he walked away from me, said i love you,and no contact since

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My partner is very emotional as well, and we both accept that sometimes I can't handle it and she needs to find support elsewhere. And I'm not working for a living anymore... when I did, with previous partners, I was often emotionally unavailable due to work overwhelm and exhaustion, and eventually the demands and neediness became claustrophobic, repugnant, and repulsive. I did not want to be around them, I shut them out, I was often irritable and angry with them... to this day, the phrase "Could we talk?" makes me sick to my stomach.

To expect one person to meet all your needs, to expect an autistic person to meet your emotional needs, is unrealistic and unreasonable. It may happen sometimes, but it will be unreliable. For your own well-being, not to mention the peace of mind of your friend, you need to enlarge your circle.

I'm glad to hear you are reducing your emoting with him, but I also respect that it is an important part of being NT... so you need to find a venue with someone else to express that part of your nature.

I do not expect my partner to share my passion for Buddhism... I wish she did, but she doesn't and I respect that. So I get together with other Buddha-zoids to express that aspect of myself. She wishes I shared her interest in rug making, but I don't, so she finds other rug hookers to enjoy that part of her being. And she has a couple of friends she can get emotional support from when I am not psychically available for her.

By the way, nice about the B-day wish. I'd think that was a good call.

You certainly have a great enlightenment about you. I really respect your thoughts and opinions. My emotions have been all over the place today and I still don't know where they will end up. I guess it would be easier if our relationship was "in person" but it's over the computer and it's so easy to just shut the computer off and ignore whoever is on there.

He isn't the only one who meets my needs but he is the one person I want to hear from every day, the one person who can make me feel good with just a "hello" message. It's such a mystery to me how one day everything can seem so fine and normal and then it just changes.

Oh well.. at this point I'm going to try to wait things out for the weekend and not send more email. I'm so drained right now.

Your advice is very helpful, thank you for taking the time to share it.

" I was often emotionally unavailable due to work overwhelm and exhaustion, and eventually the demands and neediness became claustrophobic, repugnant, and repulsive. I did not want to be around them, I shut them out, I was often irritable and angry with them... to this day, the phrase "Could we talk?" makes me sick to my stomach. "

I really appreciate this level of honesty.
Thanks, Donkey.

I wish I had known then what I know now about myself.

All I would want to do is come home, collapse on the couch and read. I didn't want to talk about my day, change clothes, fix dinner... I just wanted peace and quiet. I loved my job, I enjoyed the people I worked with (more or less), but by the end of the day I'd just be completely tapped out and I needed to 'blank out' to recover for the next day.

I certainly had very little left to give to my partner.

If I was left alone, then usually right before bed, I'd feel like a little conversation, finding out how each other's day went. But wrestling out the details of any interpersonal problems? Nooooo way. Not after a day at work.

TV was out. Radio was out. Quiet, quiet, quiet was what I needed... often when I lived by myself I used lanterns and candles for the soft light.

Even now, retired and living in the country, I find that by the early evening (6 pm) I'm pretty worn out. I keep thinking 'I'll do that this evening' and finding that it just doesn't happen. I'm becoming more and more aware of how important it is to consciously and deliberately manage my time, to husband my energy and interactive reserves.

Frickin' pain in the neck.

donkey- i appreciate your sharing here because it helps me to understand my young friend and what he must be going through. it's been 9 days now since we've spoken and i'm leaving for 7 weeks. we have made plans for the future (as friends) and i do believe i will be his friend for a very long time. i imagine in his mind i'm already "out of town" ...out of sight/out of mind, but i really have no clue. the part that is mysterious is this ...he KNOWS i want to hear from him and yet he chooses not to make contact. i wonder if he's taking his own thinking or lack of thinking to something like..."if i don't reply to her email, this might hurt her feelings and she's my friend so i don't want her to feel sad/hurt/angry, etc...so i should reply...." and he still doesn't. i understand butterflair's feelings. she has had a 4 year friendship and now she's getting "the silent treatment." my friendship is nowhere near that long and i am also getting a form of the silent treatment (as NT's perceive it...being consciously ignored). i know my friend is stuck a prisoner at home and i know his mom isn't allowing him to use the phone to call me and i know he hates email and email is all we have and he doesn't reply to my emails. see my thinking? he doesn't contact me because he doesn't WANT to.
but when we are hanging out and when he does contact me (eventually), i'm his only friend and by default, best friend, and that is important to him. this is what's hard to figure out. obviously, when he shuts down or drops out and gets stubborn about no contact, he needs that time but does he understand that if he WANTS to continue his friendship, some reciprocation is generally expected? i do feel it's a one-way friendship most of the time and i'm very happy to be there for him. bottom line: after a few weeks goes by, it feels like rejection.
and why would someone intentionally reject their best/only friend?
and i am also very much into buddhism...

Boy, I feel like I'm talking and no one's listening.

IT'S NOT A CHOICE!! !

Autism/Asperger's is a DISABILITY!! !

Does an epileptic have seizures by choice?
Is someone color blind by choice?
Does someone have poor executive function by choice?

And if you don't know what that last is, I suggest you spend a little time researching and educating yourself on just how autism affects the WIRING of the brain.

You intellectually know he's not rejecting you, yet you cling to painful ideas to keep yourself the center of your own drama.

