Question about romanticness and men.

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oops double post.

is he an aspie too?

well, if it makes you happy to give compliments and you mean what you say, then i can't see why it would really be something you should suppress. try explaining that you are just vocalizing your thoughts.

it didn't occur to me until recently that in some cases compliments are given as a means to boost the other person's self-esteem or to buy favor points or because it's a nice thing to do (that would never occur to me because why would anyone want that? i get really angry if i think someone has said something to be polite but doesn't mean it) - i had always assumed someone would only say a thing like that because they meant it and it was a spontaneous observation, and i was ignorant of the things people say just to bond with each other (which i don't understand - wouldn't making deep observations be a better bonding mechanism??). now i'm even more confused about how to interpret people!


anyway as i said, i am particularly sensitive to anything i perceive (even wrongly?) as rote or learned behavior or any kind of script. i get really frustrated with customer service people on the phone who have to end with "have i addressed all of your concerns today? etc etc .. it takes all of my willpower to resist yelling at them even though they are being forced to say it. it's so terrible for so many reasons reasons: someone has to speak certain words rather than think (poor them! how terrible that must be!! !), and i don't get to have a conversation with someone that contains any level of actual communication or sincerity .. and who do i complain to? it's so awful that they have to do that, but the only person i could complain to about it is the person forced to spew verbal candy coating and insincere stock phrases to me (so they can keep me as a customer, meaning = keep receiving my money every month .. who cares if i am satisfied with the service i am receiving ..) and how dumb do they think i am to believe that they really would say that? plus it is so difficult for me to explain why i've called and not get bogged down with rephrasing and rephrasing so that the person grasps what i mean. i wonder sometimes - am i speaking english? or have i made up some language of my own? and why doesn't anyone speak it?

when i was a kid i was really troubled when my mother would clean before she had guests over. i found it insincere.

*phew* ... sorry .. rant. really off topic.
does anyone understand this??

i don't play well with other people, really. it's unbelievable how much energy i expend wondering why they act the way they do. i wish it was otherwise. the only thing that carries any weight for me is what people truly think / feel (which behavior is only a possible indicator of, and what it means to me seems so inside out and backwards sometimes from the intention) and it is so difficult to determine. there are too many layers to peel off. i don't know how to get to the core inside.

Well, I am not sure why I like giving compliments. It is weird, perhaps because I am observant, and like to talk, and if I can see some good feature in someone, I like to point it out to them...

but it has a dark side, I am also just as good at seeing people's flaws and seeing bad things in people... I try to keep those to my self but that doesnt always happen...

I am the opposite of my boyfriend. I will show him this post tomorrow night and ask him if he has had similar thoughts. Me, as a child I never thought people were insincere. I was actually so gullible that people would lie to me and I would blindly believe them, even if it seemed a bit ridiculous.

I didnt know what someone had to gain by lying in a social situation, so I didnt think that people lied except for example they had done something bad and lied to their mum to evade punishment. I couldnt see any other application for lying, and I assumed everyone was very truthful, like me.

Perhaps you were given some social training as a child, and it made you examine people closely a lot to try and figure them out? I dont know.

My boyfriend is an aspie (mildish) and he said he had difficulties in school when a child, but he had to learn to figure people out. He says he is always on guard with people, knowing that if he can figure out how they work he can deal with them.

That is not what I do, I kind of fly blind with people, I actually feel a bit ill if I accidentally uncover some sinister motives... but he seems to like finding them.

That poster nailed it on the head zen.

Dating/courtship/romance is just like marriage.. its a matter of both sides compromising. If the girl only wants to be on the receiving end of her needs then why would the man choose to remain with her other than some faint, masochist hope that she will fulfill his needs farther down the road?

His needs may not be entirely sexual.. his needs could well be to just do some activity together or to share his interests with her. This is the part that I think many women fail at understanding. The one thing I notice in almost all relationships..mine and of other guys.. is that women make it a habit to refuse to participate in the stuff he likes and the guy just has to swallow that refusal; whereas if a guy refuses to go out shopping with her for endless hours at some mall... that refusal becomes a 'problem' in the relationship because she sees it as him not being interested or romantic.

If your BF doesnt 'romance' you perhaps you could look at what you, the woman, is doing to 'romance' him. Again, im not saying have sex with him, just saying that both sides should put an effort into the relationship not just one side being parasitic of the other.

Interesting idea but that is not really the situation I am in. I am dating someone who has a very unsentimental, matter of fact view of things, who isnt wired to be interested in romantic, frilly things, though he does have an artistic side (a good drawer and painter and good at presenting things that look nice. But that is more to do with a sort of flair with things visual.)

i could devote my whole life to fulfilling his needs and he would still have little interest in romantic things that interest me, except stuff like fine cooking, wine and massage, that he actually does like..

He is also very stubborn. He hates doing stuff that other people suggest, he has this sort of aspie determination to follow his own physical path no matter what. The worst physical violation in his mind is being told what to do. He will work under a boss at work, but he will do that for the purposes of getting the job done well.

i guess I just started this thread as I was wondering how people felt about all those traditional Romance things that men sometimes do. But some posters have helped me understand him better along the way, and that is good.

