The most complicated relationship I have ever been in.

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Hi everyone, this is my first post. I'm in high school, and near the end of 2013 I began to experience one of the most wonderfully complex journeys I have ever embarked upon. I'll try not to make this post too long, but the story is quite elaborate. Needless to say, I need help.

I started high school with a perfect mindset. I immediately started focusing on my schoolwork, grades, and athletics (I'm a long-distance runner), and I joined all of the extracurricular clubs and activities that I found interesting. I didn't do very well in the friend department from the offset, but it didn't bother me very much. I have desensitized myself from being bothered by lack of friendship.

Now, there's this girl. Being racist is not my intention, but I have to mention that she's Indian, as there are many cultural differences between us, me being a white atheistic ethnic Jew. She caught my attention immediately, not because of her appearance (I'm asexual anyway), but because of the sheer persona she constantly expounds. There is something about her... she's an incredibly positive person. Always optimistic, always happy--whenever I turn to look, there is a gigantic, brilliant smile on her face. I would find that irritating if it were fake, but it isn't. She always finds something to be happy about. And the volume of her voice amplifies that effect to a huge extent. And she's always talking. She loves talking.

She's also very intelligent, having taken Pre-Calc as a freshman, so we shared a lot of classes. I sort of ignored her for the duration of our first trimester, not wanting to get caught up in anything (which I think was wise), but come the second trimester, we started to have some friendly conversations in one of our classes. I also started to get to know many of her friends. One day a couple weeks before the end of the second trimester, we exchanged phone numbers. We never really texted yet. At that point in our relationship, my attraction was still healthy. I enjoyed her company, but I didn't feel particularly dependent on her, do you know what I mean? She could have walked out the door and I'd have moved on in a second.

One day, at the end of the day, something very interesting happened. The two of us were talking, and all of a sudden someone walked up to me, put a garland around me, and then walked away. It was weird, but I smiled at her, and I took it off and put it around her. Then she said to me, "You know, in my culture, putting a garland around someone is a marriage ritual." My mouth opened a little bit, and someone else standing idly nearby gave a shout of jubilation. He started to tell everyone what happened, and soon enough, an "inside joke" spread throughout the grade that Noah and Riya were married.

We played along to it. After school one day, she texted me (and her wording conspicuously sounded cautious, as though she wasn't sure what she was doing) about it. She just mentioned someone else mentioning it to her. We had a nice conversation by text that day. The next day we had another one. The next day we had another one. Soon enough, talking to her after school by text came to be one of my regular routines. You all know how important routines are to someone with Asperger's. We would always say good night to teach other at around 10:00 or 11:00. Both of us. That was another routine.

Things were so perfect at that time. We never moved past being friends, but like I said, I'm asexual, so a platonic relationship was all I could have desired anyway. After about a month and a half, we stopped texting and switched to Skype. She just has an iPod, so she'd been using Google Voice when we were texting, and when she heard I have Skype, she wanted to start using that. That was fine, everything continued normally. The whole "marriage" concept complicated things though. We would have romantic conversations quite frequently, and I could never be sure if it was all a joke to her or if she really did think of me romantically. Regardless, I responded in the same light.

Now, I'm not a person who is known for being happy. I'm not in touch with my emotions as a whole, but happiness least of all. I'm never really happy. Just living. But when I was talking to this girl... I was happy. It wasn't some vigorous, raging attraction; just a quiet, calm, peaceful contentment.

Near the middle of May, everything started to go horribly wrong. I started to get more dubious about what she really thought of me. I noticed that she always seemed more enthusiastic when talking to other people than to me. I also noticed that I was initiating most of our conversations. I tried a couple tests, seeing how long it would take us to have a conversation if I didn't start anything. My results frightened me. When we talked on Skype, she started taking hours to respond. The average message she would spend per day dropped to about 1 or 2. And she stopped saying good night! Some nights I would start getting depressed, cowering in bed arguing with myself. I started to convince myself that she actually found me annoying and never wanted to be friends with me in the first place.

