AS Women and Relationships

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I think that many things depend on your partner. If he encourages you, and shows acceptance towards you, it will be easier for you to open up. But I still think that one should show the more "eccentric" parts of herself, too, maybe the partner would even like it

Beside, it was never quite clear for me why would a guy be with a girl if he doesn't accept her as she is.

I think that the point of a relationship is intimacy. I guess that you've never really experienced that in a relationship and that's why you feel about it like that. No wonder, for us Aspies it is always a challenge to establish something like that in any kind of relationship.
It was very hard for me as well. I'm on the other extremity, I tend to open up too easily, even before I've checked whether the other party is receptive for me. That's why a lot of people took advantage on me.

For a very long time, I also thought that it is impossible for me to find a suitable partner, so I lived in sex partnerships. I think it was much better like that, because I didn't need to lie about trust and emotions to anybody. Most of the NTs were certainly shocked when I told them about that.

Thinking some more about this fragmentation; that I can, or used to be able to anyway, ( once I had sussed what sexual desire was, that is; like Seashell said, it took me a few/several years to do so ), "do" relatively "instant sex", and also relatively "instant emotion", and "instant intellectual", but always separately.

But I once managed/began to achieve a connection with someone, ( by taking things very slowly, as I said above ), that expressed all three simultaneously. But unfortunately, tragically in fact, I allowed myself to be persuaded, by my partner, to speed things up one night, and it blew everything. I spent the rest of my time with him in a pretty "dead"/numbed out space.

Thinking about how multiple/split personalities are supposed to be created by some people in response to severe stress/trauma, and how perhaps our/my experience of fragmentation of "function", compartmentalisation, is a response to stress aswell. ( AS apparently tend to get "blocked"/stuck in certain brain-functions especially when under stress/time pressure. )

I believe that I might be able to express all three together with someone if I had the time, as I said, to carefully, ( oh so carefully ), weave/knit them together, beginning with the "easiest" one perhaps, the intellectual "thread", and gradually introducing the others. Like when I paint a picture, start with neutrals and cool colours etc, and use red only near the end!

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Yes, one of them was quite into the eccentricities; I could be much more open, but was not in love with them (and my feelings were extremely contradictory and confused), so I didn't consider it a fit. The others I'd been with mostly seemed frightened of or turned off by signs of eccentricity.



I suppose they would be in it for the physical side or other gain.



I really like that idea!

I'm too terrified to say anything and feel guilty about it all.
I often worry whether I want or am ready for a relationship or not. Then decide I am jealous at my friends who have people to hug/kiss/love them. So I decide I do want one. Then I ask if I'm ready. AND IT STARTS OVER AGAIN.

It is a general truth that the more eccentric you are, the harder is to find a suitable partner. It is the same thing as height. If you are a woman and above 190 cm, it's a lot harder to find a partner who would accept you.
BTW, maybe you should look for partners who are non-conformist and eccentric as well (e.g., they are Aspies ). I think that these people accept Aspie girls much more easily.



Yeah, you're probably right. But maybe they are opportunistic in their relationships, thinking that it is impossible to find a perfect match, so they are satisfied with a "soft option".

I myself don't think that it is a wise decision to be in a relationship with a partner who doesn't respect me just because being in a relationship is good. I think that a relationship like that is quite harmful for one's self-esteem (been there, done that ), and it has more on the negative side than on the positive.

I hate opening up to people as well. I feel so violated...

I hate sharing my emotions with other humans unless it is the 'hard' type of emotion such as anger, pride, respect, or social unity with people who are very like yourself. I never share my vulnerabilities. Also, I prefer to show my feelings via actions than words. Words and generalized behaviours are so fuzzy and can be misunderstood, whereas if I give someone something or do something for them that makes life easier, that is an obvious signal that I care, plus I don't feel like I'm having my viscera slowly pulled out, which is what emotional openness does to me.

ouinon: I like your imagery of weaving all the aspects together. I think a big problem for me- and I´ve mentioned this before- (sorry if it´s a repeat)- is that nowadays, relationships happen very quickly, and they usually happen through sex. If I engage in sex relatively quickly, before I have time to develop any emotions, the emotions never come, and the relationship stays on the sexual level. That´s how it´s happened most often for me. I may develop a bodily connection to the person; my body may crave sex with that person, or associate their physical presence with good feelings, but I´ll never develop a deeper mental connection. This may be why I tend not to experience love.

