Are You Attracted to Water?

Post Reply New Topic

Yes.

It's not a compulsive "must go towards water" thing for me, but I do like it. I like living in a city right beside the ocean. I love going kiteboarding on the ocean in the Summertime. I like swimming, too - and especially liked swimming when I was a kid.

It's the only one of the four elements that you can immerse yourself totally in, you can dive down and you are in another kind of world - unlike fire, air or earth - and one which humans cannot rule - as Canute discovered! I wonder to if it is not in some way symbolically a "back to the womb" experience - or back to the origins of life, where we all came from, emerging life forms that made their way from water to land as they evolved. (Please, fundamentalist Christians, don't reply to this, spare me...)

Smartass.

Yes, the connection of life to water is so fundamental that the essence can't be expressed in words.

I can't swim very well anymore. I learned to swim when I was 15 and my mother and I had moved to an apartment in Hoover that had a swimming pool. She went to work and left me at home all day and I would go to the pool and I met a lot of other kids my age to hang around with and younger ones to babysit. That was one of the best summers of my life. My mother bought me a bathing suit and some floats for the pool and the other kids I met kind of taught me to swim, especially this one guy I met who was my age and I think his name was Brad. He flirted with me a lot but I had a bf that summer who would come and take me out in the evenings. I got really good at swimming that year and could swim under water, dive, hold my breath for a long time, etc. I was like a fish. It was great! I also got the first and best tan in my life!

After that though I never had another summer that was so water based. My husband lived on the lake with his parents when I met him and I'd go down there and lay on the dock and tan and go on boat rides and float on floats, but I didn't like swimming in the lake as much as the pool. I'd really like a pool but not until my husband quits drinking so much, you fall in water drunk and you could drown.

I do remember laying on floats and listening to Jimmy Buffett and Little River Band (DONT say it!) for hours at a time. I used to want to go to Florida and do that in the ocean but now I'm too old and too afraid of water to do that.

I almost drowned twice when I was younger. Both times I was 14 and both times were school functions - at the Wave Pool in Decatur and at one boys pool at his house at our end of the year party. The other kids thought it was funny. I did not. I didn't used to worry about drowning back when I swam a lot but now it's all I worry about in water. My kids might as well be fish, what with growing up on that lake every summer of their lives and access to boats, waterski's, jetski's, and all that water stuff. My husband can ski on one ski and do all sorts of tricks on it, even at his age now - 51 - but I've never been able to ski, I could only ride behind the boat on a tube, but that was fun.

We used to go tubing at the strip pits when I was younger. That was so dangerous but at the time it didn't seem like it. They were hundreds of feet deep - old strip mining pits that were full of water. Kids would climb up real high and swing out into the water and all and I always wished I could do that but was too scared.

So, I'm not really attracted to water anymore, but for a while when I was into swimming and stuff like that, I was. I was also safe around it. It's scary now that I'm old and forgot how to swim. I really should go to the lake this summer and get back into it, but I doubt I will. I'm too lazy.

Yes water, but not the ocean.

I'm pretty darn sure that's not quite what the OP meant.

There's a difference between "hey I drink water, ZOMG!! ! I like swimming too!" and "Hey I have this seriously obsessive view of water and will absolutely gravitate towards it in any conceivable situation even if it doesnt make any sense whatsoever".


Me and showers, for example. Lots of people enjoy a good hot shower. But for me, that's not good enough. I turn it up to maximum heat and let it sit like that for 10 minutes before I go back into the bathroom. Why? Because it DRENCHES EVERYTHING. Everything in the bathroom is soaked and covered in water. It'll drip from the ceiling. It covers the area around the sink. It covers EVERYTHING. And the steam is typically very thick. I dont turn the fan on, because it'd drain the steam, cant have that, it'd lower the presence of water in the room. Even if I'm not taking a shower but am in the bathroom for whatever other reason, I'll still turn the shower on and have it do that because water. I do this at hotels as well. Have to. It bothers me too much if I dont.

Speaking of hotels, there's the hotel pools. Even if I dont actually go swim in them... which I cant do if my back is acting up, or something like that (argh), the mere existence of one and the knowledge that it is nearby is comforting. Because the presence of water is comforting. Why? Heck if I know. Everyone I know thinks this bit (and the various other ways it applies for me) is pretty damn weird. Granted, they usually think that about me in general, but that one apparently is stranger than most other things. A chlorine scent in the air is also comforting, because I associate it with the pools.

And then there's the ocean. If I can actually get INTO the water there, it's absolute freaking ecstasy. Everything else ceases to matter whatsoever when this happens. I dont even need to swim or... DO anything at all. I'll happily just stand in it for 3 hours. This, too, apparently is very strange. Not that I care, it's the freaking ocean, everyone else can just go jump off a cliff, really. There was one time when on a trip down in.... somewhere.... Cayman Islands if I recall... where this one attraction is a specific area called Stingray City. You get on this boat, you go out to this spot, where the water is about 4.5 feet deep if I recall, and you play with the large population of stingrays that for whatever reason congregate at that spot, and yes "play with the stingrays" is a bloody strange idea, what with the bit where they're STINGrays, but that's exactly what you do when there. For everyone else, it's like, "Whoa, cool, stingrays!" For me, it was "HOLY #(%A& OCEAN!!!111" and the stingrays were just an added bonus.



I could keep rambling on about things related to water for quite some time, but I'll stop there lest I seem even more strange than usual. Wether or not this has anything to do with the autism specifically, I have no clue. Doesnt really matter, in the end; it is what it is.

I don't hear ever about this kind of water attractions in my life. So how can i trust on this ?

i love the rain, the beach, the lake, the riverside, puddles, aquariums. i can walk on the beach for hours watching the waves hypnotically. i like watching the water flow as i take a shower or wash dishes. i like watching the water splash in the laundry machine in the laundromat. i like water fountains.

I wouldn't say I'm attracted to it. I do love water though because it's somehow very comforting for me. I know better then to run towards a body of water and start playing in it (Not that I'm saying that people who are attracted don't have that sense). I love basically any kind of water though too. I just love being around it, and I also love swimming too.

Well, going toward a water source when lost is actually pretty logical... maybe it's an instinct that everyone has but that autistic people are less likely to ignore in that type of situation. At the same time, I do really love water...

No, being autistic does not make you more attracted to water. I'm sure theres autistics that love water just like theres neurotypicals that love water.


I don't really like deep water that much. I can swim but I only do it when I have to do it. I rarely go to the deep end of a pool. I don't like to go canoeing either because I don't like deep water and i'm afraid of the canoe tipping.

Same. I went kayaking a few years ago and didn't mind it (after some initial fear) because the kayak felt more steady with just me in it. But the couple times I've gone canoeing, I've hated it.

When I was in my "classically autistic" state, I used to be afraid of water.

I was extremely afraid, at age 5, to go beyond a certain point in the pool. I don't know how I got the willpower to attempt it. But once I got into water up to my chest, my fear went away. I learned to swim by age 7.

I've always had a love of water. I used to fill the sink with water and play in it for 20 minutes at a time, three times a day when I was little. I swim every chance I get, when it's free. I also like watching the rain fall when there's a downpour. There are nights that I play to my sound therapy machine on a water type setting.

Very much so yes! Alway have been almost drowned once but lord I love water and swimming I used to take 4 hour bubble baths an often woul nap in my tub during the bath