A couple days before school ended, I finally decided to do something about it. We hadn't talked in about 3 days, for no apparent reason. I sent her a message on Skype saying, plain and simple, that (although I wanted to say this in person) if she didn't like me or want to be my friend, I wouldn't bother her or her friends anymore. And fearing the worst, I apologized I had done so at all.

The next day, she replied--saying very powerfully and bluntly that I was wrong, she really did like me, she apologized immensely for convincing me otherwise, and she wanted to continue being my friend if that was possible. I told her that she didn't need to apologize, it was my fault and not hers for being insecure. She insisted that she did need to apologize, and did so again. I thanked her and told her how much she means to me. I was reassured. Still a little shaky, but definitely reassured.

Then she went on a trip to Washington D.C. and a wedding in New Jersey, and when she got back, we started to talk again. Now keep in mind that there were still ~8 hour intervals between her responses and mine, but I reminded myself repeatedly that she has a lot of friends and probably a lot of plans over the summer. She was busy, and I had to respect that.

I departed for a 3 week trip to Europe shortly after. Before I left, she said she'd miss me, and I responded in kind. I was... satisfied.

When I got home from the trip, I ran to my room excitedly to tell her all about it (like how I fell off a mountain and a video was recorded of it). When I turned on my computer, I opened Skype to find that... she deleted me. She left no message at all. No explanation. No warning, no note, no, "Actually I hate you, bye," nothing. I freaked out. I sent a contact request, giving her the benefit of the doubt--maybe it was an accident. Rejected. I texted her. No response. Nothing. Nothing at all.

I talked to a few mutual friends (or acquaintances, I suppose) and they didn't have any information for me. They seemed to sympathize with me, but they could offer nothing further than "Good luck." I started writing out a letter. It took me WEEKS. It was a little long, but not that long. No longer than this forum post. Every day I edited it. I added things, I removed things, I rearranged things, I made it as flawless as possible. It wasn't exactly an apology letter, as I had no idea what to apologize for, but it summarized all of the doubts and worries I had during our relationship. I also talked about what drew me to her. I told her that I loved her and cared about her and accepted all responsibility and guilt for the failure of our friendship. I thanked her for everything and wished her farewell, acknowledging that she probably wouldn't respond or even read it. I sent it to her on my birthday, July 31st (Harry Potter's birthday; we both love Harry Potter), at night. I gave up when I saw that she didn't try to reach out to me on my birthday. (Alright, I lied. I was going to send it to her on my birthday, but I caved in on the 18th. I set my birthday as the mental deadline until which I would patiently wait for a response.) Well, I was right. She never did respond.

I have no idea what went wrong. I obviously have very weak social skills, but this seems extremely off even to me. What could have possibly driven her to spontaneously cut off all contact with me, waiting until I left the country, just weeks after she assured me in black and white that she really did want to be my friend? Was everything a lie? Did I kill her uncle in my sleep? What in the fiery pits of hell did I do?

Thank you.

TL;DR: Intelligent and asexual aspie starts high school, does everything right, doesn't make friends, doesn't care, meets Indian girl who shows signs of mutual attraction, falls head over heels for her, things go well, contact is established via SMS, 1 1/2 months of perfection and happiness, outside communication switches to Skype, progress continues, suddenly stops, insecure aspie starts doubting everything, becomes depressed, finally confronts girl about not truly liking him, she assures him she does, he is content, summer vacation, communication slows down regardless, he accepts this, he goes on 3 week trip out of country, before leaving she says she'll miss him, when he gets back he finds she's deleted him on Skype leaving no message or explanation, he confirms not a mistake, tries texting, she doesn't reply, he asks her friends, they don't know anything, he waits until his birthday, no contact is made, he sends long formal letter to her, he is absolutely despondent having formed an irrational dependence on the girl.

