Are we unable to intuitively know if we are in love?

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Sometimes lack of availability makes someone seem more desirable, that goes for men and women, Aspies and NTs alike. You deserve someone who wants to be with you, without them being pressured, even if that pressure so es from them. Trust me, when you stop needing every relationship to work out, it's so liberating.

I just saw this reply. Maybe it's a good idea to make a rule for yourself that you never make relationship decisions under pressure.

Yea, in this last one here, that was a big issue that I had tbh. And it led to making some impulsive decisions that did not end well.

That goes for most of us, and surely most NTs too, I definitely learned the hard way.

The whole problem is love isn't something to be understood nor any other feeling is. You don't understand sadness, anger or fear - you just feel it. Love it the same.

Love is the warm felling you feel when you are looking at, hear, touch or think about a specific person. Love makes all her faults "cute" in your eyes, you feel intense longing to be with her even if it's just looking at her from a distance (if you are also longing to have sex with her it can still be love but mixed with lust, love and lust are separate feelings that happen to go together sometimes). You don't want to lose her, you want her to belong to you forever - but you want her to be happy.
For me love can be compared to the feeling of free fall, like when I just jumped from a swing and "float" in mid air - my body just feels that light and soft, as if I could fly if I jumped just a little bit. It's a happy, calm, pleasant feeling.

You might have not experienced it towards another person yet but if you have had special interest in your life you probably already know how love feels like. It's the same feeling you feel when thinking about and interacting with your special interest, whatever it is.

And as for your gf - people with BPD are not good partners to anyone, especially aspies. Stay away in the future. They are way too sensitive and you need to be an extreme empath to be able to interact with them without pushing their buttons. And its understandable you couldn't feel the love while she was asking you those questions. Natural reaction to them is anger, worry and confusion and those feelings are able to cover the feeling of love, making it invisible for a while. What you do in such situations is trying to remember if the warm feeling happened with the person recently and answer according to it.

If you recall the feeling of love happens a lot you say you love them.
If someone makes you feel angry, worried and confused more times than they make you feel the love it means the relationship doesn't have any sense anymore. It means you still love them - but the relationship hurts.
And if you recall there was no feeling of love recently but a lot of painful feelings - it's about time to tell the truth and break the relationship or lie to her and admit to yourself its all about sex and social expectations.

Sometimes it's difficult to recall the feeling of love when you are angry etc. though. So it's wise to give yourself some time to calm down before answering - unless you are already at the point you don't mind loosing the person and know you won't regret it.

BTW. I also didn't understand love at first (aside of that I had trouble understanding any other feelings too, a therapist had to teach me how to name them because I could only say I feel bad, neutral or OK).

It took me 2 years of being in love to realize what's going on. I simply thought it's curiosity+friendship before that. It would probably be easier if she was a guy though - I just didn't know love between 2 girls is possible so the possibility of it being "love" wasn't on my mind at all. I heard about lesbians before but I thought they are perverts and it's all about sex(=lust). I learned it isn't the case and same sex love can be pure and caring after watching some law documentary in TV that ended in a coming out of the suspect, that proved him innocent. Both him and his crush were normal guys you see everyday in school or the bus and their relationship was clearly love, not simple lust.

Last edited by Kiriae on 20 Nov 2017, 3:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think it would be fair to say we can understand it on our level internally. What happens externally isn't always paralleled.

I have confused lust with love. I’ve also confused dysfunction with love. I “love” humans more when I’m not around them. When I’m around them, I often am in fight/flight/freeze hyper vigilance mode, which hasn’t always been a “bad” thing, but it is exhausting. Zzz-zz

Though perhaps my personal experience could be better attributed to c-ptsd than asd. Asd doesn’t make it easier

Another thing that's important to point out is aspie guys' tendency to "fall in love" (read: get infatuated) with the first girl who shows interest in them. Which makes it very easy to confuse being in love with being overjoyed at having a girl finally like you. Lack of experience and misinformation from TV create a perfect storm for confused feelings.

I know I fell into that trap myself, my first year of college. I met her in class, asked her out, and she said yes. Especially considering that I didn't have a car at the time. And the last girl I asked out, my senior year of high school, broke our date when I told her I didn't have a car. This girl, on the other hand, was fine with riding a bus.

Today, I talk about being love with her, but I'm speaking retroactively, because that's what I felt back then. In reality, I was probably just overjoyed that a girl actually liked me, because I was very unattractive and didn't have a car. Her attractiveness level was similar to mine, which made the idea of her liking me all the more believable.

Here’s a short list of girls with bipolar disorder Lily Allen, Sia, Carrie Fisher, Linda Hamilton, Demi Lovato, Mary Lambert, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse...
Mergh

If you can spend your entire life with them and not feel like that was a big waste of time, I'd say that's love.

Unfortunately you can't know how you'll feel at the end of your life when you first start dating someone.

This seems like more of an alexithymia problem, which not everyone on the autism spectrum has. I'm actually quite in touch with my emotions.

Honestly, I think that thats part of it. I'm not all the way on the spectrum for that, because i felt the emotions at certain times, and it felt great, but only under pressure i didnt. I'm getting treatment for it. I think part of it is also our obsessive nature - i used to obsess over my emotional reaction to uncomfortable things she said, a typical Aspie intensity.

I feel love deeply and expresss it. No one felt it back though.

Oh gosh, I've dated a girl who I suspect had BPD one time, and my situation was very similar. At first, just this really intense infatuation, immense feeling of love...but then she'd push me away...and then she'd want me back! ...and then she'd push me away...over and over again, so it wasn't long before my feelings faded and I was just going along for the ride.

After reading horror stories about how BPD + ASD can be a terrible match-up, I broke things off ASAP. There's absolutely nothing wrong with you, it's likely just a symptom of the situation you were in.


BPD is actually "borderline personality disorder", quite different from bipolar.

I'm starting to wonder if we're incapable of love though, due to our inability to empathize, (like actually empathize, not fake/pretend to, but with actual emotional involvement), and to love, due to an inability to have deep feelings/connection with another person.

I've been wondering about whether or not taking Oxytocin could help with his...

I don't believe Autistic people are incapable of feeling love.

Some might be incapable of feeling "romantic" love.