Aspie broke up with me...how do I get him back?

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Hi, I'm sorry but I'm new to this, so hope I hope I dont bore you all to tears..

I'll try to make this as short as I can. I met my Ex Aspie partner 9 months ago while out dancing one saturday night. We clicked straight away. He took me out for dinner in that first week and we arranged our next date which was exactly one week since we had met. We had a lovely night, both very relaxed. He stayed the night at my place.

The next day we were spending a nice Sunday together. My two girls, 16 and 12 were both at friends. Late on that afternoon, something very shocking and traumatic happened. The Police came to my door and told me that my 16 year old daughter had been in a terrible car accident. They told me I had lost her.

That was one week after my new relationship had started. Well, he stayed with me throughout the last 9 months. He practically, within 6 weeks had moved into my house. He still occasionally would go back to his shared flat, but usually only when I needed some time alone for myself and my other daughter.

We have been through so much. He hasn't been that great with empathy, but I needed him more for his strong supportive personality. I have found my family and friends have helped me with my emotional needs. If that makes any sense.

One thing about my grief, is I am up and down quite a lot still. Things were great with him while I was still very emotionally numb. Lately I have been moodier more and pushing him away, at times, so I can have some space to work out my grief. At times he would just get to me with his uncaring attitude. I was finding it hard to deal with.

The last couple of weeks have been rocky. I have been picky. I know that. Everything was annoying me. Not just him, people at work, life in general. He can't handle conflict. It really upsets him but I was conflicted (if thats a word).. big problem. I never really thought we had any terrible arguments, but he would describe them as screaming arguments. I never thought I screamed..he thought I did.

So, one week ago we had been out and had a pretty good night. When we got home we sat up playing a game of cards. I thought we were having a really good night. But he was getting whiny about some hand of cards that I had played and he kept going on and on at me about how wrong I was and there was no logic in the way I was playing....it got to the point where I said "stop being a sore loser". Well, he sat back, the stood up and threw the cards across the table and stormed inside my house and locked me out.. thats cutting a long story short.

the next day I asked for a few days space to process this all. I did mention he needed to find strategies to deal with his anger etc.. or I wouldn't hang around.

Well, he came back to my place, 5 days later, sat down, was very calm and pleasant...and said "the relationship is over"... he blamed me, saying I pushed his buttons, triggered him etc... I let him go, without dramas...

I still love him so much, but am confused. Because of his aspergers, does that mean he will never change his mind? Do I make any attempt to work this out with him, or wait to see whether he does... I just dont know what to do anymore, so any advice I would appreciate.

Thanks, and sorry for such a long post:)

Depends. I changed my mind on such things, but my wife was stubborn as a mule, once she decided to cut someone from her life. Still, I would take things at face value for now. He probably won't change it, unless he can't see being without you.

I do the same thing, it's hard to leave yeah hearts desire when you they stop loving you, and I don't know NT's make all these promises they say to make them selves feel better, but when it comes down to it, they cut and run. about a year ago, I was still cross at my ex for dumping me, well finding a new person before dumping me, so I wrote her a letter saying I forgave her for what she did to me, because the anger I was holding belonged to her, and since I had nothing more to do with her, I sent it to her in that e-mail, it made me not care about being abandoned by her as shes a selfish child, now if I can just find someone who wants me for me,

i have trouble telling when people are mad at me... and i i'm sure i recollect fights much differently than the other end, so to speak... and it's hard for me to tell whether i'm being brash or not.... all kinda of crossed wires in that emotional area.

so try not to take THAT personally... just like you're askin him not to take your moodieness personally

BAM. What more do you want? He's not into you and even if you did get back together it would end again for exactly the same reasons. Be strong and move on.

hey thank you everyone for your responses,

I realise breakups are hard for most people, especially the dumped party, that's a given. You have all pretty much said to me to move on, that he doesn't love me anymore, and my head says to stay away from him. damn, i wish my heart was as willing to listen to this!! What's that saying, one door shuts, another door opens!! ! Hmmm, well, some doors have horror behind them, some lots of pleasure, so I really hope this next door that is opening for me has a garden of roses, heaps of gorgeous men of course, my beautiful daughters and lots of chocolate and happiness..

