Not wanting to want it (but I can't help but want it)

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As a heterosexual male, I find myself desiring a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with a female. As an aspie, I find this incredibly difficult to accomplish this. Sure there are people, even females, who I can somewhat talk to, but my unfulfillable desire for female companionship hovers over me like a dark rain cloud, constantly reminding me of what I lack and might never have.

So I've made it clear that I want a relationship of some sort, but the thing is, I don't want to want it. I have these desires, but they taunt me so, and I would much prefer to extinguish these cursed flames of desire than to have them burn me even further.

Is there any way to get rid of my desires for female companionship and relationships. I ask as sincerely and desperately as possible, for carrying this unfulfilled need has become torturously hard to deal with.

I can't see how you can rid yourself of your male sex drive to be honest. I don't think it's possible. You could practice ignoring it until it subsides a bit (I remember speaking to a male friend about the male sex drive and he said this method had worked for him!!)

But if you're twenty, I would say things could change drastically for you very easily, very soon. That's really young. If you start working hard on it now, you could achieve the social skills you need to gain access to a relationship easily by the time you're twenty one or twenty two, or maybe much sooner.

I'm female, I'm twenty five, I'd love a relationship and I haven't had one yet because of my various problems, AS etc. being one of the biggies. I think you could achieve it much sooner than me.
Admittedly it is easier for women to survive without sex to some extent (although we may desire it just as much, I don't think we're as hardwired to want it all the time as men), but it's still crippling to want that emotional closeness and not have it. So I know how you feel.

Don't write yourself off.

The OP didn't say anything about his sex drive. He just said he was longing for a relationship.

I see, you want a relationship but know you can't handle one. Your solution to this would be to remove any thought process and desire for relationships.
Try as you might, human nature isn't always combatable my solution would be to seek out relationships and gain experience from them. With enough experience you will figure out whether or not you want to keep trying and become a better partner / paired with someone you get on well with or alternatively stay solo.

If your question is essentially how to rid yourself of the painful desire that you have for a female companion, I would maybe look to buddism and buddhist thought on the sources of suffering. It essentially says that we create suffering for ourselves with wanting things we don't have, things that don't exist, or attach ourselves to things we want to enjoy permanently, however the natural state of things is that they change.

One thing I have read about this attachment, either to a specific person or to a general desire for that person, is to think of the downside to that commitment, or them in general. They are only flesh, and will eventually die or leave you in some other way. Even the person you love most in this world (if there is one) may have been your enemy and killed you in a past life (this is part of the buddhist emphasis on reincarnation), so why are you clinging to them this time? These thoughts are not meant to harm any one but to enable you to use your logical mind to create a distance between yourself and whatever it is that you strongly desire.

hope that helps

Why not work on trying to fullfil your desire instead of trying to kill it?

It's pretty much impossible to kill your drive, it's hard coded into your DNA.

My solution to this was to accept the fact that it is (*for me*) pretty unlikely to have such a relationship, so I found things that filled my time pretty much completely, as a serious activity (eg. with a "perpetual" desire to get better in it) - I started playing technical styles of electric guitar, started learning programming, now I've added electronics to the mix, and with my heavy courseload in college, I've pretty much filled my timetable, and I can't really think about it. It takes some time to take root, but it can work.
It really depends on your situation, and what you really want to change, or what you are really unhappy about, in a way.

If you feel it is really important for you to have a relationship, then focus your energy on that, and find ways to improve yourself in areas you're not very good at (ease in conversation, or confidence, etc). You can use instructional books or videos for that, google around. There's a lot of books in psychology about conversation, that help understanding what the other person feels (our teachers often mention those - take a look at Psychiatric Interviewing: The Art of Understanding by Shawn Christopher Shea, for example). Things like this take time and practice, so it's only natural that there's no immediate results, or that it's very hard. Even if you don't use any materials, you can just try to use every encounter with other people as a learning experience, even try saying something you're not sure about and see if it's okay or not. That's how I manage, and I've gone a long way since 2 years ago.

If, on the other hand, you don't feel you'd like a relationship that much, but you can't ignore impulses you have, I think you need to learn to focus your attention on some activity where you need to work actively to be good at it, in order to improve. It can be anything, competitive or not - a game, studies, sports, whatever you're into. This has helped me a lot these past years too. Also, if you can't find anything like that in what you do, try out something different, you never know.

So whatever the case, I figure that if you're unhappy about something, don't wait for it to change by itself, because it almost never will. Either actively work on the issue, or find a way to live with it.
Hope this helps.

I suppose I inferred that from this paragraph:

So I've made it clear that I want a relationship of some sort, but the thing is, I don't want to want it. I have these desires, but they taunt me so, and I would much prefer to extinguish these cursed flames of desire than to have them burn me even further.


But fair enough. However, sex and love are pretty entangled. I didn't assume he was simply speaking in terms of libido, merely that it was a probable element in his unfulfilled desires (alongside romantic longing), as he puts it. I was trying to be helpful and thorough.

So how does this work for you? How easy does it get to ignore women and/or the subject itself? Because if I can look at an attractive woman or happy couple and feel little to nothing about it, that would be swell. I'm aware that that's unlikely, but i'll take anything close...

As of two years now, it works great. I have no difficulty interacting with people of the opposite sex without ever thinking about that sort of stuff. Before that, I was very depressive, and had a very rough time with that and many other things.
One thing is important to note - I have practically no social life, which doesn't mean I never see people, but I certainly don't solicit any contact. That's why I'm saying it depends a lot on the situation you are in. It depends a lot on what you want from your life, and how your mindset works.
imho, it has a lot to do with acceptance of the situation you find yourself in, and the goals you have set for yourself. So it's unlikely for you to find a girl with whom to have a lasting relationship - so then why worry about it? Mayhap it will happen one day, but there's no use waiting on it, unless you really want that (in which case you should do everything possible to get a relationship, etc). Avoid trains of thought that would lead you to feel depressed about it, if you catch yourself spiraling down that path, either snap out of it by stopping doing whatever made you go there ("Right! I'm not going to go there. Time do something different."), or instead, by repeating to yourself that there's no point in getting depressed about something you *chose* ("K, so why am I sad about this? It makes no sense, I *wanted* things to be this way!").
Accept the fact that things are the way they are, because you chose it to be so. That's mental work, and takes time (and usually takes a couple of realizations), but don't give up. Plus, like other posters said, a lot of this is amplified by puberty and raging hormone levels (it's NOT your fault, never accuse yourself of this, even if you find overconfidence is lame - stopping criticizing myself constantly has helped me a bunch), so it's really only a matter of time.
One more think you could (should) try is all that positive thinking stuff. If there's a lot of people rattling their bone-boxes about it, it because it (usually) works. I don't take it very far myself, but the least you can do, that could potentially help you a lot, is not criticizing yourself for the decisions you make on a daily basis, particularly if you obsess on making progress (in a general sense), and being "okay" with what you do ("So I couldn't do what I wanted today - it's cool, it's fine, it'll be a day off").

I'm not sure I'm explaining everything well, feel free to drop me a pm or something if you think I'm on to something. I myself am quite ok with the way things are going, and this has not been an issue for a fairly long time.

I sometimes have the same feeling but You cant fight the wave!At least thats what surfers tell me I would figure it would make a good metephor here.