What is going on?

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Here's the latest edition of my long-distance relationship with my AS man -

Over a month ago, he had a meltdown and was not nice. I cried and inadvertently confessed that I had feelings for him. This confession seemed to tone him down and he became gentle. At the end of the conversation he said he cared about me, but I was too confused/mad to continue the conversation to understand what that meant. Since this conversation, he has been more and more sweet, playful, and caring in our verbal/written conversations. He's also been in contact with me more than ever before. But I've not heard any compliments or any words of love from him. Keep in mind too that I'm pretty much the only person he talks to.

If this were an NT man I would think that I'm still in the friend zone - I think an NT man would tell me how he feels. Words mean a lot, but so do actions. Since this is an AS guy I'm not sure what is going on. I need some direction. It is quite "painful" to have feelings for someone when you just don't know where you stand. Help?

Neither of us is going to come up with the right answer because the only person that can answer this question properly is him but I´d give it a try:

He may be afraid of a posible bad reaction if he compliments you because he had some trouble in the past because of complimenting a female(apparently there are some that dont like being complimented).

He ,may have had some sort of trouble on a past relationship because of compliments. Like for example a female "friend zoned" him and he thought she was interested so he started complimenting her and she was creeped out by the compliments or something.

Have you ever mentioned to him you would like to receive a compliment?(He may think compliments are unnecesary but Im pretty sure he wouldnt mind doing an effort if you mentioned to him how much you liked them).

it sounds like he probably has feelings for you, and is just too unaware of yours to compliment you and make you feel appreciated. it is very frustrating to keep up a relationship with someone who can't return the favor.

I feel like a bonehead, but what do I say about wanting compliments? It sounds so weird asking for them. Even my girl friends and I throw in compliments when talking with each other all the time. It's a way to show caring and support.

In the beginning, my AS guy complimented me all the time and then when it seemed to get more serious between us, he stopped. I still continue to compliment him so....... what's up?

Back to original question - how do I ask for compliments without sounding like a moron?

If the guy has learned some social skills, they probably involve a lot of situational things like "when not to be angry", and "when to be sensitive", and "how not to upset someone". My guess at this situation based on limited information is that he missed signals of your feelings for him, and when you blurted it out, it hit him rather unexpectedly. If you just now confessed you had feelings for him, he probably didn't think of your relationship that way.

When you blurted it out, he was suddenly aware of a piece of information that he had been lacking. The new information caused him to change the way he viewed the situation and do things that were different, like be sensitive. As a friend, he may have thought he was just having a spirited argument, or just venting because he had a bad day, or w/e. He may not have realized how upset you were getting until you broke down. When you say he was "not nice", was he cursing at you? What was the argument about? Was he just in a bad mood? "Not nice" covers a lot of ground from pouty and brooding to screaming and violent. If he was having a meltdown, what was it about?

Either way, if he didn't want a relationship, the most likely thing for him to do would have been to cut off contact with you. That he's talking to you still, and even more, is probably a positive sign. I doubt he's put you in the friend zone. He probably doesn't even have such a thing if he doesn't talk to many people. He may, in fact, have had romantic feelings all along but thought you were "out of his league" or just "wouldn't be interested in a guy like me", and was hiding himself.

My opinion is that he may have little or no experience with romantic relationships and has no idea what's expected of him and how to handle himself, so he's just being really nice and trying hard not to say something inappropriate. After all, you might say "you're a nice looking lady; most guys would be happy to have you" to a friend as a way of showing support. If he said this stuff before, it was probably in that context. It's something entirely different to say this with romance in mind. He may not know how or when to say these things without it sounding too sexual. He may also have thought "I blew it" after this incident, and is trying to decide if he still has any shot.

The important thing is, if you're going to have a relationship with an introverted, AS guy, this is the sort of stuff you're going to have to learn to deal with. He won't read signals. You have to tell him what you want in words that he can understand. You have to be open and clear. You probably need to think about having a talk about where you stand in this relationship, just ask if he has any feelings for you, is it going anywhere, or what not. He's not going to figure it out on his own, and you'll just get frustrated waiting.

How to ask for compliments without sounding like a moron? The only subtle way I can think of is this. You might try making up stuff like saying "so and so said I was a boring person", and invite him to argue, making it into a supportive type thing. I doubt he'll respond to your compliments about him. He may appreciate them, but it won't occur to him that you're fishing for a response.

