16 Apr 2011, 5:51 pm
Things seem to be looking up, don't they?
16 Apr 2011, 6:11 pm
poopylungstuffing
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16 Apr 2011, 9:16 pm
Heavy stone wheels of circular thought.......aren't they just? I don't get much of that any more but there was a time. It helped me to share my worries with other people, they tend to reassure me that my experiences aren't quite so insane as they feel, and they throw new lights onto what looked like futile circles. Not that it happens much. Done a bit of counselling too, that's cleared a few blocks. But the "not speaking up" thing still has me in its claws. It's a common Aspie thing of course. My first reaction is to rack my brains for some way of avoiding the challenge. Sometimes I quietly render the offending behaviour impossible, sometimes I just cave in, once in a while I'm feeling lucky and I'll actually challenge...sometimes I have to start quickly before the adrenalin kicks in too much. There's a real feeling of growth sometimes when I do that, but it doesn't seem to make it colossally easier next time. I think it's important to pursue assertiveness.
Yes I think that's one of the things that's plagued my current relationship, we seem to be black boxes to each other.
People are awkward like that, some of my ideas in relationships have been pretty damned fine, but I don't invest much without a field test these days.
The only time I wondered about using it myself was when a partner of mine was becoming scarily familiar with her ex, and by a weird coincidence I got a call from my ex out of the blue. But I just refused to see her, quite bluntly too. Then I just "put my foot down" with my partner, and still felt like a possessive jerk for doing so. So I sometimes wondered if I could have avoided that if I'd encouraged my ex and then said "you call your dogs off and I'll call mine off" - but using people as bargaining chips is a little out of my league.
If it were done to me I'd probably feel deeply scared and resentful. It wouldn't help anything.
Yes I share that legacy with my partner. It's been a bonding thing for us, I was able to empathise with her when she felt paranoid, and she's never worried me.....so something in me seems to have finally recognised that there are some people who don't cheat.
What games are they?
The loneliness of the faithful....I know it well. It's some time since I had enough contact, I function well but I still miss it. Now that it's chronic, the attraction to the local opposite sex can be hard to fight. But cheating won't put me right.
It'd be hard not to feel guilty then. You shouldn't of course, but you probably know that. I think it's usually more awkward when one ex gets a partner and the other doesn't. Probably one of the reasons I try to avoid exes is that I'd rather not see what happens when one of us finds the next fish
Depends on you and on him.....there's grounds for hope....the techtonic special interest plates have been known to shift. You won't know until you either get there or give up. If it were me I'd be tempted to set a deadline for review, but my heart might have its own ideas.
From what you've written, it seems hard to imagine that you're too needy for wanting more quality time with your bf than you're getting. It sounds like the needy feelings are stronger than they might be in most....I know I can get things like that even these days, and I hate myself for being so emotionally vulnerable. I'm surprised your generosity with attention for him doesn't make him gravitate towards you more...if it's the right kind of attention. Maybe you've made yourself invisible by putting all the attention onto him, so he's not in the habit of finding out more about you? Do youi volunteer stuff about yourself to him?
The piecemeal listening history....that could describe my entire life. There's decades of mainstream music I completely missed.
Again, I think anybody would feel hurt about that. Sometimes people don't want a couple in the gang because of the power problems it can cause. Why would the band member be biased in their judgement of his emotional investement in you?
Sounds like you were initially very scared of doing anything to put him off, and you're beginning to relax and remove some of the paranoid measures. I'm not unlike that, I guess it's down to insecurity
Sounds like the intensity of your feelings about the relationship could be scaring him. Just a guess. It might help to phrase it more lightly, like "are you happy with things?"
Well, intense, like I said. Smothersome is in the eye of the smothered.
It's a scary thought, popping a question like that. But I suppose it's fair enough if you aren't getting anything like as much warmth as you feel you need from him. Sounds like one of those "if all else fails" things....if you have to use it at all, I'd say soften the blow with something about "I'd much rather it was you, but I can't get you to give me what I need."