Well, where you think things went wrong is probably where they did go wrong, but your mistake is rationalizing her behaviour. There is no reason for it. She is responsible for herself and you are of yourself.

Apologizing to her when she was in the wrong is going to signal to others that you are weak. She then responded to you to keep you on the hook and keep you interested. This is a classic tactic of the type of girl that doesn't really like you, but enjoys the ego boost of the attention you give her. After a while, she just then decides she has had enough of you and treats you like you were nothing anyway. But she may come back at some point to see if she can still get a boost from you (below could indicate that).



Then when you were gone on vacation and nowhere near your computer, she deletes you from Skype with no explanation. She is guilty of disrespecting you and being inconsiderate maybe. However, your whole story indicates that you never told her how you felt until it was too late. It also tells me that she never really respected you after a certain point. Forget who else is in the picture and how busy she is, she decided you didn't deserve respect. Perhaps she might have also thought that you only wanted attention as well since you never told her how you felt about her.

As for social skills. She is in the same boat as you and is trying to figure out how to deal with things and other people respectfully. It's not just you here if you want to believe that. I believe she demonstrated poorer social skills here.

Everything you said makes sense to me... except for this. Realize that she is a very well-liked person; I know she has made passing references to formerly being quiet and shy years ago, but now, everyone is her friend. I can't even name them all. If her social skills were poor, then how could she possibly socialize with everyone around her so feasibly? Even those she has clear distaste for (and she has named them to me) adore her. And trust me, she has enough people to boost her ego without me.



Or this. Like I said, that peculiar inside joke about marriage complicated a great many things. We did have many conversations about our feelings for each other, but it's fairly possibly that our minds were in two different places. I was thinking about the real world, but if she was thinking about the joke, then wouldn't everything I'd said simply be interpreted as a joke? If so, the problem is clarity....

The first part of your post confirms that I have made many mistakes though. To be perfectly honest, when I was acting apologetic, I wasn't actually feeling so. I'm a fairly abrasive person (mentally, but not physically, lol), so my natural reaction was to accuse her of lying to me, which is exactly what she did. In a huge way. The reason I'm so confused about her lying to me is because of her religion. She's a very religious Jain, and she talks about it all the time (since nobody here has ever heard of it) and honesty is very important to the tenets of her faith.

So the natural advice I foresee is: move on. Sadly, I don't think that's possible. First of all, I'm going to be stuck with her until I graduate. We'll always share several (interactive) classes, and we're in many of the same clubs. So the trick is to desensitize myself from her presence, but I can't do that. I'm an obsessive person. I tried reducing the effect of that in our relationship, which is what led to me wrongfully apologizing to her, but I can't do it on a grand scale. I think about her all the time. My best and only friend moved to Israel 5 years ago, and I still think about him every second of every day. I can't control my thoughts about people I care about. The only option I have is to fix this with her somehow. It's the only way.

Mistakes? well... rationalizing another person's behaviour and apologizing when there is no need to. Not sure where I said there were other mistakes other than you may have told her how you felt when it was too late. I guess if you didn't then reassurance that you still like her was needed. As for rationalizing behaviours: Accept that people take responsibility over their own behaviour or they don't, and I would personally rather be around the former.

You didn't feel like apologizing, and I know I wouldn't want to here either. I remember how pathetic I felt when I apologized to people I did no wrong too.

And I still stand firm by her lack of social tact in this case and my age difference between us is the reason why I say that (I don't waste time with people who give the silent treatment out of nowhere like that). Just because one is popular and well liked and can communicate well with others doesn't mean they aren't going to be rude or disrespectful at any point to anyone. Her deleting with no warning was rude, and so was the no response she gave to your text message. The reason why is because there is no closure for you, and she likely isn't even giving this any thought and seemingly doesn't care what you think or feel about the lie she told you. And younger people are usually more sensitive in being called out on their lies from what I have observed as well.