Have you told him this directly?

no, unless you call having a parent who would scold me for being rude social training. he would get angry at me for things like telling another kid he was weird or refusing to dance with a smelly old guy at a wedding, things i found completely reasonable. but without an explanation, my response was to be annoyed that i had been misinterpreted. i still failed to understand the concept of politeness, thus the irritation at cleaning for guests. why shouldn't they see how we usually are?? if my parents had understood my deficits then they could easily have explained why being polite mattered, or that certain behavior would put other people at ease (though i still would not have danced with the smelly guy) and i might have had a glimmer of understanding , but i thought they just didn't like me.

my father though was unpredictable and on a few occasions abusive and also had the habit of ripping me to shreds with (inaccurate) psychoanalysis of my behavior. it was incredibly invasive and i responded with great effort to 1. hide my motivations from his scrutiny, as i was constantly being painted as someone i was not (even from a young age, i was very stubborn), and 2. try to figure out why people did what they did, so i wouldn't be caught offguard or be so vulnerable to the opinions of others when i hadn't acted in the way they thought i should have.

necessity is the mother of invention.

my observations rarely turn out to be correct, but that doesn't stop me from trying.



i'm always on guard as well. i thought everyone would be, who cannot rely on their intuition to read people's behavior. but maybe this is more to do with my background.



me too.

it does sound like we are similar and have a bit of defiance in common.

i think the root of it is as simple as an overwhelming need to be truthful, rather than rebellion. maybe he would submit to some romantic behaviors if you made it clear it was ok that they didn't mean anything to him? i don't know. or as dantac suggests, offer to do something for him in return. (if he's like me in this regard, this won't work; he won't want you to do something you don't already want to do)

We have had many discussions on topics like this, and we have just come to the conclusion that we are very different.

anyway you seem to think that I am complaining about my boyfriend. I am not. I am trying to understand how he thinks, and I wanted to discuss the different issues around the topic of romantic expression, the genders, and the expectations on men to do the traditional romantic things especialy.

Yeah, my background is a little different I guess. My parents didnt really notice I had poor social skills. They didnt know I was being bullied and had difficulty with friendships.. until high school anyway.

My peers and teachers were pretty rough with me. I thought they were just jerks as I didnt understand why. I didnt even understand social skills existed anyway.

i guess people are different, some aspies might react by being on guard, but I have met aspies who believed that people were nice to them when they werent. So I think it depends...

Yes my boyfriend has that rebellious streak but it is not to be rebellious... it is kind of like he is a wild horse... he just follows his own will.

I dont really want to get him to do that traditional romantic stuff for me as it would seem really weird and not him if he did it...

the nice stuff he does for me actually does suit him though. So I guess he will never share many of my views on things, and he will never want to watch a romantic comedy with me without making hurling noises, but many of the things we do are pretty nice.

From a man's PoV.

Yes. A guy is obliged to know how to be romantic. At certain points in his life, is expected to be romantic.

When a guy is young, you expect him to try and be romantic (in the clumsy but cute way that only youth allows). After being married and reaching the golden years (or surviving a spouse or two), you simply want someone who can put up with your idiosyncracies.

The fact is, for the vast majority of women, they may not expect nor need, but they do appreciate a little bit of romanticism (as listed above). If a guy can do that, it'll help solidify the relationship. However, a VERY SMALL percentage of women really don't care about that stuff as they are looking for a peer/mentor to share their life with and want someone with who they can simply sit down and share time and a good conversation with.

There are unwritten rules about being a guy, and being able to be romantic is one of them (along with being able to kill).

Hence, having the ability to be romantic will help in 95% to 99% of situations. Grow old, be married long enough, age... and the need to be romantic lessens (though never drops to 0).

Totally agree, more confused than ever. Instead of 'why do people say things they don't mean?', now it's 'omg, WHY do they want to do that?'. And I really hate the idea that my genuine spontaneous observations might be perceived as 'compliments' which have some ulterior motive. It just makes me want to revert to not bothering to talk to anyone, since I can't see any purpose in wasting the effort involved if all they expect are lies.


Every word.

No, me neither. I'm polite and kind to others, but I'm not going to pander to their bizarre ways and rituals.

I don't feel the need for compliments, but I don't mind genuine statements of opinion, as long as I'm not expected to 'do' anything with them. Sometimes people do say things which seem fake, and I dislike that, but I couldn't define what the fakeness is, incongruence perhaps, or some undefinable sense of expectation.

If somebody says something genuinely nice to me, it might take a couple of weeks before I consciously register it, and then I might be glad that they said it, or uncomfortable, depending on the situation. If a partner never makes any comment, that would be weird, because surely everyone has some opinion about the people they spend time with.

Words of appreciation do matter, but because my ex-partner could be quite nasty at times, I could never tell whether he was trying to be nice, or trying to have a dig, so I ended up indifferent to what he said - it was easier than trying to interpret his motives.