Relatinship was impossible in early life.

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Though I'm not diagnosed, i match the description of Asperger's. I'm 72 years old.

I never had a relationship until I was 30. Nothing happened for me until I was 30.

That isn't because no girls were interested in me. Over the years from early elementary school through highschool, of course a person encounters interest from lots of members of the opposite sex, and I was no exception.

But the difference was that I was entirely unable to respond or express reciprocal interest.

(I'll tell of two unbelievable examples later in this post: The first, and the worst.)

I'm posting this to find out if anyone else had this unusual life-experience, or if any professionals can explain it.

I completely missed my youth.

i'm still trying to understand what happened, what went wrong, how that happened.

As near as I can guess, from the earliest age, I was unable to believe that I was allowed anything other than the dull, boring dead routine that the adults had assigned to me. That was my role. Being a "good boy".

"Nothingsville" was what there was supposed to be, for me.

And/or, maybe it was that I was afraid of, or emotionally entirely incapable of, intimacy. Not wanting to reject intimacy, but emotionally unable to do otherwise--to my own dismay.

Let me tell two examples:

The first instance:

This was near the beginning of elementary-school, in 1st or 2nd grade.

On the schoolground, before class started, I was walking along the mesh-fence border of the school-ground.

A girl my age (but not in my classroom) walked to me, on an intercept-course, from a 45 degree angle, halfway between behind and the left. We didn't just accidentally run run into eachother--She intentionally intercepted me.

When she came to me, she asked if she could be my girlfriend.

Well of course that would have been great. Even if we turned out to be incompatible, it would be interesting to pursue that and find out where it goes, just to find out and explore life possibilities.

But, to me, it was quite out of the question. To this day, I don't understand why. Maybe it was that overpowering fear of intimacy, inability to allow intimacy even if I wanted to. Maybe it was just my conditioning that my role was to just have the boring, dull routine laid out by the adults. I don't know, maybe both. I had a feeling like, "How could she be so uncool or imprudent" (though of course i didn't know those words).

So I told her, "I'll think about it." Of course I knew that there was nothing to think about, because it was quite out of the question.

The Worst Instance:

I was about 27 years old. I was especially interested in and attracted to chubby women. I was sitting on a bench outside a pharmacy-variety store, eating a candy-bar. I heard a woman say, "Hi". I looked to my right, and there was a chubby woman sitting by me, to my right.

Could she have been speaking to me? I couldn't believe that was possible. i looked to my left, to see whom she was saying "Hi" to. I didn't notice anyone there, but I couldn't believe that she was talking to me. So I didn't answer, and just looked forward, continuing to eat the candy-bar.

Because I liked women of her description, she'd probably noticed me looking at her, and was responding to the interest that she'd detected from me.

Though there was a wrong-but-understandable reason for my refusal to answer, it must have seemed like an extreme rejection, to her. She had acne, and might have been particularly insecure, when going out on a limb by approaching me. ...making my seeming rejection that much worse.

When I looked again, she'd left. Of course I soon realized how wrongly (and stupidly) I'd reacted. Some days later, I ran into her again. I was going into a store adjacent to that pharmacy, and we passed eachother in the entrance, as she was leaving the store. Wanting to try to undo my mistake,I said "Hi" to her. She just angrily looked away and walked on.

Michael829

I had it happen to me, too.

I thought that no man could possibly be interested in me because I was too strange. I found out that wasn't the case and I was just too stupid to notice. There were a couple of instances in which young men wanted to get to know me, but I didn't notice. Now, at 52, I remember them and it breaks my heart. What might my life have been like today if I had been normal? Now, the love, dating and family part of life has forever passed me by. On those days when I remember those things, I hate myself and my suspected Asperger's. I hope I don't keep making those mistakes. I don't want to die old and alone, in a nursing home, with nobody to care if I live or die. (I've seen that happen to many normal people, and I don't want that fate for myself).

IstominFan--

Yes, that sounds like the same experience, and it confirms my conclusion that it happened to me because of Asperger's.

That's especially interesting and relevant to me, because it's the first time I've heard of that happening to anyone else. I was beginning to think that I was the unique case. So, my experience was unusual, but not completely unique.

So thanks for telling about the experience--an experience that sounds incredibly familiar.

Yes, hearbreaking is the word for the realization of how I rejected those girls who wanted to approach me.

The two incidents that I described were the first instance and the worst instance. But they sure weren't the only ones. I once wrote down some of the incidents like that, over my lifetime, and counted about 100.

And, just as you said, it isn't just some incidents--It was nothing less than the loss of a life. That's what that kind of life-experience is.

Early life, youth, life just starting out--That's the most important time. And I just plain missed it.

Well, when I'm eventually near the end of my life, if anyone's concerned about me, I can assure them that I already died, in 1957.

Well, just like me, you couldn't have done different, and so what happened has to be regarded as just the way it was, and just the way it was going to happen. It's just what this life was going to be.

This has been a bizarrely wrong and unusual kind of life that really amounts to just the end of a life, with the beginning part of the life just absent. But I shouldn't blame myself, because I couldn't have done different, and didn't have a chance.

And the unexpected thing is that, sometimes, what I perceive that most matters about those years is that life was there, and I was there, even though life wasn't for me. ...the fact that those good opportunities were there and happen. (...aside from that detail that I'm past that time now.) ...not just that I missed it, but that it was (is?) there at all.