Take your feelings of rejection and do study Buddhism... it'll embarrass the H*** out of you. Your hurt feelings are your responsibility, no one elses. Stop blaming your friend for your pain and put the blame where it belongs... on your self-centered ignorance.

No, we're listening. You have enlightened me a lot this week and I appreciate your candor and honesty.

I know it's a disability and that is why I'm trying to understand and give him what he needs. I know that for now he needs space and that's what I'm going to do.

Sorry to make you feel frustrated but you have helped me greatly.

donkey-
damn, dude, take a chill pill. of course we're listening...i was just rattling off to you all the garbage that is spinning in my brain. i know it's stupid, misguided, delusional, etc... i know that..but it's still spinning there.
clinging=delusion=suffering...i know!!
i'm leaving tuesday for an ashram for 7 weeks actually. it's a yoga, meditation and service project in the mountains near the ocean in northern california...28 hours per week of work at the ashram/conference center (hopefully most of that time in the veg kitchen!) and the rest for yoga, meditation, practicing guitar...

maybe i won't be so much in illusion when i get back.

update: have not seen him since june 14th. he had a difficult night (problems at home) and i was leaving soon for my summer. i am home one day per week and he knows that but he's made no attempt to call/email/see me, which strikes me as quite out of character...
we had one small conversation since june 14th initiated by me about something he forgot to follow up on but no contact from him. i don't know why. i asked him to clue me but have not received a clue. it's okay though. i'm learning. i decided i will not initiate contact in july anymore and see what happens in the future.
problem is ...his b'day is at the end of july. i feel crappy ignoring it but he blew off my emails and phone calls and i don't feel like contacting him again since it all just feels like complete rejection whether it is or is not ...advice?

He's not just an Aspie - he's a child. Perhaps that would explain his emotions not living up to the expectation of a 47 year old woman?

good point but i'm still the only friend he had all year and i'm a 16 year old kid on the inside and he sees that. we're the same age in spirit. actually, in spirit, he's older than me.
hopefully he's busy with new friends now.
anyway, i believe he did try to call me a few days ago. i missed the calls on my phone and there were several calls (almost 10), a few minutes apart, and i heard nothing but breathing. came from a restricted number so i can't be sure it was him but 2 months ago, he called me from his home number, several calls, a few minutes apart and just breathing...so the call 2 days ago exactly resembles his calling pattern from 2 months ago. bummer i missed the call. i'm not calling back though. he didn't leave a message...i imagine he will try again.

Ouch. This thread's having a weird effect on me.

I get the NT clinginess side, because I'm an NT with an anxiety disorder and all this is an expression of anxiety, but the Aspie side resonates with me. I'm dx'd with conversion disorder, planning on asking my therapist why we're not using the word "catatonia", but basically I suffer considerably from states of unresponsiveness that I can't control. I can't talk, can't move, hold strange postures, may or may not be posable, can't look at someone, or a number of other symptoms. There've been times when day after day I couldn't get to the bathroom or get food until mid afternoon and was only able to, say, make an later afternoon class and get frozen somewhere between my class and the dorm and wait for someone I knew to come along and help me back home.

I frequently ignore people trying to contact me--calls, IMs, texts, emails. It's not a conscious decision, but I've had the experience of Aspie friends getting mad at me or asking what they'd done or just patiently IMing me whenever I appeared, even though the reward rate was very low... I don't think about the consequences. It takes a mental effort to remind myself that, oh, yeah, I do need to call my dad back and discuss some medical or financial issue, and even then sometimes I call people and then am unable to speak (sometimes I'm unable to move to dial the phone). Or sometimes I just can't address the issue even by intending to call.

I'm sure it's a very different mechanism and sensation than Aspie shut-down, which I've not read or heard about before, and I do have more control over whether or not I stay in touch (although I'm not sure I have as much control over whether or not disinterest sets in), but I did want to add that everything seems incomprehensible if you haven't experienced it or been socialized to expect it. I tell people about my disorder and then they act like I'm choosing to remain silent in a rigid posture for the better part of an hour while they ask me questions and demand I talk to them--but it's become fairly natural to me to move in and out of control, of physical, emotional, and social responsiveness--and not necessarily with the different components in sync. Living with an impairment is... interesting. Distressing, disappointing, disabling, but also fairly interesting.

So that probably added nothing to the thread, but forgive me, for I am another neurotypical with the pesky need to communicate. ^_^

holding light...
your post (above) is awesome. thanks so much. really helps. the way you've described your anxiety symptoms very much resembles how my friend "shuts down..." including periods of non responsiveness when he's being spoken to directly. i'm pleased to say my friend and i connected by phone last nite (he has been calling me now) and we have plans for 2 days from now and hopefully we'll be able to work out some issues about communication. i know he's really anxious to brainstorm college plans for the upcoming school year....

Last edited by ptown on 12 Jul 2009, 2:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It's having a creepy effect on me. What exactly was the age of the young boy again?

he's a college student

i saw him today after more than 4 weeks (we usually hang out twice a week for a few hours).
he said he hasn't left the house in a month...hasn't checked email, etc...
i was pissy that he was out of touch all this time, he called my feelings DRAMA.
i wasn't happy but i forgave him. he has no idea what it takes to have a *reciprocal*
friendship...he was really spaced out but it was obvious to me he still feels we're friends.