Neurotypical Women respond to this only please!

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I am a slightly autistic male and I have read some accounts of neurotypical women dating guys with Aspergers or some other slight form of autism. This puzzles me, what do you neurotypical women who date slightly autistic guys see in us autistic guys? I mean, let's be honest, we are no casanovas or charming gentleman. But then again, the likelihood of an autistic guy dating/marrying a neurotypical gal is a lot more realistic than a autistic guy dating/marrying an autistic gal. You are the majority and we are a minority. So it is wise to see what NT women think of us and why they are attracted to us.

What I am asking is this- Did you seek out autistic guys for relationships, or was it by merely by chance that some of the guys you dated were slightly autistic. My second question is why? What made you so attracted to autistic guys. I am curious, as far as I am concerned, the majority of autistic guys are screwed romantically because we are bashful/shy and uncertain of ourselves. Only the lucky ones get girls who like/love them, it is purely luck in my eyes.

I didn't know that my husband was/is an aspie when we got married. He had no idea either. We only found out after five years of marriage. To make a very very long story short, he ended up asking me for a divorce. I wanted to work on our marriage, but he didn't. He said he sees me as a "buddy" and can only treat me as a friend from now on, but could not and will not commit to me as a husband. It was quite a slap in the face really, but oh well, I have to learn to move on as he certainly has a while ago.

I read the book "Alone Together" after realizing my ex-husband-to-be may be AS. In that book, the NT wife writes about what attracted her to her aspie husband. Her experience is sort of similar to how it was when I first met my husband. In the book, they did not find out the husband is AS until after 17 years of marriage.

My AS husband is very smart and quite good-looking, goofy and childish and would make me laugh. We had problems with the concept of fidelity though. He did not and could not understand why he couldn't carry on with other much much younger girls. I only realized afterwards that a big part of this faithfulness problem had a lot to do with his AS. He could not relate to me as a peer (he's one year older than me) and would seek out the company and validation of young girls who did not know the real him (and what it was like to live in a pretty cold marriage). These girls worship the ground he walks on and he thoroughly enjoyed/s having his ego stroked.

To be honest, after having gone through what he and I did in our marriage, I would not date AS or slightly autistic guys again. Like I wrote on another thread, it was very hard for me but I'm sure it was doubly hard for him. I still love him, but he has given up on us a long time ago. There's only so much heartache a person can suffer before slowly waking up. I only have so much love to give.

I did not know my husband had Aspergers when I met him ( neither did he- but did tell me he felt kind of different from other people )
what attracted me to him was .....

1. His ability to be true to himself and his beliefs and not care what others thought.
2. That he was a little shy, but on getting to know him better he was very smart with a terrific sense of humour and a great sense of what was right/wrong ( we do not always agree on this, but I respect that he holds to his principals
3. I liked his sort of vagueness .. and he seemed to have trouble with some day to day stuff... very practical things , that to me seemed a piece of cake. It was at odds with his general level of intelligence.. which I think I found interesting and at times amusing .. as did he. He can read a book completely and know it inside out, but cannot remember three items to get from the store. So perhaps I felt a sense of needing to protect and help him here.
4. We had common interests, reading, music , movies, gaming and similar values. He's a wonderful piano player and I have huge admiration for creative people. He writes like a dream as well
5. He made me laugh, he was and is very caring.
6. He is interesting to converse with, he has a passion for general knowledge as well as very specific knowledge about certain topics.
7. He takes up new interests with such intensity .. and sweeps me along with him if it is something that I might be interested in too.
8. He's quirky and different ..( probably the factor that attracted me most in the first place ) and that is interesting, I guess I have never been one to go with the crowd.. even though I am very much NT ( not even a hint of aspie-ness) I prefer to have interesting people in my life that offer me a chance to learn and grow.. why on earth would I want to have someone that is the same as me.. how dull is that ?

I think he and I are well balanced. I am a very common sense and organised person ( he is completely disorganised ) I tend to be very serious.. he is more impulsive and enthusiastic ( perhaps sometimes child like )

We certainly have our moments where we are at odds ( normally trying to communicate around emotions and perceptions ) BUT.. bottom line is I love him ( we have been married for 10 years, together longer ) and he loves me, so anything that is basically good is worth working at. We both try to make compromises for one another's differences and that is the key to making it work. I think an AS/NT relationship is never plain sailing .. and often quite hard on both people but very worthwhile if you are both prepared to put in the effort needed.

Esther just a forewarning, and I'm one of accommodating people on this board, don't expect those sorts of stories to go down well on this forum. In my experience many ASD just don't like to be misaligned with people who are so intolerable in a relationship that they give up on their partners. If anything many of us could be accused of trying too hard.

