An Aspie Paradox?

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How many others here have the paradox whereby they want to be in a relationship and to have intimacy with someone, yet at the same time, want to remain independent and have concerns about the intimacy side?

Obviously, I have a history of sexual abuse which will influence my fears of certain intimacies, but I find that one part of me longs for the perfect romance/soulmate phenomena and someone to do things with and share things with, while another part of me has become so used to being solitary and so much needs my own space and time alone that it seems easier to simply not even try to put myself into circumstances where I might get involved...

Also... how can one break free of the idea that when one gets into a relationship, it is only going to be worthwhile if it lasts a good, long time?
I find it incredibly difficult to recover after a break-up, and it puts me off what many others seem happy to do...having lots of relationships and learning from them whilst waiting for the right person to come along.

I kind of think I'll feel the same way. I've never been in a long term serious relationship... and I would really like to be in one... hopefully get married too.

I have a desire for closeness... and to really be there for someone...

But I am paranoid that after a while... it'll get old. Once something becomes comfortable... I tend to not put forth effort into something like a relationship... and I have a feeling the one I am with will start to feel unappreciated.

I don't know how much physical closeness I can handle. I'd like to say quite a bit... but I really don't know. I don't like physical touch right now... but that's because it's always unexpected. If I am used to physical relationship... then I'll want to do it I think. But to what extent I don't know...

I guess I just have to play it by ear... and see what happens. But when I read accounts of cold Aspie husbands... that don't notice their wives... and just live their own oblivious uncaring lives... it freaks me out... I think that could be me if I let it happen.

Sometimes I feel the same way.

Tim

I feel the same as well.

My aspie BF tells me a relationship is like a plastic bag over his face. He just feels smothered even though logically he knows he is not. We have a great time when we are together, I give him all the space he needs and wait for him to come to me, I don’t nag, I don’t interrupt, I let him make all the decisions in his comfort zone and let him engross himself in his “things” until he tires of them and wants me back around. He admits to me that I have done nothing to make him feel this way, he just does. I ask if there is something I can or cannot do to make this better. He says no.

His problem seems to be the anxiety of anticipating. Anticipating if I will get in his way of doing “stuff” when I am around. Anticipating I may not like something he does and yell (I never yell, this is past gf baggage). Anticipating he may make a mistake and I will think he is an idiot (again, past gf baggage). He knows he creates so much anxiety over things that most likely won’t happen. He feels obligated to have me visit or visit me. I’m happy to have time off. Just tell me when and don’t make it last too long.

The worst anxiety is intimacy issues. Suppose he may have to have an intimate conversation? Yikes! (When I need some personal info from him I start my question with “I don’t need an answer right now, but…”, and I give him a few weeks to blurt out the answer at some random time). Sex mechanically is good, but way to intimate for him. In the beginning it was better because I was a stranger and he was getting lucky, but as things evolved he has a harder time because he categorizes sex as something taboo you do with a stranger for kicks and why would he do those things to someone he loves and respects and to someone who accommodates his (almost) every need?

Bottom line is you can have both, but you have to find a girl who has other interests and friends that can occupy her time without damaging the integrity of your relationship, and you have to get it through your mind that you cannot hint for time off, you have to be direct. This is the one hint an NT doesn’t get because we can’t imagine not wanting the person we love by our side, even if not interacting just the comfort they are close by.

Yep. That is what I was trying to say in my unusual relationship post

Relationship: No, thanks. Affair: Yes, please.

I feel your pain on this, though its less shyness with me than feeling like I'm 90 degrees out of phase with what's proper. The fact that so many nights I just come home, go upstairs, go on the computer, drink a bit, makes some beats, and go to sleep, it feels like any sense of 'normalcy' is just rotting out of that and its very difficult to fathom the idea of someone wanting to be with someone who isn't stereotypically self-lead in terms of having this great structure for their time, doing interesting things or being out and about involved with stuff (aside from when my friends are having get-togethers on and off throughout the week).