I find it incredible how this time last week my partner adored me, in his special way, and 7 days later, it feels like it was a dream. Change is hard..

It doesn't sound like he was entirely honest with you. I can't see a game of cards as being the final trigger to set him off and make him want to leave. It is quite possible he was just acting out on other thoughts and emotions, using the cards as a method of release.

This could have been part of it. It sounds like an ultimatum. If he doesn't like conflict, well....that's forcing conflict upon him.

You also mentioned you had gotten moodier. That alone is one thing, pushing him away is another.

Did you ever talk with him in a way that proved to you he didn't show empathy? He didn't show it, that doesn't mean he didn't have it. Only bringing this up as an idea, as, well, I can't really know with zero firsthand experience. It could be possible that he just doesn't show it conventionally, or well, or at all.

If you really want him back, it will take work, and communication. And it will take him being open to that.

I think losing a child would be the hardest thing to deal with...you may be trying to hold on to him for the wrong reasons....

Why are you trying to understand him? You maybe need to take time by yourself to deal with your grief without projecting it onto another person or blaming their disability (I don't mean to sound harsh at all).

This should be your time...not the time you should be fawning over someone who has already told you they don't want a relationship.

I’m going to respond to you point by point so you understand where things broke down because right now, you don’t. That’s why you don’t understand. Can you get back together? Hard to say. You would have to learn a lot about Asperger’s and I would start by getting that book, Asperger’s and Long Term Relationships because it’s easy to understand and all in layman’s terms. That woman has a successful relationship with an Aspie man and she’s a Technical Writer so she used that to explain what’s happening and how an NT can work with their partner to make it better. At the very least, it will help you to understand what happened to you and that is key – you need to understand.

First of all, we do have empathy but not in the way you do. He may not understand the feeling of losing a daughter, but he does see how it is affecting you. The main difference between Aspie and NT is that we often don’t show what we feel. You are used to seeing facial expressions, certain looks in the eyes and certain body language signals. Many of us don’t pick those up from NTs or only in limited ways so we don’t even know that we aren’t giving them back since we don’t see them to begin with. You see the problem. It’s hard to give what you don’t even know exists. Then there’s the fact that we’ve been made aware that we don’t do it and you do, but we still can’t see it so we only know we can’t see it and still don’t know what we should be doing. BIG problem when dealing with NTs. That is probably the number one communication problem in our relationships with NTs.

So you were looking for normal signs of empathy and he wasn’t giving them. In the Aspie world, just being there is our way of showing it. He was showing it, but it wasn’t in a way you understood. This would be hard enough under normal circumstances, but you were and are trying to deal with grief over your daughter. So just understand it and leave it at that. There might have been something you could have done to change it, but under those circumstances it would be very hard.






I’m going to stop you here again and try to explain what was probably going on. You say things were great while you were numb. Remember me telling you we don’t show outward signs like NTs do? When you were numb, you were in that same mode basically, just not for the same reasons. You two probably clicked better because you also were probably not showing emotional signs. You may have even felt better that he didn’t push you to cry or feel. That would be understandable since most of us don’t do that or do it in a limited way or only do that when we reach maximum capacity with sensory overload.

Speaking of overload, that’s what happened next most likely. You started going up and down, getting moodier, pushing him away and probably trying at times to pull him back and expecting outward emotional signs again. Now there are two problems. One is that he probably couldn’t show you those emotional and non-verbal signs you were looking for (we can do it over time if we learn it but sometimes it comes off stilted and awkward still). The other is that you were throwing off massive emotional energy yourself. Of course you were, you lost your daughter so any NT would do this. Perfectly normal for you. The only problem is that emotion in that manner for us is often like getting hit with a tidal wave (we all experience this to different degrees, I get tidal wave effect). If he’s like me (even somewhat), he probably experienced that, became overwhelmed and shut down. That’s when you felt he didn’t care. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, he was overwhelmed by his senses and he didn’t have anything left over. I went through this with my husband who I love to death and we had a horrible time because I was not there emotionally and he would go into what you did and I would shut down. I knew he needed me but I didn’t know what to do and I was so overwhelmed that I literally would feel like I couldn’t even talk. It was a disaster. So I can tell you from my own experience of loving someone very deeply that it wasn’t that I didn't care, it was literally my brain not handling emotional input correctly and going haywire. It’s something like seeing your car headed straight for another and saying in your mind, Turn! Turn!, but you are frozen and can’t do anything. He may indeed have had that feeling. It’s bad for both and I’m sorry you both went through this.




