AS Women and Relationships

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this I also relate to. What is attraction and how does it manifest in me? VERY DIFFERENTLY from the other girls at school and the other women i know in 12 step programs. Yesterday, two women came to my place for a cup of tea after an NA meeting. They know i have AS and are very good with me about it. One of them likes someone and they started to discuss the whole process of how she likes him and what the man is like etc etc. I just said to them
1. I cannot follow the two of you and your talking properly as there are too many of you. one on one i am best. (they slowed down a bit.)
2. I cannot understand how you relate to this man and talk in this way.

THese women are very wonderful women - but they have a different kind of take on matters of relationship than i seem to.

I got bored and started to watch the children playing in the swimming pool. I know i miss a lot of the "emotional play" of this kind of talking. It is not fun for me. Not at all. i do not know how to be salacious, or to be flirty or to discuss the drooling details of whether someone is attractive or not. That is a foreign language to me. utterly foreign. I can grasp bits, but it makes no sense. I'd be more interested in a man i like showing me some photos of where he has been in the bush or out in nature, or tell me about the latest book he is reading, or what he is researching or his take on a particular topic or current event. If it is about matters of the heart, IT IS ALWAYS ANALYTICAL with me. Always. Not unlike this thread, where we discuss and analyse our positions as women with autism who experience relationships a bit differently from the ususal. Goo-goo gaa-gaa touchy feely stuff in a relationship is something i have never actually experienced and - - never actually WANT to experience.
not face to face and physical to physical. I can do a bit of it in writing or in emails. but not with another person in that way. I can fake it a bit, but it becomes pretty evident i fake it and do not feel it.

I am so much more single focused and i think private about my process of liking someone, as Morgana describes. they are often some person in the background. it is most often cerebral at first. It is also very often slow because of my alexithymia. Sometimes when i was younger it could take me a year to understand i actually liked someone because i did not know how to identify feelings in myself. This has improved a bit with age and i have a far broader emotional comprehension than i did 12 years ago. I have worked hard at learnign about my feelings since getting clean. This helps a bit with relating with others, but i still struggle because of As and the anxiety and exhaustion of being around people.

I do understand the simple mechanism of pure "f*****g" without any emotional content. I am like this myself. I am told i am very "male" in this regard. I know it has to do with single-focus and a great disparity between mind and heart -which is such an issue with me. THat great gulf....

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Yes, I wanted to respond to this because one of the biggest problems I had in my relationships was taking words too literally. This is another point- (and I´ll get to the point you made above in a minute)- that I´ve noticed that in very intimate situations, literal speech basically goes out the window, emotions take over, and there is suddenly a lot of guesswork involved. In my general life situations, like work and friends, my taking things literally seems to work much better; in these situations, people seem to be more direct, and I only experience occasional minor problems. But in intimate relationships, the problem with communication is greatly magnified! I even notice this when I visit family- (I live in a foreign country, so I only visit once a year); but there´s a whole different dynamic with a family communication, suddenly more emotional, more innuendo, and I am totally thrown when I am first in this atmosphere again. Some of my instinctive childhood reactions and emotions come back. It feels blindly irrational to me. I think all intimate relationships are like this.

I remember the first time I read, not too long ago, that about 75% of human interactions are non-verbal, I was totally shocked! In my case, I think it´s the exact opposite; 75% of my comprehension- (at least!)- is from the words. I think for me, the words are the starting point, and what I use to orient myself. I usually figure out people´s emotions and intentions mostly based on their words. I can see facial expressions and gestures, and I have studied theater all my life so I do have some general knowledge of non-verbal "language": however, when someone is speaking to me, I hear their words first and foremost and I think I just automatically assume, or at least somehow "see" their faces and body language as being congruous with what they´re saying. Even though I am much less naive now, and am aware of the fact that people don´t always say quite what they mean, or that many outright lie, I seem to temporarily forget this when I´m in conversation with someone and just automatically take them at face value. Maybe it´s from sheer force of habit that I do this. I´m not sure if that´s sort of like what you´re saying millie; not exactly, I guess; in any case, I think we all have this problem to some extent, though maybe it comes out in different ways for each of us. It´s hard, because men can definitely be opportunists- (I actually think that most are!)- and we often don´t see this coming. Due to past experiences, I don´t really trust any man now, until he proves himself trustworthy. Maybe that´s another reason why I don´t feel quick attraction, it could be a trust issue.

