'Good' guy behavior vs. obsequious behavior

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I want to caution you about this a little. As an aspergirl married to, I suspect, another aspie I want to say this so you never know our pain. I'll try hard not to let it rant and rage.

A sincere compliment now and then could have saved my 22 year marriage.

Don't think that just because she's a logical and pragmatic sensible woman of depth that she doesn't need to hear that her hair looks good as opposed to "it's shorter. I'll get used to it." There's only so much forgiveness for the condition that can be done, and there comes a point when a pointed effort to say something to make the other person feel good can say more about the love you feel than...making his favorite foods for dinner or bringing her coffee in bed. I think we can be ourselves and still make an effort to reach out and make the other people in our lives feel better with an honest compliment and a kind word--even if it feels contrived and awkward at first. These things are habits.

I'm doing my best to understand that so I can make it a habit myself. I just wanted to share that with you, because it seems like a little thing--but over the course of a long relationship those little things can add up to mean "I love you" or "I say I love you, but you really don't mean that much to me."

Stick that in your big, beautiful aspie brains and ruminate on it--so you don't have to experience it the hard way like me.

No, I completely agree. My biggest fear is that, because of what I've been through thus far, I have a lot of defense mechanisms putting the breaks on that and it will be difficult to get over - not a problem in the long term but that could end up easily breaking a relationship in the first few months if I'm not completely out-of-the-woods yet. I would like to think that I'll have plenty of times where it will flow naturally, I'm just really hoping that I end up with the right person where I feel safe sharing those sorts of expressions. Then again, if I wouldn't, I'd have to question why I'm in that relationship.

That'd just be stupid.

See, my view on all of this is that a lot of girls seem to do things like that just so guys offer to do whatever crap she wants. It's a form of manipulation.

I'm not saying this is always the case, but a lot of the time it is.

And if that wasen't what this girl was doing, then well, as you said, it's her own damn fault for wearing such stupid shoes. It's not your responsibility to pick her up and carry her, that's ridiculous.

For the record, I am nice, in fact I like cheering people up (girls in this context, but I say "people" because it's true of pretty much everyone in other situations) when most guys hate it because I really care about people, but this is something that really annoys me.