What you were experiencing again was a stage of grief and you reacted in a normal NT way. There’s nothing wrong with that. Just understand that what he takes in is not always the way you perceive it. His brain operates differently. Again, this will be easier for you to understand if you know it’s a brain difference and not that he didn’t care. You probably weren’t screaming, but his brain was probably receiving it that way. Signal goes in correctly and the brain amplifies it when it receives it and processes it. That really isn’t something that is going to go away and it will be inconsistent. That happens to many of us. He thinks you are yelling, you aren’t yelling and round and round we go. The only way to stop this in AS/NT relationships is to understand the brain and stop the emotional response so you both can understand this is what’s happening. That deflates the situation. You understand why he says that, he understands his brain is hearing something not right and you can adjust accordingly. Brains don’t do things based on emotion so don’t assign them emotional reasons. It’s very hard, especially when you are trying to deal with grief, but there it is. Unfortunately brains are what they are and they won’t change just because we want them to. At least now you can understand it wasn’t that he didn’t care or anything like that.







He was just hitting more emotional and sensory overload here, I’m pretty sure. That’s why he reacted so strangely. You got a taste of overload when you lost your daughter. We go through that with many things, strangely emotion seems to be one of them. We also tend to get lost in rules and routines sometimes. It’s like our brain gets stuck there and it actually gives us a sensation of pleasure to follow those rules and routines. That’s vastly different than what you experience. It actually takes someone telling us that we feel differently about this and the same with you. In both cases there is nothing in our experience to tell us otherwise. We both end up assuming the other one must just be stubborn or nuts. Neither one of you are (at least not about this), you are just different. Understanding that can help take the sting out of it.






You need to understand yourself that it isn’t just a typical anger thing. There is much more at work here and it has to do with fundamentals of the brain. If you ever get into another Aspie/NT relationship, that will be critical or you will end up right back here frustrated. You have to talk about and handle these issues differently because they stem from a different place – the differences in your brains. It’s good to recognize this because it takes the personal quality and the anger out of it. You didn’t know how to communicate around your brain differences is far different than you were just being mean to each other for your general amusement. Just like understanding that the way you behave when you lose a child is nothing like normal behavior. Try to see it in context and that will help.







This is probably true of his perceptions. The only reality we know is what our brain tells us just like you. This causes the problems and the reactions. Now you know the difference and hopefully he will come to understand it as well. One thing I can tell you is that he probably felt like he couldn’t help what was happening and yet he was being yelled at for things he couldn’t recognize and didn’t know how to change. We often do wonder why NTs keep doing stuff that sets us off because it’s obvious to us. Back to that communication breakdown thing. Just see it for what it is and don’t try to read it from an NT perspective. It will just confuse you more. He was frustrated and that’s why he said these things.





This is tough. Can he change his mind? Only he can answer. Right now, neither one of you needs to go back without understanding exactly why this has happened and developing strategies to fix it. He certainly won’t go for that from a logical perspective. It has zero chance of working unless you both understand why all of this happened and make a huge commitment to work on it.

I’m going to be blunt with you. It’s hard. My husband is extremely logical and rational. I only just found out about AS and we’ve been together almost 27 years. He logically waded his way through all of this and figured out what we later came to know through finding out about AS. That’s a pretty steep accomplishment considering I had absolutely no idea why he did the things he did and thought everyone was different but had no idea why. He’s just an analytical guy and he analyzed it until he figured it out. Then, we talked about it and figured out ways to deal with it. If he had gotten emotional on me, I probably would have done what this guy did to you. Frankly, I had done it to men before.

Still, 15 years into our marriage my husband went through every major stressor but one within two years and he lost it big time. I was not there for him in an outward emotional non-verbal sense. I ended up leaving and we worked it out but it was very tough and we worry that it may happen again. You can’t control the world around you and it will intrude, sometimes in big ways. We were very tight and it still almost ripped us apart, so I can understand how this happened to you…all too well in fact. I also understand very well why he probably just left like that. Personally, I felt like I could never be what my husband needed. I felt like I let him down and I would do it again. I walked away so he could find what he needed. Despite what he said, he may have done this. Then again, he may just have figured you two could never reach a common communication ground that didn’t set you both off. It is very hard and you need to understand that going in.

