Anyone relate to this kind of desire?

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I was a person who desired OLDER women when I was young.

I still can find an older woman to be attractive.

I like "cougar-aged" women too, but in a quite different sort of way that isn't interchangeable. It's more of a mother-son sort of thing in that case, where the woman nurtures the development of my mind and is proud of me rather than invigorating and inspiring me.

This is one of those times when my words don't feel exactly right, but I'll try.

Wow... middle school? My first reaction to those two words, in association with adult sexuality, is one of fear with a touch of... I can't quite find the word. It's like, the concept repels me on a gut level. This is so, even though you do clarify some ethics later. A middle school mentality is dangerous if it goes beyond the humor and the freedom/innocence to goof around as adults. The people involved have to be playing. They can't be... seriously in that mentality because that would compromise their ability to make free choices and/or cope emotionally.

For what it's worth, I think the adult nature of their connection is one of the most endearing facets of your story. It's not sappy, conventional romance, and it's not eroticism for its own sake. They seemed to have a deep understanding of each other that allowed them to just be, whatever that meant in the moment. It meant child's play just as much as it meant adult exploration of creativity and paradigm. They connected out of a deeply unmet need to be understood.



But again, how far can you go with that before it becomes harmful or even predatory? You have to have enough emotional development to make decisions that would be right for you in the long term, and so would she. It sounds like you would want to, and you would want her to, look back on the experience with fondness, not fear, or guilt, or overwhelming confusion.



Interesting. That's beyond my experience. But either way, the scene took place during daylight hours when kids would be there, and she later mentioned going while the kids were there.



Adults can still goof around, make a childish joke, tease each other. They can be curious and flirtatious at the same time also. I laughed as I read, and I'm an adult. My adult friends have sometimes made similar jokes because they can still be funny in the right context.



I agree with all of that. I would add though that because you wrote her to have such a rich and intense inner life, it stands to reason that she'd eventually need more emotional support than a detached person could provide. Her physical sensations could get very overwhelming for her also. Even assuming he could accept her intensity without judgment, he wouldn't understand, and she'd sometimes find herself feeling emotionally alone. If you wrote a novel about these characters, I think that his challenge and growing understanding would be part of it.



I hope you can find enough adult features attractive to consider an adult woman.



True, these traits are undervalued. But not among creative people.



Very true. It can't be easy for people to be alone with these feelings though, so I hope you find a way toward adult sexual attraction soon. You did mention that was a possibility with the right kind of girl.

I think you may be misunderstanding because you are attributing typically-developing sexuality to these characters. I definitely don't mean a middle-school level of responsibility for their actions or any kind of inability to practice safe sex.

In the conventional way of developing, it seems that people develop a desire for full adult sexual acts including penetration, and a capacity for an adult level of "falling in love", before they develop the cognitive maturity to protect themselves from pregnancy, diseases, and maybe also getting over-attached to people who exert peer pressure to do irresponsible things. I can see why nobody would want to carry this into adulthood.

The characters in this story in some sense have the exact opposite "problem"--which isn't a problem as much as potentially a blessing as long as they date others like themselves. They have a fully-developed capacity for abstract thought, and full knowledge of how pregnancy happens and all that. However, their sexual needs are more on a juvenile level--they like things like wrestling, tickling, and playing with each other's bodies rather than full sex. While I'm assuming they also have the capacity for crushes, possibly obsessive ones (I know I do), they don't fall in love with the same range of emotion as adults.

The problem people like us face is that people either are not attracted to us because we don't seem grown up enough in the way we flirt, date, etc., or they are interested but expect us to be more adult in terms of sexual acts than we want to and expect a depth of devotion and attachment that is beyond what we are capable of experiencing. The characters in this story bond in part over being misunderstood in this way. Of course, this means there is the possibility that a typically-developing reader will not be able to make sense of this. I think this is a function of trying to explain to a typical person a type of sexuality that may be quintessentially neurodiverse. I don't think you can draw some kind of parallel "X age in neurodiverse sexuality corresponds to Y age in typically-developing sexuality".



Too often people seem to describe a nebulous, quasi-religious idea of some nonspecific trouble that people who aren't adult in their way of responding emotionally risk having in a relationship. If you want me to address possible pitfalls, please be EXACTLY explicit in what risks you hope they will avoid.



It depends on what you mean by "detached". I, and by analogy the male character in this story, am not dispassionate or stoic. The beauty of certain scientific ideas has a very compelling romance to it, that may even exceed what typical people find in the relationship kind of romance. So the male character is intensely curious, seduced by the beauty and intricacy of the universe, and feels a real connection to the vastness of nature (one that might be called "spiritual" if he believed in that).