There have also been times when I´ve tried to slow things down, but then it´s backfired. It seems to be tacitly expected by people that things should happen reasonably quickly, and it has to be all or nothing. Any kind of push to delay things slightly I guess reads as feeling unsure about the situation, which seems to be a turnoff to NTs. There were many possibilities that never quite "panned out" with me, because I wasn´t quick enough. I know that people say that if the person expects something too quickly, and won´t wait, that that person doesn´t really care, and maybe it´s better that nothing happens after all. But then I´m stuck where I am now in my life, going years and years with no relationships because I don´t take people up on their quick offers. It seems like a no-win situation.

If I could weave the 3 aspects together, it would be in the following order: intellectual, emotional and then sexual. So, starting backwards with sexual is obviously the wrong thing for me.

This is something that I have felt for years. I never had a boyfriend as a teenager and have barely had any as an adult because "relationships" (a word I have always hated for some reason) so often seem to progress thusly: boy and girl go to party, boy and girl get drunk, boy and girl hook up, boy and girl continue to hook up, boy and girl become item, boy and girl get to know each other, and, 90% of the time, boy and girl discover they really don't like each other much and break up. To me this is wildly illogical and not only a waste of time, but poses unnecessary sexual health risks with this constant "trying on" of partners. But it seems so widespread - although, I must admit, not universal. While I'm not overly precious about it, I have no desire to have sex with large numbers of people and the general approach to finding "the one" seems to be to test compatibility in the bedroom first! For me, sex is (ideally, anyway) something which makes the long-term connection between two people better, but shouldn't be the basis for it. (Except for maybe very special situations. ) It's so difficult to find (okay, I hate to generalise, but here we go:) MEN who are willing to wait to get to know a girl before having sex. I know I have missed out on several men who I potentially could have liked very much simply because when they propositioned me I was not yet interested, and this rejection deterred them from bothering to persist in getting to know me - which then may have resulted in me reciprocating the interest!

Sometimes I mourn the death of the courting rituals of the nineteenth century - whatever happened to a man politely walking you home and quietly getting to know you, then expressing his intentions and letting that sit for a while, then having the situation move on with, what I consider anyway, to be its natural progression? In fact, Morgana - traditional "courting" sounds very much like your final statement:

Hey, girls, I'm quite sure that not parties and such social events are the only place where possible couples can meet! I think that people usually look for one night stands in such places. (At least it is so in my country -- Hungary, Central Europe.) If they want to establish a long term relationship, they'd try somewhere else. . (E.g. on the Internet, by ads etc.)

But maybe I'm mistaken and it's just that my country is more conservative than the Western countries.

Yes, I totally agree! This type of courting would have been way better for me. In fact, when I was a teenager, I used to read classic fiction (like Jane Austin), and somehow- (silly me) I thought it was going to be this way in life, with the man "courting" me, stating his intentions, etc. I was totally confused and had to learn everything the hard way when I was thrown into the big world...(I guess the fact that I basically did not socialize and was too wrapped up in my special interest in High School didn´t help me to learn a bit what was going on). When I was younger, I was always expecting men to state their intentions...then didn´t understand it when they said nothing, but just seemed to tacitly expect me to act a certain way. It seems to be all guesswork nowadays.

I liken modern day courting to a "grab bag". I don´t know if you ever played that game while younger, but the person is blindfolded, reaches into a bag and randomly pulls out a present. You have no idea what present you are going to end up with, and it could be total crap...(I think many of mine were... ) Of course, I wonder if it´s different for typical people; maybe, with the subconscious ability to pick up non-verbal cues, they can know more about what they´re getting into. I even wonder if it´s easier to feel quick attraction, for them. Maybe that´s why I use the grab bag imagery, with the blindfold; it feels like this to me, like I´m blindly jumping into things, if I play it like others do. If I try to do things on my own terms, it backfires, as I said.