I'd love to really find someone who really cares about me - rather than having the front attract them and then the reality that I'm not 100% NT chase them off. I'm more than happy to put my work in - meet them half way, innitiate the conversations to the point where I can get reciprocation from her, do the 'asking out' being that it seems to be such a necessary litmus test of a man's worth; but diving off into the unknown with someone I don't even feel like I can trust because I can tell that what they're seeing up front which they're attracted to isn't the whole me - and going years and years of being single because I can't find the exceptions to that rule that I'd need - again, just feels like my life's ridden with decay when I'm not keeping up with what seem to be everyone's, including my own, fundamental dreams. Even if I know at times that I'm living a bit of a trapped life and I don't have much in the way of recourse or left over energy after to just make things happen in a void of opportunity.

techstep - do you live in a city or a small town.

Ive formed most of my ideas about US culture from film, but i just get the impression from some of your postings your surrounded by a sort of 'small-town'/suburban mentalities and you might be happier living in the socail diversity/acceptance of a metropolis.

Me too

Heh, not at all. that's just it. I live in the area of one of the two largest cities in my state. The fact that you'd say that kinda indicates though and reverifies to me - its not the area I live in, its definitely me. What I mean by that - my passions and what I need in someone else don't fit into a nice little clique, there's no geeky guilty pleasure I have that I could elaborate on and find myself in some aspie oasis; sad thing is I really don't think I'd even be able to relate to people like that. As far as just joining something to joining something, if my passions aren't there a) I won't have a good time and b) I'm definitely not going to be expanding my horizons because whether its to meet friends or meet women it'll be kind of apparent that I'm joining a club for something that I'm not even passionate about - you have to kinda be feeling it for that to work.

I have friends who say part of my bottleneck is intelligence; that I should join a book club, a wine club, maybe go to wine and cheese parties; one look at most of my posts and I think you'd understand I'd probably be even more out of place there than I'd be just going to a bar and grinding up on some drunk party girl. When I do find someone who's of my caliber its almost never something that anyone else would have figured out - it could just as easily be some preppy bar girl as it could be a girl who's kinda OCD and has that sort of elevated sense of things to where her loops and differences actually put her more on point with reality and understanding people for what they are (the second I really wish I could find more of).

I think my final problem though - what I look like. I've been round and round about this and even with as far as I've gone to put myself in a different mental place and even give people the benefit of the doubt, give myself the benefit, write off what I may percieve as this, I still feel like I give a bad first impression just for the fact that I look youthful and frankly a bit immature. When I was really working on myself, I mean giving it my all to rise above everything people said I was, I noticed one thing never changed - while a lot of people liked me once they knew me, I had to tread even more carefully that other people because I had to do a lot of extra work to disprove people's first guesses of me based on just my build, what my face looks like, and what sort of genetic resting personality that they'd gage me as having. That's s--- but unfortunately there's not a lot I can do with that. At least as I age I'm visually looking a bit better so it feels like all the negative attention has dialed back a notch; still you can imagine how it could be extremely difficult for me to look a woman in the eyes and smile having never talked to here when even at a grocery store if I accidentally almost ran into a girl and laughed about it I got a brusk "Not my type....". When people react to you that fast and with that much of a homogenous gut-level response you tend to wall yourself up in your dignity because it works like clockwork and you'll seriously be damned, if you have any self-respect, if after having happen time after time after time, that you're going to drag yourself through the gutter and play the 'lets date' off of first impressions game.

Being my roommate, probably my biggest social asset, will probably try to stick his dick in anything that's even remotely attractive it means I need to meet her outside of our social group, the hard part is I have work, I have some home-bodies with kids who I hang with, and then I've got a small aspie support group where while I wouldn't completely abandon hope of finding someone there it still seems like its a long shot. I do have girls I talk to who are interested in me but with one, real sadly and for as cool as she is I can't get attraction on my side, another girl who I'm definitely attracted to and vice a versa but she also shows a lot of signs of being an un-dx'd aspie so I can't get through to her even though she shows me signs that she wants me to (long story, I'd have to PM you probably), and while I'll meet women who do seem interesting at their jobs - stores, restaurants, barbers, I would need to be repeat business in some cases and in others I still all too often find that while they seem close to on; I've had just as bad of experiences with close to on once they catch that I'm different than what I was on first glance just as much as I could have with anyone else.

