Fear of commitment

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I cannot even begin to tell you how confusing your thought swings will be to the other person. Although they may be logic driven, that logis is your logic and odds are they will not understand it at all. Even worse it could come across as being very logical in a selfish way, where you benefit from this logic and it will appear to them that their needs have not been considered.

I think it is very admirable that you are honest about your thought swings and it shows that you do not want to hurt anyone.

So a casual relationship may indeed be better for you, however I think you should be sure that this is the tone that is set from the begining. I think that may be hard for you to do though, depending on what your thoughts are about the relationship in that moment. I have heard many times how important it is for us NTs to be consistent with our behavior and the message we send. Most of us also like consistency as well.

I'm not ignoring it...

Maybe I'm guilty of failing to acknowledge that I'm not ignoring it though - I Blame My Asperger's!

I'm teasing. I get jealous when an OP of a post responds to everyone BUT me.

Maybe this helps you see why commitment is so difficult for me. It's kind of like "Edward Scissorhands" syndrome, I want a relationship, but I am very prone to hurting someone by my very nature. I guess I need to find someone who's really low-maintenance...

After glancing through the responses it appears that Grisha responded to people who asked him a question or for more clarification regarding his post.

Perhaps I missed something, but that's what it appears like to me.

Yes you probably do need to find someone who is very low maintenance. I have a saying "equity is important in a relationship, you can't make the other person give more, but you can choose to give less." However for some people giving less and getting less changes the relationship in a way that they do not find satisfying.

Just realize that when you give less, you get less. As long as you are happy with that, then you will have found the perfect situation.

I really do admire you for not wishing to cause another person pain.

It's not a matter of *choosing* to give less, it's a matter of being fundamentally unable to give some things that an NT partner wants/needs - this is a disability, not a lifestyle choice!

I usually try to compensate with material and sexual generosity - but of course this never is enough...

While I'm not Grisha, I think you said it pretty well. I was in a similar situation, with my first girlfriend ever in 2007. (She wasn't my first sex partner; I've had sex with escorts before that.) I messaged her on a dating site, and she took an interest in me. While I liked per personality and the conversations we had, I wasn't attracted to her physically. But feeling the pressure from society and from myself to be in a relationship, plus knowing that I'm nowhere near good-looking myself, I let things get more serious than I should have. This included sex and talking about taking vacations together.

As I should have expected, all this caught up with me, and I found myself with a moral dilemma. What ended up being somewhat of a saving grace is that after we celebrated Valentine's Day, she hasn't contacted me in a month. After that, I ended up breaking up with her because I realized I did have some semblance of feelings for her (or maybe it was simply attachment; I was too inexperienced to know for sure), and found the disappearing act quite hurtful. We both came out relatively unscathed. Still, in retrospect, it would have been best to limit the serious behavior on my part and not let physical intimacy get past making out or maybe a little more.

I learned my lesson since then. Grisha, perhaps you shouldn't act very boyfriend-like at the beginning, either, which you seem to be doing. Don't use the word "love", don't make long-term plans for the future, and don't talk about exclusivity right away. At the same time, don't have sex until you're sure of the relationship, or at least be very clear that you're not looking for commitment. You will portray your intentions more clearly and save yourself the moral dilemmas you're posting in this thread.

In my situation it is me who chose to give less in order to make the relationship more equitable. However this is not really what I want or find satisfying.

I did not mean to imply that you chose to give less.

In my situation it is not always clear why he makes the choices that he does, I am sure he has his own sense of logic. I am aware that AS is a disability not a lifestyle choice. I suppose that what each NT needs probably varies, if what that person needs their partner is fundamentally unable to give then the relationship will ultimately fail.

My needs are rather basic for an NT, and I am able to clearly articulate what they are in what some have called a contract. I cannot gauge if a person can give what is in my contract, I have to be able to depend on them to determine that. However once they agree, I do expect for them to hold up their end of things or let me know that they cannot.

Only you know what it is that you can give. Once you articulate this to someone, it is their choice whether or not to accept your terms. The most important thing is that each person be consistent and not keep changing what they have agreed upon.

There was a book written by Dr. Laura Schlessinger called The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, I thought that was what you were using as a reference point for "to try and understand the care and feeding of an NT"

I think that is what most of us long for, someone who can understand how to care for us and ensure that our needs rarely go hungry. In that way AS and NT people are really not so different.

I hope that you are able to find someone who can meet your needs, and that you can be successful in meeting theirs as well.

