Can someone define shame for me?

Post Reply New Topic

Just don't forget that those thoughts are just assumptions.



Being sheltered means that someone else managers your responsibilities, and you are probably unaware of the process involved. If you have responsibilities in your life that are autoMAGICally taken care of, then you are sheltered. If you have never learned how to shop for groceries, do laundry, balance a checkbook, then you are sheltered.

A sheltered person is usally incapable of being self sufficient.



You do need to work on not being ashamed of yourself.



What about this:




She didn't want the relationship to develope into initimate/romantic/sexual/etc. relationship. And you weren't really interested in that either. You just wanted to use (ever here that term before?) Anne for self-validation and approval. In your desparation, you even offered to have "boyfriend" not mean anything special.

Relationships stand on their own. Everyone knows that. When you start wanting credit, people start avoiding you. No one wants to be used or taken advantaged of.

She was ok with you two becoming closer friends. You didn't care about that, you were just interested in using Anne for validation.



Your desparation distroyed the relationship that you had (your friendship).



How would of you responded? I want to know what your expectations were.



I couldn't find your answer so I assumed it wasn't there.

Affection, and reciprocation of affection, are important components of being in a relationship.

You need to learn how to express your emotions. You can't think about what to do. You just have to do what "feels" right. The only thinking involved might be a quick appropriateness check.

Express of emotions is just another skill that is learned. No one is born with it.



Just because something isn't in the letter doesn't mean it's not relevent. It might have some up later. Or Anne may have assumed that you wouldn't be able to do that.

I'm assuming that you want to understand to past so that your future will be better.

Exactly. And the point is that I am going to school in Michigan and my mom lives in California. So I cook for myself, do my own groceries, do my own laundary, pay my own rent, etc.

However, my mom treats me like a child, so I told Anne some of it, and then she generalized it to decide that I am not self sufficient.

MISCONCEPTION 1: If my mom treats me like a child it means that she also supports me in terms of living

However, it is true that my mom WOULD LIKE to shelter me in terms of living too, in fact she didn't want me to go to graduate school so far from home. But her evaluation of me was wrong since I am obviously making it on my own. Nevertheless, Anne trusts my mom's evaluation of me, which brings me to

MISCONCEPTION 2: Other people's evaluation of me is more accurate than my own. Even though other ppl only judge me from outside by standardly accepted NT criteria while I find my own way




But she does it while she is friend, too. So how come it is okay to run a show as long as she is called friend. But once she is girlfriend, it is no longer okay?



Like I said I don't believe in premarital sex. AND I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE, I mean there are plenty of religious ppl who don't believe in premarital sex either. So your definition of relationship needs to encorporate them.



But you contradict yourself. In your previous quote you said that she didn't want "relationship/friendship" from developping further. And then I pointed it out to you that yes she wanted a FRIENDSHIP to develop. And you said she didn't; I did.

Yes I think she DID want friendship to develop. I am just surprised by what you have said in the past about her not wanting it to develop. So now when you finally agree with me she also wanted friendship to develop, this leads me to point out to you that perhaps you talk about two different KINDS of friendship.

So this would get MUCH closer to what I want to be asking because once we draw a line between two different kinds of friendship, we will be able to distinguish relationship from friendship without appealing to sex, which is what I wanted to ask on a first place.


You didn't care about that, you were just interested in using Anne for validation.




I would of stated the following:

1)My mom can't possibly shelter me due to the fact tah I am in a different state and rarely ever answer her phone calls

2)Yes she would LIKE to shelter me, BUT her perception of me is WRONG

3)No I do NOT like my mom being overprotective -- in fact that is precisely teh reason I rarely respond to her phone calls

4)To support my point 3, I would remind her of how I was teling her I keep things from my mom. In other words, I want DISTANCE from her. THis is totally opposite from wanting her sheltering

5)Yes my ex girl friend did shelter me. But guess what -- I broke up with her over it. Actually this isn't accurate because the truth was that I simply stopped returning her calls and looking for other women while keeping her in case I won't find anyone, while she was the one who broke up with me after I was quiet for 3 months, although she did it after she found her own boyfriend first. But of course I won't ever admite this to Anne. So I would simply say I broke up with my ex over it.




But from Anne's point of view I can't help other things too. Yet she included other things. So why didn't she include this?

Looks like you've got that covered.

How emotionally self sufficient are you? I know you've had a need for validation.



It probably wasn't ok. She did it cause she liked you. But she didn't want to put up with it with someone she was emotionally committed to.