But if you are abrasive like you said you are, she probably wanted the clean break without the mentally abrasive attitude you might give her. And giving you reasons as to why would have likely resulted in a bunch of questions she likely wouldn't have been able to answer or didn't want to. You two are still young and she likely doesn't have any better ways to deal with this at this stage in her life. That is the impression i get from your last response.

And the most important points I have: What if she doesn't want to fix this with you? Or what if she believes there is nothing to fix between the two of you? You will have to find a way to control the obsessive urges one way or another.

That's my worst fear: that despite how much time and energy I have spent pondering and analyzing this, she isn't thinking about me at all. At times that seems realistic, but at others it doesn't, because she truly did express myriad gratuitous sentiments towards me. Why is understanding people so difficult? I have never been able to comprehend her opinions of me. Some days it felt like she was infatuated, and others it seemed she was just... getting by.



I agree. But I want to know her motive for being rude. Is it far-fetched to spontaneously call off a friendship with someone because a general statement such as, "After a lot of thought, I have decided I don't like this person?" I can't tell. To me, it seems more reasonable that somewhere along the line I made one specific mistake that led to it. But I can't figure out what that might have been, because everything seemed fine between us before I left!



I generally fought against most of abrasive attitude in our relationship. I don't think it came out very much and I don't think she would have foreseen it as an issue. And I'm not arbitrarily aggressive or anything like that, I'm just generally not afraid of conflict if it's inevitable.



Controlling my obsession... that's the ticket, isn't it? The question of whether she doesn't want to fix it depends on why it broke in the first place. That's what it all comes down to, in my opinion. But she won't talk to me. And after you mentioning the fallacious nature of wrongfully being apologetic, I'm beginning to think that letter I sent to her is going to count against me too.

Sending a letter to someone under those circumstances is tricky. There is not guarantee that she will read it either, or what will happen if she does read it. Depending on what you say in that letter or e-mail, things could go well or not so well when for whatever reason the two of you do speak again.

I know. I sent it on July 19th, so I'm 100% sure she is not going to respond to it. I acknowledged that in the E-Mail. I don't know if she read it, but I hope she did. I know that she removed me from her Google+ circles, so it's possible it will get sent straight to spam if she ordered it to, coming from me...

Yeah?it's time to cut this one loose. In my experience, this kind of thing means there's a bf in her life, things are either amazingly serious and there's a future in it, she's got friends who hate you and have been talking crap behind your back, or the guy she's with is a possessive lunatic who won't allow her any sort of contact with other men. I was once involved with a girl who was sort of wishy-washy like that. We got together again a year or two later. The relationship took a good serious turn before she went gold-digger on me. I lost my own senses at some point after that and turned stalker?after which I realized she was distracting me from finishing college, so I just quit calling her. Out of the blue she calls me up to see how I'm doing. lol Yeah? She'd call me up every now and then while I was between schools. I'd make conversation, but I didn't put any initiative into contacting her. She eventually married, divorced, slept around, got pregnant, married some rich dude, and moved far, far, away. We'd randomly meet up by accident, but we barely spoke two sentences to each other when we did. I'd say we're on friendly acquaintance terms now, but we haven't spoken now in years. And you know what? I don't miss her one bit!

Get out there and just start meeting women, make some friends, and just see who out there really enjoys hanging out with you. Don't waste any time putting this behind you.

Hmm... That's an interesting perspective on my situation. I don't have enough information on my own to come to any conclusions, but yours still doesn't seem very relatable to me. I really don't think she's met anyone, and her friends seem to like me--I still talk to some of them even now. And they always talked about me positively behind my back, as I was told. Neutral people would tell me how her clique was always rambling on about my eyes (which are apparently quite impressive).

You have given me a lot to think about though. If she met someone else she's interested in and was approached by them, then maybe deleting me on Skype with no message was a frantic response; like she was afraid to tell me.

