Advice for NT dating someone with ASD

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Hi, all. I found this site when looking for resources on dating and ASD. I appreciate that this is a space for ASD people, and if it's inappropriate for me to post, a moderator can remove the topic and I apologize for the intrusion.

I'm a NT woman, though I have ADD and I'm an alcoholic in recovery, so I do have my own set of quirks. I've been in a relationship with an ASD guy for over two years. It's by far the most satisfying and healthy relationship I've been in, and he's an amazing person. For the first year and a half or so, the relationship was long distance. We live in cities about 8 hours apart and spent 5-10 days a month together. In September, he moved to my city and moved in with me. He still traveled for work, but we were together much more often.

The week of Thanksgiving, he had a meltdown, said he needed to move back to his city, and a few days later broke up with me. In retrospect, I see how hard the move was on him, and while I didn't notice it at the time I can tell he's been unhappy and had trouble adjusting to a new place. I think I was just so happy that I didn't see it before.

We didn't speak for a few days, and then he contacted me and said he wanted to talk. He realized he had panicked and made a mistake breaking up with me, but said he did feel like he needed to move back to his city to be happy and pursue his career. I'm disappointed, but I love him and I'm willing to try to make it work. So now we're working on rebuilding trust and restoring a healthy power balance in the relationship.

(One of the factors that influenced his move was me receiving a lucrative job offer, and we decided I should accept the offer rather than move to his city and look for work. So, while I could potentially find work in his city, I'm now just a few months into a new job and won't be able to move there any time soon.)

The problem now is that we're having trouble meeting my needs for attention and affection. Before, I was able to take it on faith and just trust that he loves me even though he isn't very expressive, but getting dumped sends a pretty strong signal to the contrary. Even though logically I know his feelings haven't changed and that was just an aberration, I'm still really wounded by it. He's actually great about physical affection, even in public, so when we're together it's not a problem. He also shows affection by helping, like taking care of my car or fixing things around the house. However, going back to long distance means we'll be spending a lot of time apart, and we're struggling to find a way for him to offer me some reassurance and affection that doesn't involve verbal expression. We use an app for texting that has lots of stickers, so that does help some. For example, he can push one button and a cute puppy with hearts for eyes pops up, and he's comfortable doing that. Still, I'm finding that right now I just need more.

I absolutely own the fact that the insecurity is not entirely logical and is partly related to my own issues (for those unfamiliar, a feeling of being unworthy of love is common among alcoholics). That doesn't change the reality of the feelings I'm experiencing. I also know it's only been a few days and some of the comfort and reassurance I'm looking for will come with time.

Still, I want to learn everything I can from you. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have, and I'd love to hear any ideas, theories, advice, or (especially) practical tips you might have for me, about this situation in particular or about ways I can be a better partner to an ASD person generally.

There is no strategy or 'thing' that you can do. He will either take you back or he won't. It all depends what his real feelings are.
You wouldn't want to be with someone who isn't 100% commited to you anyway.

So just remain friendly and see what happens.

Not sure if I was unclear or if you didn't read the whole thing. He asked to get back together and I agreed to.

it seems like he panicked to me.
moving to a new city, and starting to share a house with someone 24/7 is a big step for anyone, moreso an aspergian.

i also get fidgety and uncomfortable being at my girlfriends' place for too long (more then 3 or 4 days, although i am getting better).
i would assume your boyfriend has been repressing his anxiety for your sake, but finally snapped and made rash decisions.
it is a good thing that you resumed your long distance relationship, that is something that worked.
next time, perhaps you can ease into the move, staying a week on and a week off at first, and then extending the time he stays at your place slowly by a day at a time.
another good thing is to give him his own spot, a safe room where he can retreat to to let the anxiety out, without being bothered or dragged out of (self-imposed 'timeout'). that will go a long way to prevent such outbursts in the future.
aspergians need time alone every now and then, it is nearly impossible to remain social on an NT level constantly, and if no easy way out is available, panic can ensue

I can't offer you much advice from an asperger's point of view because this problem isn't necessarily related to the fact that this is an NT-AS relationship. I see it all the time in my life.

After a break-up and a huge breakdown in communication like this, it's going to take a long time for things to go back to normal. I think most people don't jump back into a relationship with affection and communication being what they once were. Re-building trust and love takes a lot of time. You both just have to work to re-build those things, should you both want them back. Such things are what caused the break-up to begin with, and the communication difficulties you might've had leading up to it.

Showering each other with affection so soon isn't really a good idea, from my experience, doing so was just a means to soothe each other's insecurities. Communication takes a lot of time to establish.

Hi, sounds like you've found a lovely guy but I think you need to try and understand the ASD a bit more before you put all the effort into rebuilding your relationship to make sure that you really can be happy with the limitations that come from being this way.

I am guessing, and I could be wrong, that you subconsciously assumed that things would be a certain way eventually and was therefore happy to put up with a lack in the interim, but maybe you need to re-check your own assumptions. It may very well be that
a) your man can not be happy moving to your city, ever
b) your man cannot be happy with living with you full time, ever

Those are the worst case scenarios and he isn't going to know himself whether these apply or not - it's not something he can know in advance if in fact he really wants to have a relationship with you, which it seems he genuinely does.