In otherwords, she didn't want a significant other.

Sidebar: The term premarital sex is quite the misnomer. It should really be called prewedding sex. Sex falls on a spectrum that goes from purely casual (no emotional involvement) to truely marital (you give yourself completely to the other person). It is possible to have marital sex before a wedding, or to have a wedding, but never be married.



Exact definitions are vague. Vague definitions are precise. A good relationship is a friendship. A friendship is a relationship.

When you start trying to quantify what you have, it falls apart.

She didn't want the bond (she called it friendship, you called it relationship) to become more emotionally envolved (she called it relationship, you didn't think about).



I didn't know before that she was ok with the friendship developing. It's possible that her feelings changed over time. Initially, she wasn't worried about. But as you two grew closer, she recognized that 1, she wasn't ready for the commitment, and 2, she needed you to grow personally before she would be ok with allowing herself be in love with you.



I just used sex as an example. It didn't matter. You were on a different axis from her. You just wanted a title for self validation. She thought you wanted more out of the relationship; but you didn't.



I don't think she wanted to be refuted; that just makes for aurguments.

Was there anything beside validation that you wanted?



You didn't mention that your mother was some 2300, 2500 miles away.

Yes I did. She even asked me how often my mom visits me so that she can see her. I told her I keep her from my mom. She was asking me other questions about my mom which I avoided ansering because I didn't wnat to come across as rebelling against my mom due to the fact that this is what ruined relaitonship with my first girlfriend, Sarah. But I didn't realize that something else was also important, namely my lack of independance. So from this perspective, I BETTER come across as rebelling at least to some extend, but I ddidn't realize it untill it was too late.

Anyway, what she heard about my mom was

1)She was in California and I was in Michigan
2)She is visitting me once in 2 months
3)She is very over protective
4)I keep my girlfriends from her among many other htings
5)I kept changing the topic whenever she tried to question me about my mom (BUT THAT WAS ONLY BECAUSE THERE WERE NO WAY FOR ME TO PREDICT THIS LETTER).

As far as what she knew about my ex was

1)My ex was also overprotective
2)My ex was in Minnesota and we broke up shortly after I moved to Michgian to transfer schools, which was a year before I met Anne
3)My ex had my password and was still checking my email (that was a lie in order to cover up for something else)
4)My ex didn't give me keys from her appartment when I was staying at her place
5)I changed a subject any time she would try to discuss further anythign about my ex (AGAIN IT WAS ONLY BECAUSE I COULDN"T PREDICT THAT LETTER OR THAT LACK OF INDEPENDANCE WOULD BE AN ISSUE)




The question is how much of it did Anne know? And I guess her only "evidence" was what I told her about my mom, and also the fact that I let her take care of me. As far as my telling her about my mom, I never said to her that I agreed with the way my mom was treating me. I simply brought it up in a context of hiding things from her. So, if I said that her overprotecting me leads me to HIDE things from her, it can only mean thtat I don't like it. As far as the second part of allowing Anne to take care of me emotionally, that is only because I didn't realize that I would be judged based on this. I was assumming that if she offers me X, Y, and Z, and they are all her ideas it means that it won't be "wrong" of me to accept X, Y, and Z. But looking back, it is possible that her offering me X, Y, and Z were all motivated by my telling her about my mom, so in this case basically her knowledge of my mom put me into catch 22 which goes back to the fact that it is unfair to judge someone based on what someone else thinks without testing one's assumptions.




That is what I don't understand. How come when you are emotionally committed to someone, you put up with LESS things? From my perspective, it should be the opposite. If you really love someone you can do the world for them. So this is what brings up the whole idea of boyfriend being some kind of title as opposed to actual love. Becuase if it is title, then it is true that you would put up with less if it comes from, say, the president or something.



Fine, so then the question is what is "significant other"?



I simply derived it from the word "marriage" i meant to say pre-marriage sex and I meant to alter the ending of the word "marriage" the way things are altered when you combine words. But may be I didn't have a good spelling.





But can you actually DECIDE how much something is emotionally envolved? I mean you can't control your emotions unless you have some magic drug.

Okay, if I knew how to DECIDE to feel something, then my whole question would be answered. Not wanting a relaitonship means DECIDING not to feel something. But how is it possible to do it? If it isn't, then I would be forced to fill in blanks with other stuff, such as some of my incorrect conclusions.



