What Happens With Your Romantic Obsessions?

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winds up breaking my wee little heart every time.

So, there is nothing you can do to stop the obsession from happening?

I have an aspie friend that gets regularly messed up by his obsessions in all kinds of ways, , and the women he dates that take advantage of him because he is obsessed.

Mine were purely mental. They were an undesirable distraction that I wanted to but could not get rid of. They never really spill over into action, I'm too self conscious.

Last edited by Eldanesh on 30 May 2010, 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A couple of questions about romantic obsessions?

-Yes?

I'm told that aspies are prone to romantic obsessions? If you have had one, would you share your story?

-Yes I've had some. I don't really care to share them at the moment.

Do they turn into relationships? How well does that work?

-No. I don't think it works too well.

How long does the obession last?

- Depends on the position of the stars and planets.

Do you have different kinds of romantic relationships, some obsessions and some not?

-I think so. I tend not to let myself get so obsessed anymore and just enjoy platonic attraction when it happens. I still think romantic stuff but I don't it let me dominate my thoughts.

Did you ever decide to avoid romantic obsessions? Were you successful?

- Sometimes. If my romantic/sexual interest in someone is too intense without hope of reciprocation it's just better to avoid them and let it die off. yes, I've been successful with that.

What is the obsession like? I get the impression they're sort of like what NT's do, but not entirely.

- You think about them constantly and want to know all about them. Fantasize about being with them, doing this and that, sharing life, talking, gushy stuff. Maddening when you can't do anything about it.

Thanks for the reply.

So how did you get that there are obsessions and other sorts of relationships, and perhaps the obsessions are best avoided?

That seems to be the issue with my friend.

Is he going to have to get flattened by his obsessions a few more times?

I have had LOTS of romantic obsessions, and always have. I think it may partially have to do with my life's lack of romance. My current one's a bit weird, but I suppose that's a story for another thread.



I've never had one turn into a relationship, however I have had a relationship turn into an obsession. It does not work well.



Mine have all lasted different lengths of time. They have gone away and changed for a number of reasons, with people coming and going out of my life and new interests sparking.



There is a very big difference between a romantic relationship and a romantic obsession. With an obsession, I tend to do everything short of stalking the person. They're on my mind 24/7, regardless of where I am or what I'm doing. I have dreams about them - dreams while I'm asleep and daydreams while I'm awake. I always make sure I'm free for the possibility they would want to hang out (given it's a friend or someone close). I've even tried to be online at the same times as certain people, with the hope they'll want to chat. I'm not creepy, I swear. A relationship, at least a healthy one, can't work with that kind of obsession. It's too much for the person on the other end, let alone the sanity of the one obsessing. Trust me. The romantic relationships I have had were much more laid-back and enjoyable. I don't know why certain situations turn into obsessions and some into relationships. It just happens.



I'd love to avoid these obsessions, but I have yet to be successful.



Pretty much how I already described. They're constantly on your mind, and it affects your life when you do and plan things based on the obsession. It's always a constant fear that the person I'm obsessing over will find out how I am and think I'm creepy. So I never let it out - which drives me more nuts, and prevents the obsession from becoming anything more, as the person on the other end never finds out I have any interest in them. It's terrible.

Well years ago I got close to a girl online & I got obsessed. Things fell apart for lots of different rezones thou. I've spent the next six years obsessing about finding someone else & that hasn't happened yet Before her I didn't think about relationship stuff at all but now I obsessively think about it. I'm better off obsessing about relationship stuff because I had some really unhealthy obsessions(kind of psychotic) before that I haven't had sense. I do NOT want to go back to that. I know I'm a much better person with a good partner

I gotta say, I'm a lot like Manders on this one. Except I rarely try to hide my interest. Sometimes, if I don't think my interest will be requited though, I'll phrase it in a silly kinda way, like "I think I may be getting a crush on you.... If I start saying more things like this or acting funny, and you're not interested, just set me straight again, okay?". I think that way of putting it has preceded any kind of romance only once. So, either that's a very unattractive thing to say, or I have a good sense of when there's no interest. But I digress....

My interests don't usually turn into obsessions unless my interest is reciprocated though. My interest only sparks in the way needed to light that kind of fire when we share quirks that normally bother others (or that I/we think bother others.... e.g. age 13: shared a belief with a girl online in psi-phenomena and spirits, but also that almost everyone else who professes anything of the sort is usually boisterously clueless, and an interest in writing fiction; age 17: shared the same belief as previous, plus a slight gender dissatisfaction / itch to bend the hell out of standard gender roles, which we certainly did...). So I think my obsessions are largely drawn from identifying with someone in a unique, unlikely, or counter-intuitive way. Especially as an outlet for sides of myself that even my exuberantly transparent personality won't let me express fully normally.

