Could you be loved?

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I'd say if there are any differences its that occasionally being through hardships makes better people, though I doubt it happens in too different a ratio with AS/NT. Some aspies have a more computerized makeup of thought where lying is simply 'irrational' but I still think that's a very particular subset, for those who aren't like that they can understand the world around them and what's going on enough that they have to make as many moral/ethical choices as NT's do and can fall on either side just as easily.

^ Agreed.
Even for a person lacking AS, they have their own personal challenges to face, which we might lack. Generalizations that elevate aspies' supposed ethical superiority are simply jingoistic assumptions. We're different, especially in a few key ways, but we're not THAT different.

Hee hee.....Sound said "jingoistic".....hmmm.....jingo.

Seriously, though, I agree with both @Step and @Sound....I wish everybody thought it was irrational to lie, but sadly, not enough folks do. But I really don't think - for the most part - that Aspie/NT status is more important in predicting honesty than plain old character.

Everyone lies, AS or NT, it's just a matter of those who make a habit out of it, or outright lie - for example, I have an uncle that pretends to everyone, especially women that he's trying to get with, that he's rich. He talks about money and stocks and bonds that he doesn't have, and gives the woman the impression that he's loaded.

There are other types of lies. Like when men post pics of themselves on here and the girls say "You're really sexy" when even Stevie Wonder could see that they're ugly. Those lies are meant to conceal an ugly truth, no pun intended.

Other lies are like if you ask your ex why he/she broke up with you, he/she will say "I wasn't feeling it." That might be part of the truth, but the deeper truth might be that there was something he/she didn't like about you but doesn't want to you know.

I have no idea how she would react though. Asking that woman across the way to a coffee might just be asking for mace to the face... I have no idea what she's like if I've never met her before, and therefore I need to be as on guard as possible...

Okay, I didn't explain myself adequately. When I was a kid, I had self-love in spades. I genuinely thought I was the best thing since sliced bread, and that all the people around me were stupid for not realizing that. Of course, I was looking at a warped version of reality. And that's what invited almost all of the bullying. Not to mention that even if people weren't bullying me, they were generally annoyed with me because I was like that. I don't want to succumb to self-love and become that monster again.

I don't consider my church to be the only place to date women. However, my "dating pool" is basically the female friends that I see in real life that I think I might be personally compatible with and haven't rejected me thus far. I need to at least determine that I am compatible with a woman before I make a move, otherwise I'm just wasting both her time and mine. So what I really need is a place that is just as safe and supportive as my church, but has more younger women around. If such a place actually exists...

But I'm enough of a failure as it is... I couldn't afford to become more of one. Thats why I put so much thought into compatibility with another person: so that there's a decent possibility that I actually succeed and therefore don't have to be a failure anymore...

Toad, the likely outcome if you went up to a woman and said hi to her and she wasn't interested is that she'd walk away or say "eww." Most likely, she'd just say "I have a boyfriend" or walk away without saying or doing anything.

Yeah, I love that word.


Since I think this point will be addressed readily by others(although I'm sure it has already been covered recently), this time I will elect to repeatedly bash my head on the keyboard in frustration, instead.

Last edited by Sound on 11 Mar 2010, 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Stop being so patronising? Are you Maxine Aston in disguise? She's made a good career out of patronising AS relationship problems.


So you knew the answer to your question all along.


Better still as it is guaranteed effective - prevention of abuse, rather than treatment. And as much of the abuse is perpetrated by NT's on Aspies during formative years, NT's need "something done with them" as much as anybody does. Or are they not "flexible" enough to stop the bullying and harsh treatment of those who are different ?


Oh, they used to be for sure. "Blunt honesty" was a requirement, but now they've lowered the standards so *anybody* can get in.

@ManErg - I have no idea who Maxine Aston is, so if I'm meant to be offended, I'm not. I'm also not patronizing anyone. I'm expressing an opinion that's based on my interpretation of many posts I've read on this board. Anyone reading it can take it or leave it - there's absolutely no obligation to agree. And yes (obviously I think), I did form my opinion before I wrote the post. I don't think a post is really worth the time required to read it if the person writing it hasn't bothered to think it all the way through.

As I've said, I've read many posts on this board by people who feel isolated and lonely and are quite sad about it. I've also read many posts by people who seem to misinterpret symptoms that are related to surviving trauma and abuse as symptoms of Asperger's, and/or confuse abusive relationships with healthy relationships. Whatever one may feel about the management of Asperger symptoms, the symptoms of abuse can be healed. And - in my opinion - I think healed people make better partners, and are even more attractive as potential partners.

The point of this post is to offer that perspective, in the hope that it might enlighten someone and perhaps help him/her to some day make that intimate connection with another person. I agree that anyone who abuses should be punished - but I can't stop abuse that's already happened. The best I can do is to offer the information I have, in hopes that it helps someone see their life in a new way, and take steps to heal the damage.

If you don't believe that Aspies are capable of having successful intimate relationships, that's your choice. You seem to have a very entrenched "us-vs-them" attitude when it comes to Aspies/NTs. Again, your choice, but I think that attitude contributes to my perception of you as angry and bitter. You may have good reason to be angry and bitter, or it may just be my flawed perception of you. In any case, it makes me want to curtail this discussion. Disagree with my opinion if you like, but I don't appreciate being insulted any more than anyone else does.

It does, but I like the way you phrased it.



I find it hard not to see it as a character weakness, when others have proven vastly more resilient in worse situations. You're right, the best thing to do is see what can be done about the damage, but I feel rather at a loss as to what to do to try to repair the damage.



Not to all, but I would say to an overwhelming majority.



My ex and I aren't British, actually UK culture is a lot more straightforward than our own. Still, your advice applies, and yes, being with someone who requires that 24/7 would be too much.

