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Let me begin by saying I am a neurotypical girl who is 39 years old and somewhat new to the whole aspie world. I was a special education teacher for 12 years and understood the syndrome from an educational standpoint but recently became involved with a man who has a diagnosis of being a highly functioning aspie who is very successful in the technology field. We met on an online dating site and we quickly fell in love. He was funny, charming and old fashioned which I loved. We had the same sense of humor and we both had a similar sense in our morality and our basic approach to life. He was patient with me with regards to becoming intimate (that is not something I just jump into) and we had a wonderful sex life. In November his work and family obligations caused him to be out of town for three weeks except on the weekends and by the beginning of November I was feeling a lot of anxiety from the separation (and the fact that my mother had died a year earlier and the holidays were approaching). I told him that I was not sure if I was the girl for him or if he really had time for someone in his life. I was feeling sad and I wanted for him tosay "yes, you are the girl for me and we can get through this". That night he told me he loved me but we have not spoken since. Once I got home I told him I was just upset about my mom and that he was the man for me. He told me he needed some time to think about things but the next day he deleted me from his face book page. we exchanged several emails and he said he had to erase everything that reminded him of me because he was hurt and he felt rejected. he also emailed me and said that he was convinced that he should not be allowed to date and that he was sorry he could not be there for me in a more caring and understanding way.I told him I was heart broken that we had broken up and that I really loved him. A few days later he suggested that i watch the movie "Adam" which i did and he said he could relate a lot to that character even though he knew he was higher functioning in the social realm than that character. I have not heard from him in almost 3 weeks and I called him and left a very casual message a few days ago but I have not heard from him. In one of the email exchanges I asked him if he missed me and he said "sometimes" and I also asked him if he ever loved me and he said "Yes, I would have not said if I did not love you". So................ my questions to this community are these:
1. Since I have not heard from him should I just start trying to get over him?
2. Could he be in the middle of an emotional meltdown?
3. Is there anyway i can get him to talk to me?
4. Could contacting him cause him pain (that is the last thing I want to do)
5. Should i just walk away?

I truly love him. I am a reasonably attractive girl and I don't have a hard time meeting men but I do have a hard time meeting men that I truly connect with and i felt like we connected on a lot of levels. Love does not come around very often so i don't want to just give up but I don't want to fight a losing battle. Keep in mind that you are responding to post posted by a total neurotypical girl wears her heart on her sleeve

that's not a meltdown type thing, its over

how can he go from i love you to "its over"?

sparing your feelings
people with AS know how to do things like lie and spare feelings
we're not all totally void of empathy

btw the movie Adam, sucked, don't use movies to understand AS

Did you tell him directly you wanted to be with him and get back together?

I told him I was heart broken that we broke up and he said " he wasnt sure if he would ever understand how our break up happened and that he was convinced that he should not be allowed to date"but he never said he wanted to get back together.

blondieamc, I will be really blunt here.

Perhaps your ex-boyfriend is a bit weird but that is life.

You are 39 years years old yet you describe yourself as a girl.

If you have relationship problems then perhaps you should look closer to home.
If you haven't found a caring man in the last twenty years and you are worried about being dumped by a mentally disturbed man, then there is something seriously wrong.

I am a 42 year old male aspie if that's worth anything.
My suggestion is to be very direct. Tell him what you want, that you want the relationship to work, etc. Just do it in a calm not so over the top emotional way. I know with myself I have at times misinterpreted my wifes emotions to be about me when they really weren't and was driven away by it.
Worst case you'll get a straight answer.
Good luck!
JD

Then you didn't tell him you wanted him back.

My advice is to tell him directly with no fluff: You want to be with him again. If that does not work, THEN you can move on.

First of all, I'm a 31-year-old female with AS (just so you know where this is coming from).

That was mistake #1. He took what you said literally, and personally. "Game-playing" does not work. Blunt honesty does. You should only have said that if that was REALLY how you felt--not because you wanted a particular response.



He took what you first said to heart--saying afterwards that you had changed your mind and "he was the man for you" wasn't going to cut it. He couldn't trust that that was actually true. Trust often is a big AS issue.



This was him continuing to take it to heart--blaming himself, but at the same time not being able to fully trust that you actually meant what you said.



All 100% true, but that does not necessarily mean you'll get back together.

My advice would be to drop him a "hi, how are you?" e-mail every few weeks. He may decide to re-contact you, seemingly out of the blue. He probably needs a lot of time to "think about things."

However, if he doesn't, drop it and move on. I can't say exactly how much time to give it, but I can say that you shouldn't put your life on hold--if you meet and want to date someone else, do so.