Spending time around other people has been theraputic....I went through a very big phase where I had blocked myself off from almost everyone....something I must contend with is the fact that I am SURRounded by Exes...I have made sure that this was not something to bear on him as a threat...when I first met him I was in a transitional phase...I was quite determined to be uninvolved with my business partner (ex#1`)....and on very shaky grounds with my good friend (ex#2) who had been resentful of me and treating me badly....and I had sent his things back to him after he told me he did not need me...months before we started dating.....
at the moment I feel less lonely and at my wits end than I have in a while,,,
recently saw the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World where he had to do battle with the seven evil exes to be able to date Ramona....(a few people had said that I resembled her slightly)....I do not have "evil" exes...persay...but unavoidable exes....exes who I have remained friends with...who have played in bands together and have been friends themselves....since I have always been around guys..since I have been in bands since I was 15....I think that in order to "date" me one need not battle them....they all do eventually end up becoming and being friends with each other on some level....oddly enough....
It is not the way I want things always to be...(I think)....Because I am now 35 and have never been "married" and will never have children or that sort of thing...I have started to feel sad about it and the prospects of being old and alone....granted....I have witnessed hellish marriages...or long term marriages that went through many hellish years...and I would not want to be in one of those....I need to get used to the fact that I will spend life without many "rites of passage".....on one hand, it keeps me young...on another,..it adds to my loneliness.....maybe my "general" loneliness that tends to impact the way that relationships affect me...
Granted...I look very young for my age and act even younger...My behavior is on par with that of an average 13 year old....it fluctuates....but I am perpetually childlike.....Society seems to like to dictate...or has in the past, that women have more of an "expiration" date than men...a point past which they are no longer worthwhile/attractive to men.....I need to get past this brain-washed-ment......my poor boyfriend...only 2 years older than me....feels terribly middle-aged now...and I think (of the few relationships he has been in)...in years, I am the oldest girl he has dated.....also, possibly the most "autisticy"....He said that for once, he has gotten to be the "normal" one in the relationship.....
poopylungstuffing
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16 Apr 2011, 10:14 pm
16 Apr 2011, 10:31 pm
poopylungstuffing
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16 Apr 2011, 11:21 pm
18 Apr 2011, 5:44 am
poopylungstuffing
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19 Apr 2011, 3:05 am
Granted...I look very young for my age and act even younger...My behavior is on par with that of an average 13 year old....it fluctuates....but I am perpetually childlike.....Society seems to like to dictate...or has in the past, that women have more of an "expiration" date than men...a point past which they are no longer worthwhile/attractive to men.....I need to get past this brain-washed-ment......my poor boyfriend...only 2 years older than me....feels terribly middle-aged now...and I think (of the few relationships he has been in)...in years, I am the oldest girl he has dated.....also, possibly the most "autisticy"....He said that for once, he has gotten to be the "normal" one in the relationship.....
You may be entering into the "midlife crisis" phase of your life.....I know a 38-year-old who is currently anxious about becoming 40. I had a lot of bad feelings like that when I was that age. But it does subside eventually (I always thought it would get worse and worse as I got closer to death, because logically it ought to be like that). Until you reach the mid-point of life, it's very hard to emotionally appreciate your own mortality.
The other saving grace is that there will always be people of your own age to choose from, and most of those will be perfectly happy with a partner near to their age. Yes there are probably more older guys with younger women than older women with younger guys, but I don't think it's all that common. Certainly no need to imagine that you'll ever have to compete with the spring chickens. And even if you want to go that way, the youthful Aspie appearance ought to be good for knocking a decade or so off your age in the eyes of men.
I did lose some self-confidence when I started looking less youthful....I'd look in the mirror and think "who the hell's going to want that?" but then I realised that there are loads of women doing exactly the same thing with their reflections. It's a shame that there's some truth in the idea that men are more likely to get off on the "trophy partner" thing, and go for looks over and above anything else, but I shudder to think what becomes of their relationships, because relationships ultimately have little to do with looks and everything to do with behaviour, communicating, and all that.
I've heard people ask those with a bohemian lifestyle, "what will you do when you get old?" but I don't see any more security in being a nuclear couple. That mainstream spouse can die, indeed 50% of married partners who stay together for life will be bereaved, mostly when they're so old and set in their ways that they'll probably have enormous trouble starting over. I don't know of ANY lifestyle that will guarantee that I won't die alone. Not that the bohemian life doesn't scare me....there's less support for a faithful couple, marriage seems to be a kind of legalised mutual possessiveness which bohemians usually have little respect for, so bohemian relationships tend to be more open, which is perhaps more dangerous. I've never been able to quite decide which camp I want to be in, but mostly I think it depends on the person.