Apropos faces and body language: I read in a book today that was geared for NTs in a relationship with an Aspie that they shouldn´t do something like give their partner a look with their eyes that says "come here", because the Aspie may not notice it. I realized that as a woman, I would have no idea how to even give a "come here" look with my eyes! What do the eyes do to make this look??? I was barely even aware that one could say that with a look. I would just say "come here".

^ I have no idea what a "come here" look entails either.

and yes, Morgana - that is exactly what i mean re your paragraph above re naivety. It leads to shattered trust.
Isabelle Henault spoke about this at the Aspergers conference with TOny Attwood a few weeks ago. I really related to what she said about autistic women struggling with this realm of relationships and also being abused and strung along or outright lied to.

Of all of the autistic characteristics, I find alexityhmia to be the biggest impediment to building any kind of beyond-superficial relationship. All relationships have a natural dynamic, shaped by a few defining moments. When you miss the cues, or when your own feelings register hours or days later, the moments pass and the relationships fade. It doesn't help when you finally understand today what your date was really telling you - in 1986!

yes, melissa17b, that alexythimic lag is a problem. I notice this in all my relationships - even with my son.
It is an ongpoing issue. I know without a doubt it has improved since adolescence and childhood as i have more of an intellectual store of things that help me with the general gist of things. But all the same, it is incredibly confusing in any relationships that are of a romantic (what is that?? it does not exist in my life really) or sexual nature. There is just too much going on for me to and too many facets of the dynamic to contend with, and so i tend to isolate instead.

Alexythimia: I didn't know there was a name for it. My father, almost certainly on spectrum too, once said, ( in an exceptional, rare, moment of talking about his own experience rather than what someone said in a book ), that he very often has to ask himself what he is supposed to be feeling in a situation in order to produce some appropriate response.

And yes, the time it can take is mind-blowing. It took me at least 5 years to realise when and why my last but one sexual relationship had failed; a crucial moment one night when my failure to feel what was going on led to me making a critical error, ( and it took me another year to get out of the dead relationship, to realise that it was dead ), and I do this all time, ( with my son too as millie said, especially when he was a baby/infant, and it made me the "classic" "refrigerator mother" in that sense ), just not always in such loaded situations.

As melissa17b says about relationship dynamics, I have realised in recent years, ( particularly because of living France, 10+ years now, as my lack of body-language communication is so much more obvious and crippling, whereas in the UK I could use my excellent english as prosthetic device ), just how much "making friends", ( let alone sexual partners ), is like a dance, and you need to keep in step, otherwise nothing happens. The number of times an apparently promising friendship here in France has mysteriously evaporated/collapsed has both confused and depressed me.

In my late teens and early to mid twenties I was so in love with the high of finally successful "social performance", like a struggling actress who had suddenly hit the bigtime, that I didn't mind too much, ( not too much ), that intimacy, and long-lasting sexual relationships, remained beyond me, but as I grew older this has become more and more painful.

So long as I stuck to "performance" in which other people were nothing but characters acted in a play, without real people behind them, I was able to follow the dance, keep the rhythm, ( with the help of alcohol especially ), but after I learned, in an extraordinary moment of growth, aged 29, about compassion, ( for myself aswell as others ), felt for the first time ( in ages, or for ever ), empathy, understood that these other people had real feelings, it all got too complicated and my performance collapsed irrevocably.

While I took gender-imperatives literally, consumer-society literally, so long as I obeyed all those rules, I was a functioning "member of society", however much of a mess I got into, but as soon as I began to question the "goodness"/value of these, aswell as my own actions/behaviour when following those imperatives, my lack of "in the now", body-language, etc reactions/responses to people were laid bare.

So long as I related to other people as mere ideas I was, if not alright really, at least able to "fit in", but as soon as people became real to me it was beyond me.

This thread is amazing by the way; if I quoted everything that I could say "me too" about it would take pages though, so I won't.

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Last edited by ouinon on 19 Apr 2009, 4:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Very important point.
In my mind, I run through minor details of people's behaviour, trying to recognise patterns from previous bad experiences, which is not conducive to relaxation and feeling attraction.



That does seem odd. Maybe there are other subtle movements that coincide with the eye expression that the author doesn't consciously register (since reading it comes naturally). Things like eyebrow and mouth movements, or a certain tilt to the head.