Don't beat yourself up over this. NT's and Aspies speak very different languages.

I'm continually amazed by this forum. I aways thought I was different/weird/unusual BUT I keep seeing the exact way I think and the same reactions I have over and over here.
It makes me smile that I am obviously normal for this group

She is 100% right; be direct; be literal; be irrefutable if you love him.

Hi there,

when a normal girls loves an aspie, communication problems are very common. I myself didn't understand and couldn't believe when someone told that she really liked me in an more or less indirect way.

Try to be as direct as possible, and an aspie will give you the true answer. Then at least you are sure about it.

byebye,
anton

I just used the word "girl" because I was tired and it was late. My question to you is do you think people with aspergers are mentally disturbed? All of the literature I have read indicates it is a neurological disorder that is sometimes accompanied by mental disorders but there is no research that indicates that people with aspergers suffer more from mental disorders than the NT population. And by the way he is a caring man and that is why I am upset about the break up. I do wonder if there are a lot of other problems going on with him that he was able to disguise during the time we were together. I am also concerned that my contacting him will only upset him more and that is the last thing I want to do.

[quote="conundrum"]First of all, I'm a 31-year-old female with AS (just so you know where this is coming from).

Thank you so much for your perspective. I really appreciate your advice. I am going to take a few days to think about if I want to contact him or not. I do love him but I am afraid that I do not have what it takes to be in a relationship with someone who can shut someone out so easily from their life. I should not have said what I said that night but I am sure if we got back together I would say something else that would cause him to retreat and shut me out and I don't have the strength to ride this roller coaster of emotions. I am sure he is doing just fine without me.

First, I wouldn't pay too much attention to cynical posters that offer blunt criticism without any accompanying advice. You're new to this board, so you don't know, but there is an awful lot of cynicism here and while some of it may be partially accurate, it is not generally helpful to others. Brutal honesty is one of the more difficult things for us with AS to overcome. Everyone has problems, including myself. People that say they don't are either lying or in denial, and neither is particularly useful. I personally have co-morbid depression and anxiety which I'm heavily medicated for.

Now then, IMO, this guy lacks any confidence in himself in the dating realm, so he protects himself by running and cutting off contact at the first sign of trouble. When you said "I wonder if you are the type of guy that will have time for me", he took it literally. I probably would too, even if my reaction would more likely be one of probing for more information rather than immediate flight. It would cause me to have serious questions about the relationship and myself. Further, he was most definitely in love with you or he wouldn't have said so. It's likely he still is. I've not heard that aspies can turn off feelings any easier than NTs, and I know I personally can't.

Contacting him will upset him. What I suspect is that in his mind, he blew it without knowing why or how, and he's just dealing with it the way aspies deal with everything else, by shutting everything out and having lots of alone time. If you try to reestablish the relationship, you will probably face resistance, maybe very severe resistance. You may cause a meltdown. It will be hard for both of you if you decide to push this.

I'm not saying automatically don't do it though. Aspies have even less chance of finding love than NTs do, so realistically, he has a lot more to lose than you. The question is do you love him enough to push through his defense mechanisms and get to his real feelings, enduring whatever hurt that causes both of you. If you do, start by apologizing profusely for the initial remarks in the usual apologetic lover tone "I made a horrible mistake" "please take me back" etc., and expect to spend a lot of time just getting back to the point you were at before. If this sounds over the top, it is. What you did is very minor in the NT world but it's not minor to us. The fact that every single person here is telling you the same thing about this one comment should be an indicator of that.

I guess my advice is this. It would be much easier at this point for both of you if you let it go and move on. If you are looking to make your life or his easier, this is what you should do. Life has taught me, however, that the path that seems easiest is often not the right path. It's your decision whether to keep trying for this guy or not based on what you learn here. Either way, it sounds like a terribly painful situation and I do feel sorry for you.

Zur-Darkstar,
I said all of those things to him in the first few days that we broke up. I even told him that I was going to bring him dinner so that we could talk and he told me not to come over and that was bordering on psycho so I did not go.I think he needed time to be by himself and that all of this was too overwhelming for him in those first few days. Do you think it was too soon for me to try and get back together with him during those first few days and do you think he might be more responsive to an apology now?We have had several email exchanges since then and they were pleasant but he never has said that he would like to see me. We have not had contact in a few weeks. I agree that it would be easier to walk away and I know that I could find someone else but finding someone else is not really a goal of mine. I was single for 4 years before I met him and it did not really bother me. I am fine on my own. I just fell in love with him right away and he did too. We never even had an argument before that night and that night was not really an argument.