the pain runs deep

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Why would you call someone like her amazing? I don't know your exact situation, but from these messages that you posted she seems like a bully. She bullies you. Calls you names and demeans you. It's not that she tells you things that bother her about you, it's HOW she says them, and what I've read made me feel very sad. I agree with the poster that said she's verbally abusing you. I don't know you, but I don't think you deserve to be treated like this.

I'm not so sure that i do have AS or aspergers and if i do i know how she is talking to me is not right. How would you expect someone to change positively when as you can see it is basically verbal abuse?

i have changed alot over the course of 2 years(by choice believe me i am much happier now). i used to be addicted to playing WoW(online video game) and now i like to go out and socialize with others but i am set back alot because i didnt have that interaction with others when i was younger. my first relationship was an online relationship where we typed back and forth for a year and a half and yeah its not what i would call a relationship now but it was to me and her back then. So this is my 2nd relationship but really its like my 1st real relationship.

Maybe this is the wrong place to say all of this but i want her to see that i am not out to blast her but i want her to work with me. If she cant accept me for who i am then it is never going to work. I need to be given the respect back that she had for me in the begining of our relationship. I think she just gets so frustrated now that she more or less just wants to push me away so she can be happy and maybe i should just leave her alone. I dont want to of course but if she will be happier because of it then i am going to do that.

I think you already know you need to, like you said, "leave her alone". Not only would you be putting yourself in a bad situation if you stayed; you would be letting her think that it was okay to treat people the way she treats you. That wouldn't help her, either.

Change can be very frightening. Ending a relationship hurts. Plan out what you are going to say before you say it, so that you won't get stuck; but you'll get through it. You don't have to get mad or attack her, and you don't have to try to hurt her. You just have to explain to her that if she doesn't like you for who you are, then you two aren't a good match, and should go your own ways. When two people just don't see eye-to-eye, they don't make a good couple, and they'll only end up making each other miserable, and you want to prevent that.

Dump this psychopathic b***h NOW.

If someone talked to me like that I would wean myself from their sphere by not answering their calls, their emails. If they came to visit I would say as little as possible until they left or make an excuse for them to leave. I don't need that kind of pushiness in my life. They think they are doing you a favor but that approach causes someone with AS a lot of stress because we feel we are being blamed for stuff that's out of our awareness and not given the chance to think about and consider stuff.

If you do want to stay with her just agree with all she says to get her off your back. Sounds like that is what she wants. That type of personality would drve me nuts. She sounds like a total fault finder and who needs that?

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Last edited by CharliebrownE on 31 Jul 2011, 10:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This concerns me. Why is there a post about cheating and relationships, when you have been single for a year and a half? Is this a delusion? Maybe you really should seek therapy.

If you read through the messages, nowhere does it say there is a relationship. In fact, I see a few times the term "friend" used only.

I'm confused

BTW, if you dont know if you have aspergers, why are you on this website?

I think deep down you know you do....

Also, I know OP. I am a friend who made a post to help him find support. In my post I said he was my "SO". Just because it made it easier to understand of why I was so concerned for him. But in reality we are just friends and he knows that. So when I saw THIS post, I am shocked that he is saying he is in a relationship when I KNOW he is not lol. But I'm not trying to call him out, just a little concerned since I am his friend. All his friends (the ones that actually KNOW him) want for him is to change the negatives into positives. I read something someone posted on here about comparing it to a person in a wheelchair or something. My thinking on that is, if you are bound to a wheelchair, that doesnt mean you should give up the WILL to walk again. Just like if something from Aspergers is causing "problems", there should be a will to want to change it. There are therapists for a reason. Because some people actually want to change the negatives. That is positive behavior imo. But only saying you want to change goes so far....sometimes you have to meet the person half way. Some of us have offered going to therapy with him, reading info that he is reading, etc......But it has to start with HIM. As friends, we can only do so much for him.

So good luck with your struggles OP, I'm still here if you need to talk. As a friend if you one day say you have aspergers, then ok. That is a step

Elora. Asperger's is not something you can change. You cannot remove it; it's hard-wired into your brain. All the successful AS/NT couples I have seen accept that the Asperger's is there, and treasure it as part of their relationships.

You can learn useful skills, and you can learn to communicate better; but I do not recommend--now or ever--that an autistic person attempt to become "normal" or to get rid of his autistic traits. That is not just impossible; it also involves denying yourself and your own nature. It is, psychologically, more like insisting that a boy become a girl than insisting that a paraplegic learn to walk.

If you want to be a good friend, you will accept him for who he is rather than insisting he change. I know you've probably seen a lot of things on TV where some character goes crazy and his friends force him to see a shrink and then he magically recovers; but this isn't like that. Autism is for life. If he's autistic now, he'll always be autistic. You're not supporting him by constantly saying that his autistic traits are unacceptable and must be got rid of.

And you know what else? Friends don't publicly embarrass friends, either. Chew on that one for a while.

And there are some people in wheel chairs who know they will never walk by conventional means. Not everyone is going to achieve an NT-like existence.

I've talked to people who use wheelchairs and say they would not change it if they could. They've learned that being disabled doesn't mean they are inferior or have inferior lives--it's just a different sort of life, that's all.

Same.

As far as it goes, I do agree with everything Callista's said in this thread. The quoted comments come across as abusive to me, and if I had someone telling me these same things, I'd probably just cut them off. Friend or relationship, it really doesn't matter.

