Building trust online

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I could use a bit of advice from people experienced with dating men with HFA, if anyone could spare a moment please? I really need to get my head sorted out with a guy I've fallen for online.

I met this guy my age (40's) online 4 months ago via a forum concerning a mutual interest. We traded some photos and we've been speaking every day since then, and have grown extremely close. I'm pretty much 50/50 NT/Aspie according to the tests, so I can click into relating to highly intelligent people on the spectrum reasonably well, and really appreciate people with those traits. There was a pretty rocky start to this friendship, since he's undiagnosed. So I had to figure him out piece by piece, and a lot of the time I was worried that I had got messed up with someone with anti social PD or something. But I finally decided to just trust him and let him show me who he is.

This guy, he won't talk about feelings, and there's a lot of personal subjects he won't talk about. He's hard to really get to know. But we finally found a good way to communicate via a combination of minimal words, music, lyrics, and movie clips. And he's been so amazing to get to know. He's great to talk to since we share so many mutual interests. He's hilariously funny. And I discovered how much he feels, and how much empathy he can communicate, if allowed to do it in own time and way. I'm intensely attracted to his mind and we often tell each other we love one another, with the disclaimer that we understand that its each other's minds and feelings we know, not the other stuff. But I've been interested in knowing if it can be more. And so has he. lately, quite suddenly, he started talking about marriage. Which seems a bit soon for me.

At this point we have two major conflicts. The main one is that I find him shallow and cruel when it comes to women and their appearances. On the forum where we go, he alienates people all the time, and he posts a lot pretty insulting stuff poking fun at people and their flaws, especially women. He's so insightful and gets people's insecurities,. But what he does with that information is cruel and hurts people. He's been banned multiple times for being an assshole basically. So I've been a bit unforthcoming when it comes to showing him more about how i look. I showed him 4 pictures to begin with. Then a few months later another two. And now for the funny part- we are having a fight because he thinks I'm a guy, probably a shemale, because of my jawline (and male interests and intelligence). Its so insulting on multiple levels, but i'm used to him being like that. So now he wants to see video footage of, uh, the private parts of me. And he's basically said he's not talking to me until I do. I think he means it. I almost feel i would do it just to turn the guy on, but he's just told me I look like a guy! I can only image what new insults he would direct towards my private parts. So I said no, wait until i know you better and trust you. Call my mother if you want to know if I'm a woman. But that's not good enough either. I even offered to show him a newly bloodied tampon. But no. geez, I can only laugh.

So apart from the fact that I'm a shemale in his mind, I'm seriously worried about how shallow he really is. I mean I am 42, and I don't want to A. send a bunch more pictures and listen to his brutal insults or B. Commit to him and find out that as soon as my tits sag he can't stand the sight of me.

And finally, we live in different parts of the world so to be together, i'd have to marry him and there wouldn't be an easy way to just date him slowly.

What do you make of this?

How about webcam to show you're female though your voice and figure with clothes on?

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Neurotypical. I'm very friendly; feel free to message me.

Thanks heaps for your reply . I've sent him long voice messages which he says is very feminine. And I can't get him to do webcam or IM yet.

Well if he wants proof, then he should agree to it. Maybe he was tricked before by a man online and wants to prevent it.

_________________
Neurotypical. I'm very friendly; feel free to message me.

Is he really worth it?

Its kinda hard to say if he's worth it yet, because I'm still getting to know him, and how we are together. I sort of know how difficult a relationship with a person with HFA could be like, and I'm starting to get a sense of who he is. I expect I'll have to drag out of myself a huge amount of emotional self sufficiency in the long run. I'm getting better at this, but its hard and I am still adapting. I have a pretty solid self estimate, but if he humiliates my appearance too much and starts to withdraw sexually from me because of the aging process, I couldn't survive in the relationship. I'm not sure about affection or how asexual he is. I talk about all of this with him at length, but he doesn't reply to these kinds of questions. He hasn't sent any recent pictures of himself to me; as I understand it from photos from a few years back, he's a plain looking guy. This is possibly why he won't agree to webcam. I can't get him to agree to talking on the phone yet either, though I explained I would ask him a few general type questions, and send those questions to him in advance.So I don't know some things that are very important.

