Please help me decide whether this is hopeless...

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Me: NT woman (36)
Him: Aspie man (55)
Started dating: 3 yrs ago
Broke up: 1.5 yrs ago
Started dating again: 1 y ago
Broke up again: few weeks ago

And it's breaking my heart but I have no idea how to go on with him.
We're very close. He says I'm the only person who ever understood him and I don't think it's an empty compliment. I enjoy that he's an Aspie, I love the way he reasons, I love the relentless logic (we have terrific arguments that we both enjoy ), I love how he tries to understand what I need emotionally, and tries so hard to be there for me...

I "diagnosed" his AS during the 6 months that we were apart. I'm not a psychologist, hence the quotation marks, but I know him well enough to know that I'm right. (I never told him about the AS though.)

The reason I broke up with him twice, despite all of the above, is that both times we ended up with him not wanting to see me more than once in every month, or every two months.
The first time this happened, I told him I'd like to see him more often and after some time of him trying and constantly coming up with excuses, he finally admitted that he doesn't feel like he's able to exist in a serious relationship.
So I left him, and spent months thinking about what went wrong, until I stumbled upon an article about AS and it hit me in the head: bingo, this is my guy. I started reading about AS, and it all fit, etc.

So when after 6 months he approached me and indicated that we should start over, I though to myself: we should give it another try, because me knowing about AS could make a difference.
It has been a most beautiful few months, until the excuses of why we can't meet started creeping back again. When we got to the point of meeting once a month, I told him we have been here before, I can't do this, I need to see him more often and he said he's unable to.

I know that he doesn't have another woman, it's not this. His explanation is that when his emotions are intense he wants to see me all the time (true), and when his emotions get less intense, he would be forcing himself to keep seeing me often, and forcing himself would lead to no good.

This makes perfect sense, and since we can't seem to make it work, I thought it was time to end it for good. (He would've wanted to keep the relationship as it was, meeting when he felt like it.)

I'm pretty certain that, a few months from now, he will want us to start over. Heck, I KNOW that he will want to start over and I'm trying to decide what to do when that happens.

So please, since you know AS much better than I do, tell me: is there any chance that this could ever change? Or are we going to do the same pattern over and over again, him not wanting to see me very often after a few beautiful months? Because I don't want to keep doing this repeatedly.

(A side question would be: should I tell him about AS, but this would need another long description of his background so I'll skip it for now.)

I'm self-diagnosed; might be PDD-NOS if it's argued that it doesn't impact my daily living enough, but I have just enough traits for sure to qualify. I can tell you my experience and how this looks to me, anyway, while others might see different things.

Every relationship goes through ebbs and flows. Sure, a couple is always supposed to be committed, but there are days when you don't feel as close as you do other days. For NTs that's normal, for some Aspies it's disconcerting because they see it as feeling they don't love the person anymore. the closest relationship I was in, we drifted apart and I didn't really know how to verbalize that and the fact her father (who lived about 2 hours away - her parents were divorced) didn't seem to like me as much and I didn't want to cause problems in that relationship. She took the lead in breaking it off and I was glad. What I'd had was just a major crush (it was 6-7 months total)

With yours, it's been more serious, and he's probably feeling conflicted - does what he feels mean it was just a crush or does it mean he really likes you and it's just a normal ebb and flow. I can't answer that, sorry.

What I can say is that if he hasn't been in a relationship before, you and he should sit down and talk about the ins and outs of a relationship. I remember in "Our Town," when we read it in high school (27 years ago) that there's a line from a long-married couple where the one says that after 23 days they'd talked about everything there was and they were afraid there was nother left to talk about. Even NTs get concerned about this, and Aspies would really find it tough.

Which means it might help to mention about AS; but you never know, he might think he has it himself.

So, explain that this happens and that if there's a typical ebb and flow, then he and you have to figure out how to work with that so that he understands he's allowed to see you and that it'll get better, but if not, then it's a good idea not to. (I know that it was just a crush for me because the feeling never came back.)

So, that's my experience, others might have other ideas. But, don't forget to consider your own feelings in the relationship ,too. There is the benefit that he seems like a very nice person.

That's a very important observation, thank you. Makes me understand him a little better.
Yes, it is normal for me that I'm committed in a relationship regardless of momentary feelings. I don't fear that I don't love the person any more even if I don't actually feel the emotion for a period of time.
But if I were to think that I've lost the love for a person, I would probably behave the same way that my BF did with me: I would try to keep it going but feel that I'm forcing something on myself that is not really sincere.

Extremely useful what you said, thank you. This gave me a whole new perspective into what went wrong and how I, on my part, can have more understanding.