The rewards can be great if it’s right. My husband and I get along fantastically and we are closer than any other couples we know. We work. We also work at it. It’s right for us. You two? Only you can say and that’s if he will talk about it.

If you want to try, I would get the book, read it, come up with strategies, take it to him and attack it like a non-emotional strategy. Have him tell you where he reacts differently than the book's examples. Have him tell you what works for him instead of what worked for the author’s husband. Keep it rational and logical. Those things calm us. It’s just a brain thing again. We are calmed by something different than you are. Presenting a logical plan in a calm, logical fashion will calm him. If you want to try, that’s the way. That is the only thing that will give him any confidence that you have a chance. All the proclamations of love in the world won’t budge him now, so leave that out. At most, say it once. I love you the way you are, so this is what I did. Tell him what you found out. Show him what you come up with in the way of possible solutions. Ask for input. But once you say you love him up front, put your emotions in a box and put them away for now. They can’t help you with our brain.

So there you go. I can only tell you what I know. He’s going to have some differences and so are you. Whether you get him back or not, I would get that book for your own piece of mind. You’ve dealt with one loss already. You need to understand what happened here so it doesn’t push you over the edge. If nothing else, letting him know you understand will make him feel he isn’t crazy or persecuted. Sometimes just knowing that is all we need. That is also true for you.

Good luck.

you should try to respark the fire that once was burning!

That's probably what did it. Whenever somebody says something like, "you do this or I'm going to ...", I find would rather just go for the "..." then try to struggle with the "this". Also, telling him he needs to find strategies to deal with his anger was presenting him with an impossible task from his perspective.

You should have offered him help to find strategies to deal with his anger, not make it a mandatory thing that he has to do on his own. If you really want him back you need to address that.

I don't know. My wife and I had a breakup when we were first seeing one another that essentially started over a game that she wouldn't try to play. Really ended up causing a lot of damage in our lives. Yeah, there may be a lot of underlying issues, but sometimes small things are REALLY important.

I am so grateful for the advice and comments you have all made.

ZanneMarie, thank you very much for your response. I have read it, and re-read it and will do so again. I feel you really knew where he and I were coming from.

He told me very early on in our relationship that he has Aspergers. His mum also gave me a book at the beginning of our relationship, which I read to gain some insight into Aspergers. That was quite helpful.

He also explained to me that he didn't feel much empathy. But, at such a painful time, early in my grief I had so much support and compassion from family and friends, that this was not a problem. I didn't want out relationship to be based on my needing him for empathy. So I was more than happy to keep that part away from him. We did talk, very logically usually, about my feelings of grief etc, and my grief couselling. There were only a few rare moments, where I was very emotional with him. Those times, he was strong and let me cry it out. Although his logical responses were hard to take lol.

I loved how we could sit and talk for hours about how I felt on a topic v's how he felt.. we really explained it to each other. I loved the way he saw things, plus he is incredibly smart.

We recently went to see the movie Mr. Bean. He thought, and so do I, that Mr. Bean has an "extreme" form of Aspergers. We both came away from the movie frustrated and laughing at his aspie antics..

I know he truely loved me. He told me quite recently that I held a place in his heart alongside his mother, whom he adores. He gave me a valentine day card expressing his love and respect for me and thanking me for showing him a new way of life. He said he could never thank me enough.

I actually feel more like, at the end, he chose the easy option. I wanted to find ways we would deal with any problems that arose.

Before I lost my daughter, I was in a relationship for 19 years. I certainly think I learnt a bit about the ups and downs of relationships.

We are both in our early 40's. He doesn't have any children and his relationships have all ended around the 8-9 month period. He loved my 13 year old. They were like mates. She was very good at understanding his different ways of doing things. Sometimes they were like brother and sister, I'm not sure who was the oldest hehe.

We are both too similar in a lot of ways. Stubborn, competitive and strong willed. We understood each other very well.

The night in question, he did have a few other issues that he was feeling stressed about. A family member of his hadn't invited him to a bithday lunch, which he was pretty upset about. He hid this from me, and only told me about it the day of meltdown. He seemed a bit sad about it, but brushed it off fairly quickly, so I thought he was ok.

