HOW DOES ONE EXPLAIN ASPERGERS TO HIS GIRLFRIEND?

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ABOUT 6 MONTHS AGO, I MET THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS. SHE IS THE FIRST GIRL THAT IVE CARED ABOUT WHO'S ALSO CARED ABOUT ME. SHE IS CUTE, FUNNY, KIND, CARING, AND VERY TOLERANT OF MY WIERDNESS. THOUGH SHE DOES PUT UP WITH ME, I STILL CANNOT GIVE HER A DEFINITIVE ANSWER WHAT IT IS LIKE TO HAVE ASPERGERS. I HAVE EXPLAINED MOST OF THE SYMPTOMES AND TOLD HER THAT IT IS LIKE A VERY MILD AUTISM, BUT I DON'T THINK SHE GETS IT. ASIDE FROM HAVING HER READ A BOOK ON IT, HOW CAN I HELP HER SEE WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT??

Woah! Could you knock off the caps lock please? Typing in caps lock is the online equivalent of shouting.

Have you thought about introducing her to this website to have a look at?

On your sig: I don't think we need to know about your sexual proclivities, thank you very much.

http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=212

(Print this out and give her it, if she don't understand she don't understand....)

http://www.nas.org.uk/content/1/c4/62/32/AlertCard.pdf

(or this and cross out the one's that don't apply to you, it's about as basic as you can get)

It’s years I have been trying to explain what autism is to people who know me, with nearly no result. It seems nearly impossible, for someone who is not part of the pack, to understand what it feels like being autistic. I understood myself what was wrong with me very very late in life.
I will try some approach. It has to do with istinct. A politician knows by istinct what the struggle for power is. Had he to ponder each one of his moves scientifically, so to speak, he would be totally lost. He knows BY ISTINCT what works, and what not in the relationship with others. When I say something to someone else I have always to think what his/her answer means? Was he/she subtly aggressive, ironic, sarcastic? Was he/she hostile to me? Was his/her friendliness affected, sincere, overdone? What weight do I have to give to the traces of hostility I may have found in the answer? People sometime may answer coldly because they have some belly ache in that moment, and you don’t know. Or they may have just received some bad news they cannot communicate to you when they answer. Or they may be shy and not be able to express their sympathy for you in a trasparent way. Communication for us (or al least for me) is all about being aple to decrypt what the other say. It’s like having to look up in a dictionary for every word is spoken to you. Moreover we (I) are generaly oversensitive, we look for a sympathetic reception by others, that they cannot give you in the inordinate measure you would like.
It’s as if, when you cycle, you had to think over all your muscle movements. You probably will not go a long way and in any case would be exausted after a short time.

If this is of some help I’ll try to dwell more on the subject.

Capital lock may be an aspect.

The NAS explanation is good.

You can keep trying to EXPLAIN, or you can let her ask when she's curious. IF she really likes you, then she accepts the fact that you're DIFFERENT than other guys. Perhaps this very difference is what ATTRACTS her? Some people never get the 'spectrum' idea. Beware, though. Some NT women can be quite cruel when they discover you have meltdowns. My first girlfriend was, the NT b***h ! !! If you keep trying to explain, it'll probably just frustrate her...

Well, I have tried to do the same thing to my classmates at my HS but I thing they love to ignore me.
My advice is to lay low for now until you feel it is appropriate to do so.

Is she NT?

i go for the direct approach.. with my wife, and before her, my ex, i said "baby, look, im RRRREAL f'd up".. i tried to explain how some things that may seem irrational and unimportant to them, is sure as hell important to me and makes perfect sense in my mind.. how unexpected hugs and kisses are nice, but they freak me out.. how when im sitting "at my desk" reading, studying, reviewing chess magazines or watching futebol (football/ soccer) that is MOST DEFENITLY NOT the moment to ask me anything.. i have been very lucky, because most everyone of my girlfriends was very understanding, and some of them put up with alot of crap from me....

In my first (last, only, etc.) relationship, I decided after weighing up the arguments not to tell her, even though I would be considered a mid- to severe case with quite a few other related impairments, to the degree that anyone with knowledge of ASDs beyond the most rudimentary would be able to idenfity certain traits. Still, I thought she didn't necessarily need to know about it.

What I found out is that (1) most of the time, it helped me a lot, especially in forcing me to behave 'normal' and try to function like NTs do by depriving me of what would be an overly tempting excuse - one shouldn't apologise for being different when one can't help it at all, but sometimes it's ufeful to be able to act as NTs do. In retrospect, the latter was a momentous learning process and a huge advantage in my professional future. (2) When, however, our relationship started to disintegrate, I had to put up with criticism for much I couldn't really help and what I could generally have explained with my ASD. I could have told her at the time we had our conflicts, but (a) I thought that would have been unfair to her (it's called an 'ambush defence' and generally raised by real bad losers), (b) it might have led to her interpreting my conduct as dishonourable and dishonest by not telling her and engendering false expectations, viz. point (3) infra, which she basically was entitled to know. To state matters clearly, I believe a prospective girlfriend has the right to know all relevant circumstances. (3) I found that once you are planning long-term, a time will come, unless your case is really a very very mild one, where you will have to tell her (or even worse, run the risk of her finding out). There is no favourable outcome in that case; the best you can hope is that she will be understanding. I, having learned the lessons, do not think anymore that I would go the same route. By all means, be honest and open.

Not being able to go through these hoops of disclosure is part of the reason why I now find life considerably more relaxed without the issue of relationships.

Yes, I'd point her towards WP. I always think, if one wants to explore ASDs via reading, that general books aren't the way to go. Getting actually personal input from many auties is probably the best at explaining us. Maybe even an ASD chatroom.

Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

I explained to some of my friends a little while ago. I ended up telling them to think of it as 'emotion dyslexia' with facial expressions and body language being letters and moods being words. They seemed to understand that explaniation.