Understood?I think I forgot to mention that every time she'd break up with me, both times, she was very mysterious about it. Everything would be BEAUTIFUL and then in the blink of an eye she'd be hooked up with some other guy and she'd cut off all contact with me. So, yeah, that would piss me off. Now, let me make it very clear I do not victim-blame when it comes to harassing behavior, domestic violence, and the like. I'm also the kind of guy who respects boundaries when a woman says "back off." It was, like, I woke up one day, looked in the mirror, and asked myself "What freakin' happened to me? Why am I so obsessed with this chick? Why do I keep calling her all hours of the night and showing up everywhere I know she hangs out?" I've gotten bent out of shape over girls before, but never downright psychotic. I finally had to tell myself to just grow up. If that's the way she wants to play it, it's time to get far away for the sake of my own sanity. Once the drama was gone, she started calling me, and eventually I played those conversation as though I didn't care. And that was the only way I could ever get to her the way she got to me. I have no idea how I ended up there, but something had to change before somebody ended up dead or in jail. It's embarrassing to think about now. But repeatedly trying to reach her through social media, Skype, text, email, snail mail, etc. is not helping, and her lack of a response is only going to feed these negative emotions you're having.

You're not going to get the closure you're looking for any more than I ever will. But you'll also realize that kind of closure is really not the most important thing in life. The closure you really need is in closing this chapter of your life. And that's really all I can say about that.


Who knows, right? There's no law saying you owe anyone an explanation. If it's over, it's over, and no explanation is needed. I'm just the kind of person who will shut up and leave you alone sooner if I at least know what's going on. I believe in working things out in the relationship if they can be worked out. It just took me a long time to realize that when things get to that point in a relationship, the other person doesn't want to work anything out. Which is so stupid because I've been on the other side of that conversation before. It's like we don't mind breaking up with people, but we'll all but kill someone if the other person is the one breaking up. So nobody can force anyone to grant that kind of closure. But it's always good to communicate a breakup in clear, unequivocal terms.

Speaking of which, sounds like she's being quite unequivocal about it with you?I just think there's a better way to handle it and the way she's going about it is totally dumb and insensitive. All you can do is refuse to ever try to speak to or see her again. Don't even try to contact her through friends. Keep your end of the breakup nice, neat, and clean. You will not be trying to win her back, and if she ever wants to talk, she knows where to find you.

Well, that sounds familiar. Altogether, it seems like you handled the end of your relationship very well. You went through a rough spot, and you overcame it. Mine is more private though. I haven't done more than would seem safe in terms of trying to reach her since it happened. I have essentially been communicating with a mental version of her.



So far, the only attempts at communication I have made since returning from my trip and seeing that she'd deleted me were sending a contact request to make sure it wasn't an accident, and sending that letter I mentioned. I haven't done anything else, because I'm deliberately trying not to come off as a stalker, and because I want stand my ground against this. The next time I see her, which will be on August 20th, I intend to appear as confident and unbroken as possible. All of my emotional suffering has been solely internal. One of her friends who I talked to about it actually offered to talk to her about it, and I refused, because I think it would be absolutely pathetic to have someone else repair my relationship. I would certainly not be impressed if someone tried to repair their friendship with me through a 3rd party.

But ultimately, my long-term goal is reestablish our friendship. I can't possibly describe in words how much she means to me. Her attitude towards everything is inspiring.

Right. You wouldn't dare try to repair the relationship through a 3rd party. Heck, don't even try to repair it at all. It's irreparable. All you want to do through a 3rd party is just get information just because you want to know what's going on. You're not trying to manipulate anyone. You're just trying to mentally get the big picture of what happened.

Sounds to me like since you know you'll see her on the 20th, you'll eventually get the full scoop. If it were me (it's not, but IF), a simple "can't explain it, don't want to talk about it?just don't want to see you again" is fine and dandy. But just shutting you out like that, like you're some kind of psycho and you haven't even done anything? I think that's messed up. I couldn't be with a girl like that. I don't care how inspiring she is, I don't have the time to waste.