That last line I especially relate to! (Except that my dates didn't begin until the 1990s.)

I was completely honest with one person; I'd tell them how much I was feeling or not feeling in a given moment. They were aware that I would often forget their existence when they were not in the room, for instance. My feelings for them were very confusing, such that I'd express how much I liked them one moment, and they'd say "really?", and the next moment I would say "I don't know." I was being honest. I'd only expressed my liking of them because I'd felt it in a passing moment, but them asking me to confirm it would engage my analytical brain and disengage the emotions.

I was wondering whether some/many AS women in the past not only got labels like witch, ( as I think Morgana and Ephemerella said on another thread ), but also femme-fatale, because of the word, ( and "gesture/charming-smile etc )-perfect performance of an "ideal", ( and "unreal" ) woman which AS women can be capable of, without the empathy/intimacy which would "normally" go with it. it's something I've been called, in my early twenties, because of this combination.

I could describe my own trajectory remarkably precisely as "tomboy" ..."ugly-duckling" ..."femme-fatale"..."witch" ... "refrigerator mother"/"witch"! ( femme fatale and refrigerator mother being the two which refer to a woman, perjoratively, in terms of her relationships, with men and children respectively )

PS. Is mentioning/using the terms Refrigerator mother and Femme fatale in less than 20 minutes within the acceptable bounds of reference to negative stereotypes, in the context of discussion of AS women and relationships?!
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Last edited by ouinon on 19 Apr 2009, 5:30 am, edited 2 times in total.

Perhaps the difference is that NT people don't question society and interactions - or that, even more likely, when they do so, it's in an abstract, instinctive, nonverbal way. I.e., they cannot put into words what it is that's 'wrong' or 'right' about a situation: they just know. Whereas we are constantly trying to do exactly that and verbalize what we observe; to analyze it logically rather than instinctively.

An NT looks at the sum (situation) and immediately knows what the answer is, without being able to easily explain how it is that they reached their conclusion. An NT could be said to do their sums (interactions) on a pocket calculator, with the calculator being their subsconscious 'social brain': the information is inputted, and the answer is quickly given back to them without the NT really knowing how it happened. We may be able to also eventually come up with the answer, but only after writing out complicated mathematical equations. And in the process of writing out all those equations, the spontaneity and flow of the interaction breaks down.



I've been informed by people that they were very hurt to realize that I don't really think about them when we're not together and interacting. They do come to my mind if I am mentally debating specific actions and interactions related to them - something I wish to tell them later, something that they asked me to do, etc. - but apparently that's not enough. I should be randomly thinking about them on a regular basis, wondering what they're doing, how their day is going, and so forth, even if I have no reason to imagine that they would be doing anything out of the ordinary, but this just isn't something that comes naturally to me. I think to call people, for instance, if there's something that I wish to ask or tell them; it would never occur to me to call just to say, "How are you?" if I had no reason to suspect they were anything but perfectly well.

Me too!

But yes, I really appreciate all of your responses, everybody! For years I thought I was alone with all these thoughts and feelings, I didn´t know there was anyone else like me. I would keep these things to myself. Even though nothing has changed, and I haven´t resolved anything, it´s totally AWESOME to connect with others who experience the same things as I do. I have learned so much, and can now put things better in perspective. I just love this exchanging of ideas! You guys are totally cool

That may very well be true. As I recall, the way she wrote this, it sounded like this "come here" look was so instinctive that an NT wouldn´t think about it at all. She wrote something like "if you find yourself inadvertently giving your Aspie husband a come here look"....meaning, I guess, that this look just comes out with no concentration. But still, even with eyebrows and head tilts, I would be clueless about how to give this look....

I read something in the same book today, which I thought was interesting, so I thought I´d mention it here. She explained that she often felt anger or frustration towards her husband when they spent time together, due to him not seeing her signals, or due to her misreading his reactions (or non-reactions) as being rude or uncaring. She said that a low level anger would often fester within her all day, and would eventually erupt at some point. When this happened, her husband would be totally taken aback, because, as he misread the cues all day long, he had no idea this anger was welling up inside of her. When she exploded, he would be utterly confused. I bring this up because this was something that I noticed often happened to me, too; men I was in a relationship with would sometimes act mean or angry, for no apparent reason; it would feel like a sudden attack, which I was totally unprepared for. I wonder if this was what was going on with them too, and that I was missing signals. It was kind of interesting to read about it, because that might be one of my past "mysteries" solved. Anyway, I was curious if that sort of thing happened to any of the rest of you too...