He is actually probably higher than she is on a scale of overall intensity, since she has the ability to calmly absorb what's around her. What he doesn't have is much of a connection to the "here and now" and to his bodily presence. That's what she brings to the "table".

It's also true that as both characters grow older, they will probably need the nurturing of a more grounded and supportive partner. At the time of the story, they are too young for that though. That's why I have her say that if she ever were to start a family, she'd see herself doing it with a maternal other woman.



Yes I can, it's just that the adults I'm attracted to on all levels (physical as well as emotional and intellectual) are quite few and far between. Typical children are lacking something too though--so I've never had a strong romantic interest in an actual child, as opposed to an adult who comes across like one.

Awesome, so I can put aside the fear/creep factor of "middle school" and discuss the characters outside that context. Because there were mentions of physical attraction to an adolescent appearance, I thought of the most vulnerable potential elements of middle school sexuality and felt fear.



That's certainly the stereotype anyway, although I wouldn't generally call their emotional attachments adult love. Then again, I can't know for sure. I didn't date until college, and I didn't hang out with anyone in middle or high school who said they fell in love. Adults I've spoken with who had adolescent dating experiences call it "puppy love." Either way though, the factors you describe would make them vulnerable to adult exploitation, so I'm glad you weren't referring to a desire to be with people who display these characteristics.

Another characteristic I'd add to that middle school/adolescent list is that they're still figuring out what's right and wrong and why, in a big way. They're making choices they'll regret later, and they're vulnerable to coercion in many forms. They're also figuring out what they believe and value, and how those ideas might differ from the values of their family or peer group. All of these characteristics put them at a different stage of development. Would you agree?



Is that why you used tickling in the context that you did, saying that the girl had a different reaction than is typical when the guy touched her? As for the range of emotion, you wrote the girl to have intense feelings, so I would assume that she'd be capable of all the various states of love. The guy, maybe not. He has a creative side, a sense of humor, and the ability to show physical affection, but it's not clear what he feels emotionally in his life. You do make it clear that they both feel safe and understood though.

The development stage you describe here isn't like the middle school stage above.



Yes, you do show that in the story, except for the part about love I mentioned earlier. Your characters don't have the social experience for the dating and flirting games, as they're too disconnected and show little interest anyway. Their sexual preferences are atypical, narrower in some ways, partly because they haven't gone through the process of exploring their sexuality. It's safer and less complicated for them that way, because they don't have to deal with all the misunderstandings, performance anxiety, and all the other crap.



I think that's why certain childish characteristics seem off, and that makes people think of pedophilia and related behavior that takes advantage of vulnerability. The suggestions I made would preserve the childlike innocence/wonder/playfulness of the story, while leaving no doubt about the characters' adult status.



I had examples in mind, but they apply to adolescents as you described above, or to adults who have trouble with abstraction or impulse control or who develop attachments too quickly. It doesn't sound like you or your characters are drawn to the people I'm describing.



You could add a sentence or two that shows his emotional reaction to the beauty of the universe maybe. Are you describing awe, or the sort of appreciation for beauty that takes your breath away, or a driving passion for science/discovery, or all three?



Do you mean like dissociating because his feelings or sensory perceptions are too overwhelming? If so, that's not clear in the story because you didn't share that he ever had such a reaction, and you didn't have him empathize with her intensity. He did not judge her as weak or irrational or defective or whatever though, as some stoics might have, so that's a point in his favor.



So this is their first but not their last. That's realistic, not typical for romantic fiction.

When you say "right and wrong", do you mean in a sense of how to behave ethically, as in not stealing or cheating, not hurting someone on purpose, etc.? or do you mean in the context of some kind of abstract and culturally constructed moral code?[/quote]



Yes, I guess if you wanted to use Freudian terms (which I don't believe in anyway) they are more in a "phallic" than a "genital" stage, i.e. their body parts are objects of curiosity and something they "fiddle" with and explore more than things they bring together in conventional sex.



I've kind of suspected this may be the case--I've never been strongly attracted to actual middle schoolers, yet in terms of the kind of things I'm looking to discover about my sexuality I feel more at that level.



I'd strongly take issue with the "narrower" comment. I'd say that typical adult preferences are actually narrower, as they sort of "feed" in a "funnel-like" fashion toward "actual" sex, which in turn serves a rather narrow function as a kind of "glue" for a socially-sanctioned, conventional relationship that looks almost like a family unit even when it doesn't involve actually having children. This more inchoate, exploratory sexuality is filled with all sorts of potential for discovery about one's own body, the opposite sex's body, and expressions of creativity. It's almost a "synesthetic" type of sexuality, not something defined that ties people down somehow. Though maybe that makes no sense to you.



