AS Women and Relationships

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Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

I thought I did - my simply still being with them meant I cared. If I didn't I would leave. Apparently, this is not enough.

[quote="Morgana"]

I ALWAYS win the verbal arguments in a relationship. I was emailing a male AS friend the other day and expressing how this is where my AS systematic thinking comes to the fore - in the capacity to break down and analyse human dynamics.
THat is not uncommon for women with AS.

The criticism levelled at me by just about every partner i have ever had is that i cannot be beaten in a "relationship" argument.

As for the furniture simile, Morgana. I really do have to work hard to get a sense of the people in my life being anything other than objects. I understand they have thoughts and feelings - i see this and can read it to some degree. BUt i do struggle incredibly with interaction that is of a to-and-fro nature and not one-sided and i do agree that all i ever really want is for others to "Be THERE" so i can live my life and have a kind of background hum (not too loud or intrusive) in the receding corners of the house.

That is all i really want - a kind of hum of people - who assuage my feelings of loneliness, give me a sense of minimal connectedness and help me to function. THen i can get on with special interests and more special interests and more special interests.

As for emotions - i am not emotionless. As i stated previously, i go up to an autism Psychologist who helps me develop strategies for better quality living - (sensory issues, scheduling, practical stuff, addressing exectuve funcitoning which is pretty well shot to pieces in me.) I spend the bulk of my time in pitched anxiety, anger and sadness - bouncing around in these three wth scant knowledge of anything else because i have spent so many years undiagnosed and struggling. So in a relationship, i have way too many meltdowns, I live in a constant state of extreme anxiety so my stimming and pacing is a big issue for those around me. I also have ADHD and so i can be very impulsive.
All this is hard for others.
I am trying to address these negative emotions so i can live more peacefully with self and with others.

it is working. bit by bit.


THe main issue is that i do not actually get the same kind of "JOY" from people and relationships that i can get from my special interests. I can enjoy people one on one, and i can enjoy WP, but in so far as having a long two way conversation with someone - I just do not find it interesting unless it is special interests related.
THat does not make me great relationships material, in the normal sense of the word.

Yeah, me too...

I have often had the same problem, also, of not knowing my emotions, and having to reflect upon them for days to figure them out. I might have the vague feeling that something is "off", but I would then need time to figure out what that was. For this reason, I often didn´t react at all to certain things; to emotional mind games, even to forms of abuse sometimes, because it took me a bit of time to figure out what was going on. It was like if anything unpredictable happened, I would go into a state of shock, and just not react. I would only feel my feelings later, when I was alone. In fact, lately I´ve been finally experiencing some of my feelings from childhood, things that I just never resolved because either I didn´t understand them or I never experienced the feelings at the time.

Lately, though I think it´s getting better...at least, when I´m alone I seem to be able to pinpoint my feelings better. Maybe that´s just it, maybe I´m just more aware of my feelings in a calm, predictable atmosphere. I also spent years studying theater, texts, motivation, body language, etc., which helped me become aware of those more subtle feelings. I also spent several years writing all my emotions in a journal. Somehow, through writing, I was able to "find" my emotions better, and I think this has carried over into life. Although, who knows if that would really help in a relationship situation- (I haven´t been in a relationship in a really long time). As you mentioned, it´s much harder in "real time", and part of the problem I had was also "keeping up" with other people´s emotions, reacting to them, etc. Sometimes I just wanted to stop the clock.

It occurs to me that I could/can do well in terms of paying people attention if the person themselves has become a special interest to me - if I am 'into' them in the same way that I might be into a hobby. But if their special interest status fades - or was absent in the first place - I too tend to treat them as furniture. I think that no matter how much I like them, I do tend to see other people essentially as objects.

As soon as someone expressed a "heavy", negative emotion, I would get a horrible feeling- like a sick feeling- in my stomach. Just the words- "we need to talk" send shudders down my spine. I would usually go limp, and internalize everything. I would feel horrible, like a cornered animal. It was also a form of shutdown, because I would often not react much outwardly. Very often, in this state, I would just act logical and rational, but I think that´s my way of just trying to figure out what´s going on. I´m not very good at arguments myself...once again, I just can´t think fast enough to make good comebacks, though later on, in retrospect, I can come up with all kinds of good responses. I have to prepare myself for an argument! But how often is that possible???

Occasionally, if someone is really aggressive towards me and "in my face" I react defensively. But I hate it when this happens, because then I feel totally lame. I don´t feel so in control, and it´s harder to speak when I feel that way. Defensiveness is not such a good way to react...

Again, the emotional aspect of arguments is very difficult for me. Too uncomfortable, or too many emotions happening too quickly, or my not being able to make a good case (speaking) because the emotions are too distracting. Ugh.

Actually, the furniture thing was not a quote from me, but from outlier. The men I was with did not say that I treated them like furniture, specifically....though they might have been thinking it!

They said other things, to kind of the same effect...

Wow, this is the first time I've looked at this thread. I've just been reading through the whole things, and I feel like I'm eavesdropping on a conversation of people who are so much like me! I keep thinking, "Yes! I understand that!"

Morgana, your story about your drummer was particularly powerful for me, because I have a similar person who I feel a deep connection with. There are a lot of things, when it comes to love, sex, and relationships, which I have often felt like I simply need to be silent about. That's because there are conventions about the way things are supposed to be, and if you deviate from that, people don't understand, so you can't really have a meaningful conversation about it.