Basically, I just want someone I can bond with over the things no one else appreciates about me. I think getting too much bigger of a dose of that than I previously thought possible ("she must be the only one like this, the only one for me") precipitates an obsession. For that reason, I keep convincing myself that they'll never happen again as what I consider reasonable increases. Hell though, it'll probably happen again, next time probably with a girl who's got all the things I loved sharing with my last obsession, plus a love of silly/useless card games like the ones I invent. xD

Sorry though, I think that may have had not too much to do with what you were asking about. >.>;;;;

I usually don't get obsessed with anyone who'd really use me like that though, because, well, the girls I fall for usually are too miserly about getting help from friends with things to even ACCEPT the help, never mind use me for it.

... I think the duration and focus of this post are clear signs that I need to be headed to bed. G'night, whomever is still on. xP

O.k., let me add another layer here:

people with AS do NOT like to be told what to do. In fact, they really don't like criticism of any kind.

If you were an aspie "dating" someone who had kept you around as a hanger-on for years, used you for housework, and generally treated you badly until they sort-of agreed to go out with you....

would you stick around?

If you were so obsessed that you would, is there anything that anyone could say, or that might happen which would snap you out of your obsession?

Stick around? Hell no. Obsessed with them or not that sounds like a douche.

I've been in this spot for a year now. Last year I started again at Uni, became immediately infatuated with a girl in my class. She was physically attractive to me, she was friendly, very intelligent, and we shared a lot of areas of interest. Halfway that year, after we'd gone to an anime convention with a few other people from our class and had a great time there, I worked up the courage to ask her out. I got the "I like you but I don't think of you that way let's just be friends" card and she didn't talk to me much anymore after that. But I couldn't let go, I thought, maybe I should just give it some time.

Then I got hit by the hammer early this year when she started dating the one guy in our department I couldn't stand. "Jerk" type guy, the one that in those stereotypical american high school movies would be the as*hole captain of the football team. That hurt really really bad. She dumped him after about a month or so, but since then I've been in a depression that's been going for half a year now, and led me to my self-diagnosis and eventually official AS diagnosis. Studying became a problem because of it as well. Two months ago she left for Japan as an exchange student, she'll be there til august. All my classmates have received messages from her except for me, which hurts as well, but now that I haven't heard or seen her for two months I think the obsession is starting to subside. Also since I heard quite a lot of stories about her that basically label her as a big tease who's flirtatious with everyone to get attention but doesn't want anything more from them. Maybe that's the wrong way to handle it but I think it would be easier for me if I'm just mad at her.

I'm trying to ignore that whole situation anyway at the moment because my studies are a more important problem. But in terms of relations with women, my self-confidence has completely gone down the drain. She was my first crush. I don't often get in situations where I meet women so someone in my class would seem like the only option to me. I keep thinking she was the one chance I had and I blew it.

That would be a book and a half. First romantic obsessions started when I was about 11 or 12. The only way one obsession would end was if I found someone else to obsess over. I remember a one or two month period in high school where I was not obsessed with some girl and it was a huge, but too short, relief.

I can't count the number of obsessions I have had in the past 35 years. None have resulted in intimate relationships, although one is still one of my closest friends.



Since none become relationships, it works out quite well. When these obsessions end, I usually stay on good, but rather distant, terms with the woman in question. Only in one case has it ended and I realized that the woman was shallow and I not particularly deserving of whatever emotions I felt. (Although I did find her through a mutual friend on Facebook and was happy to see she seems successful in her life. I have nothing against her and I wish her well, but I just don't care to ever talk to her again.)

In one case, my best friend in college started dating the girl I was obsessing about. She claimed to not know of my obsession, but she made a particular point of having lunch with me to tell me that she was dating my friend. (Perversely, this happend on Valentine's day)

As painful as this was, the friendship with both of them was more important and, by talking honestly with one another, we worked out our issues. Today, they are married with two kids and I will be visiting them later today. They are still my closest friends and I have no regrets about how it worked out.



The longest an obsession has lasted seems to be about 3 years. The shortest has been a few months. But the hurt and frustration can still hit me many years later. Despite feeling like I was long over one obsession, when a friend mentioned dating the woman years ago, the feelings of jealousy and rejection came to the surface once again as if she was my current obsession.