Thanks, Zur-Darkstar -

I posted earlier that the fight was about phone calls. Him getting too many sales calls and from another friend who he is not talking to now and then me (although he said I was the least of his issues). He really hates phone calls. He was just mean in the words he used, but didn't call me names or swear. Just when someone is sweet and polite 99% of the time before and then to be mean was shocking.

I had blurted out my feelings for him once before - wayyyyyy too early in our relationship. It freaked him out and he said we were to be friends "for right now." So then I stepped back and tried to change my feelings and told him I was doing that. I couldn't change my feelings, but never told him that.

You are right about his self-esteem and high anxiety, though. He has very low self-esteem and high anxiety. I try to do what I can to make him feel better. And I do get the feeling that he thinks I'm somehow way "above" him.

And in terms of experience - he and I are older and he has had relationships that have lasted either several months to a couple of years. But the women have all left him and he doesn't seem to understand why.

I can do the fishing for compliments, but I hate playing games, especially with an AS man. But telling him flat out how I feel, I'm just not ready for that. He told me he has come out and said I love you to women in his life before, but it seemed to make things worse for him. I'm just not sure if he did it too late in the relationship or what.

But I'm encouraged by the posts that he must be feeling romantic feelings for me now. It "feels" like it, but I didn't want to be deceived by false intuition signals. This helps me hang in there.....

Aspies do that in the beginning mostly because its a learned behavior - we know people expect it because we've seen others do it, but constant complimenting does not come natural. Complimenting someone when you're just getting to know them is one thing, but it seems very fake and insincere to keep telling someone over and over that we admire something about them, whether its looks or talent or whatever. Once we've told them, why keep repeating it? That just makes it sound like sucking up. So if you are so emotionally needy that you have to be complimented all the time in order to maintain your self esteem, you're going to be very disappointed.

All my comments are from my own perspective. I only realised in September that what I've struggled against all my life was AS. But, I'm a writer, and I've spent years poking around in my own head, figuring out what I could. First of all, I'd say it sounds to me as though he's interested in you. I certainly can't say exactly what his feelings are - but if he was in the state I suspect he was, and your blurting out that you had feelings for him calmed him down, that's pretty revealing. If he didn't care, at a moment like that, it probably would have just set him off some more.

From my own experience, I doubt that your phone calls were much of an issue in themselves. This kind of thing has happened to me. Phone calls are a huge pain, and even two or three can ruin my day, make it impossible for me to get anything at all done. So I'll get one, get fairly upset, get a second, be driven to the brink of screaming - and when the thing rings the third time, before I even pick it up, so much is boiling over I can't stop the explosion even if that call isn't a nuisance. And at that moment, it will feel like a nuisance, just because calls have pushed me over the brink. It isn't that I always intend to be mean to the person who calls; I've just been primed and so the fuse blows... (Of course, if that call turns out to be another idiotic thing like some salesman trying to shove something I don't want down my throat, then I am happy enough to let him know just what I think of his interruption. The point is that I'll blow even if I don't mean to, if I've been driven too close to the edge already. Hours staring at a blank page, a whole day's writing ruined, thanks to past phone calls, can work me up into quite a state. The specifics of his situation probably vary, but it sounds to me like the dynamic is the same.)

Now, I need to point something out you need to think carefully about. I don't know if this guy is right for you or not. Only you can make that decision. But if you want to try to make it work, you need to understand him. And I can't get inside his head, but I can guess at what might be going on in there. At least, the things you've said sound very familiar to me. You don't think phone calls are that big an irritation, probably - the best I can tell, the NT reaction that would be most equivalent to what I feel after the phone interrupts my writing (or other thoughts) a few times would be to be poked - hard - over and over for an entire day, until you're ready to explode. When finally you are ready to blow, whoever touches you, even if it isn't the person who's been poking you all day, is going to get an earful. Try to imagine that, painful hard jabs, over and over, so you can't think, can't do anything, and the frustration just builds up. (For reference, I've been poked, pretty hard, by someone I know. It annoys me, but as it happens when I'm not trying to write or think, I am actually less annoyed by that than badly timed phone calls.)

The important takeaway is this: things the NT world considers routine, that you "just ignore" can be unbearable to us, just as many of us can shrug off other things NTs never could. (I can write through most of my migraines, for example. I don't even notice I have them until I stop writing - and when I do, sometimes, I will literally be in so much pain I'm staggering, but I held off that pain and wrote without even thinking about it.)