Okay, here is a link that contails story in detail (PLEASE NOTE -- the whole story is described not only in original post but also in few of my responses to myself because it was really long, so please read all of my responses to myself to get an idea):

http://www.wrongplanet.net/asperger.htm ... highlight=






Okay, that letter was only a week after she started seeing me and it was only a RESPONSE to my proposal for a relatinship. I didn't see any of her distancing away from me durign that one week. Quite the opposite she got closer and closer. Her letter was only a RESPONSE to my letter, and that was it. So thats why i can't buy the answer that her feelings changed.

By the way how is it possible for her not to ALLOW herself to fall in love with me? How can she DECIDE what to feel?



More like what?



But didn't she say "you might be mad at the last paragraph AND I MIGHT BE TOTALLY OFF"? By clasure "I might be totally off" she basically invited me to refute her.




I wanted emotional connection. I also felt we had a lot in common because we were both graduate students, me in physics and her in math. We also had other shared interests, like in runnning and in psychiatry just to name a couple. Plus she approached me in math class so this means that I could easilly introduce her to my mom and tell the truth without ever admitting for ever looking for anyone online or otherwise. She also had the same perspective as I did, she thought a lot of ppl are quite shallow to focus on small things like playing video games and not go deep down to getting to know each other on emotional level and how no one understands her in math department. She was hopping that I would understand her better because Asperger would give me "some inside". Appart from that, she was obviously caring and emotionally supportive.

So I guess I wanted a lot of things and self validation was only ONE of them. But AFTER that rejection letter, self validation became most important one on the basis taht I was offended by the reasoning of the letter. But UNTILL htat letter, self validation was only may be 50% of it. After the letter it became 90%.

You're assuming that because she puts up with something today, that she'll be able to put it with it just as well tomorrow. She knows it's easier to get you to change now, than if you're in relationship.



You don't know what that is?



Yes. You can control your emotions. Be careful about it though. When I was young, ended up repressing love because I didn't want to feel the pain of missing my dad.



All this happened in a week? Maybe your letter made her realize how fast the relationship was moving, and that she wasn't ready.



It's a skill. And you do have it. You just need to recognize that you can do it and refine your abilities. Example: Do you still feel sad if you see a dead animal on the road?



You can let her know what she has mistaken, but don't "refute". When you refute, it's going to sound like you're arguing, and that your're trying to put someone in their place. It's actually comes off pretty rude.



Before the letter, were there any other reasons that accounted for >25% of you desire for a relationship?

Why is it easier to change me when I am not in a relationship?



Remember how I was asking I don't know what is the difference between boyfriend and a friend given that as a friend I was just as close? Well, what you did was substitute teh word "boyfriend" with the word "significant other". So the same question still remains, just cross out the word boyfriend and put the word significant other. In my original question I didn't know what is boyfriend. So now i don't know what is significant other.



Okay now I am onto something. Perhaps I can explain a behavior of a different girl, Katie. She first was turned off because I mentioned that my ex was overweight and she took it a wrong way because she was overweight herself. Then 6 months after the fact I came back to tell her I didn't mean it that way and I was actually saying something opposite, namely that the fact that my ex was overweight implies that it is OKAY if someone is overweight. Then she appologised for HAVING (note the past tense) been immature. But at the same time she STILL didn't want to be in a relatinoship. So could it be something like this:

1)First she thought I had a problem with her weight
2)So she took anti-love-drug
3)6 months later she realized she was wrong in taking hte anti-love drug
4)However the anti-love drug was still acting
5)So even though she knew she was wrong in taking it, she couldn't do anything about it's effects

Here is a relevent post: http://www.wrongplanet.net/asperger.htm ... highlight=



That is part of my dillema. Because from my perspective, the only way to know the truth is through logic. Yet, whenever I try to use logic on ppl, they think I am argumentative and try to distance themselves from me. But from my perspective an hour of logic would save for the months of misunderstanding. So even if it is unpleasant, why not endure it for an hour just for the brighter future?

I mean, suppose a math student solves a problem wrong due to her believing in some wrong equation. So I told her she was mistaken without telling her why. In this case she might memorize correct answer for this particualr problem, but the underlying misunderstanding will still be in place. Hence, when she comes across a subsequent problem she would still get a wrong answer.

For the same reason, I feel that if I would correct people without refutting them, I would still ultimately be misunderstood. On the other hand, if I refute them, I won't be misunderstood any more. Now, I agree being refutted is unpleasant. But just like it takes one hour to learn a theorem in math and then you know it for the rest of your life, in the same way if someone endures my rudeness for one day, they would be spared of misunderstandings for the rest of tehir life.

