Someone please help me; I am in a lot of pain :*-(

Post Reply New Topic

All us Aspies hate being told what to do it is the best way to make us mad btw Hope everything works out for you.

My own impression is that there are several issues at work here. I think he wants to marry you - but he's afraid. And then, when you brought it up, that drove him into retreat. I have this: push me, and I'm likely to talk myself into opposition to whatever I'm being pushed into, even if it is something I want.

As for the "lack of emotion" - when I am too overloaded with emotion, I shut down. It can take a long time to process. My best friend died in a car crash when I was in high school. I don't think I showed much emotion for days - but more than thirty five years later, I'm still wrestling with the aftershocks. What you see isn't always what's on the inside.

And all the signals? I don't know how many times people have misread me.

As for the kid issue - again, if he was feeling pressured, this would be one thing to scare him. And if he felt pushed, he'd hang up on it. And, yes, it would be one of the tougher issues to handle. Even if he likes your kid, kids do tend to push sensory buttons.

I think he's an Aspie, trying to make something work that he doesn't understand how to make work, scared, and now pushed in the wrong direction. (I'm not saying you tried to do that. But I know if I get pushed on the spot, my default is to push back, and talk myself into opposing whatever I'm being pushed toward.) So this complicates things. In the end, you have to decide what you want to do, but I don't think he's trying to hurt you. And under emotional pressure, I think he said a lot of things he wouldn't have otherwise. Again, I do that.

The way I understand it, the two of you are in different stages of a relationship. You are ready to commit to this man for life. He, on the other hand, is not so sure.

Of course you are in a great deal of pain about this! I understand the misery you must be going through.

The number one rule of relationships is that you cannot force someone to change or to see your point of view. You can only change yourself. I suggest you start taking a more objective view of this man, to match the one he has of you.

Take back some power for yourself. Ask yourself out of all the millions of fish in the sea, is he really the right one for you? Try to think less of him as someone you pour unconditional love towards for life, and more of just someone you enjoy spending time with at the moment. It sounds like you are interested in meditation, use that to your advantage...because its all about enjoying living life in the present moment, taking each day as it comes, and being open minded about the future.

It so is! I think what may have happened is that he thought, "A jewellery box is just a box; it's what's inside that matters." Using that line of reasoning it's easy to understand why he gave you a memory card inside it: to him the box was pretty, which he thought you would appreciate, and it's the wedding ring which makes the proposal, not the box it is presented in. Therefore, for him the box is a neutral container and does not have the associations which you attach to it.


This question is really indicative of a completely literal and logical thought process. Of course he doesn't know what will happen in the future, and neither do you. The problem is in the way he and you use the same words to mean different things. When you say, "Where will we be in five years' time?" you mean, "What things are likely to have happened over the course of five years, and will we be married?" However, that isn't what he understands. What he understands is that you are asking him to state something which cannot be justified because there are an infinite number of things that could happen between now and then. For him there is literally no such thing as a "foreseeable future" regardless of whether you are in it or not. It's nothing personal against you, just a different perspective.

I think, and others here are welcome to correct me, that your boyfriend does need to understand how you see things as well, otherwise he will continue to blunder on without realising there is a really big problem which could affect him in other ways as well. It's quite possible that he's using the classic aspie technique of trying to interpret the world through a completely logical rules-based framework; i.e. "If I do X, then Y will happen." Unfortunately it doesn't always work like this, and sometimes the process ends up being, "I did X and Q happened." Then it becomes an issue of whether a new rule has to be created to account for that sequence ("If I do X, then Y or Q could happen") or if this is a fluke which is unlikely to happen again. The problems start when there are situations where the sequence goes, "I did X and then Q happened the first time, but N happened the second time, and then F the third time." This is the hardest thing, becuase often there is no apparent explanation for such a seemingly random sequence of responses to the same cause. Worse, even if there is an explanation, there is no guarantee that the explanation will be logical. At that point either it is something he will just have to accept, or there may be a factor he had not considered which guaranteed the outcome would be F and not Y. So, going back to the jewellery box, there are two ways of looking at it. His new rule could be, "All jewellery boxes that look like X will make my girlfriend think Y regardless of content" or, which would be better, "Some shapes of jewellery box, in certain circumstances, will make my girlfriend think F, even if I mean her to think Y."

If he can understand and accept the latter version, and you can explain to him why you thought F and not Y, and that there may be other factors which have to be taken into account, then perhaps it will make it a bit easier for him to prevent misunderstandings like this happening again.

I concur. I was in a (fortunately brief) relationship with someone with borderline personality once, and can only imagine how terrible it would've been to be in a five year marriage with her. I would certainly be reluctant to "tie the knot" again if I were in his shoes.

Especially after only a year. My current GF has only been a little over a year, but she's been talking about marriage for quite a while now...I guess society does expect couples to marry young and start pumping out the babies, but I don't feel the same sort of "running out of time" that she does, which is odd since she's so much younger than me.

This post has everything! 100% agree with it all!!

If you two are happy together, do you care if he doesn't want to be married? It doesn't mean he's a player just because he doesn't want to.

People have their own preferences to marriage, but he seems committed to you so why would it matter?

You can always ask him if it's money issues or something along those lines as it is expensive but other then that, I would say just accept that he isn't the marrying type if he's been hurt previously when he asked someone else.

I think she probably feels like that because people with female bodies go through menopause in their forties and fifties, but people with male bodies stay fertile for much longer.

Yes, but he is 28 and she is apparently quite a bit younger than him, which would mean that she has a long way to go before it becomes a problem.

I don't see how that affects anything; she still has the danger of menopause looming ahead. I guess it could also be affected by social pressures that may or may not be sexist.

Of course she does, I'm not denying that. The point is that from his description she has to have at least 10 years to go (issues such as Downs' Syndrome tend to occur after 35), so basically she isn't required to have kids say in the next two years or risk no children at all, unless there is some medical issue which none of us know about. My mum, for example, was nearly 37 when I was born and nearly 39 when my brother was born. I am an aspie, but other than that both of us are perfectly normal in every respect.

I should add for vavaviolet: I know you are hurting, but please understand that not all of us are like your boyfriend, so if you do decide to throw in the towel and leave him, don't be put off dating an aspie ever again. Just look at Gavin Bollard's excellent blog, "Life with Aspergers" and his post called "Aspie Myths - 'He won't miss me'" which is here:

http://life-with-aspergers.blogspot.co.nz/2010/11/aspie-myths-he-wont-miss-me.html

Scroll down to the bit entitled: "Honour vs Wants." He made a lot of mistakes, but there's no denying Gavin truly loved his NT ex-girlfriend and she loved him too. Four aspie kids plus a serious marital crisis later, and they are still happily married. It can be done!

What? This conversation makes no sense to me anymore.

Ok. You said that she feels her biological clock ticking, because women are fertile for a shorter period than men, therefore she feels that she should have children in the next few years or risk not having any at all. My point is that because he is 28 and she (according to him) is significantly younger, she doesn't really need to worry about becoming infertile before she has the opportunity to have children. Unless there is some underlying medical condition that she has which we don't know about, she will be fertile for at least another 15 years (I'm assuming she's 25 or younger here) which is plenty of time in which to have kids.