I'm married with kids, but I often retreat into myself. I require huge amounts of personal space, as someone said earlier, and I always worried that I would have trouble in a family because of that. My fantasy is to have a much bigger house (ours is the size of a postage stamp), with a room of my own.

Okay...I know that's not exactly where the thread was going, but I just wanted to chime in and add some things that came to mind while reading the whole thing.

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welcome to the thread, Elderwanda. Morgana starte a beautiy with this one.

Also Outlier - apologies re furniture quote and not giving credit where credit is due.

I feel very, very similarly to this. When I get angry, or when someone insults me - basically, when I am confronted with a strong negative emotion, I freeze up. Inside I am screaming and melting down, but on the surface my facial expression just solidifies like concrete and my throat feels literally as though it is squeezed closed. A simple rude remark in passing from a stranger can have me blinking back tears and choking. I always lose arguments that are emotionally based because I cannot feel and express at the same time. Now, logical debates which are unheated and progress at a speed low enough for me to fully process everything that is said - now then, I can whup some serious argumentative butt. I'm sure this has hurt me in relationships - an inability to contribute to an emotional argument but an infuriating (apparently) ability to ruthlessly crush my opponent in a factual debate. Men (most of the ones I have experience with, anyway) seem to find the shutdown with emotions bizarre (this is the stage at which they start to think I am a hapless loser) but the triumph in logic immasculating.

It's very interesting how similar many of the experiences seem to be amongst AS women in relationships. I never would have expected the similarities to be so... striking.

Thanks for a great thread.

I experience delayed emotional reactions. For example, any attraction I feel is usually when not in the other's presence, though this has changed a bit in recent years. I'm getting better at noticing disrespect, but am not quite there yet because it's usually in retrospect.

I cannot "mindread", so get others' intentions wrong; this results in paranoia. The others cannot read my facial expressions and always say "What's the matter?" when I'm OK, or think I'm giving them a dirty look. My feelings for them remain very confused and contradictory, so it's a bad idea to make a commitment.

It's fortunate that along with these issues comes great tolerance for and enjoyment of solitude, and love for certain subjects!

Yes, you are so right! As soon as I´m with someone and a conversation about love relationships comes up, I do the "pretending to be normal" thing. Either I´m really quiet, sort of nodding my head occasionally, or I end up spouting off a bunch of intellectual stuff I´ve read in some psychology book. I know people wonder about me...

Once, about a year ago, I mentioned to a woman I knew that I wasn´t sure what the purpose was to relationships. All my life, people raved about them like they were the most important thing in the world, but I´m not sure why...I felt the only thing I ever got from a relationship that was "special", that I couldn´t get anywhere else, was sex. She looked at me in total shock, as if I had said something truly blasphemous. But when I said it, I was totally honest...I just wanted to know what that elusive thing is in relationship, which I´m obviously missing... As to her reaction, I wasn´t sure if I had said something totally "off" or wrong, or if I had just vocalized something that others may think, but which is considered taboo to say. I guess I´ll never know, either.

greenlandgem: yeah, maybe you are my twin.

That was a good point you made about men feeling "emasculated" if you are too logical. I noticed many men reacted to me as if I emasculated them; (even ones who weren´t going out with me!) Maybe that was why, I hadn´t thought about that.

I enjoy a good logical, unemotional argument. I usually have them with my Dad- (although maybe I should call them heated discussions). But my Dad is also very logical, maybe that´s where I get it from. I think he purposely likes to take the other side (play "devil´s advocate"), just to see how I react.

I'm in an AS/AS relationship. I am probably an Aspie, though undiagnosed, but my fiancé has a dx.

He used to have that problem in his previous relationships that most of you have mentioned, namely that he couldn't "open up" to other people. I think that it is probably caused because he experienced that people do not accept him as he is, and he rather tried to hide what is inside. But he says that when he met me he felt such enormous love for me and so strong acceptance from my side that he could somehow easily transcend these inner boundaries of his. So maybe if you meet the right person, these problems will just disappear. Two people can largely influence each other.

As for me, my first long-term partner considered me very weird. He just couldn't understand my quirks and my social ineptness. Besides, I'm not that easy-going person, I tend to have extreme mood swings, and he just couldn't take that. But my fiancé is completely different, we function together perfectly, in every ways.

Very true! And the part about hiding what you are inside if sensing the other doesn't really accept you is also true.

I know how unlikely it is to find a proper fit, so I don't look for one (and just awoke from a dream where I found one, which reminded me of its near impossibility).

Yes, I agree, I would hide things about myself for this very reason. Most of my relationships felt superficial, or unreal. It can be hard to open up.

Totally agree with that.

This whole thread, or rather the subject, ( I've been reading it now and then, even posted once before deleting ), feels like something I have no grip on, as if the language I have to describe/analyse my experience of relationships is so far away from what I feel, designed to describe something so different, that I have felt unable to participate.

I almost have trouble "seeing" my experience of relationships with the ( verbal ) language that is available to me.

I understand your remark about "the only special thing being sex" because that "literally" seems to be the only thing clearly and solidly specific to a "relationship" for me too. The rest is vaporous.

PS. I definitely identified with what Millie and a couple of other people said about fragmentation though. A separation between sexual, and intellectual, etc functioning. But I did once, for a couple of months, seem to discover a way of combining/unifying these and it was by taking things very very slowly ... as if I was knitting/weaving all of them together.

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Last edited by ouinon on 13 Apr 2009, 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.