What now?

Post Reply New Topic

A friend recently sent me a link to the Wikipedia entry about AS after he heard a piece on NPR and I'm certainly glad he did. Many of the effects of AS described in that entry and by posters on this site apply to me and I'm now almost convinced that AS explains many aspects of my personality and personal history.

I had just pretty much accepted the ideal that I wasn't able, for whatever reason, to dive into social situations, relax and go with the flow like everyone else seemed to be doing. Also came to understand that I was unable to engage in an open and relaxed one on one relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I've had more than a few failures on that front over the years. The relationship always seemed to end with the other saying that I was too cold and reserved and didn't give of myself.

All in all, I've come to accept that I would never be like the others I see around me. I would always be separate and removed. It's not that I have come to not care about others and the world as a whole. I think now that I feel more empathy towards others than at any point in my life. I just can't express it like others do.

Finding this site has given me a new understanding of who I am and how I came to be the way I am. I always thought it was because of my childhood experiences and that I just never learned how to socialize like others around me. I still think that past is still a factor in my personality but AS explains a lot more about the difficulties I have had in my personal life.

The questions is “what now?” I had pretty much accepted that I would never be able to participate in social situations like others and finding that “soul mate” is just not going to happen. It's not that I'm unhappy with my life as it is. In fact I'm pretty damn happy with who I am and the life I live. But still in the background there is a longing to connect with others the way I see them doing. Like when I see a happy couple walking hand in hand down the street and feel a pang of regret that I will never know that experience. Now that I know about AS and how it has and continues to shape my life is there another path I can take or should I just be happy to have this part of who I am revealed and go on with the life I'm living now? Or a little bit of both?

I have experienced the same yet I can be and do many things and succeed or be incredibly average emotions run deep but are not out there to be seen except anger when I have it. The longing you feel describes me. I am not diagnosed but know I have been weird for a long time and sometime after elementary school I became different I was to begin with but apparently it had subsided with help in school and I was normal for a while or seemed to be. I was then removed from the program they had me in because I was above average and then I began to flail in the 5th grade and have been like this since.

Now you know you don't have habits to correct - you have a brain with a slightly different wiring scheme. Instead of trying to correct something, make coping skills to interact with other people. Observe, learn and apply. And there are plenty of married Aspies out there. The relationships have their own problems, but if both parties work at it, they work out.

Whenever I see a couple together, it never really bothers me. Maybe I'll think, I wonder if they're happy together, or how long will that relationship last? People, and probably their relationships are amusing, but I never think of applying it to myself. I never feel jealous that I have no one I share an intimate relationship with, even if I see others having one. I can only wish that they will truly be happy together, no matter how low the odds, and keep living as I am--an Aspie robot. But without relationships, I am still happy. It does not bother me that perhaps I will never end up finding true love, and it's not in my best intentions. I know that love is not an ultimate end for me, either because it's too cheesy or troublesome. But perhaps maybe it's because I have found my true love in logic and math. Perhaps it's because I love these things too much that I cannot love another person. But this acceptance is what makes me happy. And that's probably why I don't feel jealous.