Terrified of intimacy

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Makes sense to me.

Now I know why they say Love is blind.

Last edited by cinbad on 04 Feb 2012, 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually, its not that its FALSE intimacy. Its that its only physical pleasure with very WELL defined rules. Ones that I know & am familiar with (though I feel guilty about this sometimes).
One time, the dancer actually french-kissed me. oops! Nearly shut-down. I don't like surprises in some situations.
On a REAL date, I struggle with what to do/say constantly and when to do it.

Sincerely,
Matthew
PS.
I actually have stopped doing the Club thing. Concentrating on my REAL Love Life & spiritual issues these days. Just saying..

Ok, fair enough.

Things don't come naturally to me, so I need patience and direction. I'm a virgin on top of that, so I'm already nervous enough to begin with.

If someone throws in the towel, they have to live with the consequences and they have to know that they can't go back and change that at 50 or 60 if they have any regrets about that decision. For some a temporary hiatus is necessary, for others life has given them a hint for as long as they can remember and there's a certain point in time where they simply need to find peace in accepting life as its going to be, not as they would have wished it could have been.

I have this problem too, I know when I was a teenager that it was overwhelming and I would just shut down or leave, but that turned into avoidance and the issue compounded from there.

I'm at a loss now of how to approach it, I'm acutely aware that I'm missing out somewhere, but can't get back to it. All the people that I have talked to about it give one piece of advice, which is 'Just get on with it!' But to me it isn't that simple as I can't make head nor tail of body language and inferences top even get the ball rolling.

Intimacy is a form of trust. Meaning you have to open yourself up to someone who you want that closeness with. For me it takes a long time for me to feel comfortable with someone because by nature I am a touchier. When I feel close to someone I touch them in mid-conversation, but within my family hugs are a little taboo. For me when I think of wanting to be close to someone, I don't think of sex I think of lying in bed in the arms of the one that I care for. So, when you find some like that don't rush it go at your own pace and you will love yourself for it.

I have a cautionary tale about giving up because of being so terrified and overwhelmed by the thought of letting someone close.

One day I teased a girl a church that she should not be so mean and that she should share the suckers she was holding with me. She gave me a cute smile and handed me one. I was 16 or so and she was younger so in was simply an innocent encounter, but destiny had other ideas it seemed. The girl developed an instant crush on me as young girls will do and it was cute, but she was just way to young. But as as the years past by she never stopped loving me and eventually became a beautiful young woman.

At first our relationship was just fun a flirty and it was fun and exciting, but as she grew older and my feelings grew for her, is when the trouble started. Now, I was expected to do something, take the next step. Something that any normal person is thrilled and excited by but it terrified me because the closer I got to someone the harder it was to hide my deformity.

One day my mother once asked me why I didn't call her, she told me that this girl didn't understand why I didn't. She told me that sometimes she felt that I wasn't good enough and tears sprung to my eyes, I just couldn't do it.

I didn't know that I had AS, but I knew that something was terribly wrong with me. I just didn't know what to do. The awkwardness, the uncertainty of how or what to do next only lead to anxiety and panic attacks that led to me withdrawing in shame and embarrassment and I know it hurt this young woman's feeling, and that made me feel worse.

This girls mother became an angel in my life. She reached out to me in a way that no one ever has before or since. She knew how to draw me out, she was one of the few people that I could talk to forever. She actually wrote me letters of encouragement during the times that I withdrew, but neither one of us knew what I was up against.

Over time I gave up on the dream of actually having a relationship with her. but she just kept loving me. Both her parents and mine really wanted to see us be together and would occasionally see that we ran into each other.

My family threw a small birthday party for me on my 26th birthday and had invited this young woman and her family without telling me. I was actually really happy to see them, but it brought back that surreal, gut wrenching feeling of being an deformed alien, incapable of pursuing a relationship that any normal normal 12 year old could do with ease.

For most of the evening she sat on the floor gazing lovely at me. We made some small talk but that was the extent of it. There was a serenity and peacefulness about her that took my breath away, something I'll never forget. I knew that she was there to let me know that she still wanted to be with me and I knew I had to make a decision about our future, if not that night, then in the very near future.

But by this time in my life my AS had left me crushed, disoriented and hopeless. and it was all I could do just to survive. And how could I let her love me., was it even fair for me to let her do so. When you love someone that much you want the best for them and not only wasn't I the best, I was a sub human mutant. And she loved kids and wanted to be a mother more than anything on earth and I knew that she would make a fantastic mother and wife. But how could I even consider having children if there was a possibility that I could pass what I had one to them. How could I live with myself if I did. How could I see their struggle and pain and live with myself.

