Are there any Old and Very Naïve Aspies out there?

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I’m ancient, well past my allotted three-score years and ten. I’m also an Aspie, and one of my Aspie traits is that I’m naïve. A consequence of this is that I’m finding great difficulty in accepting old age. As a dreamer, I would prefer to think I can go on forever. The reality I’m finding, that stuff goes wrong – both mentally and physically - is extremely hard to take.

So, if you are an old and naïve Aspie, how do you cope?

(Naïve: a young soul, innocent, a dreamer, unrealistic, immature)

With respect, I don’t believe comments by people who are neither naïve nor old can help. If you aren’t like me, you can’t know what it’s like.

Last edited by MarchHare on 17 Sep 2011, 9:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

A bit of pride or fear nearly turned me away from the word naïve here, but now I understand after reading your post!

One way is by trying to feel at least somewhat useful by trying to share a bit of experience/wisdom to help justify my crippled existence ... but then I often run into some of the same "bullet-proof naïvety" of my own past! However, and even while finding "old age" physically limiting, I can still accept it fairly easily while remembering and reflecting upon a wide variety of past opportunities exhausted and experiences gained.

I'm not as old as you, although according to my nieces, anyone who knits is older than dirt. As far an naïve, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I'm hopelessly naïve in a lot of ways, I know; and I'm also too naïve to know what those ways are!


Even though I'm not that old, most days, I feel it. The broken back from the Dog Drool Incident and having no sense of balance to speak of anymore, well.... By far, my biggest mental problem is that I can't concentrate on anything, except drawing and writing code, for more than about ten minutes at a time. I can draw and write code, and throw pots and other exceptionally interesting things for about 50 minutes (the length of the usual high school and college class--I've wondered if there's a connection!). This is bugging the [shocking bad word] out of me.


I guess the only coping strategy I have is the tautology that "It is what it is." That, and lots of chocolate. And taking some time out every day to just play.

Naïve: a young soul, innocent, a dreamer, unrealistic, immature

Well, I guess I qualify then! My boss constantly tells my I'm unrealistic, and everyone considers me immature and always has. ("Childhood is fleeting: immaturity is forever." Is that from Calvin and Hobbes?) Innocent? Don't know about that. But dreaming is pretty much my constant state.

Agreed. I learned to live with gray hair long ago since this started early in life. However, finding my beard and -- worst of all -- eyebrows losing their color is as though nature would offend me.

After sitting for an hour or more, i'm having problems to move. It's kind of backache and my joints feel immobile like rusted.

Mentally i don't feel it's going wrong and hopefully it won't in the future. I can focus even better than, say, 30 yrs. ago.



That's me, and this unrealistic, immature dreamer is hurting in a way because the distance between the iridescent bird of paradise he's been for his lifetime, and the time chasing him, is getting smaller. But only once in awhile, and there might be new or newly discovered dreams offering refuge.

...it's never enough" (i like to quote Lilly Tomlin) but actually most people who really know me would say i'm naive.

i take what people say at face value despite understanding intellectually that the world is full of liars.

i trust the way things are done even though i can think of how to improve almost any part of it if someone would listen.

i can still while away an hour or ten hours at one of my interests without the least sense of responsibility or desire for accomplishment. if i make a poem or a painting i don't think of showing them to others, or doing anything careerlike with it; & it's only when i look back at the accumulation that i feel regret, because it's so much trouble to keep up with. (i wish someone would do that for me...)

it comes as a shock when i am stiff in the morning or i forget something that i never would have been able to, earlier. i'm still in okay shape because i have a physical job but i sometimes try to do something that is beyond my strength. i gave myself a hernia one time because i forgot that i wasn't 25 anymore.

but the worst thing about ageing, in my opinion, is to have to watch the deterioration of your parents. how could i not have expected this? and yet, i didn't.

The Lilly Tomlin quote reminds me of a quote from Miss Marple, that goes, in effect, "Yes, it's bad to think the worst of everybody, except that the worst is so often true."

I will admit I'm not dealing with the results of a lifetime either behind home plate or up in a tree or on a horse; but grey hair... I earned every grey hair on my head! Humans are programmed, I think, somewhere deep in the old hominid brain, to show if not respect at least some deference to a grey head, and I use it for all it's worth.

Hi, I think I qualify; I'm over 60, and constantly shocked by whatever most people just roll their eyes at. Every child murder bewilders me, attacks on women and girls...I just don't understand how or why humans CAN! I grew up in the 1950's and 1960's....I don't understand the decadence and cruelty that are tolerated and accepted...cope? I really don't think that I do..Sylkat

Sylkat, I react the same way to animal abuse. I grew up in the 50s and 60s as well, and I don't think cruelty is more tolerated than it was then, I think it's just more publicized. At least, I hope that's the case.

Dear Bat, I do hope you're right. I feel about animal abuse that the publicity, the exposure, especially pictures and video must continue, that people SHOULD use their camera-capable cell phones to document this whenever they see it! I'm glad you brought this up, it really pertains to 'naïveté. Until I saw footage of dogfighting, pictures of survivors, I had no comprehension of the hideousness, and certainly not the extent of it! Talk about naive! I am still amazed that hundreds, possibly thousands of men breed, train (torture), and then send dogs to die! And Mr. Vick is back in football, making millions...I AM naive; I would have thought no one would want him on their team..real naive, huh? Sylkat

The fact that Vick is back in football is... well, the only word that does it justice is "a shandeh." Hebrew for a shame, a disgrace, something so far south of tolerable only the word "shandeh" describes it.

But I'm told that Apsies have "a rigid sense of right and wrong." Well, if this is why I'm so furious about this, it just goes on my list of Reasons I Wouldn't Trade My Brain For A "Normal" One Ever.

another naive aspie here…

also not connected to my physical age… making it more and more difficult to connect to people… or find a new partner a year after the last one abused me and my trust… she was a BPD’er and effectively wrecked my life and my kids.

naive as i am… i still hope to find someone i can trust someday… and share a nice life with...

dreamer…

What is a BPD? (Blatantly Pushy Diva?). Sylkat

Bi-Polar Disorder.

Thank you, Bat, to be honest, I got a better picture from the old term, manic depressive. I could see that their personal roller coaster pulled them waaaay up, then pushed them waaaay down; that in the mid range, you could be talking to such a sweet, charming person, but at either extreme, things just don't make sense; totally different person! I knew someone years ago and learned a lot just seeing the heartbreak her disorder caused everyone around her. I learned that mental illness does not hurt only the one who is diagnosed. Sylkat.