He can't understand why because all of us are reasonable to ourselves. If phone calls are more troubling to you than migraines (my own case) then you'll find too many of them intolerable. So many people have worked out a shared set of assumptions that they define as reasonable, those of us outside that line are stuck in an awful position. Why is it all right to torture us? Why is it wrong to do things that are much less upsetting (to us)? And enough of that shatters your self esteem. The world doesn't care what matters to you, it tramples upon it, and it tells you that you are in the wrong. How are you supposed to feel? I understand what's going on, and I still can't figure out when I'm wrong and when I'm not. To illustrate how confusing it can get, I also finally learned the precise nature of the eye problem that has left me with terrible vision since birth. All the other eye doctors never figured this out - they gave me a hard time for flinching at their lights - but finally, someone figured out I was born with ocular albinism. I have a medically verified reason to be sensitive to bright lights. The fact bright lights bother me wasn't news to me, obviously - but I was shocked to learn it wasn't just something I was supposed to "suck up". The pain of bright lights in my eyes was literally lost amidst the welter of other stimuli that torment me - many of them much worse than that one. And the world has so consistently shoved my own viewpoint aside that I never figured out what was what.



Here comes the really humiliating confession. I'm a writer. I'm supposed to be good with words. That was one thing that kept me from suspecting I had an "autism spectrum disorder" for so long. But there is always one thing I've had trouble admitting, even to myself. There are things I just can't say. The more they matter, the less I am able to say them. That sounds stupid, I feel stupid saying it, but it is there. I understand compliments are supposed to be a good thing - I can, to some extent, toss them out there when it really doesn't matter, although I won't say I'm terribly good at it. But, in talking to anyone I really cared about, I could never just "offer compliments". If something complimentary happened to naturally arise in a conversation (naturally as defined by my train of thought, which can be quirky), that's okay. If not, I simply couldn't do it. If I tried, I'd make an utter mess of it, assuming I could get a word out at all at that point. Yeah, it's weird, to be so 'good' with language, and yet have words betray you like that, just when they matter most. But that's how it is for me, and it sounds (he complimented you early on, but not now - yet his actions show he probably cares) like he may work the same way.

There's also the issue of attention. Let's say I were involved with a woman I thought was the most beautiful, spectacular, sexy woman I'd ever seen. At first, I would mention that. It would be hard not to. But as I grew used to it, as her amazing qualities became an integrated part of the background of my life, the thought of mentioning them would literally never occur to me. It would be like expecting you to suddenly comment on the amazing hue of the walls of your house - that had been painted two years ago. NTs like to say that if it were "important", we'd notice. Not so. It is a matter of attention, and attention can be a tricky thing for us. When my son was diagnosed with ADHD, I read the report. It mentioned he paid "inappropriate" amounts of attention to things that weren't supposed to be important. But how do you know what's important, unless you know what the person is thinking, and why? And even if something is important, how can you keep it in the forefront of your mind once it is something you're used to? Our very thoughts are different, and so we do not react the way that most people do. We can't. Everyone else wants to be taken on their own terms, but we are expected to change, to become more like everyone else.

To Avengilante -

You said - "... it seems very fake and insincere to keep telling someone over and over that we admire something about them, whether its looks or talent or whatever. Once we've told them, why keep repeating it? That just makes it sound like sucking up. So if you are so emotionally needy that you have to be complimented all the time in order to maintain your self esteem, you're going to be very disappointed."

I guess it's an NT thing - we seem to be more social beings who need and give support quite freely to each other - compliments, signs of support, and such. So we NTs don't think of it as a needy thing. Just a sign of love and/or caring. I guess from an AS perspective it seems needy. Maybe I need to learn to let go of this. It will be just as hard for me not to expect this though as it would be for him to learn to give me this. And on top of it, what is worse to an NT than no compliment, is an insincere compliment.

But thanks for the reminder.

To The Wanderer -

First, I want to say that you are very eloquent in your written communication.

Phone calls - thank you so much for what you've said. My AS man absolutely abhors phones and I completely understand that now once he explained this meltdown to me later. It was a concept hard for me to believe, but you are completely similar to my man on this aspect. I have come to realize just how much he cares by how much he put up with when it came to our phone calls.