So I made the decision to just walk away. into the void. I didn't know what else to do and I felt that I was basically powerless to do anything else. A couple of years later, I heard that she met a guy from Texas and got married. Some guy came along and did what normal people do, in the way that is meant to be. The dating, the phone calls, the time together, those shared special moments that could have been mine , all for him now. Everything I could have had, if not for this cruel condition that we are afflicted with

And now it's been almost 25 years since that last day I saw her. It's hard for me to imagine the she could be a grandmother now. I just can't believe that so much time has gone by. I'm now 52 years old , still alone and more isolated and withdrawn than ever. These memories just recently returned to me as I recently reflected on my past. I would give anything to just be able to make one more attempt to make that relationship happen. Maybe if I had just calmed down a little, stopped over-thinking the situation and with the love and support of the two most wonderful women I will ever know - I could have done it. My life would have been so completely and utterly different and in all the best ways. But I'll never know - because I gave up.

This wasn't just some random relationship I gave up on. I watched this girl I liked become a beautiful woman I loved. Her family loved me, she had a bother about my age that I liked and became friends with and now there is nothing

Autism always takes a toll on those it affects, but you have to keep fighting. And especially when you are feeling embarrassed or ashamed or over whelmed. Because our reactions to events and circumstances are often blown way out of proportion to the reality of them.

I've had other chances at love, actually just a couple, but it just brought up all the pain my past and none of the women measured up to that one special woman, at least not in my mind. I think I've continued to want to resolve that failure by re creating that relationship some how, so I can take all those feelings I had back then to fruition. And once again - don't do this, it can't be done, every relationship will be different and possibly much better if you give it a chance. And all the difficulties I had back then still exist today, I really haven't progressed much over the years

I'm not sure what the future holds for me now, at my age I'm pretty sure I've struck out for the last time. I don't want to dwell on the past, but I'm old, tired and just feel that I'm done. I'm sure that I'm just feeling sorry for myself, in fact I admit it, but I just don't care. I'm actually working on my will as I'm writing this, I want my parents to get everything if something were to happen to me...........

So the moral of the story is - don't be like me. Be terrified and do it anyway. You will embarrass yourself at times but just keep on moving forward. Though there are no guarantees, you just might score that one victory that will change your life forever and all your failures will be a distant memory.

DigitalDesperado... You write so eloquently and heartfelt. You brought tears to my eyes. I cannot imagine how someone with such a heart cannot show love. You showed it right here...and beautifully. I am older than you are and I am still looking for it. I have never given up. Maybe this could be your time. Now that the wisdom of years is behind you. It's never too late for love.

^ Very well said! From the amount of detail, it looks like it was pretty emotional to write. This story has a little glimmer of hope for me! Thanks for sharing!!

Desperado to give you a bit of background on myself I'm 32, had lots of girls 'interested' through school (at least highschool on) but it was that hair trigger kind of thing where they'd make the attempts, realize I was different, and either shoot off like bullets or even take a reserved attitude to the extent of thinking that I'd shunned them. My social skills weren't even that bad, just that they didn't particularly need to be - I was more eccentric than socially impaired (to this day that's pretty close to the truth). Through college I had some close brushes but - by this point I'd become a self improvement junky - I was dying to, needed to be, the guy who I'd always wanted to be (putting rediculous amounts of work on myself) and for some reason, when women detected that about me they didn't like it; I couldn't understand it but then again couldn't stomach the idea of throwing away what I was trying to do for myself all for the sake of gratifying their love of someone who I wanted to bind, gag, and drown, and they couldn't gel with the guy I was becoming - who internally needed to be for my own sanity and stability (which also - I could have cared less if a girl was intoxicated by me, if the next time we went out I'd get my arse beat by a bunch of guys and I couldn't take her anywhere its an utterly worthless gain anyway). My luck with ASD has been that my expressions look different, generally don't work, I look hyperaware, have always drawn negative attention for that, and I felt like I needed to do what I needed to do to survive dealing with my own gender through life.

What happened unfortunately in college, aside from working a restaurant job where a new girl every month would pull that trick of being interested then angered, all the way up until I was already repelled the moment they showed interest, but the times where I actually did see girls who seemed like they had an energy where they were just like me - I saw them once going from one class to another, or I'd see them in passing but never within any range to talk to them. I can count only once where a girl who was strikingly, I mean strikingly beautiful and had my same features - the glassy eyes, very quiet, almost docile one minute and blowing out energy like an emotional lightning rod the next (again, without a word - just posture and movement), who had that same sort of otherworldy/alien innocence that I had about me (its pretty fair to say from her body language that she saw me as much as I saw her). Kind of a Wall-E and Eva kinda vibe if you get where I'm coming from. In that class we had group projects galore, we never got grouped together, and the sad thing I came to realize quick - I could talk to extroverted NT girls around me like it was nothing, even if they were quite attractive it was their silliness and lack of intensity that made it no effort. With her I got another chance to see why girls had such a hard time talking to me - yes, she was strikingly beautiful but what made her difficult to approach was that intensity.