Not really. They are always obsessions. I have good friendships where the love I feel for my friends is something like the love one might feel for a spouse, but those are platonic feelings.

I have been in one particular situation where a woman directly asked me to have an afair with her. (I think it was her way of breaking up with her boyfriend) This was certainly different, but I wouldn't exactly call it romantic. In the end, I just could not engage in a relationship with her as the ethical issues bothered me too much.



I never really tried to avoid these obsessions. The emotions I felt were too appealing even if they only resulted in pain. As I have grown older, I tend to be less obsessed, but I think this is due more to isolation and the lack of an appropriate woman to obsess over. I have always been lucky in that if a woman is in a relationship, I don't get obsessed. I think it's my one pinch of common sense that saves me from the piles and piles of stupidity that I indulge in.



I don't know how NT's think and act so I can't really compare. It seems different though in that my obsessions seem to have little connection to reality. In fact, if the woman I am obsessing over seems to be attracted to me, I start finding fault with her and lose interest. I've mentioned this before in this forum and others have mentioned the same behavior. I guess for some of us, the obsession can only exist while there is no possibility of a real relationship. Once that possibility arises, the fears of not knowing what to do with the person overwhelms us and we go running off to hide.

As described by others here, the obsession involves thinking most of the time about the person in question, imagining scenarios, outcomes. Much involves, at least for me, the fantasy of a totally accepting and mutually supporting, intimate relationship. I think it is possible for me to have this kind of relationship, but there is a chasm that must be bridged between the small interactions I actually engage in with women and the complex mutual understanding required to have a true intimate relationship. I just have no idea what is supposed to be done with another person in that chasm.

I want to say that I would never allow someone to treat me that way, but I think that, at least when I was younger, I would have hung on despite dismissive treatment and criticism. I have generally only been attracted to fairly intelligent, ethical women who would not tend to engage in this sort of behavior. The result is I haven't had to deal with that problem.

But the woman I mention above who wanted to have the affair with me might have been the sort to use me. In fact that probably was her motive... to use me as a way to break up with her boyfriend and my reaction was to get away. So maybe I wouldn't stick around. I just don't have enough experience to fully answer this question.

Lars

When I was around twenty and in colleged I obsessed badly about very beautiful and intelligent girl. In my eyes she practically turned into an eastern princess but for months on end I did not dare make a single move. I just suffered in silence.

For the decades that followed I used to have these daydreamed imaginary girlfriends. I would meet them in such a way that they needed me, because i was so sure I had nothing real to offer them myself.

And now, just when I am finding a lot more self esteem I have met the picture perfect incarnation of all these daydreams and we fell for each other like a block inside two months.
She is so close to what I have always imagined she would be that it almost feels like I have been mentally practicing for her all my life.
And its not that I have been looking for someone like her, it just happened. It started as a consequence of a very distressing post she had made on a forum and to which I responded, but quickly, almost instantly, developed into so much more.

Sadly, she lives rather far away from me in London and is suffering from seriously bad mental health issues. Still, it feels so incredibly right.

Over the years I've had a few particularly big crushes, I suppose you could call them obsessions. I find it more accurate to think of them as fixations. I nominally am obsessively interested in women, just no one in particular. Whereas there were a few times when I thought the other party was reciprocating my interest, and then I would start to convince myself that I was about to enter a relationship with them. In these circumstances, over a transition period of maybe a few weeks, I would come to think predominantly of them whenever I think about the opposite sex.

Two occasions come to mind. With the first I had some encouraging signs, but barely any and in the end she turned me down (or I put her off, I'm not quite sure which). I was fourteen and didn't really know any girls, and made a lot out of someone who wasn't my girlfriend. The second was someone on an internet message board who seemed interested in me, but after a few months had an apparently sudden change of heart and ran off with someone else on the same forum.

With both of these girls I was "fixated" for a few months, and when I was rejected I felt a lot worse than I ever have been turned down by a girl. I've never been in a relationship, but I guess they're dry runs for how I'd feel going into a relationship and having my heart broken. I'm pretty sure I would only do this if I felt that my interest was being reciprocated, and what's important is not only that I feel like I'm going to be intimate with a beautiful woman, but that I would have the mental assurance/stability of no longer being single. There was a "back to square one" feeling I got from being rejected, in both cases, like I wasted a lot of my time and was really a hopeless case.

I like what Freak mentioned about the reciprocation... That has been a stipulation for me.

That being said... Mine have all lead to relationships of varying degrees but they all mislead me and were very manipulative ect...

Was really hard to get out of or get over them.