It reminds me of the things both my abusive parent and abusive ex would say to me, and when I am put in that position - clearly defined as an inferior who is doing everything wrong and needs to change my entire being to satisfy someone else - I have learned that it is often healthier and better for my state of mind to walk away. Not that it's easy, but that it is necessary.

I just want to clarify that I know you cannot change Aspergers. But I know you can change some things CAUSED by aspergers. I know OP almost got evicted because he was "confused" with some stuff with the apartment/manager. I helped him get it all cleared up. So in that instance, I would hope he could work towards being more responsible, etc.,
The doctor said being on his own and struggling with responsibilities is part of it. He has the ability to CHANGE that part of him.

Everybody has positive and negative things about them, aspergers or not. Its what people CHOOSE to do to try and turn those negatives into positives. If it is clearly a problem that has been pointed out by people, and it causes issues....then the person should feel compelled to better themselves. NT or AS.

As far as the wheelchair scenario, I know a person in a wheelchair who has grown to accept the fact that they wont walk again. But she has stated that she would never wish it upon anyone. Because she use to walk and she knows what there is to miss. She is happy, but she doesnt ignore the fact that she is limited to some things she use to LOVE to do. She has adjusted well, and no she is not inferior, but she knows her limits now. So she says after 11 years of being in a wheelchair, that she still would change it if she could. If they told her she might be able to walk, I know in a heartbeat she would do everything in her power to try. Why sell yourself short if there is a CHANCE?

btw verbal abuse is never good, whether its from a parent, friend, gf/bf, etc...
But that is a different subject, or is it?

Last edited by Elora_Danan on 29 Jul 2011, 8:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well she kind of verbally abuse you :/
You should find a way to tell her that if she gets angry over that well she is kind of a b*tch :/

Reading and trying to compose a response to this makes me actually want to bang my head against something. It is that frustrating to deal with this attitude from other people. If we were talking face to face or were in some other context in which any response I made would only be relevant to you, I would rather just walk away because it is extremely difficult to answer the kinds of assumptions that seem to feed into the idea that if you see something as a negative, it must necessarily be a negative. And if you see it as a negative, that it must be "corrected" somehow and turned into a positive.

Perhaps I have had too many experiences of other people telling me that my hobbies were negatives and using them against me (social manipulation, intimidation, etc) and telling me I had to better myself and learn that there is more to life than those particular things.

But I really don't want to make this personal, as difficult as it is. I will simply say that not all traits you perceive as a negative is actually a negative, and it's not up to you to define to anyone else what qualifies as "bettering themselves." Speaking as someone who has heard such demands from others who were certain they knew who I was supposed to be better than I could possibly myself know, I found it difficult to impossible to function under such demands and strictures.

Why must we always focus on our weakest areas and turn them into strengths? Why is it wrong to focus on our actual strengths? I am never going to enjoy loud social occasions or socializing at length with more than a couple of people and not for very long at that. This is clearly a weakness - should I try to correct that, try to learn how to socialize more, and socialize longer? How does that help me? Why can't I simply hone my skill at writing and try to make money at that?



I don't understand how your anecdotal "one of my best friends has a disability" friend is relevant. We all have to choose how we relate to our own disabilities and with the idea of being disabled in our respective societies. The idea to me that "I wouldn't wish this on anyone" means that a life like mine is too horrible to consider, that no one should ever be subjected to that. But people are, all the time. People live lives like mine all the time. Or lives with more difficulties and different difficulties. My life is still worth living, as is theirs. I am not making an argument that people should be wishing particular lives on anyone. What I am saying is that I would not make that particular statement because I do not consider living with my disabilities or other difficulties to be any of the worst possible things you could inflict on someone else.

I am also not concerned about a cure, and I do not wish for one. I do not consider this "selling myself short" and I find it rather peculiar that you'd phrase it that way. As far as I can tell, having a disability does not make me less of a human being than anyone else, does not make your friend who cannot walk less of a human being than anyone else. Curing any of us won't make us more human or more worthy of anything. So I do not understand how this falls under "selling yourself short."

Some people would love a cure, and others don't want to be cured at all. I think this is more a personal thing. The expectation that everyone with a disability should want to "get better" is unrealistic, especially when dealing with conditions that are not likely to ever be cured. It's a waste of energy to expect that we should wish for it.

Wow...

I didn't see it anywhere - does the OP have a dx of Asperger's or just a 'well meaning' girlfriend/friend-who's-a-girl running an Asperger's intervention?

One of the lines in the OP - 'letting Asperger's take control of your life' Just - yikes. Letting it? As in people have some sort of autonomic control over how their brains were wired prenatally and in infancy? Yes, skills can be learned but what we are talking about here is a guy in his late twenties just finding out he may have this developmental condition - and let me tell you that is NOT always an easy dx to wrap your brain - and he has a 'friend' berating him for not reading books fast enough or changing behaviors on some predetermined timeframe that she has envisioned.

Just wft?

She is insulted because he isn't 'fixing' himself fast enough. I'm sorry but anybody who tells you that you need to change in order for them to be your friend, girlfriend, whatever, is no friend. It is a trait, in Aspies, to often be taken advantage of because of how we see things and people. We may feel responsible or let people make us feel responsible. We may let people taken advantage out of guilt. Do NOT pay this girls healthcare if she is treating you like this. If those are the truthful words that she used - you need to cut her off now. I would consider her LETTING you pay for her healthcare after that sort of berating to be using you in a blatant manner. She may have brought AS to your attention but that does not make you forever indebtted to her and responsible for taking her verbal abuse. If this is her version of tough love - she better go take a class because the application of it sucks.