Can Aspies connect?

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My husband has Aspergers and we have been together for 19 years. When I question his feelings for me, he says he can’t connect with anyone, not just me. He says he has always been like this. So is this an Aspie trait?

The reason why I am asking, it is because of our sexual life. He hates foreplay and sees no reason for it. He does try for my sake, but he says it doesn’t do anything for him.

He had a obsession with porn when I met him, but I asked him to calm it down a little, as he preferred it to having sex with me. But I have since learnt that he gets infatuated with other women and fantasies about them, then finds sex boring with me. It seems like he can only wants sex with women, whom he doesn’t know very well. He has been infatuated with the woman at work. He doesn’t want to know her, but finds her sexually exiting. I worry because he seems to prefer her to me. She is a loud, flirty, giggly woman, who looks at him suggestively. He says he doesn’t like her but loves the attention she gives him. I used to be very flirty, confident and giggly with him, when I met him, but he put me down and criticised me, then I lost my confidence, every time a little of old me comes back, he starts being horrible to me. What is going on here?

We have been counselling and he worked on our sex life a bit, but gave up, because it wasn’t for him. We still have sex but with hardly any foreplay. He is very mechanical. I still don’t like our sex life, but put up with it. As he starts having erection problems. Any advice?

Most of our relationship is great, as I have adapted to him having Aspergers.

In general, Aspies share some of the following traits:
* despite a desire for friends, difficulty in initiating or maintaining close relationships
* perceived to be cold-hearted and self-centered, unfriendly
* socially awkward (inability to socialize) (severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction)
* shows a lack of empathy (difficulty understanding others’ feelings, difficulty communicating feelings)
* unaware of others’ thoughts, feelings, desires, intentions or perceptions resulting in inadvertently appearing rude or inconsiderate

If he is starting to experience ED, it will probably only become more difficult for him to experience sex. Not only with you but with any woman. It will become a little bit like a hollow memory.

Whatever this man does or does not have (in terms of disorder), it sounds like your problem may stem from here:

To answer your question, yes aspies can connect with others, even if it is hard for us.

The question you should always ask yourself is: does this person love me?

And if you're not married yet / don't have kids to consider, am I happy in this relationship?

Yes we are married, have 3 children, one who is special needs. I worked very hard on our relationship, sex was very good in the beginning, but very porn like. He lost his virginity to a prostitute. Since we started living together, one year after we met, everything went downhill, by that time I was pregnant. I thought the problem was me. My husband is very very good looking and I put him on a pedestal in the beginning, it took me years to find out what the problem was. Our son is autistic, that is how I found out about my husband.

Yes, Aspies can create very strong connections with the right people under the right conditions.

Some Aspies also have unusual sexual preferences, and so I don't think you can blame it exclusively on porn consumption. Unfortunately, both having unusual sexual preferences and being asexual takes a good match & good self-knowledge to turn into a good sexual relationship.

My partner says he cannot connect with people in the conventional sense and it distresses him greatly. That does not mean that he lacks strong emotions.The connection is different and if I can neutralise my expectations and learn a different code of communication, I can understand him. It is very important for my partner to feel desired and wanted. My partner especially likes visual stimuli, lingerie and such, voyeurism.
No man likes constant criticism, is that an issue?
You have shared before about your marital problems I recall, I am glad that you are still together especially for the sake of your kids.

Don't worry about other women, men like to look at other women, aspies are not good at concealing, I prefer the honest approach personally. Try and concentrate on refreshing your sex life, make it fun, try something new. I suppose porn is good for aspies because there is no need for conversation and foreplay, I have been instructed to remind him when he forgets foreplay, and I do.

Thank you everyone, you are all sweet and lovely. Thank you to Teach 51, for remembering me. I also have to look at myself, I am nearly 50 and going through menopause. I have learnt so much in a space of 2 years, I have re read my old posts and I feel my husband and I have made some progress.

