Recently diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult (LONG intro!)

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Hi everyone.

This is my first post here. I joined a few months ago when I was contemplating being tested for Asperger's. When I found out about a local agency that would do the testing for free as part of a screening/application process for their services, and had the testing done. The psychologist who tested me thought I met the criteria for Asperger's and gave me the written report explaining her diagnosis. This is brand new to me and I'm figuring out how to process it.

I'm not totally sure yet how much personally identifying info I want to give, but I'll give some background and discuss some of my issues. I am a 27-year-old male from the USA and have always had some social difficulties, which generally became more obvious and disruptive as I got older. I always had some friends at school and had a few close friends when I was in elementary school that I would see outside of school (we liked playing video games mostly). I was always considered "quiet" and "smart" and most people seemed to like me though I only had one or two close friends at a time. Later in middle school I did experience some teasing that bothered me, but didn't really rise to the level of bullying. I guess I was pretty lucky overall. I have 2 sisters whom I've always had a lot of fun with, though of course we had our disagreements. For the most part, I feel like I had a pretty good and "normal" childhood.

I always had some unusual interests, like lists and stats about anything, particularly countries, states, cities, etc. I also became very interested and obsessed with a mostly female-dominated activity, first as a spectator then later as a participant and volunteer/official, which I continue to this day and is one of my big interests now. (I may decide to reveal that later, but right now I'm wary that identifying the activity could be too personally identifying).

I started feeling much more isolated and depressed once I started high school. I had always "liked" girls before but puberty multiplied that by 1,000 and I became totally infatuated with a particular girl. I associate my freshman year with getting up really early to get on the bus on dark, dreary winter mornings and hearing lots of love songs that were quite popular at the time and just feeling depressed. I just figured she was totally out of my league and never tried to pursue anything. On one occasion I did get to hold her hand as part of an activity in gym class which just about made my whole year. By the middle of sophomore year or so I was so emotionally exhausted from obsessing over her and my feelings finally lessened a bit, and I had a few other girls I liked but again, never really tried to pursue anything with them.

In my senior year of high school I realized I wasn't happy and finally opened up to my dad enough that he made me an appointment with a therapist, who I'm still seeing to this day. I've developed a good relationship with her and it's good to have someone I can talk to about really personal things. I've made a lot of progress in certain areas, particularly with the activity I'm very into now. Despite my social and communicative difficulties, I've made many friends in that area and my passion, dedication, and knowledge have shone through to help me progress. I feel very proud about how I continue to make progress in and become more and more confident in that area of my life.

Overall, since I've been seeing that therapist and been through college and grad school my mood and outlook have fluctuated quite a bit. My self-esteem and confidence could go up or way way down depending on the day or the minute, and I could be very hard on myself. Finally, when I was going through a particularly rough patch about 2 years ago I spoke up and expressed that I was open to trying medication for depression and social anxiety after avoiding the topic for years, ironically, because I had anxiety at the thought of taking medication and somehow felt like I would be "changing" myself and wasn't comfortable with that idea. I had a really bad reaction to the first medication I tried, which didn't help, but eventually saw a psychiatrist who prescribed a different medication about 1.5 years ago and I've been on that one ever since. It took a while to notice any effect and then I started feeling the absolute lowest of lows. After she upped the dose I started feeling better immediately.

I had a really traumatic experience earlier this year and for a while I was verging on suicidal about it, which I've never been in my life. Even if I was unhappy I never felt like I would be "strong" enough to follow through with something like that if I wanted to. Recently I've been feeling pretty good. I just got a promotion at my job and feel like things are moving in the right direction. I've been getting together regularly with a group of friends I met either through my grad school program or through one of the friends from that program, and feel like I fit in with them.

However, I've still had almost no progress in romantic relationships. I met one person from an online dating site, which was probably the most nervous I'd ever been up to that point (this was before the traumatic experience earlier this year), but I felt like it went OK considering how nervous I was. I was upfront that I was nervous even before we met in person and so was she, and I could tell she seemed very nervous also, but I thought we had a decent conversation and tried to keep it balanced so I wasn't talking just about myself but expressed interest in her also. I started feeling more and more comfortable, but then she abruptly said she had to leave in the middle of the conversation and said that it was nice meeting me, but it definitely seemed that she rushed off and was really unexpected. I sent her another message afterward to try to find out why she left so suddenly and she said that she could tell how nervous I was and that that made her uncomfortable. It was disheartening to know that I came across THAT awkwardly when I really didn't feel that bad and had been very upfront about how nervous I would be. It was a while before I tried contacting anyone else and since then I've chatted with a couple people (one of whom also left the chat abruptly and never responded to a message I sent her afterward-- I can't think of anything I would've said that would've scared her off) and sent messages to quite a bunch of others but none of the others have responded. A few people have sent me messages that I didn't respond to because it was clear they weren't my type. I'm planning to send messages to another "batch" pretty soon. Since I communicate much better in writing than speaking, I think chatting online first would be a good way for me to meet someone.

There is a girl (well, young woman) that I met through the activity I participate in whom I like quite a bit. I know her well enough to consider a friend and know that she is single but I don't know whether she's interested in a relationship, let alone one with me, and I'm afraid to ask but trying to overcome that.

I have an online friend that I've been chatting with for a long time who has similar relationship troubles and who I have a lot in common with and he was diagnosed with Asperger's/mild autism over a year ago. That is what first got me thinking about whether I might have it also and I went back and forth about it for a while and eventually kind of stopped thinking about it, until a relative asked me whether I had considered that I might have Asperger's when I opened up to her about a whole bunch of things after the traumatic experience I had. She's by no means an expert but I told her that I actually had considered it and started looking into testing after that. Eventually the therapist found out about the opportunity that I wouldn't have to pay for out of pocket.

So far I've only told my parents, my online friend, one other relative, and one other person I know whose son has Asperger's (not even my sisters or grandparents know and at least for right now I don't want to bring it up with them). The real-life acquaintance was not surprised and said that she suspected that I was "on the spectrum" from the first time she met me. She had told me at one point a while back that I reminded her of her son, and there had been other "hints" I had gotten over the years from various people that I didn't piece together at the time but now the diagnosis makes so much sense, and explains why it just feels like I completely lack the ability to connect with women in the way that would lead to a romantic/sexual relationship, even though I really want to experience that. For the past year I've been working with yet another specialist on my communication skills. It seems like it has maybe helped a little bit, but progress still feels slow overall in that area. Now that it feels like other areas of my life are heading in the right direction I'm hoping I can finally push through and get a girlfriend for the first time in my life!

God, this is long and I kind of jumped around a lot chronologically so it's probably really hard to follow, sorry guys! Now you know way more than you probably ever wanted to know. I'm glad to have found a forum for those with similar issues and hope it will help with my progress!

Welcome to WP
We are generally very friendly and people are always very good at answering qustions.

Welcome to WP

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome to Wrong Planet! I'm a new member also and I can relate to your story a lot.

Welkome to WP

Mick