fffffffoooooooh it is sooo hard.....i don't even think we may ever be a nuclear couple....and it KILLS me to hurt him....but I keep coming up against the same wall over and over.....and yet....I would so miss the interaction I have with him...very much so......I have talked to him about poly stuff...I have come close to blurting out the idea that our relationship become more flexible (though my feelings for him would not be any less)....for all I know...HE might like not feeling completely strapped to this girl who he only sees occasionally and who it quite much less attractive than all of his previous girlfriends aesthetically...(he hadn't dated in some years before we met, but the girls he dated years ago...some are so pretty they make my eyes burn) and vibrant prolific females..where I am a quirky but terribly dysfunctional "woman-child".....coupled with the reluctance to say "I love you" in anything but the most strained/forced/reluctant manner.....and the general reluctance towards physical intimacy aside from back rubs.....that kinda stuff sorta breaks MY heart.....
I have been needy of more compliments and things because I get the looming impression that his expectations are lowered and he is sorta just slumming it with me....I fell into this trap in my last relationship (coincidentally) with a ASish male who had been single for a very long time, and because he was my friend of years...with brutal honesty loved to wax poetic on the 2 girlfriends he'd had years ago in his small town and obsess upon all the women he was attracted to with "aspie" honesty..on one hand, it hurt my feelings and I endured it because i loved him...although my literal mind coupled with his brute honesty was a difficult combo....gradually, I couldn't take it any more...now he sees the error of his ways.....
My current boyfriend is more likely to keep things hidden....but that is just part of the emotional/communication void.....at least he has "tact"...a "gentlemanly" quality...heh....and he REALLY freaked out when I broke down and "laid the dice on the table" and his reaction to the one time I snapped at him was shocking.......Though he reacts to need female histrionics by going almost completely nonverbal falling asleep, and then acting as though nothing has transpired the next day...hard to know what to do with that.....
wait....WHat thread was this again?.......
19 Apr 2011, 6:03 am
Yes but those lookers still failed the LTR test, didn't they? Some time back, I was furious when a lady told me she'd found a new respect for me since seeing me with an attractive partner. That partner was no better than the rest of them in terms of the way she treated me. Though I wouldn't hate hunky guys like I do if I didn't share your insecurities about looks. One thing I like about bohemians is that the ones I met didn't have any deference to mainstream "beauty," I think they'd have treated me the same if I'd had 3 heads.
Yes I remember you posting about the guy who loved to discuss his love of other women with you. I don't suppose he meant any harm, but that kind of thing can undermine self-confidence. Best to nip it in the bud, I think......most people would support you for that. I can see how your current bf's pretty exes will now be worrying you more than they otherwise might have, if you'd not had your self-esteem shaken up like that previously.
I've also done my share of shutting down like your bf does, when confronted by an upset partner.....there are things my wife wanted of me that never got done because of the way she went about it.....it was slightly different because she didn't collapse in a soggy heap, she just barracked me and yelled at me, and swamped me with too many words. I always put it down to my (somewhat justifiable) pride and boundaries, amplified by the traumatic memories of a very harsh mother, but it's possible I'd get the same kind of overload if she'd been less pugnacious and more heartbroken and scared.....I think the Aspie theory is that intense emotional displays of any kind, hostile or not, can be terrifying to us, and we have to shut down.
If there's any earthly way you can manage this, I'd recommend trying to present your misgivings with as light a touch as possible....while ever the problem fazes you, if you convey that (perfectly honest) feeling too graphically to him, then you'll faze him too, and scare his brain from taking on board what you're trying to get him to look at. I hope that expressing your problems here will help you to get them more into perspective and allow you to approach him with the calmness needed to get him to really open up and listen. It probably seems counter-intuitive to do that, because when you feel strongly about a thing, it seems obvious that it should be expressed intensely and not as if it were a casual remark about the weather. Of course it should, but we don't live in an ideal world.......
