How I was able to cope with my Aspergers and find a wife.

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I had a friend like this who I believe may have been autistic, he was also a very screwed up individual and believed that he had power over people and regularly drew people in and manipulated them, only to wash over their entire person with strange judgements and then cast them aside, it was a bizarre thing to watch.

I met my girlfriend at a retail shop, I was buying something I don't remember what anymore, I asked her for her phone number because I couldn't get to mine at the time, I tried to call her later and it wasn't a valid number so I went back and asked her why she gave me the wrong number, she had horrible handwriting and wrote it down wrong, we hung out on her break and rambled like a dork near the end I gave her an awkward hug and then she called me up and we hung out a few more times, she was fascinating and she seemed to enjoy my company too, after less then a week we decided to become a couple and have been with each other for over 5 years now, we have a great love life, neither of us want kids, we both have interesting plans for the future and it all happened by random chance, I had just gotten out of a terrible relationship with a crazy person but she seemed very approachable so I took a chance I wasn't weird about it.

I am likely just lucky in this respect, maybe it's because I knew what kind of person I needed after being in several sh***y relationships beforehand I'll never know, but I always remember sitting down and thinking about what kind of person I really would enjoy the company of, what kind of person I would be able to attract realistically, and what kind of person would balance me out, things I had never given much thought before and this is shortly before I met her so maybe it helped, beats me.

I really don't think a person needs any fancy techniques to get to know another person. It usually just takes genuine interest, and willingness to listen, and willingness to say straight out, "Hey, I'm socially clumsy, if I bother you please tell me," and then to listen to them when they tell you something bothers them. And if they're not interested, to back off and find someone you are more compatible with.

Yes, I'd say it would be wrong--it's an invasion of privacy to read someone's mind like that!

Now, if she's wearing a T-shirt that says, "I Love Vanilla Ice-Cream", you could say, "Vanilla, right?" and expect to have her confirm that.

But the important thing is--don't poke into somebody's privacy; when they display something that other NTs could read from them (like the T-shirt, or like body language), you can use that--but always make sure that that's what they actually want. Maybe the girl who likes vanilla, wants strawberry today.

I am studying psychology. I don't see in it support for the idea that the incredibly complex thoughts, emotions and behaviors of the people around me can be reduced to a few types or a small number of sets.

There are many complimentary and competing sorting schemes: Enneagram, Meyers-Briggs, Keirsey, Jungian archetypes, Freudian superego-ego-id interactions, 3 trait systems, 5 trait systems, religiously-derived systems and so on. None of them are particularly well supported by observation. All of them are at times useful to people in one way or another.

But the primary goal of understanding other people remains communication. People are not static systems. They are moody, changeable and irrational. Give the same stimulus in the same external conditions, they will seldom respond in the same way twice.

It seems to me that having impressions about people based on experience and education (including any such system you have put time into learning) is fine, as long as you continuously verify your impressions by close observation of reality. In many cases, you can ask questions to verify your reading of the situation, though it is almost always best to do this using open -ended questions and active listening techniques.

Just paying attention puts you in a different position than most people who are socially interacting--I remember asking someone about something she had just told me and she was shocked that I had actually been paying close enough attention to be aware of it.

If I had not adopted this general approach when I was in high school and kept using it and refining it all my life, I would not have developed a relationship with my wife and would not have been able to (slowly, haltingly) make my way into the working world. Reality is always more important than the system of classification or notation we use to describe it and this is at least as true for people as it is for physical systems.