Sometimes relationships don't work out. Besides chemical signals there isn't all that much that hold people together in general it seems. Unless they really have something beyond that.

Hi 0_equals_true. I would argue that the idea of "trying too hard" is all relative. I wanted to try even harder, but as you said, my husband eventually found himself in an intolerable relationship and had to break free. Like I wrote, our marriage was hard for me, but harder for him.

I don't think I'm a bad person (and my husband is such a lovely man) but the reasons he gave for wanting out of the marriage did not amount to just upping and leaving. I guess he reached the end of the wick of his patience candle long before I did.

I was just being honest in what I wrote. I love my husband. I don't care if he is AS. When we found out he is AS, I told him that at last we now knew a huge source of all of our misunderstandings and miscommunication and could start anew. Yet he still said that he was going to file for divorce.

I agree with you. Our relationship just didn't work out. I wish him all the happiness in the world. I hope that he has found/finds whatever makes him content. And I hope that he finds a new person who will give him the satisfaction that he could not find in our marriage.

I am NT but I would consider my tastes to be offbeat. I am attracted to nerds and introverts and people who think differently or oddly in general, and the few aspie guys I have known fit at least one but usually all of those descriptions. I shouldn't generalize but I can tell you why I like my current aspie crush. He's very sweet and honest. I've dated NT guys who are sweet but seldom are they honest in the way my aspie crush is honest. It's nice to be around someone you know isn't playing some dating games. And unlike many NT guys I've dated, I don't feel objectified when I'm around him. No matter how well they hide it, when I've gone out with NT guys I always in the end feel like a piece of meat, even if they respect me for my mind, treat me decently, etc. It feels like they're jumping through hoop after hoop of established social/dating customs with the end goal of sleeping with me. Not that I'm saying my aspie crush can't think of me sexually (I certainly think of him sexually ) , but it's obvious that he's sincerely more interested in aspects of my personality or my interests or views. Our interaction, to be frank, is very BS-free, which is an incredible feeling.

Other things I like about him are that he makes me laugh, he makes good company, he's insightful (about life, religion, politics etc), he revels in his weirdness through his style of clothes, he follows his own ethics and standards instead of blindly accepting the ones set by society, his passions are clear because he gets a child-like enthusiasm over them and I love encouraging him in pursuing different goals related to his passions/interests. To be honest, now that I've gotten a taste of what it's like to be with an aspie guy, I think I'll be reluctant with going back to NT guys if I ever have to.

As for your question on if I sought an aspie or was it chance -- I didn't seek out an aspie specifically, but he did tell me right off the bat when we met and it did peak my interest greatly. It's possible that even if he were not an aspie, I'd be attracted to him because I find him very physically cute, but who's to say.

Thanks for that.

I doubt very much that many people have had an orgy with some nuns, no.

Why aren't there more NT women like you, and if there are, why aren't they swarming to meet me?

Last edited by ToadOfSteel on 26 Sep 2008, 5:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wake up....

I'm fully awake as it is. I know that most NT's go for the status factor, which to them is more important than any meaningful in a relationship. Was it not you that argued on repeated occasions that women only go after men that possess certain traits?

traits that you and me don't have.

Still the ever self-defeatist prince I see.

Perhaps try gaining the knowledge, without the positive/negative attribute. A neutral calmness is the only way you could possibly use any knowledge you attain.

A vibrant passion, or indoctrinated feeling of love, or its counterpart of a despairing depression, will in both cases, and neither, allow you to succeed. One causes you to overcompensate, and the other undercompensate. Both sicken the ability to think and than act with no intermittence.

Take your knowledge(and what you think it is), and test it on those you don't care about or could never actually see yourself with. Perhaps even the lowest common denominator. Maybe than you can refine the method to suit your lifestyle and personality.

Usery and complex manipulation is something else entirely. One marked with unabashed intent, and maliciousness. Something which deserves not even the paper its written on.

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And...this entire paragraph somehow got amazingly wordy...I think I was too amused.

I'm fully aware of that. I was lamenting why there couldn't be more women like the variety of suebear...

Mmm, I dunno I think I'm just your average INTJ girl. I would say "garden variety INTJ" but given the statistics of INTJs in the population, that's possibly a contradiction.

I don't think Suebear is wholly unique, I can really understand what she means, because I too I'm attracted to the 'less common'.

In fact it was me who was struggling with the candor, openess and lack of guile. I kept looking for it, thinking I was missing something. I now I find I have to challenge my own perceptions, assumptions and beliefs!

I wonder if SueB has landed on something here.......I too am an INT...although P in my case, but only becasue the rules say so, straight split between J/P. When I was younger almost off the scale for NT (in Myers Briggs speak), this has moderated ever so slightly, but I I think that's learned behaviour.

So, let's not despair, there are women out there who are 'less common' too.........