It is hard to be good.
poopylungstuffing
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19 Apr 2011, 11:55 am
I have tried the calm thing....in general i am quite calm and light hearted around him....it is all the time spent "not around him"....which is MOST of the time....I only collapse in soggy heap when in meltdown mode...I cannot yell at him...the one time I raised my voice, he cried.....it was awful......but talking calmly about things...or trying to.....they do not seem to cross his radar......He is a poor sweet man....who I fiercely care about...He is a sort of downtrodden genius...I have had the continual feeling as though I am "below" him...intellectually...etc...I see him as this vibrant creative very intelligent soul who has sorta been stuffed into business clothes and stuck behind an office desk and clumped into a video game addiction and his self esteem is hurt by failed relationships of the past and the fact that he was once very slender but is now overweight and (in true AS fashion it seems)...is self conscious about having started losing his hair in his early 20's (same as my last AS boyfriend).....afraid to leave his job and look for something better for fear of "blowing job interviews" ....and that job is very draining...and not the thing his heart is reallly in to.....He was working for IBM directly out of college...He has a vast body of really good music....really clever funny brilliant stuff...which he meticulously recorded....He writes clever brilliant songs...he has a past working with puppet troupes and travelling around the country on his intense roller coaster obsession....and intimidatingly encylopedic knowlege of all kinds of stuff...but his general "routine" has sorta schlumped into waking up, going to work, going home and playing WOW till he falls asleep (early)...I am a bit of a break from the routine....I'm his fan...I think of the things that he might regard as the person he "once was" as part of the person he "is.....I tell him he is attractive...and he (sadly) thinks he is attractive "only to me" .....(I have said this kind of thing myself to others)....I was told it was insulting....I sort of understand why now....
In some ways I do feel sorta like I did when I was in the pit with my last AS boyfriend...with self esteem troubles....damaging my own self esteem in vain attempt to boost theirs....and my self esteem is damaged enough....
poopylungstuffing
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19 Apr 2011, 12:22 pm
Well I have yert to PASS the LTR test myself....2 WERE LTRs....1 for nearly 8...the other for 2 (and they lived together)...The gal he dated for a year..is this MINDBLOWINGLY beautiful uber-talented ukulele girl...for whom he wrote a whole ukulele album after they split....The girl he dated for 8 years runs Marathons and sings in the 80's cover band he co-founded but was "kicked out of"...the one of 2 years...this really beautiful sensitive artist-of-all mediums....who seems "more like me"....but...better.....she has this beautiful delicate face and is very thin....I sense that he has an appreciation for intelligence and aethetic beauty in females to a level that I don't quite measure up to.....Conversely, I have an appreciation for all things unconventional....I see all kinds of beauty in imperfection...while I am simltaneously hard on my self...I am both literally and figuratively more "bohemian" than him by nature...and it has added to my "fish out of water" feeling...from time to time....He fits in better among the fancy folk...I have always been an odd novelty....I sense he'd like a "fancy lass" but does not feel bold enough to "get" one and do what it would take to "mantain" one....
Yes I remember you posting about the guy who loved to discuss his love of other women with you. I don't suppose he meant any harm, but that kind of thing can undermine self-confidence. Best to nip it in the bud, I think......most people would support you for that. I can see how your current bf's pretty exes will now be worrying you more than they otherwise might have, if you'd not had your self-esteem shaken up like that previously. Ah yeah...it was a period of "shameless" personal growth for him....he is/was one of my very closest friends...but he was so isolated...I filled in the niche of both male and female friend...and he did the same for me (he's gender-queer)....a very strange kinky person...extremely repressed......and I always adored him for his bizarre exotic uniqueness....but he NEEDED so BADLY the validation that others could feel the same way...though he was TOO painfully shy to do anything about it....NOT my fault....I hurt myself in an effort to prove to him that he was attractive to others....and ow...it hurt...
I've also done my share of shutting down like your bf does, when confronted by an upset partner.....there are things my wife wanted of me that never got done because of the way she went about it.....it was slightly different because she didn't collapse in a soggy heap, she just barracked me and yelled at me, and swamped me with too many words. I always put it down to my (somewhat justifiable) pride and boundaries, amplified by the traumatic memories of a very harsh mother, but it's possible I'd get the same kind of overload if she'd been less pugnacious and more heartbroken and scared.....I think the Aspie theory is that intense emotional displays of any kind, hostile or not, can be terrifying to us, and we have to shut down.
If there's any earthly way you can manage this, I'd recommend trying to present your misgivings with as light a touch as possible....while ever the problem fazes you, if you convey that (perfectly honest) feeling too graphically to him, then you'll faze him too, and scare his brain from taking on board what you're trying to get him to look at. I hope that expressing your problems here will help you to get them more into perspective and allow you to approach him with the calmness needed to get him to really open up and listen. It probably seems counter-intuitive to do that, because when you feel strongly about a thing, it seems obvious that it should be expressed intensely and not as if it were a casual remark about the weather. Of course it should, but we don't live in an ideal world.......
