Love vs Calculator - Calc wins

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I remember something that happened years ago when I was staying at my girlfriend's during uni holidays. We'd been talking about going out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate our love, or rather she was talking and I was ignoring. We were walking down her local shopping plaza when an office supply store come into view and I asked if we could have a look. So after a lot of "do you really need it?", isn't our relationship more important?" type stuff I walked out with a $200 programmable calculator. And spent the rest of the night programming in PV=nRT, e=mc^2 and everything else that's important in life. The relationship was dead a few weeks later. It was only a few years ago I realized that was a fatal mistake in social skills and emotional understanding. Has anyone else done something similar?

i couldn't even get that far, to actually have anybody to go out with.

Dude, if she wanted you to blow $200 on a fancy meal rather than a calculator that'll last a long while and be useful in school and/or work, then she probably wasn't the kind of girl you would've liked spending your life with anyway. Find yourself someone who'll beg to help you program the $200 calculator after you've bought it, and you'll have found a much better match.

i'd rather have a fancy meal with a nice girl then a calculator.

I bet you've still got the calculator though?

She still doesn't sound like much of a prize to me. Insisting on ridiculously expensive meals (presumably paid for entirely by your boyfriend) when he doesn't have a lot of money to begin with and evidently doesn't enjoy them really isn't something a thoughtful person does. She almost sounds like she thought she owned his money, or something, if she was going to break up because he wouldn't spend ridiculous amounts on a meal out. Seriously controlling there.

My dad stayed un-married to his girlfriend for 25yrs

Each year in spring they would discuss the +'s and -'s of getting married.

Riding lawn mower won one year, the big screen TV another, vacation to Ireland, the new car, home improvements, new CPU etc etc....

Umm yeah, But it's in bits because a following girlfriend smashed it since I wasn't giving her enough attention above the calculator and the computer lol. Gee I can pick em hey?

Wow... I think I might swear off girls forever if that were me. 'Course, I kind of already have, so...

Very familiar situation LOL! It was my first portable chess computer in 1985 and my then gf, who was terribly bad at chess. You've made the right choice.

Not a mistake!

You saved yourself some trouble by realizing that this girl didn't care at all about your interests and was more interested in scoring a very expensive meal. If you truly liked you she would be happy that you bought something cool for yourself.

That's pretty much what I think. It might have been different if you'd mutually agreed to celebrate your bonding, but it looks like it was something she just decided for herself and then imposed on you. Kind of ironic that she thought that would be a celebration of your love......more like a celebration of her getting what she wanted from you whether you liked it or not. And if I had a relationship that had matured enough to make me want to celebrate it, I wouldn't end it just because of one mistake like that. Especially if I knew she was an Aspie. Especially if I hadn't warned her a couple of times that we'd agreed to do something else.

To be honest guys it wasn't just about buying the calculator. I still had enough money to take her to Maccas if she wanted, lol. There was also my failure to socialize with her family or be able to talk to them like a "normal boyfriend" would. And wanting to spend all night getting intimate with a calculator rather than doing something with my girlfriend must have seemed a little crazy to them. I remember one night her mother asked me to go with her to get take away and was a little confused why she'd want that. Once again it was years later I realized during that time her daddy brother and sis were probably giving my gf a lecture on how crap I was for her. This was roughly 20 years ago. I haven't had a "proper" relationship since. And never plan to.

I'll second this.

My immediate reactions to the topic was "But why does one have to win?" A nice meal is nice sometimes (though I'd view "nice meal" as $50 for two people, not $200), but enjoying yourself with things that last longer is far more important. I'd more have worried about whether you bought it without thinking about it and just because it was the new thing and would never use it than the fact that a calculator was more important than a nice meal.

Sort of reminds me of AntMan and Wasp in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I couldn't stand to watch that series because I hate how Wasp treats AntMan. Supposedly they're in love, yet she seems to hate all his wonderful aspie-ish qualities.

I wonder whether that's what causes this trouble with AS/NT marriages that causes people like Maxine Aston to go all ballistic. The NT spouse thinks they can force the Aspie to act like an NT rather than being themselves; and that controlling tendency ruins the marriage.

If an NT goes into the marriage expecting the Aspie to act like an NT and rejecting them whenever they don't act like an NT, then that's a recipe for failure. Not that the Aspie half of the partnership couldn't ruin the marriage too; expecting an NT to act Aspie doesn't work either.

You got to get somebody who likes you for who you are--including your autism--and doesn't want to try to turn you into something else.