Crush on a potential Aspie?

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Hi all,

I’m new to this board and in dire need of some advice. Sorry for bulging in like that. I don’t have anyone I dare to discuss this with. I didn’t see any guidelines for topics in this subforum, so I hope I’m doing it right.
I’m an introvert NT and currently I have a love interest. At times I think he likes me but sometimes I think he doesn’t care at all. I think the guy I’m crushing on is an Aspie. Other people describe him as socially awkward but I was not sure if he’s just a very introvert NT or if they are right. Slowly I’m starting to think they are right. One difficult thing is that he lives far away and I get to see him through mutual friends every now and then. So I can’t really meet him as often.
Some things I’ve noticed:
- He is absolutely INSANELY talented in his hobby. Others also find him a genius in this regard.
- He is very private, no FB etc
- Whenever we talk when he is entirely sober, he is shy and quite nervous to be around me
- Whenever he is not sober, he does makes some physical contact with me (in general, we do hug when we meet), like touching my arm.
- Everything I tell him about myself or my hobby’s, he thinks is interesting
- Whenever we talk and someone else comes up, he ignores them
- He asked my number but didn’t initiate texting or calling.
- Because we live far apart I started texting him. So we talk through text now but his responses are a bit different. In real life I would think he does like me. But in messages, he ignores half of what I tell him and singles out on part, or only parts where I specifically ask a question. Or just ignores the question too and only responds in one sentence to another part. He seems uninterested to me.
- I already told him that I like him but he only said that I’m nice.
- If I don’t respond he does say something the next day to keep the conversation going. Usually.
- He agreed to meet me sometime in the future.

What is the next move to make? Does this sound like an Aspie to you?
I don’t know what to do anymore because NT guys usually are very clear and I can take a next step easily or they do it themselves. But maybe it is an NT guy, but just a shy/uninterested one. I don’t know

XOXO Mina

Thanks for writing your post in an easier way to read. Everybody writes these huge blocks of single text and it drives me crazy.

I don't think we have enough information to say this guy is an Aspie. But, the things you've highlighted do indicate the *possibility* that he's an Aspie. If he has agreed to meet you at some point and talks to you in person and has an interest in your activities, there's a chance of attraction on his part.

The problem is, a guy can be attracted to a girl but "write her off" for reasons that have nothing to do with her as a person. In your case, the biggest issue is that both of you are far from each other and only meet in person on certain occasions. So that could be an issue here.

So here's some questions for you to see if we can get some more details that might be helpful. What hobby is this guy so amazing at?

Did you save the text messages between you and him? If so, can you look at them and tell me if the questions or messages you sent to him that he ignored were perhaps ones he might not have wanted to answer? Let me give you some examples, and I'm just going to make these examples obvious so that you understand what I mean:

"So I know you like girls, but do you like guys too."
"Do you think you have Asperger's?"
"What kind of girl are you attracted to?"
"Why aren't you dating a girl?"

Just so I'm clear, I doubt it's likely you asked questions *that* personal of him. So the questions might be more subtle than that but could still be questions he didn't want to answer. So is this guy selectively answering questions or ignoring certain texts because they might require him to reveal more about himself than he really wants to?

The reason I ask this is because guys with Asperger's can have trouble (like me) handling that type of thing. We don't want to answer the question but we don't have a subtle NT way of handling it. So we might try to ignore the question and if the person asking the question insists on me us answering it, we might feel backed into a corner and overreact (because that's all we have in our tool chest, basically).

I hope you can figure this out one way or the other.

Hehehe, I love bullet points haha. And thanks so much for your elaborate reply.
He is really good at music (multiple instruments even) but also drawing and painting. Basically artistic stuff.

To make the part more clear about him avoiding some of my messages:
For example, he writes me and asks me a question. I go on answer that question and do some more chit chat around it (even though he started the topic in the first place). I looked back and couldn't really specifically see private questions he was avoiding. The questions were more general questions, like if he likes his job. It was more like he avoids the chit chat and answers only a direct question. Sometimes he ignores the question and just says something else. What I'm trying to say is that the conversation looks like this usually:

Me: ----------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------?
-------------------------------------------

Him: ------------------------------
-------------?

So usually, NT people respond on the chit chat too. He does that only sometimes. I'm thinking he just replies to what he finds interesting and just skips the rest (while NT people do reply on about everything as this is how conversations flow). I also thought about that he might not be interested in me, but then I don't think he would message me if I haven't replied in a while.