The funny thing was; I could tell she was having as many problems with guys as I was women, just that - she was the same way I was and rather than that making it easy it shut us both out. Truthfully she made better efforts than I did on a couple occasions. My big problem - I had involuntary mutism by this point, I'd be as tense as a lead pipe in class quite often, to even turn my head half the time caused a heck of a jerk so I typically just leaned back and kept myself looking forward. My physiology literally shut me down. One time when I was leaving class I have every intention of saying something to her but - trying to get the words out was like trying to lift a car. I couldn't budge. That of course passed, never saw her again and I really have my doubts that I ever will.

After that, by my late 20's, I actually did start dating. I'd had one three-week relationship at 20 where I lost my v-card, she was a homeschooled girl till 16 who went to public school, we got her into raves, and it seemed like we both lacked the maturity for the relationship but she specifically needed my time all day long, would keep me up till 4 AM on weeknights, and really didn't and couldn't understand any minute that I wasn't there. After three weeks she was with a live-in friend, for the next three years, who married her after which she ran off on him (go figure).

My late 20's dating though was probably the biggest blow to my ambitions in dating - ie. I learned that I'm more than half the problem. I already realized that for most of my life I'd meet a girl who I was truly magnetically attracted to maybe once every three or four years, and I couldn't get enough of thinking about any of them. Needless to say none of those were ever ago (albeit I had one at 26 where she might have been interested but it was kinda like what I met above - self conscious and self conscious, we were always out of sync in showing intrest) but getting back to the main point with this; I found out that I literally could not find anyone that I felt even a modest attraction to. Sadly, while I have no judgment of any women and find most at least reasonably attractive, if it comes to even the thought of dating a girl who I'm not fully attracted to - not only do I feel like there's a huge magnetic field repelling me from her, if I do follow through and date her I'd feel even more lonely; like I'd shut off hope, shut off the future, and was grounding myself in something that just felt wrong on all levels.

From about 26 on I can't think of a single time I haven't done the rejecting, a complete and absolute roll reversal from before 25 but one that really made me sick in that realizing - if very few women are interested in me than I'm once removed, but if I'm equally interested in very few women - I'm twice removed.

Like you as well though I can't shake the feeling that I'm utterly hideous. No, I'm not ugly, but my body language still gets some ugly responses from women who either don't know me or have personality types where they simply wouldn't be able to conceptualize me. Had a girl join my martial arts class who I walked in, she was a friend of my instructor, she was kind of nervous about the whole thing and talking to me about it. By the time I got dressed and, truthfully, made even a fraction of small talk (knowing that when I quiet down I start looking like Lurch from the Adam's Family and sending really odd vibes) I got the abrupt "I'm married", which my instructor looked over puzzled - he knew full well she wasn't. Things like that are a hard thing to shake because I can't stop feeling like I literally 'do things to people' just by drawing breath and looking like me; social skills in the raw sense can't touch it. Apparently I've historically looked like I should be that grabby/stalky guy? Whatever it is I've learned that I can't do battles with people's perceptions and win, especially when my expressive and speaking ability typically goes to reinforce rather than help.

Its not even about people like her even. A girl who ended up with me would have to realize that no matter how functional I seem up front, no matter how sharp my common sense seems, no matter how high my GPA was or even how well rounded I might seem (perhaps come off like I've taken the best of what the cool kids were and the best of the nerd side); that has to be countered with my short term/working memory deficits, my utter inability to learn many coordination tasks, my absolute and abject failure at social contests with the guys (or other husbands), the way I draw predators out of my own gender in public just on something about my body language that I've come to conclude has nothing to do with an emotional state - its always there, add to that what I've noticed about so many women; they've always seemed incredibly closed minded about what a guy can or can't be, almost no guy who's different on the outside than he is on the inside - even authentically - has any chance, you're not allowed to be deep without it being spun specifically for social purposes, you're not allowed to like much other than top 40 or pop; I have a driving compelling need for things completely other than that and its anathema. Pretty much conformity is the one true god, none others exist. I fail in conformity, I have to watch my employments because employers either really take to me or fire me within a month - all depending on personality. In so many senses I'm rendered too vulnerable to society's whims to be a 'man' for anyone but myself and there's nothing I can do about it.