I don´t really go to parties, and I don´t meet single men at (work related) social events. These quick situations I experienced were people I met at work, or similar things. None of them wanted a one night stand: they all seemed to expect a real relationship- (I was actually the one who sometimes assumed it was "just sex", as the men did not state their intentions). I think nowadays, people "try on" relationships, auditioning their partners. I was under the impression that quick relationships are just the way it´s done these days. I notice people around me having quick relationships, too.

I would be quite skeptical about meeting men on the internet or through ads, but maybe that´s just me...

Although it would be very arrogant (and untrue) to suggest that a desire for an asexual relationship is somehow more 'noble' or 'deep' than the desire for a sexual one, I do think it may be possible for asexual people - or those who consider sex to be less important or see it somewhat differently to the norm - to approach a potential relationship a little more logically and consider whether they are really intellectually and socially compatible with the other person before becoming involved with them. Similar to what you say here, too many 'relationships' seem to consist of little more than, "I really want to have sex with you!"/"I really want to have sex with you too!" and only last until Person A and Person B get bored of having sex with each other, or Person A realizes they actually really want to have sex with Person C as well. I.e., extreme physical lust was being mistaken for emotions.

Yeah, you´re right, it does seem to be this way. I´m surprised people can have these strong sexual feelings so quickly.

I am not surprised by this at all. I know quite a few AS people who i have met online who actually relate better sexually than in any other way. SO for them, sex becomes the prime means of closeness or communicaiton with another human being and sexual arousal is a kind of communications tool. There is connection without compexity!

The more i read, the more i listen to other Autistic peple, the more i think it is this issue of mult-tasking that afflicts us so profoundly in relationships. If it is a multi-tasking issue, then it actualy makes no difference what particular approach is taken in getting to know someone. The issue is that it is difficult for us to weave it all together successfully and in a manner that is possible for others to do.

I know with me - if sex comes first, then the communication gets jammed there.
If intellectual exchange comes first, then the communication gets jammed there.
etc. etc.
It is very difficult for me to achieve a smooth flow from one of these aspects of myself to another. On my own it is hard enough. with another, it is a trial and very exhausting and stressful.


what is also so difficult for me is a great delay and disjuncture between a literal interpretation of words from another and a summation of their actions in an analytical manner. THere is a GREAT discordance here for me....so i can basically be fed verbal crap for years, then analytically read the actions of the other person and note the two do not match - and yet because of my literal interpretation of what is said to me, AND MY NAIVETY - i have repeatedly discounted my own intellectual analysis of another's actions...even though in the long run this might well turn out to be correct. There is a fair bit of confusion and unsureness when it comes to undrstanding others - a lot of guesswork - and so i have invariably, historically discounted my own judgments in favour of a literal interpretation of another's words. This means i have ended up in a lot of dangersou situations where a naive inability to "read the play" and follow through on what is best for me, has been the order of the day and has led to great upset.

I know women without AS or any form of autism also go through this, but there is certainly a more pronounced manifestation of it in me. I have been taken for a ride a lot in my life.

Now that i know about my autisma nd have a formal diagnosis, i am better able to understand this and i can introduce strategies of care that can help.

This part I do understand; I find most verbal interactions with men very difficult and complicated somehow, and, though I think speaking about more intellectual subjects would be easier, I meet so few men who actually want to carry on an intellectual conversation! So, sex often is a good way to communicate. Unfortunately, I just can´t seem to do this too early on, with a relative stranger...(well, I CAN...and I have...but the problem is, I won´t be aroused at all, so it´s just like going through the motions). I actually WISH I could feel attraction more quickly and easily; I would certainly have better luck at relationships! For years, I thought there was something wrong with me because of this. Often, I really feel like an anomaly.

Most of the men I was ever attracted to were people I vaguely noticed, in the background of my environment, until one day it finally dawned on me that I was attracted to them. I think someone needs to be sort of familiar to me in order for me to feel attraction. (It also helps if there´s no pressure about having to make a decision). I seem to be like "The Little Prince", in Saint Exubery´s tale- (the Rose is unique to him, and special, because he knows her; not like the other anonymous roses he meets later on Earth). Don´t know if that story is familiar to anyone, but that´s the way I seem to work.