I never suggested Aspies are any less able to have succesful relationships than non-Aspies. Quite the opposite. You could cut and paste your question and post it on any forum to do with relationships. There is an abundance of lonely, isolated people in the world. So why single out Aspies?

Does a 50% divorce rate amongst the general population sound succesful? The fact that 'relationship how-to guides' are continually amongst the best sellers? I'm wondering if there isn't something awry in our culture as a whole. Something that is *not* being cured (and may be being made worse) by drugs and therapy - hence the continuing increase in depression. Could it be the encouragement of selfish individualism and competition from the day we're born perhaps? Social systems that reward sociopathic behaviour and discourage co-operation? A media that is driving us insane with greed as it persuades us to buy this months must-have fad? The amount of polluting chemicals that didn't even exist 150 years ago being absorbed into our bodies. There are plenty of systemic dysfunctions to choose from....

BTW Unless you've been crowned "Queen of WP" and I missed it, you do not have the right to determine when a discussion is curtailed here. I decide when I said what I''ve wanted to say.

This...

How other people choose to hold themselves, that's none of my business. But when people here, on a support forum, continually encourage selfish behavior out of me, it just gets very annoying, real quickly...

@ManErg - When I told you that I wanted to curtail this discussion, I was speaking to you, not to the community at large. I was trying to provide you with some feedback: when you introduce insults into a discussion, it immediately takes the focus off of the subject matter, and effectively ends the communication. I was trying to tell you that when you started insulting, my response was to be disinclined to continue the conversation. Unfortunately, your response to that "yellow flag" was a snarky "Queen of WP" comment, so now I'm throwing the "red flag" - consider this discussion between us over. You are a person of free will, however and you may continue, but I will no longer respond to your comments in this thread.

@Toad - I'm sorry, who on this forum has ever encouraged you to act selfishly? I've read a lot of people's posts to you, and the overwhelming majority have only encouraged you to try to better your circumstances through healthy behavior. You know, months ago, I encouraged you to start in inter-church youth group so you could increase your chances of meeting a nice young woman with the same ideals and values as yourself. Have you done anything in that area? And is that something "selfish" I've encouraged you to do?

You don't seem to realize that going from thinking you were the best thing since sliced bread to believing you're a totally unlovable failure isn't an improvement - it's going from one extreme to another. Your shift from viewing yourself as the bomb to viewing yourself as worthless is just a different symptom of the same problem: you have a very distorted self-image. I hope that at some point you realize that's the problem you need to solve.

Toad, everybody has good traits and bad traits - everybody. Nobody is perfect - for God's sake, even Mother Teresa lost her faith. At the end of the day, your goal should be like everybody else's - to have more good traits than bad. Learning to accept that you have good traits isn't selfish or sociopathic or anything that will cause the end of the world as we know it - it's psychologically healthy. Freaking deal with it.

I approached my pastor about the possibility of starting one up, but he just side-stepped the whole thing. I think that finding younger people to associate to the church is not a high priority for the church right now, unfortunately... I'm probably going to try again after Easter, maybe the pastor will be more receptive at trying to bring in former kids that graduated high school and are in college while they're all home over the summer...

I think most of the contention comes from the fact that I consider putting myself before anyone else in any situation to be selfish. I'm being selfish right now talking about myself. I need the emotional outlet, but at the same time I feel bad about myself because I'm doing such a thing here. It's like selfishness is a drug, one I abused in spades as a child, and I'm still trying to recover from so I can be a better person, but I keep relapsing, and I become a monster every time...

Back then, yes, I did have a distorted self image. Now, my self-image is informed by the opinions and expressions of those around me, and therefore closer to reality than anything I could conjure up about myself. All but one of my attempts to find a woman have ended in rejection, and the one exception ended in an effective rejection shortly afterwards. It would be kind of stupid to blame the constant failure on other people when I'm the only constant in the equation. Therefore, I can deduce the "unlovable" characteristic about myself... Otherwise I would be able to actually succeed.

I'm not saying that all my traits are bad. Some people say I'm a good artist, especially with computer graphics (see my avatar for instance). I might be able to eke out at least a small living from such things. But being able to use photoshop isn't something that is going to woo a woman over. When it comes to the traits one needs to do that, I got the worst possible hand dealt to me. If I try to play that hand, I'm going to lose what little I have left.

Edit: I'm sorry if I sound like a jackass... it's just that I don't have much of an outlet for my feelings in life because I can't let anyone in real life know how I feel. That's why I have an online persona that cannot be accurately traced to my real identity (also why I don't post a picture of myself). Also having a therapist is starting to help out with that (which is why I don't post here as much as I used to), but that's still one hour a week, not nearly enough time to deal with all the s**t I've been given in life...

@Toad - Will you take a moment to examine two of your quotes from this thread?

"I'm sorry if I sound like a jackass... it's just that I don't have much of an outlet for my feelings in life because I can't let anyone in real life know how I feel."

"There's one big issue that I still have with, well, the rest of society... I still can't understand why said illusions have to be spun. It makes people look better than they really are and results in a lot of heartache when you don't live up to your selling points. That's why I'd rather be who I am, the good and the bad. And honestly that's how it should be... at least in my opinion anyway, obviously most of society disagrees with me if such "salesmanship" is so tolerated (and encouraged)..."

Do you realize the irony? In real life you can't let anyone know how you feel? So, you're not being "who you are - the good and the bad" at all. You're the one who's "spinning the illusions" and then denigrating "salesmanship." Do you know how much mental energy you're wasting by projecting and maintaining this fake persona of yours? And what is that getting you? Has it ever occurred to you that maybe that's why you can't connect with someone? Because you need to be authentic in order to form an intimate connection. Maybe if you weren't so busy faking it, someone might actually get to know the real you - and actually want to be with that guy.