To cap that all off - I can't find that many people I can trust, can't trust anyone until they've hung out a minute to know what they're dealing with, otherwise I'd need to see just from the basis of a woman's reaction and mannerisms that she's talking to the whole 360 degrees of me - did happen recently but its really hard to gain trust and set up a date with someone you can only see once every 4 or 5 weeks without seeming creepy or shady (yeah, place of business thing). Do you kinda see what I'm saying? Its like with every opportunity comes a shut down in one way shape or form. You could call it incredibly bad luck but when its this much bad luck for this long you can't call it luck but rather I almost sometimes wonder if Sylvia Brown's theory is right, that I calculated my life beforehand, and part of what I wanted to suffer for experience was a maddening degree of something that just goes beyond all rational probability or even common sense. I at least know now - I can't berate or blame myself on this anymore, if I do try to find fault with myself over it I'll drive myself crazy looking for a specific area or solution I can find; I drive myself crazier when no such thing exists and it seems like the only option I really have it just toward positive thinking, letting myself know that this is just luck and that it'll have to break at some point, and even if I look in the mirror and the fact that I have a neurological problem seems to jump out and smack me in the face every morning I don't really think that's going to permeate someone's senses as much as it would mine just like I know that there are people out there to where that kind of an issue is well outside their scope of what matters.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 07 Sep 2007, 12:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

I feel this way. I worry about being taken advantage of and being controlled, and being told how to dress, and losing all independence. Yet at the same time I really would like to be in a relationship.

Hehehehe, by the way psyche, I'm almost kinda sorry that I wrote that much of a book in response to that but I swear - when you've got an itch that you can't scratch like that its maddening.

- np, its interesting AND really easy to read (makes a welcome change for me) - i wish i could express myself with that eloquence. Or say something suitably profound &insightful in response All i could manage atm would be my usual quasi-mystical platitudes of how we create reality in our heads and attract the 'right' people and situations into our lives through synchronicity.

I know what you mean about compatible people being scattered randomly about the playing area and not fitting any clearly-definable demographic. I suppose thats what makes them special tho, iyswim. I dont understand why you dont chase up that un dx-ed aspie girl Unless by 'not getting through' you mean shes not picking up enough of your non-verbal cues to make you feel the strength of connection your looking for.

Yeah, and that's the kind of advice I'd probably need to shelf just because to really take it to heart would amount to me being entirely too cruel on myself - in light of my own situation, and the sort of negativity and hopelessness that thought really inspires if anything is probably more counterproductive just on my mood and how I display outwardly than helpful. I figure this though - negativity doesn't precede the problem with anyone, no matter what it is usually, so I've also had a tough time believing that a persons inner reality has any more effect on things than how they vibe up around people on the surface. In my own life I've had so many things work out worst-case scenario that I had positive feelings about; should I go as far as to say "Well, maybe but SUNCONSCIOUSLY in that small corner of my mind that I have little or no control over - was I entertaining some small doubt that I wasn't aware of?". Definitely nothing but a trap for a person who has a too internal of a locus of control.



No, I mean while she's very capable of holding a conversation - comes off as pretty normal, mainstreamed all the way, and actually lives and seems more NT than any spectrumite female I've met. On the other hand though we are at a communication impass on anything past surface scraping or music. It amounts to the fact that I try to communicate with her but I don't get the same reaction back anymore; part of it I think also is certain lifestyle issues which I can understand but its still something that I know could be talked through and while I'm opened to communication in general she seemed in the past and still today very difficult to get any reassurance through words from. I actually wrote her off as lost in that sense, a bit of communication recently made me wonder, but as I come back around to it I think I'm probably just better off leaving it there. If the balls in her court she needs to hit it back and if not, I've kinda gotta do the math and my guess is she's got too many things in her own life that she's worried about sharing and she still hasn't found the strength or the time to overcome her own anxieties surrounding them.

That stuff makes me crazy because if you follow it to its logical conclusion, it means abused, tortured and murdered people pretty much brought it on themselves.

I don't think the Jews created the concentration camps in their heads and attracted the Nazis into their lives through synchronicity.