Like a combination of awe and driving passion for discovery. The kind of intense drive for meaning and creation that, at its unhealthy extreme, leads some artists to stay up around the clock with coffee (or stronger ) trying to perfect a masterpiece.



No, I mean that he almost finds it hard to feel truly human, in the sense of a down-to-earth embodied being. I think a lot of us aspies who are hypo-sensory feel this way.

If there is a dark side to this kind of relationship, it's not unwanted pregnancy or joining a riffraff crowd or anything like that, it's an almost Faustian one (if I understand the meaning of that term correctly) where the girl's budding creative/feminine/bodily/whatever energies are sucked out and completely subsumed into the fire of his need to unlock the answers of the universe. But in a more balanced form, she provides him some kind of embodiment while contributing intellectually and he shows her how to reach farther in her pursuit of truth and understanding (as well as applying his passionate knowledge-seeking to figure out how to push her sexual "buttons", undeveloped and juvenile as they may be). That's why I made sure to give the girl her own creative projects, and while she is seduced/inspired by his ideas, she's not so in awe of his greater scientific understanding that she gives up her own path of discovery to feed his.



What do you mean not typical?

I'm talking about ethical behavior. Culture plays into that though. For example, if you give someone a gift, there's a cultural context in which the recipient will interpret the gift, so there are ethics for gift-giving in different contexts and cultures.

Sexuality is more individual, but there are cultural and religious contexts there also that people have to respect if they interact with someone who identifies with those contexts. For example, your characters don't violate each other's boundaries. They ask questions and feel each other out to see what would be acceptable.

Actually, I wish more people would be so direct in this process. My guess is that the people who are very indirect don't feel the same sort of anxiety about correctly sending or picking up on those cues that I do. Now I have to figure out how much of my anxiety is justified.



Wow, I get that! "Narrow" wasn't the right word on my part then, just not fully formed or defined. There's freedom in that exploration process actually. Also, I feel that if people could approach each new relationship with more exploration and less expectation, there'd be less anxiety, heartache, and misunderstanding. You don't need an undeveloped sexuality to go back to basics.

Wow, now that I've more clearly defined what terrifies me about relationships, maybe people can actually help me deal with it--learn to find peace within all the uncertainty. Thanks for opening the door for me to express all of that.



I'm misunderstanding something. Wouldn't his feelings and sensations be less intense by definition? Speaking to my earlier question, if you were to write a later chapter, how would he react, and would he understand, if she expressed intense emotions or felt intense sensations?



I think you convey that balance quite well. OTOH, I also think that his much more substantial education and experience would probably make them feel quite different from each other. It helps that she has talents though. Also, I don't feel that sharing intense experiences with a trusted friend drains energy over the long term. On the contrary, the sharing makes the experiences more powerful or meaningful. But then again, maybe I feel that way because I'm an extrovert. She's strong and assertive, so I feel that she would quickly point out when it gets to be too much anyway.



It's not formulaic romance. You know, all those stories of immediately falling madly in love, breaking up, and then magically getting back together for the wedding the same day. LOL. I would actually read or watch more romance if I knew of more unique and meaningful stories. I find your story to be unique and meaningful.

I'm glad you recognized that.



I agree, or rather I would say that they are more socialized into understanding those cues. It may actually be harder for them to express feelings/preferences that are "non-standard". I think that is where some of the uneasiness about alternative sexualities comes from.



Sensations (in the physical sense) yes. As to feelings, I think it's really hard to compare. He feels very intensely about ideas and the connections between them, about the beauty of the universe and nature. She has some of that too, due to her rich inner world, but she also has the capacity to deeply feel things through her body as well. You could think of it as him having both feet in his imagination, and her having one foot in her imagination and one in experience. Very roughly though--she's still considerably more disconnected from reality than the average NT.



Oh, he sure hopes she does. His sexuality is based around his curiosity about her body, but also around his need to take her body on a wonderful sensory "ride", of sort of channeling his creative energy through her body. Hers is based on curiosity about HIS body, and also around a need to receive sensation. In that way she's meant to be in a way "submissive", though not in a tie-me-up sort of way--maybe "receptive" is the better word.

I see him reacting to her greater embodiment by feeling more human himself. I don't mean for her to be a "typical woman" (if there is such a thing) who is easily hurt by sexuality unless her partner feels in some really specific way about her. Nor do I see her having the superficiality of a member of the "hookup culture". I see her as being like a curious child, very interested in exploring her body and others', but with a greater capacity for understanding.