The feeling, at those times, is that life is unlimited, and isn't something that you miss all of, just because you miss one life. So, losing a life doesn't mean losing life. That's just an occasional feeling, and I can't justify it.

Well, when you've missed and lost your life, you naturally seize on unjustifiable positive feelings like that. ...and of course are attracted to philosophy.

Metaphysics is the philosophy about what is. Metaphysically I'm not a Materialist or Physicalist. The notion that what happened to me, and to you, is final, and is really the loss of everything--That's a notion that goes with Materialism. If Materialism isn't true, then maybe the notion of losing everything when you lose a life isn't true either. Maybe there's some justification for the "unjustified" favorable feeling that I sometimes have.

Anyway, I wanted to quickly jot down these things that occurred to me to say.

The completely missisng-out, losing, life-experience that happened to me is rare, but now I know that it isn't unique.

Michael829

I am working hard to change my ways. I hope that, if I have an incredible piece of luck in which a nice man would be interested in me, I wouldn't be too stupid to notice. The older I get, the fewer chances I will get. I have a lot of strikes against me. I am far from the picture of the idealized woman who would attract people instantly.

My replies are sometimes late and long. …late because they’re long. I sometimes paste a messages into Word, and just work on my reply over time, to have better opportunity to say everything that I mean to.
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(The periods on the lines between paragraphs are space-holders, because sometimes text from Word loses its paragraph-spacings when pasted to websites or e-mail.)
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As for movie-star glamour, I can assure you (because I’m one) that there are men who aren’t looking for that.
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..appreciative men for whom a woman is a woman, who choose by the interestingness and appeal of who she is.
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I've found that, in all my 72 years, I never could really change my disastrously disadvantageous social ways. Every time I thought I'd wised-up and knew better how to live, I found myself failing in the same way. That was more than exasperating. I'd be hating myself, and my own unrelenting overcautious stupidity.
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Of course, afterwards, the mistakes are clear. ...making it particularly exasperating when they happen again, the same way.
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Well, “exasperating” isn’t even the word for it. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Thoroughly painfully dismaying?
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I guess I always thought that it must be easier for girls and women, but I realize now that the same incredible, disastrous life-loss can happen to a girl and a woman.
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About 7 years ago, at age 65, I met someone online. Internet introductions were what helped for me, because there wasn't a need to be able to read subtle signs and cues, and guess how someone felt.
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Being older helps too, of course. But that improvement is too late.
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You’ve heard the saying (They say it came with German immigrants—I looked it up.):

“Too soon old, too late smart.”
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But, realistically, the most important, potentially best, part of life is when we're younger, in the teens, when everything is new and intense. And that's when we're completely bewildered, with least idea of what's going on--and so we easily miss-out.
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I was 30 before anything happened for me.
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As I’m sure you do too, I keep wondering why someone would be born in a life, presumably to live, wanting to live, but unable to.
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…as if life is offered but not really available. …a cruel situation.
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Surely everyone one of us has often said to ourselves, “I shouldn’t have been born!”
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At 72, I’m still trying to make sense of it and understand what happened and why & how.
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Grasping at straws, I guess, one subjective explanation occurred to me:
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Almost paradoxically, in some ways I like the way I am, and can’t imagine being any other way, though I don’t like that it meant the loss of my life. So maybe I wanted to find out what it would be like to be this sort of person, with some attributes that I like.
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…as a possible explanation or why I’m in this kind of a life. If so, then it could be said that I asked for it.
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Until the last few days, I'd never heard of anyone else who'd had anything like my bizarre life-missing experience. Because I’m still trying to understand how it happened, I have questions.
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So, to both people who replied, I ask:
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In my case, I had unqualified parents. Was that a factor for you?
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Was it always just a matter of misreading cues, or was it sometimes just an inexplicable outright refusal of intimacy, even when it wasn’t a matter of missing subtlety, and there was no social risk?
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I ask that, because, in the first instance that I described in my initial post, the girl in 1st grade explicitly asked if she could be my girlfriend, and so it wasn’t a matter of my having to take a risk of rejection. For some reason unknown to me, I felt that I couldn’t accept her suggestion.
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Was it just that I’d internalized the anti-life, dull-routine, deferred-happiness, teaching from the adults?
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…or was it a purely built-in fear of intimacy?
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If you’ve had that type of experience, which did it seem like for you?
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That first instance refutes the notion that it was just a matter of fear of rejection, or misreading subtle cues.
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Aside from those questions (maybe more questions will occur to me), is there any other information that you can share about what happened, and why, from your point of view?
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People who have had the unusual life-loss experience that I had, are a valuable resource for trying to figure out what happened.
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Michael829

I'm of German descent (mom's side) and I certainly can relate to "So soon old, too late smart." Hopefully, it isn't too late to become smart. I'm working to add social smarts to my book smarts.

I said:

{quote}
When I was in highschool, a teacher told me that I knew the Earth's diameter, but (figuratively) didn't know my way around the school. A perceptive kid told me that I was a "social moron". Sounds insulting, but true, of course. When told that, I didn't care.
{unquote}

The reason why I didn't care if those criticisms were true was that I didn't know that those criticisms referred to seriously life-destructive misconceptions and errors about my approach to life. In fact of course I didn't know that there were such errors and misconceptions.

Michael829