But that's just me. lol

What I know for sure is that the feasibility of fixing it won't be known until I do eventually talk to her. A conversation is inevitable, because as I mentioned, we're stuck with each other until we graduate. Every day. There's nothing either of us can do about that.



Will I get the full scoop? I sort of doubt that. We're going to be with a lot of other people (it's a training session for this class we will be facilitating next year), so it wouldn't be hard for her to just ignore me the whole time. I agree with you about one thing though: I would be a lot less hurt if she had simply told me she didn't want to be friends anymore. I would still be hurt, but not as much. I can get over something that's set in stone. Just cutting off all contact in a seemingly perfect moment without a word though... that's different. And she waited until that particular time to do it too. So was it planned, or did she just wake up one day and decide, "I'm going to delete Noah today?" I hope I will be able to find out. This is why I hate the social world as a whole. Why can't everything just be rational?

Most everything IS rational. The trouble is we can't see inside each others' heads to understand how it's rational, nor would we accept it as rational even if we understood it.

She doesn't "owe" you anything. Shutting someone out is just mean, though, and it's going to trigger a lot of emotions that's going to negatively impact your own rationality. You're not seeing things with a clear head at the moment, for instance, and if you were to keep going with it, you'd eventually lose it. If you want a straight answer, and you've probably already thought of this, just a simple "hello" next time you see her is all you need to do. If she doesn't run away, you can make small talk. If that works, you can ask her if she's feeling ok, and btw, what happened? You need to understand that most likely you won't get a straight answer and you need to be willing to accept that. And you don't need to approach her with it ever again. You'll get moved out of the friend zone and into the creep zone, and the police are only a phone call away. And I know that because I've had to deal with a love interest's crazy, stalker, ex-bf before. I was a courtroom witness on that one, and there were enough people with consistent stories that the trial was over in less than half an hour and I never even got called to the stand. I'm not saying that's how you're going to end up, but that's where this can go. I'd hate to see that happen to you just because you didn't get the closure or answers you wanted.

Oh, and btw my gf I mentioned?she made it perfectly clear that the relationship was over, she didn't want to work things out, that there was no longer a future there. You don't strike me as the kind of person who has issues like this guy. But we also live in a world in which a man can go from zero to psychotic in a fraction of a second and all it takes is a girl labeling him as such. Tread carefully.

Perhaps she got sexually frustrated and she tried to find someone else

Well, ok?let's keep this in perspective. Most of us are adults, and he did mention he is still in high school. I'm guessing I'm twice his age, so admittedly a lot of things aren't going to apply. It's way different in high school when you don't really have that much freedom.

Another possibility: You do come from different cultures and ideologies. No offense, but based on some things you've mentioned (nothing personal), I wouldn't let you date my daughter. It's a family values thing, and I don't think you'd be happy hanging out with all of us. You seem like a cool guy, but you'd be happier elsewhere.

What I would NOT stop you from doing would being friends with her and us. But even if you were a guy l felt would be compatible with her and our family, I'd STILL give you a VERY difficult time about it. You'd be hanging out with all of us?a LOT. And we'd be hanging out with your parents?a LOT. Not because we hate you or are overprotective of our daughter, but because that's just the kind of people we are. But we also care that our children are focused on education and career before getting into serious relationships that risk distracting them from more important things.

If we were remotely suspicious of any guy she was spending time with and we did texts, Skype, etc., we would probably make her delete him and stop all contact immediately. If we thought a guy was manipulating her in any way, we would put an immediate halt to the relationship.

Harsh? Strict? Maybe. But that's just who we are. We can't stop her from doing whatever when she's an adult, but hopefully certain behavioral patterns are instilled firmly enough she knows how to succeed on her own without getting hung up on a bad relationship.

Again, I'm not judging you, just letting you know from a parent's perspective what it's like, how we see things in my family. Have you considered maybe that the parents have something to do with it? How well do you know her parents, and how well do you get along with them?