It is hard to be good.
poopylungstuffing
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19 Apr 2011, 1:36 pm
I can shut down/melt down too when yelled at...I don't have good defenses....that is why I find it so hard to yell at some people.....Conversely there are people who have made me feel so defenseless that all I could DO was yell 
(I am often unable to take what I dish out)...My friend/ex....He had screaming violent meltdowns with yelling and throwing....very firey tantrums...I recognised him as AS and that was the nature of the beast....It was hard on me, but i worked with it as best as I could...we were together for over 2 years...and friends for years before that..during which time I enjoyed his company whenever he came around, but we were both very shy and I was always "with" my business partner.....after the turds hit the fan and my business partner's "first" affair...after our sixth month seperation was revealed...He was one of the only people I could think of to call to seek some sort of solace....but i sort of knew what would happen were we to spend time together, and I "chickened out"...it was a couple of years later after my bizz partners next binge of wreckless behavior with young girls...when we got together...I was encouraged to "hang out" with him while my Bizz partner went on vacation with his "girlfriend"...at this point, our realtionship was (quite) broken...but I could not leave...and was sorta looking for someone else.....and there he was.....He always thought the coupling happened in an "unromantic" and very logical way...I tried to make him not see it that way...but it did not meet up to the standards of the fantasies he had as a very lonely man with a hyperactive imagination....
20 Apr 2011, 6:51 am
In some ways I do feel sorta like I did when I was in the pit with my last AS boyfriend...with self esteem troubles....damaging my own self esteem in vain attempt to boost theirs....and my self esteem is damaged enough....
I'm sorry....I somehow got it into my head that you weren't approaching him calmly.
I remember an ex who would always cry buckets whenever I raised my voice....it was like walking on eggshells and it felt very unhealthy because there was nowhere for my anger to go, and I resented her for making me stifle it all....at the time I thought it was a deliberate ploy to guilt-trip me into caving in, but I really don't know....she did seem to have a few Aspie traits. Anyway the effect was awful....rather than yell, I just smouldered, which probably did more harm than yelling. I seem to be able to convey great contempt when I smoulder.
Hmmm....if yelling at him doesn't work, and calmly talking doesn't work, the only other way I know is repetition.....I don't use that one nearly enough myself, because if it falls on deaf ears the first time I tend to just think they aren't interested. But I've heard that repeating a message can be surprisingly effective, especially if you use different ways of saying it, in different contexts.......I guess that stops it feeling like the proverbial broken record.
I agree about the job strain thing. I've felt that from the inside, getting home and not having the energy for my partner. There's evidence that I'm a different guy when I'm away from the strains of the workplace, and I live in hope that when I finally break away from my job, there'll still be something left of my old self. Getting a different job would feel like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.....I can't understand how anybody stands it for a lifetime. But life gets kind of hard without money.
Could he negotiate shorter hours?
Otherwise, maybe he could be encouraged to decompress in a different way....there must have been a time when he had a life without Warcraft. If you could just find something to do together that had a decompression value.
I can never understand why anybody gives a damn about their sexual attractiveness to anybody else but their partners, especially if fidelity is the name of the game, but I'm probably very naive in that respect.
It's sad that you seem to be losing your own self-esteem in an attempt to boost his......I was surprised when I first read that, because I get a lot of my self-esteem from trying to help people in that way, in fact sometimes I wonder if it's not become a special interest. But I guess if you feel that you're failing to hit the spot in spite of your best efforts, yes that could be quite depressing. If I can't make my partner happy, I don't know what I'm doing on this planet.
You seem like one of those people for whom a relationship is really vitally important to you....I'm a complete hypocrite for saying this, but I think it's better to also look outside the couple for validation, approval etc.......not necessarily sexually, but more the social thing. Easier said than done of course.....good friends don't grow on trees.
20 Apr 2011, 9:31 am
You may be right, but it might just be that you're projecting your own inferiority thing...in what ways do you sense it?
How did you do that?
poopylungstuffing
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20 Apr 2011, 11:28 pm
Tarralikitak
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22 Apr 2011, 7:03 pm
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