He hasn't been scammed or duped by anyone before. He just mistrusts the internet as a medium.

I guess what I want to know, is it reasonable after 4 months to want to take things slowly with someone like this?. He has given me an ultimatum basically to reveal a lot of vulnerability to him, whilst disclosing very little in return. I don't know whether to let him go, try to keep him as a friend I get to know at slower pace (which he may not agree to) , or open myself up to potential humiliation for the sake of making him feel better.

He sounds like a sociopath to me. If you were a friend of mine I would say stay away from him. It sounds like he likes to manipulate people. I wouldn't send him any more photos, or have anything more to do with him, if it were me. Or if you were a friend I would tell you exactly that.

That's my advice, whether you take it is up to you.

PS part of the way a con man makes a person go too far is to try to get them on the defensive. He is making you work to gain his trust when really, he has done nothing to earn yours. For instance, all the photos, and now he is asking you to "prove something" by sending naked pix of yourself - without being willing to put himself at any risk. I think you are being played, and being naive, to be blunt about it.

I most emphatically second the recommendation to RUN.

Ok - this man
- dislikes sharing feelings and personal information,
-will not even show you what he looks like
- suddenly discusses marriage after 4 months although you have never met in person
- this would involve you leaving everything and being isolated on his turf
- he enjoys finding out things to hurt people, and is well known for it
- he is trying to manipulate you into showing yourself in a sexual way which makes you feel uncomfortable

A psychopath has
- interpersonal coldness in spite of signs of open gregariousness.
- freed themselves from the social conventions about taking turns in talking, for example.
- in extreme form, they will be deceptive, deceitful, underhanded, unscrupulous, manipulative, and dishonest.
-a lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims
- a history of attempts to sexually coerce others into sexual activity

Just saying.
Please be careful.

Those are really great observations, thanks heaps for telling me how you read his behaviour.

If you want to hear my pyche profile for this guy, this is what I believe:

Definitely HFA.
Definitely Sociopathic traits....he was adopted, then parents went through divorce in early childhood, then beaten brutally.

I get so lost trying to comprehend the HFA side of his nature, I sometimes forget how much of it can attributed to sociopathy.

I really needed to hear your honest warnings. Thanks so much for hearing me and helping me. You really may have helped me to prevent one my biggest mistakes .

X

Hope things work out ok for you.
This man as you describe him does set off all my "run!" alarms.

How do you know he's autistic? Has he suggested it or have you come to that conclusion for yourself, based on an online persona?

That you can say that you might "open myself up to potential humiliation for the sake of making him feel better" suggests to me that you have exceptionally low self esteem, or are quite simply a masochist. That he makes cruel comments about others doesn't seem to bother you either.

I'd be running, very fast and not looking back.

It's really funny how much the AS community is always trying to distance themselves from the fact that some autistics are cruel. I think that this person shows signs of being a bad person, and it is important to warn someone that might get into a close relationship.. Hell, if being shallow (and cruelly vocal about it) would disprove someone from an ASD diagnosis you should really take a deep look into the "Love & Dating" subforum and then start kicking people out. That said, thinking about how he acts in the framework of "aspieness" is not helping.

OP, you should really just get out before you're in too deep, he has done nothing to earn your trust and that is just ridiculous. His view of women in general will affect you too, even if you could find a way to "prove" yourself to him.

He doesn't want to share anything with you because he would expose himself. Meaning, he would render himself vulnerable to exactly the type of merciless attacks he inflicts on other people. Perhaps nobody else would be so cruel, but he doesn't know that because he does it and therefore thinks others will do it to him. This is someone who digs himself into a hole. He does not trust the internet yet he himself hides behind it. This is not someone you should trust.