I have had problems with this all my life. The simplest example is Me:"Does it bother you when I do this? Would you like me to go in another room?" Mother/Husband/Office Mate:"No, not at all. You can stay." (Time passes) "For God's sake, cut it out! That is driving me crazy!" Me: "I'm sorry! You said it didn't bother you..." Them: "Well, good grief, how could you believe that wouldn't bother me...", and apparently they were strongly broadcasting that they were bugged, but I was too clueless to get it. I of course chalk it up to them being flaky.

It is never this simple, of course, but I've found that this little scene plays out almost everywhere. If I keep asking for confirmation that it isn't annoying, the very question is annoying (eg,"I told you it was ok...), so , yes, the explosion comes out of nowhere for me. I have made peace that will continue to happen.

I guess a lot depends on the kind of person they are; those with pissier and less tolerant attitudes are more likely to become angry in this unexpected way. Also, being passive, reasonable, and innocent in nature would seem to encourage such anger or meanness towards me; I suppose they knew there were fewer consequences for this behaviour, so they didn't attempt to contain it.

Absolutely. My friends have learned that they really need to be literal about such things, and I'm lucky to have friends that actually do so. However, it was PRECISELY this reason that the only serious relationship I ever had fell apart: my doing this on a daily basis was the main reason cited for his leaving me. Except, he called it being self-centred and selfish. But surely isn't it self-centred and selfish to expect others to be able to accurately read exactly what you are thinking? The whole situation just confused (still does, to an extent) the hell out of me.

Some of the men I was with complained that I didn´t call them just to say "hi", or to say "I love you", or leave little notes around. But I honestly never thought of doing these things! They never did these things for me, by the way, so I´m not sure why they were upset that I didn´t do it for them (?). Are these the things that are expected that women do for men? Does anyone know? I did eventually have the feeling, as I mentioned earlier, that the men seemed to expect all the emotional stuff to come from me. Which I find kind of stupid anyway.

One of the biggest complaints I heard through the years seemed to be something to the effect that I didn´t act like the man was the center of my world....well, they were right about that, I guess.

Ok, next question: did anyone ever have "theory of mind" issues in relationships? I don´t mean just not being able to read someone and understand them, but the problem that you literally didn´t realize that they may have other thoughts than you?

When I was younger, especially, I seemed to have the idea that if someone was interested in me, and I in them, that we automatically thought alike. My first sexual relationship was with a republican. I didn´t realize he was a republican, because on our first date, as I was going on and on, spouting off my democratic views, he just remained quiet and didn´t answer, probably because he knew he wanted to sleep with me. But as our relationship developed and became more "established", he started telling me I was stupid for thinking the way I did. I wondered how I could have possibly gotten into that situation, and was surprised to find myself there. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that a republican could fall in love with me...(I guess I thought that only people of like mind fell in love with each other). Not sure if that´s a "theory of mind" problem, or just a strange belief that I had....

But here´s another one. I was going through a phase where I was fascinated with the album "Quadrophenia"- (this was back in my rebel rock-n-roll days), and I felt compelled to listen to that album at least once per day. So whenever my boyfriend and I were riding in the car- (same boyfriend, the republican)- I gave him a tape of "Quadrophenia" to play. After a few days of this, he finally exploded and told me he hated it! He was very angry that I kept telling him to play this- (I guess he thought I was trying to manipulate him?)- but it never even once occurred to me that he may have a different opinion about it. I liked it so much, and was so enthusiastic about it that I guess I never noticed that he didn´t share my enthusiasm. After that, he insisted on playing music that I didn´t like, I guess just to establish himself, like some kind of power play.

I also had a problem repeatedly with boyfriends that I had no idea what to get them as gifts- (Christmas, Birthday). I mean, really NO idea...Sometimes I would ask, but people never answer that question...again, they want you to read their mind and get the perfect gift. In the end, I bought some really lame presents...I mean, REALLY lame, even I knew they were lame! But this kind of thing was always really hard for me.

I realize that in many of my relationships, I was quite self involved. It was hard for me to come out of myself and relate to the other person, on their level. I think I may be better at this now, due to years of teaching and relating to students; however, I only relate to students in that way for a relatively short part of the day, so I still don´t know if I could do this more on a "full time" basis, in a constant relationship situation....