It's a tough call. Are there more points I need to pay close attention to? It's very confusing to me since I'm getting mixed signals.

Well that's certainly interesting and could certain be an Aspie characteristic. When he asks you a question, his objective is to get an answer about that question. He could be viewing the "small talk" as an unnecessary waste of time. Personally, in order to adapt, I'll get involved in small talk and now I'm so used to doing it that I'll participate more out of habit, in an almost robot-like fashion. But he has his own personality and may not be willing to put up with social niceties as much.

To go back to your question about whether he cares or not, I'd have to then say that it depends on the questions or what he responds to in the conversations, because those are what's important to him. It's kind of funny because it actually means you could find a lot of patterns in what he actually responds to and therefore learn a lot about him, and perhaps what he thinks about you.

So for instance, if he asks if you two could meet up soon but ignores the small talk you attempt before answering his question, so what? He wants to see you, that's what matters to him. That would indicate that he likes you, not the fact that he won't discuss the temperature in Toledo. So I guess what I'm trying to say is what he responds to and what he doesn't may tell you how much he cares, etc.

Have you ever tried cutting the small talk out and just getting to the point? I bet if you engaged in a serious conversation with him and just answered questions straightforward and asked him about how he feels about you, etc. you'd get some simple, straightforward answers (assuming he's really Aspie).

Yes, I think he is neurodiverse (Aspie) in multiple ways. In regards to online "discussions", an even more extreme variant is to ask no questions at all but rather write about something that he might think is interesting, and then hoping you will counter by continuing to write about it as a non-question. I think that is the natural ways NDs exchange information. If he does it like this, he won't care if you ask questions or not. He will pick to respond to whatever he thinks is interesting regardless if there was a question or not.

I think the best sign of possible interest is if he gets worried or writes to you when the discussion stalls, and then I don't mean the next week or month.

It's possible, but then she needs to ask about only that. Still, I think the natural way here is that both parties talk about this in the monologue style, without being asked. I think she can trigger him to do that by starting off by telling him she likes him or something like that, and then she should not add things that he could decide to respond instead. Although this might work best on Facebook, but it probably can be done in other types of communication as well, but you can give hints about this by sharing pictures with a text. That way it only becomes a hint, so she doesn't need to say it directly. If he is shy about talking about those things, it will be easier for him to counter with his own hints. I mean, I would not write "I love you" to some girl I had a crush on, but sharing a picture that somebody else did with the text "I love you" would be fine as that is only a hint. If the girl doesn't feel the same, then I wouldn't feel rejected because I didn't write it directly to her. If the girl does feel the same, then she would understand the hint and know that the guy has feelings and so could return it. An even more subtle way to do it is to write "Having a crush is wonderful". Again, if the girl is not interested, she wouldn't know if I had a crush on her or somebody else so I wouldn't feel rejected because I didn't tell her that part, but if she was interested, she would definitely take it as a hint.

So, this is actually an area where NTs are much more direct than NDs (Aspies). The primary reason many of us probably prefer that way is because many of us cannot handle rejection. This way will avoid direct rejection.

Errrm well when I said (through text) that I like him, he only said that he thinks I'm nice. So I didn't have the guts to question this some more because "nice" is more platonic I think. I guess I should somehow ask him this again then.
I think I will do less small talk indeed. Thanks for the advice.

Hi Rdos, thanks for your thoughts about this.
Hehehe that'd be great, because he does writes me again when I haven't talked to him in 2 days.


Aye, I don't dare to specify it like that tbh As I said in a previous message, I did say that I like him (through text, he doesn't have FB) and he said that I'm nice. That already kind of felt like a rejection.

That's fine. Two days is when I start to get worried, and after three or four I will think that the girl has lost interest. At least if we have regular exchanges.



But then you already did it once. I don't think it was a rejection, just an answer on a similar level. You should move to a more "graphic" platform where you can share images.

Another example of how a girl could do it, is to draw a heart on her palm and then post it so the guy can see it by accident. But you need a graphic platform for that. In general, I think pure text is not so good.

I think you are reading way too much into this. It might just be that he doesn't like texting. I know I hate it when people bombard me with long texts (especially from more than one person at the same time). Keep them short and simple.