded that I do so right now, this very minute. She's in the other room as I write this, waiting for me to finish doing it.

I don't know why it happens. I do some self-searching and here's about all I can come up with:

- In the moment, I'll say "okay, I'll do that" to make her stop talking or change the subject, because she can get quite emphatic and insistent, sometimes angry, and my threshold of tolerance (I mean in terms of it being an Aspie thing, because I can only handle so much "noise" and stress and dissonance) is pretty low. "Okay! Okay! I'll do it!! ! Okay already!! !! !"

Though my promises are not always extracted under duress. Sometimes I'll volunteer to do something for her; the baseball game thing was my idea. "Hey, I gotta take you to a baseball game!"

- It's off in the indeterminate future. Without a concrete deadline or anything like that, the whole thing just lapses into the ether. I do nothing about it and I end up neglecting to do it.

She says she's fed up and that I have to figure out how to modify this. I don't know what to do. I could write some kind of calendar or something but I tried doing that for work meetings that I kept missing (because they were at irregular intervals) and I kept getting chewed out for it, and I kept failing to find a way to make sure I didn't miss those meetings. Mainly because it would slip my mind that I had to devise a calendar in the first place.

I was tempted to write "Dear Wildman's girlfriend: Leave him and find a man who cares enough about you as a human being to remember promises they have made to you. They aren't hard to find, and if you stay with this man he will continue to treat you like you are nothing and don't matter." However as you can neither remember work meetings, perhaps this is a little more than just self-centeredness.

Has your memory always been like this? If not, you may be suffering from a medical condition. Perhaps a thryoid problem or hormone imbalance.

If yes, then it is something you seriously have to work on. In this day and age with so many electronic devices on which you can schedule things, there really is no excuse for a chronic forgetter. Many cell phones can be programed to send reminder calls. I suggest you take advantage of this technology.

If you say you're going to do something, especially if you suggest it, you should do it. Although, saying that, saying 'yeah, I'll do that' just to make her quiet is a bad idea because she'll expect it to happen and you still may not want to do it.

I'd suggest to be honest (but nice if possible). If there's something that she wants, that you don't want to do, don't fob her off with 'okay, I'll do that'. She'll keep on being angry about not doing stuff and thus both of you will be stressed a lot more.

As Chronos said, in this day and age there's little excuse to be a chronic forgetter.

In relationships there is give and take, balance is the key. Doing something that she likes (regardless of your own liking for it) can make her feel better about doing something you like to do. If you don't try to do some stuff she likes, she may feel put upon to do something you like.

If she's so set on you taking her to a baseball game, why doesn't she remind you in a timely manner? I'd be tempted to say something to her like "remind me in case I forget, won't you, because you know how crap my memory is, and I hate letting you down."

It's possible that she does a thing that some - maybe most - women do......uses your ability to remember such things as an indicator of how much you care. If so, I think she needs to take it on board that such a test is invalid when applied to somebody with a memory impairment. Rather disturbingly, Freud reckoned that women are correct to assume that men who (e.g.) forget to buy them flowers simply don't love them any more - he felt that men were wrong to see it as an innocent mistake. Freud didn't know about Aspergers Syndrome, but his remarks seem spot on for a lot of modern NT women, in my opinion.

I think it's quite well known that Aspies don't find it at all easy to remember to do:
A) things that aren't part of their routine
and
B) things that they aren't obsessed with

Unfortunately it seems impossible to remain obsessed with a partner for months and months, and I've known some people (self included) get quite upset when their partner moves from the obsessional phase into the "mature" phase.......nonetheless I feel you'd be within your rights to remind her (talking of poor memory) that you have AS. My wife teaches autistic kids but still seems completely oblivious to some of my Aspie traits, and I suspect that's an NT thing......I don't mean to sound unkind but these people need to do their homework better if they really want to have rewarding relationships with us.

But I don't mean you should just sit back and expect her to make proper adjustments for your condition. I find a year planner very useful for remembering appointments, as long as I have enough appointments to justify looking at it routinely - if I only have a few appointments, I stop looking at it because there's hardly ever anything on it to read. And of course Aspies often have few appointments But have you tried using a year planner yourself? If so, how did it go wrong for you?

Another method might be to use the schedule alarms of a mobile phone.....problem there is that the alarm sometimes goes off at a bad time, e.g. when I'm in the tub. But maybe if you're a creature of routine, you could set the alarm for a time of day when you're pretty sure you'll be able to look at it.

Even if nothing works, partners usually appreciate it if they can see you're making a palpable effort to get them what they want. So put a reasonable amount of time into giving her a hand with this issue, and make sure she sees for herself that you're really taking her seriously. Partners can be downright touchy about seemingly little issues, and its tempting to blow them off as unreasonable, but in my experience it's usually best not to. Not that I'm saying you would.

I agree with the others regarding writing down stuff in a calender or inputting it into your cell phone for a reminder call.

I also suggest giving yourself a deadline. Let's say that you suggest or promise that you'll take the GF to a movie. Write it down (I am very old fashioned and need to use pen and paper - you may text yourself a message or use technology). Give yourself a deadline. Check the movie listings by Saturday 10:00 AM at the latest. Offer a choice of movies to go to the following week by Sunday at 8:00 PM at the latest. Then write on your calender that you are going to "X" movie at "x" time at "y" place the following Saturday. Set aside the money (if paying in cash) so you have funds to pay and enjoy the date.

I told her that the best thing we can do is sit down and make concrete arrangements (date, time, pertinent details, etc.) within 12 hours of her stating that she wants to go to or do X. I know that she wouldn't forget that, if I do.

Her: "we're going to X tomorrow at 3 p.m."

Me: "ah, yes, of course."

(As long as I didn't stupidly schedule something that I can't get out of and that would interfere with X, everything's A-okay.)

That's about the only way an electronic reminder would work. There's no way to program "I want to go to a baseball game (at some point in the indeterminate near future)" into a cell phone unless there's a specific set-aside date involved. She would ask for something and I'd go "okay, sure" and then five weeks later "you promised to do X and you never did!" And I would go "you shoulda brought it back up! It might not occur to me otherwise!" And she would say "I shouldn't have to beg you over and over again for you to make it happen!" I guess the best way to preempt all that is to make concrete arrangements ASAP and put it in the cell phone on the spot.

My cell phone is 5 years old and it has this black spot on the screen that keeps growing and growing and growing (it fell out of my pocket in the mosh pit when I went to see the Dwarves), and it's also the cheapest one the Verizon store had at the time so it was a piece of crap to begin with. Guess I should get another one, that might help.

As for the work meetings, it was always the meetings that weren't on a routine basis. "Okay, ummmm... about two weeks and three days from now... 11 a.m. sound good to everyone? Okay, see you then." I tried doing the cell phone thingy but I found that unless somebody stood over me and told me to do it, it would slip my mind. I guess I should find a way for making that a habit. I'm not going to get fired if I keep missing those (I'd miss, like every other one or every third one) but a certain few things could be jeopardized.

It's also true that if I myself was obsessed with the idea, I wouldn't forget it. I wanted to visit what used to be the most violent town in the Old West, which is in east-central Nevada and about 2.5 hours due north of Las Vegas. So I kept bring it up periodically over several months until we got in the truck and went.

Yes I think turning a vague request into a concrete plan would be good. It's easy to agree that a thing should be done "in principle" but until the where and when is nailed down, its not likely to get done. So in suggesting fixing down a time and a place, you'll be adding weight to the idea that you're really interested in taking up her suggestion, as well as making it easier for you to remember.

I'd definitely get a new phone. The learning curve will probably be pretty uncomfortable but I expect it'll be worth the trouble.