He also had another issue with this card game we played, called texas holdem poker. We both played together, at tournaments weekly. This was his obsession when I met him and then became mine too, lol. He was trying his hardest to master this game. Had read every book, highlighted every paragraph, was constantly searching for a way to conqueur the game. After most tournaments, unless he made the final table, he would analyse the hands for hours, and was annoyed that everyone had played wrong. He hated the fact that no matter what the logic was in this game, it just didn't seem to work. He would think he had it figured out, then I wouldn't end differently. This game was causing him a lot of frustration. Then along come I, and start to win against him frequently. He didn't mind that, and he was usually very proud of me, because he taught me the game. We used to tease each other quite a bit. He's got a good sense of humour usually, and we'd have a good laugh. But on this particular night, at home, he was already upset for two other reasons, not concerning me, and I was the final trigger. He said me calling him a "sore loser" was what did it.

I loved how you have explained to me about both our perceptions regarding my "shouting". I hadn't read that in my book, so that was good to finally understand that bit. I just wish I had of known some of what you have explained to me before this happened. I would have dealt with this differently. Bugger these emotions, they really get in the way at times.

I know I shouldn't have given what sounded like an ultimatum, re: anger strategies or I couldn't stay with him.. I think that was his deciding factor in breaking up. I was tired, upset and pretty worn out the day I said that, and not thinking clearly. That is why I suggested we have a few days apart. T

Those days apart did clear my head, and I was thinking well about our future again. I really was/still am surprised by his reaction by leaving. What I mean by that is, it really seemed to be only black or white for him. Whereas I was in this shaded area, thinking this was a small bump along our path together.

I will say that I had already purchased the book Aspergers Syndrome and Long Term Relationships. It had only arrived only the day before our break-up. I hadn't even had a chance to read it. Well, I have now read the whole book, and gone back over many chapters, trying to figure this out.

We were both pretty open about his Aspergers, at times we would both have a laugh at something he would say, and how it would sound. I liked his straight down the line talk. I always knew what he meant. I am very similar, and can sound abrupt, so we didn't offend each other too much. But there were definately some moments, moments when I was under stress, where I couldn't cope well with some of his quirks. When I felt this happening, my frustrations rising, I would ask him for a few days to myself. It would sort of feel like I had bad PMS starting lol.

Asking for time to myself was my way of staying calm and not taking my frustrations out in our relationship. The problem was that he thought I was pushing him away, when I needed this time. It seemed to me no matter how hard I tried to explain my reasons to him, he couldnt understand. I've always needed my own time, away from people. He liked his own time too, but was comfortable having it with others around, So that was a problem we hadn't yet worked out the solution. I have always needed a bit more time alone than a lot of people I know, so it wasn't always to do with our relationship. Just something I need.

It's funny but he asked me once whether I saw things the same way as he did, when I was explaining something that had happened to me. I did the Aspergers Test online to see what the results would be. It came back around 120 and said I had both NT/AS traits. That was interesting.

If your still reading, opps, sorry to be so carried away.

I don't think you are carried away, you just want to understand. Don't you think that is a normal response?


I'll try to explain about the card game because I go through this, but at work. I used to manage (I know, believe or not, right?) and I would clearly see in my mind the end result and how we needed to get there. I usually come in when things are in chaos and complete breakdown because I'm good at getting them back to where they should be (maybe because I don't get caught up in politics and emotion). Anyway, I have extreme hyperfocus when I see what needs to be done. I have a hard time explaining the logic and how to get there. If one of my staff starts going off their own way, ohoh! Bad news. I explain it to them as, Don't flip my mother switch! That kind of takes the sting out of it and I do act like my mother when I have a freak out. I become this completely inflexible, arrogant, dominating witch with a b You have to love my employees because they would rally around the other one and explain that although I couldn't explain myself well, I did know what I was doing. They would explain the inbetween parts to the hapless one who accidentally flipped the mother switch. I would just go on my way without any idea why that would bother them. Later on one would explain it and I'd try to make amends, but the differences between me and my almost 50 staff over the years is staggering. I think they only stuck with me because I was fair, honest to a fault and made sure they were always in a position to get the next job if the company laid off people (a harsh reality in our profession).