Great! Progress is good! Keep checking in, it helps to share a problem

I don't find the typical NT sex life refreshing. Five minutes of foreplay and then five minutes of sexual intercourse (averages in large surveys) simply cannot be good sex. In order to qualify as good sex, it must go on for hours, and be mixed with games or other fun stuff. So, it is not the lack of conversation or foreplay that is the problem, rather that five minutes of sexual intercourse is not fulfilling and it can easily be replaced by porn instead as that will be just as fulfilling.

Is that typical? That's depressing! For me refreshing is as you described. I am just learning that. Communication is important, not too much. If there are kids at home sometimes a quicky is all that is possible unfortunately. I enjoy marathons of 2-3 hours now my kids are grown and I have privacy.

You must be really in shape. I'm worn out after thee minutes of intercourse & then I start falling asleep. I can only stick with an hour of foreplay before feeling worn out & tired. That's an hour total where we each take turns pleasing each other. The best part for me about sex is falling asleep while cuddling naked.

I've been with my spouse two decades also. There are ASD and gender issues that crisscross. I am the ASD-like (diagnosis pending) and husband is NT.

I have concluded I don't love as expected and yet love too much. It all feels so strong for me and yet I could drop it on a dime (if I had to). I have many a past friend who claimed I didn't love (that I "used" folks) --- my NT husband is really sweet and says "we use each other" - I love him, don't I? (ASD thing, not gender?)

Currently my NT husband "suffers" 45 min of foreplay or we skip it on occasion. The foreplay doesn't do anything for him except bring him closer to the goal. I am hypersensitive, so my thought is that is helps desensitize me (esp. in some parts of my cycle). I am not sure how hyper- or hyposensitive would impact an Aspie man. (Gender thing, not ASD?)

My NT husband also put (puts?) more energy into porn that I wish he'd put into our sexual relationship. Porn was (is?) an easy escape for him. Granted he's NT so less likely to obsess perhaps. (Gender and ASD thing?)

Esp. at that time in my cycle, I get sexually excited by others. My husband suffered my "work boyfriend". I had such the crush on my work BF and kept it at that. We stopped working together, but I still see him on rare occasion and get a bit giddy. In my mind it's separate from my marriage and my commitments. (Personality thing?)

Your husband needs to knock off being horrible to you. Call him on that - assertively. BTW - My husband would say he was confident until he met me and I tore him down. He's still confident, but reasonably so. I am now looking to build both of us up more. I ask my husband to call me out, so I can be aware and approach a (good) idea more kindly. That's hard for him (NT thing?) but worthwhile when he does. (ASD thing, not gender?)

I took my NT husband to counseling specifically to improve our sex life and it wasn't for him. (Gender thing, not ASD?) I playfully tease my husband for persevering past erection problems. (Which is a big deal, b/c generally I don't tease; it's my way of complimenting him.)

Advice: one possibility - schedule what you want (and be specific) - maybe not all the time, but some time.

I would hope my husband would say the same. Teasing: I've adapted to him being NT, mostly.

Instead of asking "can aspies connect?", You have to say, which aspie, to whom, at what time?


That's like saying, "can aspies do backflips?"

Some aspies can connect

Some aspies can't connect

Connection could be a continuum

From experience, I can opine that aspie connectivity is largely a "hit-or-miss" affair -- mostly "miss".

I think a lot of Aspies have trouble establishing a large quantity of shallow-medium connections like (most) NTs do.

But at least some Aspies can form a few deep, strong, long-lasting connections with the right kind of people.

I only know about foreplay because people talk about it, and it doesn't come naturally to me. I find the intensive foreplay-intercourse thing that maybe lasts for ten minutes completely alien.

I prefer it when you have a bit of sex, go do something else, have a little sex again and so on for a few hours. That's a nice experience. You could play games in between, talk, or do whatever. The sex doesn't need to be physical, it can be in your mind only, or both physical and in the mind. Things don't need to end with intercourse.