So, where I'm at - the prospect of making any more unnatural or forward effort to go out and 'find' someone makes a root canal look like an attractive alternative. If I'm not human, if I'm too much of an outlier, and epecially - my biggest nightmare - the conformity that a 'dad' has to live under and the sheer abuse and tirades of "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!" from a wife who's demands I can't conform to; some guys are nimbish, servile, chestless, and they can and do take that all day long; the difference with me, the way AS has taught me to think, I couldn't survive someone talking to me like that. I'd be a suicide in no time (my safety mechanism on that - I'm inflexibly assertive with that kind of thing, a frame of mind which I probably need to learn how to corrupt away), mainly because very adult, poignant relatives and other encounters, my peers, the professionals; all made it incredibly clear to me - the message was that I need to take it for granted; when in doubt its my fault and whoever is confronting me is probably right. That's the kind of poison unfortunately that turns so many aspies in to marks and victims, but, even realizing that its an incredibly difficult poison to wash out. When it happens from 7 or 8 to diagnosis at 11 through even early adulthood - even if you kill the core of that belief the secondary and tertiary patterns of analysis are in your core wiring and likely not leaving until well into your 40's or 50's - IF you're incredibly self aware and intrepid about removing them (crossing my fingers); otherwise, possibly never.

At this point though I'd say my opportunities are properly fried. I remind myself daily, closer to 20 or 30 times a day "No god, no life hereafter, no human soul" and I have to keep saying those words over and over and over to chase away that feeling like life did something to me (the Catholic upbringing in me would not only say 'did' but 'did so purposefully' - trying to find a reason or purpose for it nearly drove me insane at a point in time as that proposition needs blow by blow 'you earned that' or converting me into some passive Lazarus-like entity on who's life other people's salvations/damnations are decided on based on how they're treated ). I can't stomach the idea of being a victim (which is perhaps a piece of reality I'd run from no matter what even if I was forced to accept that it was true - that notion is just something I can't healthily cope with) and at the same time I look at how many NT's life has wiped the floor with; their old before their time, living in a hole somewhere divorced or unmarried with several kids, have 400 or 500 credit scores, with people who beat the heck out of them; and it reminds me - yes I did my best, yes I always meant well, but - what's so different about me vs. the rest of the people on the human wreckage heap? Nothing. So, at this point I'm really trying to teach myself that its really narcissistic, and unhealthily so, for me not to accept my lot in life. That said - I don't know that the future is - I haven't shut women out necessarily, just that unless someone really surprises the heck out of me (and just as importantly she has any luck with me) the odds are I will never be dating again.

Sorry for this super long post, I guess I just wanted to point out though - its an incredibly multifaceted issue, you can't get away from 'too deep' conversation with this kind of thing, and the grass is always going to be greener on certain paths you didn't take or literally were shut out of by who you were able to be at the time. The good news - you're in the good company of 6 billion other people on that, I really doubt anyone's exempt.

And desperado; don't feel so bad. If you really look back at your story in true fairness to yourself - it went exactly as it was going to go; whether you replayed it one time, ten time, one hundred, one thousand, one million. There's no one else you could have been and no other path things could have taken. For that to have happened something different would needed to have happened to you along the way that simply didn't. Life is causal, regrets are truly a self-inflicted punishment that on further analysis are no better than pounding on ourselves for the thrill of it.

As the English say, "Well done sir, well done!" I have never heard that put so beautifully. Although I am sad for your plight, I truly believe there is someone out there for everybody. You are right, timing is everything. And once you reach the point of no hope, you will have nothing to lose but to make the effort. Because in the end. if you don't try you lose anyway.

The next time you see someone and have a mutual attraction, remember those words. You'll lose if you don't and nothing to lose if you do...so go for it.

I posted my story and ideas though to really say this though: don't hang yourself over the 'mirages' of what looked like 'should have' happened but didn't or couldn't. With an anxiety-triggered speech impediment and facial affect that goes way south under stress I literally need to wait until timing is right. If timing is never right and I meet someone else who seems like they'd be right - it was really another mirage.

I was terrified my first (and currently only) time, but i slugged back about 12oz of straight bourbon and went to town. i was a little drunk before that, but still too nervous. I only remember about two thirds of the act but i feel as though i performed much better then had i been nervous and sober. I think i did a pretty decent job actually, i just wish i remember how it ended.

It felt really odd to take my clothes off in front of someone, but after that it felt kind of natural. I think if i had a smaller dick it would be enough to scare me out of it, I barely had the confidence to do it as is and i know the girl is into me physically.