However, the way it actually works is taht people seem to be too "lazy" to endure my rudeness for one day. Instead, they stop talking to me after the first hour at the most. So, due to them not being around long enough to actually be refutted, they still believe whatever they first believed since one hour is not enough to present a day-long-proof. Hence, in light of the fact that they listened to me for only one hour, my argumentativeness only confirmed their original views of me.

So what puzzles me is that why DON"T they stay around for a day to be refutted? I mean no matter how blatanly rude it is, if it is only for a day, doesn't it WORTH the years that come AFTER that day? And even fi they don't BELIEVE they woudl be refutted, still if tehre is 1% chance that they might it is still worth it. If there is 1% chance of clearing misunderstanding for the comming many years, it is more important than 100% chance of fights for only 1 day.



50% Self validation
20% Her being graduate student in math
15% Her being emotionally supportive as well as sharing the same perspectives
10% The fact that we met in class which makes it easier as far as introducing her to my mom
5% Common miscellaneous interests (running, etc)

It the whole "Why pay for the cow, when you can have the milk for free." thing. If you gives you what you want, she won't have it as a way to motivate you to change.





You are very logical, yet are completely blind. When you say that your ex is fat, you are reminding her that she is fat. When you do that, you are telling her that you are more interested in how she looks, that who she is; even if you say you're ok with her weight.



How many people have said you need to learn to love yourself?
How many people have said you don't need to love yourself?



I have better things to do than listen to an arrogant bastard rant.

Seriously, you are arrogant. Look it up. You believe that people should listen to your almighty logic. That they should give you undivided attention and hear you out.



Do you see anything wrong with your desires?

So are you basically saying that she DID still consider to be in a relationship with me AFTER I change? I guess thats what she also said at the end of her email but I weren't sure if she was serious about leaving the door open, or whether she was just trying to be polite. I guess in order for the above explanation to work, I have to assume that she DID in fact intend to start a relationship once I do change.



I see what you are saying. However, the whole point is that she had admitted to being "immature" for having jumped to conclusions. So, if she just admitted to being immature, this means she no longer thinks that her weight is the issue. So this raises a question why would she still not want a relationship even if she considers her reasons to be "immature"? And thats where I am forced to say that she basically says that since I haven't gotten a "title" on the first place it is too late to get it now just like if Gore wasn't elected on the first place, even if later they found the reasons were wrong, he is still not a president.



1)Different online dating tips
2)Anne
3)Katie
4)Anita
5)One girl in Minnesota whom I only talked once and no longer remember
6)Yourself
7)Some people in other message boards



The same girl as listed on part 4, Anita. Basically, she told me that I do NOT have to be happy with myself at the beginning of a relaintoship because we can make each other happy, however later on she broke up with me over the fact that I am not happy. This makes her inconsistant and makes me wonder that perhaps I pissed her off with something else. Just to clarify, she is NOT Anne even though she has similar name.

I am going to make a separate post about her and I will give a link once I am done writing it.




Actually I weren't referring to you, I was referring to the girls. Sorry for misunderstanding.



I am not saying it just about me. I want to make a general rule that person A should give unlimitted time to person B to explain themselves, whoever A and B might be. Just like I expect everyone to hear me out, the same way I expect myself to hear out everyone else's logic (in fact htis is the point of this post). And if you have two people who have nothing to do with me, if you ask me what I think, I would tell you they need to give each other undivided attention untill they totally understand each other's logic.



I guess you already gave me an answer because you were telling me how seeking self validation is wrong.

Yeah, but you're not the only one that had to change. She wasn't planning on a relationship. She was telling you that now (then) is not the time, and it might be possible later.



It's still an issue. But she did recognize that you jumped to a conclusion about you.



That happens. A lot a girls don't like to be told you want to just be friends, then come to find out you really wanted more. It is ok though if you truly just wanted to be friends, and something more develops on it's own.



So, does the guy with relationship problems still think he's right? Instead of debating about who's right, why not just try it? Is there a reason that you don't want to love yourself?



She's not inconsistant. You're stubborn. She figured that once you were in a relationship, you would be happy. You continued to be a downer. She didn't want to be with a killjoy so she left.



People in general don't want to sit patiently for you to go on and on as to why you're right. Your professors may be different, or just patient. You need to learn how to aquire new understanding without having to debate something.



It ain't going to happen - except when two people agree to debate.