Self-esteem - yes, he's been misunderstood by so many people - actually pretty much everyone - his whole life that I guess it would be hard to come out of all that with high self-esteem. When people tell you you're weird or it's all in your head, etc. etc. etc. whenever you complain or try to get help for problems. I just can't even imagine what that is like. Nightmarish is the adjective that comes to mind.

Compliments, etc. - it is complicated. I care about him in part because of these things that are unusual about him. And yet those very things can be frustrating too. I would never want him to change just to get along in the world. I guess I try to make sense of the fact that we all compromise what we want to do so that we can mesh better with the person we care about, but within reason. We don't want to compromise who we are either. So this normally difficult balance is even more difficult to figure out between an NT and an AS.

In any event, thank you. This peek into your world has helped me understand his.

Shame on me for not reading your other post thoroughly. I hate phone calls also, and especially sales calls, and can be rather harsh speaking of them when venting to a friend. If I had a friend trying to sell something to me, I would not handle the situation well either, and that could very easily spill over on anyone who had the misfortune of calling me about 5 minutes later. People that know me tolerate such things. It's simply a pet peeve. I hate to be interrupted by anything. If the publisher's clearing house people showed up with a million dollar check in the middle of dinner, I'd still be irritated for a few minutes. This is not uncommon with AS. I'm self-diagnosed and strongly suspect my father has it as well, and I can't imagine my mother's frustration when the doorbell rings during dinner, because she knows both of us really hate being bugged while we're eating, and the dogs start going nuts too, and she has to deal with it because IF we get up, we do it really slowly and grumpily.

This guy sounds enough like me, I'M actually getting some education here as well. Again, the guy probably took you literally when you said "OK I'll just be friends". It probably made the interactions easier. You may be dealing with a guy who had given up on romance entirely. If you give him some time to adjust to the possibility of a romance, but keep talking to him and encouraging him, and eventually his feelings may get overwhelming and he'll be forced to either do something about it or break contact. Don't be surprised if he suddenly confesses his love directly and with some considerable emotion. On the other hand, if you want to be open and honest and direct, you can. He might prefer that, but he's probably not had good experiences with being open and honest in the past, so he's trying to do it slower like NTs do, but just not doing that particularly well.

Do not expect much subtlety. He won't play the game of little subtle flirts and seduction and give and take. This is way beyond what most AS people are willing or able to do. You have to be able to give on that, or you have to be willing to manipulate the game yourself, make all the first moves to watch his reaction, and sort of draw him out gradually. How you handle it is ultimately up to you.

Thanks again, Zur-Darkstar. Very insightful. I think I will continue to be encouraging and slowly nudging him along. I care about his and my friendship too much to jeopardize that by scaring him off.

Reading posts on this site really help me figure out the AS world. And I feel like I'm just learning a new language, making plenty of mistakes along the way. Not sure if I will ever be fluent, but I'm trying!

Sorry, I do understand that two people can't have a relationship without compromise on both sides. And every person must ultimately figure out what they are - and aren't - willing to compromise on. My point was that some things aren't a matter of willingness, they are things we just aren't capable of. And so many people assume we "must" be able to, because "most people" are. You obviously aren't like that, and I apologise.

If you aren't familiar with the "intense world" theory of autism and autism spectrum "disorders", I suggest you read up on it. That is the only theory I have seen which makes sense to me, from the perspective of what I experience, in here. Of course, even that isn't a perfect explanation to anyone who isn't on the inside. The extent to which simply experiencing things more intensely can alter the very way you think isn't obvious. I've had to devote a lot of thought to working out the ways such intensity might lead to this or that difference - and I'm far from finished.

I hope this relationship works out well for you, however it develops. You are trying to understand us, instead of just forcing us to be like everyone else, and that is rare enough it deserves to be rewarded.

Thanks to you too, The Wanderer.

I'm making mistakes along the way, but understand that much of what is frustrating to me is just how he is and isn't something that I can change or, to be honest, I should even expect to change. This is how he is and I have to love that whole package or not at all. I think I need to reframe my expectations from changing attitudes to one of changing actions on his part.

And he has, I think in terms of his way of life, made some big adjustments to fit me in.

An Aspie friend of mine talked about the fact that it isn't an absence of feelings that Aspies deal with, but that AS feelings/senses are too intense to handle and sort out unless you can control your environment. I agree that this seems to fit my LDR friend as well. Will read up on this more.

Again, thank you.