The one thing that makes me the most crazy is when logically something should work and it doesn't. I get extremely angry about it, but it's born out of frustration and I often lose focus of the other person involved. They often think that anger is pointed at them. The truth is they are somewhat hazy at that point. My focus, like the problems at work, is on the thing and not the person. I'm always shocked when the person thinks I'm upset with them and that's after they get me back to earth and dealing with them again. It depends on how close I am to the source of the frustration how well I deal with their issues. Sometimes I'm still stuck in that logic problem and my frustration. Unfortunately, I'm not an old phonograph where you can just bump the needle, so I usually just advise people around me to lay low and let it blow over because it will. If they confront me then, I don't understand why they can't see that it should work and it makes me feel even more alienated than usual around them. Enough of that and I'd believe that we had nothing in common. I think maybe that was the dynamic taking place there.

It's very hard for you to understand our mind. It is the nature of our brains to pattern new information against what we already know. We do it and so do you. Therein lies the problem. We are dealing with two different brains that we are unconciously using for that patterning. So your brain reads his behavior according to what it knows about humans (based on your experiences and knowledge), while his does the same. But when the input is so vastly different in how it is interpreted, the output is also going to be vastly different. So you see gray and he sees black and white. You are right in that, he does see black and white. He does not see gray (I'm guessing by what you describe and what I know if myself) and he never will.

It is very hard, but intellectually you two can get to a point where you can understand each other. I figured you had things going on or otherwise you wouldn't be there. That's probably the case with all of us NT/AS couples. My husband is over the top OCD. He couldn't live with anyone else because they might actually have an opinion about something in the house or yard. I don't even notice the house or yard. It's enough that I know which garage to pull into. But, we are functional in our dysfunction. He thinks if we saw a shrink because we found out about AS, we'd be divorced in months because they would try to "fix" us. He's probably right.

Anyway, you are working against your boyfriend's patterns and they are black and white. I have all these unwritten rules about interractions with people and they are set in stone. It pretty much takes dynamite to change them and I'll resist it. I have no empirical evidence to convince me otherwise, so this is the way it is.

I would still say just send him what you posted to me and what you logically think can make it work. Tell him he can use it to understand what happened or to try and work it out. Either way, invite him to put in his input. Present it like a logic question, not an emotional one. Also, I would explain that the taking a few days off is your way of trying to spare him emotional overload and because you experience something akin to emotional overload yourself. Put it into terms he can relate to himself. Remember that we don't always pick up on the unspoken (Okay, most of us don't get much of that at all). It sounds like he's reading that differently and you need to rationally get in there and explain it. It's very similar to what he experiences so he can understand it, you just have to get around pre-conceived notions and things he's probably been told in the past.

Honestly, looking at you as a person, I think you could be all right in an NT/AS relationship. It takes a unique person to be happy there. It appears by what you say that you could do it. So, it's worth a shot and if not, you two will get ot a point where you do understand and maybe you can just be there for each other as friends. Who is to say what the future holds. I never thought I would get married at all. Look how that turned out!

Last edited by ZanneMarie on 21 Apr 2007, 10:06 am, edited 3 times in total.

If he lis like me blame and fault are hard in a situation like this. It would be best if you could go back as if nothing happened. Though I'm not expert on relationships. I just think the card game was pointless it doesn't deserve an explanation.

Btw lack of empathy does not equal lack of sympathy. It is just if you don't know what’s something is like why pretend?

Thank you so much for to everyone for taking the time to reply. I have really found your all thoughts helpful.

ZanneMarie, for some reason you really are hitting the right spot with me. I just wish I had the chance to run things by you earlier, prior to the break-up. It may really have made some difference. But, I am still grateful now, because I am not so pained and confused wondering what the heck happened and why it did. You have allowed me to see in a very simple way the differences that I knew existed between us, but I couldn't quite figure them out until you explained them.. It was a lightbulb moment reading your reply... I really thank you from the bottom of my heart. I won't say that I have much peace yet, but you have certainly given me some huge tools to work with. I may let a little bit of time pass before any contact, just so I know that when I do make any effort, it is coming from my love and not my need, and also I need to know that I am strong enough to accept him rejecting me.