The problem with people like us is that we are so desperate to have normal lives that a lot of the time we are our own worst enemy in that we try and pretend we don't have all the special needs we have. That's been my problem so maybe it's your boyfriends too. Maybe he really wants to make things work but he is never going to be able to, not in a way 'normal' people would expect things to work out.

In the meantime, he is having to make all the extra effort of reassuring you which is probably stressing him slowly but surely towards the next meltdown.

We are like finely calibrated measuring devices - great for precision work but the smallest displacement, ruins us completely.

I hope you find a way to be happy with or without your guy!!

Thanks for the great feedback. It definitely reinforces some things I've intuited but haven't really been able to make sense of.

First, to clarify, we definitely each had our own bedrooms and he had the den for all his hobbies and things, and separate space is something I would always want to have. I'm an introvert naturally and, while I enjoy interaction, I find it very draining and prefer to do things in parallel with people. I asked him if he wanted to live with me in his city, and he said yes, but I'm glad you called my attention to the fact that he may not really know his limits or may be afraid of telling me something I don't want to hear. That is absolutely what led to this breakdown, and I don't want to see that happen again, not only for my own happiness in the relationship but also just for his sake. He was so completely miserable, and anything we can do to help avoid that is worth the extra time. The suggestion about easing into it is great, but I don't know how feasible it will be financially and logistically. Still, that's a long way down the road, so it's not something I could plan for now even if I wanted to. It's definitely something I'll keep in mind. I'd be disappointed if living together is never a workable option.

I also really appreciate the advice about the ongoing communication and attention/insecurity issues. I think this also relates to the comments about me accepting his limitations. This is something that I've been aware of since we started dating but before this breakdown there was no real reason for me to examine it, so I didn't have any clue what it meant. For this reason, I also didn't have any idea how much work he was putting into pretending everything was fine when it obviously wasn't. Watching him try to express his feelings last weekend was like watching someone struggle to pick up a rock. Like dude, I know the rock is heavy, but just put your back into it. And when he couldn't do it, I felt like he wasn't trying. Reading and listening and getting more information has been like finding out the rock was actually superglued to the floor. There's a big difference between the way it feels when my assumption is "he doesn't want to tell me how he feels because it makes him uncomfortable and he thinks it's dumb" vs. "he is literally incapable of putting those feelings into words." Just starting to understand that has really soothed a lot of those insecurities without him having to do anything differently.

And finally, thanks for the kind words and well wishes. I know I'll be fine either way, but he's such an amazing person in so many ways that it would be silly not to try to work it out.

OP -

I am NT and have been dating a wonderful AS (Aspie/high-functioning) man for nearly 5 years, of which we've lived together for approximately 4 years. He isn't formally diagnosed, but we found out about AS about 2-3 years ago and it fit him to a T, explaining many things that had been different all his life but we never knew why. That being said, I didn't know he was AS when we started dating, but we worked out a wonderful relationship through openness, honesty, and self-less-ness even without the information available to those who know they are AS. So, just giving a backdrop on my story.

All that being said... My thoughts are that the primary way that AS affects this situation are in knowing why he freaked out and left and in knowing how to avoid it in the future. As for the day-to-day of rebuilding a relationship, that takes time and commitment, and not much else that can help with it. It sounds like you're on the right track, though - both of you trying to give each other room, both of you working towards the same goal, and you doing what you can to learn more about how he's wired.

I would just advise you to try to work on the insecurity that is making it harder for you to trust his love, and then to be OK if things progress slowly. I had insecurity issues as well at the start of our relationship, and I know they drove him crazy, but in time they passed. Learn to value yourself so that you can believe others will value you. I'm not talking about stupid "Believe you're the cutest person in the universe" crap - I'm talking about simple, honest self-confidence. Develop just a little pride in yourself. I know that developing this self-image has helped me to believe my AS man's love, even if he doesn't say it every 2 seconds. He is more verbally expressive than some, but his standard mode of verbal expression is the cheesy stuff that you either choose to laugh at or enjoy (like, Google "cheesy pick up lines", and that's the type of stuff he says ). However, it's not the verbal statements that make me know he loves me - it's just the knowing o a solid relationship. Try not to let the freak-out break-up affect you too much - try to understand it for what it was, and then love yourself so you can believe he loves you.

Not sure if this helps any, but just wanted to contribute as another NT dating an AS guy. Feel free to PM me if you ever want a listening ear or advice or whatever. I may not be an expert, but we have an amazing awesome relationship, so if I can help anyone else have that, I'd love to. I don't know any NT-NT couples as happy as we are. Things are different in our relationship, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Lilla

Last woman I dated wanted me to move in with her after only a month it made me panic and I broke up with her.

I don't think his behaviour means you have any reason to doubt that he loves you. I moved countries once because I got offered what I thought was my dream job abroad and changing to somewhere completely different was a nightmare. After a few months I would burst into tears every evening for what felt like no reason. I kept myself vaguely sane by going home about every 2 weeks. Such a big change is often not a fun adventure but complete hell for an aspie who has got used to everything where they consider home. No job for any amount of money would ever be worth me doing that again.

I'm not sure what the solution is with regards to long distance if neither of you can move, it sucks, I hope some assurance that the reason he won't move is unlikely to be because he doesn't love you help.