what is love to an aspie? question from an aspie's wife

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I'm still learning about the "spectrum" and what the nuances are. I'm not sure where he falls on it other than "aspergers" although I'm starting to put ideas together on that as well. I absolutely realize everyone is an individual. I'm married to my husband, not to Mr. Asperger. At the same time, I think its important to understand what aspergers means to our relationship. It makes a huge difference in understanding him at a high level.

Alright, so I know you want a free answer, but I also read a great book that I keep on referencing lately.

Asperger's in Love by Maxine Aston. If you feel like having something to use as a reference, this is a great book. The author gives great examples of women who have had difficulties with their Aspie husband. She says what is beneficial to do, and what not to do. You will understand that your husband does love you, but has a different way of viewing you than someone who isn't an Aspie.

The one thing she frequently makes note of is Aspie men being faithful! Score!

I am an aspie male who is not in a relationship, but would really like someone to love. I think we do love, just as much as NTs, but express it in odd or hard to interpret ways. I would feel guilty for hurting a partner, because it would be just as hard for her to understand me as vice versa. I tend to do silly things that hurt people through idiocy, not on purpose. Marriages between NTs and Aspies can work, but take a lot of patience, support, and understanding on the NT's part. Of course, the Aspie has to try to put the NT partners needs ahead, as well.

Both you an your husband might find The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome by Tony Attwood helpful. In the chapter The Understanding and Expression of Emotions, the are a few paragraphs on how NTs and aspies answer the What is Love? question. I'll try to paraphrase here so I'm not copying the book directly. Let me say right here that from experience on these forums there will be complete disagreement to complete agreement with the book.

NT's give answers like tolerant and supportive, passionate and affectionate and enjoying each other and a special feeling one has when with the other person. There's also an answer about the other person having qualities you don't but admire, and reflecting back how you see yourself. I don't quite understand this last part myself.

Aspies answers tend to run along the lines of helping my partner, try to make an emotional connection, having someone to help you in life and give my partner space to be his/her own person. Other common answers are "I don't know" and "I've yet to experience love." My personal experience is the latter. I'd like to change that but to quote a line from an old Paul Simon song, "I would if I could but I cannot I know."

Not changing plans at the last minute seems to be a universal asperger's trait. I can tell you that there have been instances in my life where people have made last minute changes and I just refused to go along altogether, opting to stay at home and go about a routine day. Honestly I can't put a word to the negative emotion I feel when this happens. Time to adjust to a change in plans is very important. I've even felt this way when the other person had a completely legitimate excuse, like illness, family issue, or even a death in the family. Of course I bite my tongue under these situations because I know it is wrong for me to feel this way, but I still do. Even with a logical brain it can be hard to fight off such a strong emotion.

I had a very perceptive supervisor at work for many years who figured out that I didn't take well to sudden changes. If it was possible, he'd come to me several days in advance and tell me I was going to have to do something different, make a change I might not like. I usually didn't react well, but the extra time allowed me to accept it and I was able to handle it much better.

Love is when someone accepts you warts and all and you accept them warts and all. The rest is just details.

my former husband did very similar things to what you listed, OP... and he was not an aspie. sometimes people just don't understand when something is emotionally improtant to their partner, or else they do not have the emotional resources to always provide the support at that moment. i found that when he understaood the real reasons behind my needs, he would be more likely to come through.

i had trouble articulating why something was important to me, so i learned to improve my communication so i could rationally explain my needs in a less-emotional way. even though i was in fact communicating emotions, i needed to explain them instead of just expressing them.

i learned to rely on him less when it was less important, so that he would have the emotional resources when i really needed the help... that way, i could say, "today/now/this minute i need you to support me please", but i said it sparingly because if i said that every day, obviously, it would become too much for him.

i tend to require a lot of support, which i am working on improving at my own end. it was not easy for my ex to try to be there for me when i needed it so often. i am learning to cope with anxiety through a series of workshops and such, so that i can become my own best support. also, i ask friends and other relatives to be there for me more often to lessen the burden on one single person.

to answer your original question... love is different for each person, and i would not put aspies in a separate camp from other folks.

Some more thoughts that I have on this subject are:

In general aspies don't have trouble feeling emotions, but rather the trouble lies in expressing them.

On the contrary side of that, though, is the fact that myself and others that I have seen on this forum sometimes express trouble feeling a specific emotion (my big two are grief and gratitude - I have much difficulty with those; when I was younger it was difficult for me to feel anything the majority of the time) so it is possible (even likely) that there are some who have trouble feeling "love" or identifying what it is.

But back on the flip side again, aspies do tend to be very straightfoward and few are capable of putting on a facade. So if your husband at all acts like he cares about and loves you, he very likely does. It is against typical aspie nature to be nice to someone they don't care about for some sort of a physical benefit like sex or cooking. There's always exceptions to this but my impression is that this applies to the vast majority.

If your husband is at any time reaching out to you or wanting to touch and be close to you or wanting to spend time with you, and yet is autistic you can bet that he cares for you since it does take some amount of effort for many to care about things other than their interest(s) or allow others to touch them

tammy will never struggle for another day in her life.
i do love tammy very very much

I don't even know what romantic is or feels like. I know basic affection (like for friends and family members) but the other is completely out of my range of experience. I don't know if other aspies might feel this way, that the affection they feel for various people is indistinguishable.

Heh, I don't even understand how two people get together.

Love is characterized by irrational, chemically-driven, and usually-short lived infatuation,
and is altogether silly to succumb to and allow to invade one's life.

Do I believe that?
No.
But since all Aspies are identical robots by virtue of NOT being NT,
why bother with nuance?

once upon a time, there was a variety of canned dog food called "luv", and for a very long time i was able to say when someone asked me what i thought love was, that i thought it was a brand of dog food.

i was very happy that i had that response at my disposal. but then the brand "luv" went broke and disappeared, so i could no longer rely on my stock reply.

what a drama. it is well that i have thick doors.