“Open” relationships and ASD

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I'd kill for your short time period, three months is my longest. Bliss then boom, and it takes time to recover. I'm still trying and it's seems to be improving but now I'm feeling the pressure as I'm running out of time. I have to decide to either give up and get a dog or keep searching by not searching.

Music is funny subject as I like a variety or I'm diverse but I get a kick out of singing along with the love song ballads. Whitesnake's "Is this love" or "Here I go again,", Jackson Browne, Patty Griffin, etc. I apply the words to myself or via daydreams and this is false hope for me. When discussing music, I am usually surprised by other people comments about a song or artist. Example, they say Jackson Browne sings such sad songs, I'll disagree as I don't think about his personal loss and see hope in the words. "Sky Blue and Black." For reference, his wife committed suicide during his peak writing period.

My first three relationships were open on one side only, and without my consent.

My boyfriends were sleeping with men, and I wasn't.

That sucks

I've been in non-exclusive "friends with benefits" relationships, and that was ok. But for anything more serious, monogamy is better for me. It's hard enough for me to deal with just one other person's thoughts and emotions. A polyamorous network is just too complicated for me to navigate.

Yup, sucks to be me.

If I could ever read a person's sexuality properly, I'd likely die of shock.

I think most people don't read their own sexuality properly. I know it took me a long time to be comfortable with even my own hetro-ness. I would see an attractive male and think, wow what an attractive man, then homophobia would set in and I would start processing the same question, am I gay? I finally accepted that yes, Elvis was an attractive human but I would not want to see the nasty bits, ergo I ain't gay. Proof comes when I see Roseanne Barr and I start wondering if she is shaved, has an hitler, landing strip, or au natural?

Maybe the need to have a non traditional relationship is a way of adapting to challenges. For example I love my partner but can no longer live with him due to his daughter's irrational phobias ruling my life and making me completely miserable, which lead to me being hospitalised. We all have ASD and my partner and his daughter also have ADHD. His previous marriage broke up due to challenges daughter created in their lives.

I love him and want him in my life, but it can't be full time. I asked him if he would consider being on rotation or having an open relationship. He is against it, but I cannot sit around in limbo, waiting until he is free.

Having a non traditional seems the only solution if we are to stay together in some shape or form. Why throw the baby out with the bath water? He is perfect, but he cannot marry me. I need to live my life differently from neurotypicals.

I agree.

I've gotten into trouble due to fact that I don't feel jealousy and that when I am interested in someone, Im not interested whether they are single or married or in exploration mode or whatever. I just wanted closeness and openness and did not require exclusiveness. I was glad to discuss their other relationships, so they told me about their dates, girlfriends and wifes. It would have been okay if not the jealousy of the wives. I could not understand why were they so convinced that I was going to steal their husband. I was totally OK with being, as they say, "No 2". Or No 3, or No 33, or whatever, I didn't care. But all other women wanted to fully own their husbands. I ended up causing some divorces before I submitted to realities of society and started limiting my feelings to single or divorced men and abandoned my friends when they had new wives. I've been called immoral for my attitude. I don't feel immoral, on the contrary, to me it feels immoral to want to own a person and to restrict another person from having other relationships. But I guess morality is what majority says it is.

I am glad that I am not completely alone in my attitude, though.

it seems to me this involves only the most socially intelligent and highest TOM aspies, the cream of the cream. for the majority of us who can't even have one relationship or anything close, this subject is like "echelons beyond reality."

Partially true but not completely.
At school boys made a list of girls where they ranked them by desirability and I was at the very bottom of it, no one else below me. Yeap. I was socially completely dumb. Lucky for me, IQ wasnt bad, and coupled with constant hard work at learning masking, got first relationship in my 20s, which failed, because I failed to mask 24/7. Another decade of hard work, and I had a few relationships in my 30s.

So, not exactly cream of cream. No good looks and socially totally dumb. Only IQ and extreme persistence. Life starts as complete failure, but at some point, things turn around. For me it was 20s, for someone else maybe 30s, 40s...

I do understand that many dont have hope at all. Im just saying that you dont have to be cream of cream - just being plain cream can be enough.

What is TOM?

Theory of Mind

This is difficult to explain in a few words but I'll try. I got involved with a remarkably respectable number of women before getting married (although I usually though of them as "girls" unless they were older than I) but only two that I ever really though of as "girlfriends". The 2nd of these, whom I met when I was 24 and she had just turned 21, was undeniably neurodiverse (although I don't know what her diagnosis would have been had she been born 40 years later) and I fairly recently came to suspect the other was also on the spectrum if not fully autistic.

There are a couple of reasons to suspect the 2nd GF may not have been entirely "faithful" during our relationship (which lasted well over 2 years). The first night I spent with her she told me, in a matter-of-fact manner, that she had a FWB she would sometimes go see when she was horny. Second thing was sometime later, I showed up unannounced at an event I knew she was attending and when I got there saw that she was walking around holding hands with some dude who was in fact even 4 years older than I. When she saw me, she sort of acted like she didn't recognize me. I don't know if she actually had sex with him on that day but it's probable she had had sex with him earlier (possibly before she met me). BTW I do know that the FWB and the dude she was holding hands with weren't the same person, nor were either her ex-boyfriend who by then was married. The other thing was she somehow gave my parents the impression she wasn't naturally monogamous (I honestly don't know what she said or did to give that impression) and that is one reason my parents were so opposed to my marrying her (which she was very ready to do unlike her ex-boyfriend whom she had dumped).

However this is about me not her. The fact is that I never gave much if any thought to the FWB, and although seeing her walking around holding hands with that 28-year-old upset me, all I did in response was, when I saw her that evening I said I didn't want her to do that again in front of me suggesting that I wasn't going to dictate her behavior just that my feelings could be hurt. In retrospect I can imagine she may have been genuinely concerned that I would leave her that day which may be why the relationship survived as long as it did and it may have helped inspire her to talk about marriage. I am sure that many of not most guys would have either have left a GF who did something like that or would have maybe done something to get back at her, or periodically brought the topic up in a threatening way. At the time, she gave no evidence of wanting me out of her life and was unfailingly nice to me and dedicated to the goal of ensuring that my sexual "needs" were satisfied.

I never really understood why a single example of showing interest in somebody else is reason enough for most people to consign their partner to the sofa or simply leave them, or to revisit the incident as a way to remind them they'll never be forgiven.

I recently came across the idea of "Solo Polyamory", defined as follows:

"Solo polyamory means that someone has multiple intimate relationships with people but has an independent or single lifestyle. They may not live with partners, share finances, or have a desire to reach traditional relationship milestones in which partners' lives become more intertwined."

I also saw this term self-applied to a seemingly disproportionate degree by those on the spectrum. I had not even considered this as a possible way of living, but it seems that at least a few have managed to make it happen.

I'm guessing that even within the generally very "open" Polyamory community, this may seem like a fringe notion.

Darron

cream is still way above me. or - that "cream" for all practical aspie purposes, counts as cream of cream.

I'm getting into a chit chat with a woman about a friends with benefits type of deal tomorrow. It's a far better match for us than what we had before.