Sorry, this is off topic, but I'm just curious, did she tell everyone that she has AS? Because I used to know a woman who acted similarly, except she was bipolar.

Grisha, I had one more thought about your situation. Do these people you date begin acting demanding and "crazy" (for lack of a better word) from the start, or do they get this way over time? Not that anything would excuse their behavior as you describe it but, maybe if you're giving inconsistent messages, or getting serious and pulling away, it's causing them to freak out and want "proof" that you still love them or are serious? I.e. maybe they suddenly want to do "couple stuff" (like manage money together), or they just generally act bossy and out of line because they want some reassurance that you still care about their opinions / feelings and want to be a couple with them? Maybe they don't know how to get that reassurance from you in a more appropriate way, or don't know when to just throw in the towel and realize they're just not going to get it from you?

It's probably inconsistent messages. Remember, I'm just trying to guess at what I am "supposed" to do, and initially this may come off as being more interested than I really am.

Well, I take a "take it or leave it" approach. I take the attitude that I am who I am and if you're one of those people that feels everyone has to live like you do according to your standards to be acceptable, then just go away because I have no interest in being someone's human project or constantly arguing about petty differences and quirks of behavior.

I just have an internal list of things that can be compromised for a relationship, and things that can't because "that's just me" and it would require too much effort or stress or lifestyle adjustment or w/e to try and change it. As an example, I spend a lot of time playing video games and on the computer. If my partner objected to this, I'd immediately be wary because this is not something that I can easily change. I do expect to give up some of that time, perhaps a lot, to spend time with my partner, but I need my personal time and I am not going to have it dictated to me what I am and am not allowed to do (beyond the obvious not cheating or downloading porn or w/e). Another example is parties. I'm not an outgoing person. I require very few relationships to be happy. I would do these things occasionally, but I'm never going to be the socialite that knows all these facts about everyone's family and jobs and who's dating whom and what not. I try to make this apparent fairly early in the process by using the right phrases to describe myself like "introvert", "homebody", "quiet", "shy", "geek", "nerd", etc. I purposefully use words that have a generally negative connotation because I know they're "turn-off" words and I'm screening out the people that aren't going to like me for who I am.

How do you find these women Grisha? You must be the unluckiest person in the world. With the combination of your looks, intelligence, and income, I would think you could have most any woman you want and they'd look past your social limitations just for the income stability. You should move here. There's an almost limitless supply of old-fashioned country girls that want nothing more than to be a housewife that takes care of their man while they raise the kids. With your financial resources, you might even try looking at places in the rural midwest/south for these types of women that are willing to relocate. If you so desire, you can find women probably 15-20 years younger than you are. If you're willing to date single parents, you should have a really easy time. I have had several single moms message me, and I live with my parents. There are lots of profiles where the girl actually says it's important that a guy have a job and car, not even a good job and nice car. That's sort of the reality around here. The unemployment rate here for folks in my age group is very high, so the dating standards get really low.

Well, you'd think so, but woman in my experience are FAR less interested in financial security than is popularly supposed, especially when everyone thinks you are a serial killer.

Actually, with the way my business is currently structured I could live just about anywhere, but since I'm a liberal atheist I might not be too popular in the areas you mentioned even with a decent income. Also, I am perfectly willing to date single moms - it's actually kind of ideal because they are by definition homebodies...

I think if I was NT I'd actually being doing pretty well, but my AS kind of offsets all of the positives...

Well, liberal isn't a dealbreaker because even here a conservative woman is more to the left than a conservative man, and a lot of women aren't political at all or don't care enough to argue. You're right that the atheism would be a major turn off around here. That question on OKCupid about creationism in public schools gets a lot of yesses around here. That one may actually be a larger obstacle than AS. Have you considered agnosticism? It's a more open minded version where you just say "I don't know one way or the other". It depends on how strongly you feel about the subject, but a lot of "religious" people are not the sort of people that even go to church regularly, and a lot of them won't try to convert you (I don't generally date the zealots that are all religion all the time either), but if they see "atheist", they jump to the image of the militant atheist that runs around suing to have all references to God taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance and the money and what not.

Of all your AS traits, which one seems to give you the most problems when it comes to dating? MAybe the forum can help you with that. I mean i know that it probably isn't just one thing, but where would you start?

I refer to myself as "Agnostic" or "Secular" in polite company, and I can credibly call myself a Christian except for the fact that I don't believe in the supernatural. Militant atheists that you refer to are intolerant a**holes - I have nothing to do with them...