NT female seeks input on AS male's fears

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@waitykaity Yeah, in some ways learning about asperger's is like learning another language. Say the wrong thing and you end up offending them.
To be honest, WP has it's good points and it's bad points like everything else.

I think my embarassment would come from the fact that some of the things I have expressed in my posts I had not expressed to him. When I started posting I hadn't really put it all out there for him. He knew I liked him but that was about it. So for him to stumble upon a post of mine and read about the deep feelings I had for him.....would make me vulnerable to him, which I wasn't ready for at that point. But since then, I have told him exactly how I feel in no uncertain terms. So I guess, if he were to read them now, I'd be okay with it. I am not embarassed at all about actually being here or the reason why I'm here. I love it on WP! I've only been posting for a few months but I've gone from an Emu egg to a Snowy Ow in those monthsl and I feel like I 'know' some of the folks here. Sometimes I sit and wait for Hyperlexian to pop up and lock a thread!

Hey... hyperlexian is cool. She doesn't just lock the threads.
I'm sure she has much more various hairstyles.

I never heard of sensitivity to compliments before. I used to have no time for them usually, took them as most likely dishonest, didn't expect to be believed if I said them myself, and it would never occur to me to do so. Even now, like eye contact I can forget to do it, even with partners. And the idea of returning the courtesy, that's pretty new too. I do somehow manage to make some folks feel better through talking with them, or so I'm occasionally told, and I always used to say it's a lot more important than "ooh what a nice hat you're wearing," it's often hard for Aspies to do shallow. But I twigged compliments better about 18 years ago.......I think the key point was realising that even an exaggerated compliment means that somebody wanted to make me happy.

If it's a downright lie or the opposite of what they really think, to hell with them. But mild stretchers I can forgive. I've even done them myself, though they filled me with guilt. What I really love is to notice things about people that I really do like and to just say so. Expressing heartfelt admiration. I think it doesn't often have the look and feel of "social glue" compliments.....while performing some music, a musician I'd never met walked up to me with an angry look on her face. I thought she was going to hit me. She said harshly, "you're good," and walked away. She wasn't a leader or anything, just so socially inept that I felt I could really trust that she meant it. Same night, the illustrious compere smiled and said something like "great performance!" - but it's just his gloss. I like him, but he's outer circle.

Anyway, I'm baffled as to why it hurts your Aspie so much. Try different delivery styles, include details and reasons that show him you mean it, maybe, if he's offended by perceived dishonesty. Ask him what he thinks of compliments, listen for emotive words in his reply that might point to the source of his hostility towards them. If he's like me, he will also have self-esteem problems which make compliments even harder to trust....if you "know" you're worthless, what can a compliment be but a cruel hoax or a bit of spin to keep you sweet?



Could be right. I thought I was touchy about feeling pushed away until I met the world. I'm always newly shocked by people's unawareness, and they seem to have the same problem with me.


And geekiness. I'd not have known you were distant and aloof in real life. This is a very friendly thread you've created. Written word stronger than talking?


My wife was less aimless than that.......mostly career and church interests, not really what you'd call a drifter, but the impulse control, oh, my! She tended to stick with things quite well though, if she got them working at all. I thought she must really hate her life so far, to be so obsessed with radical change. I wasn't excluded though....more drafted in for labouring and financial help. I've always loved helping my partners - it makes me feel needed and secure, it gives me a role - but she had no idea of limits, and most of the work I had to do alone. Sudden, short deadlines. Her impulses were never hedonistic though. No hobbies but career things. Gadgets only for a purpose. She never bothered me with other men, which is I suppose something of an accomplishment compared with the others........her previous partners had ended up being unfaithful usually, in spite of children.


That's priceless. I was uncomfortable with putting "all my love" on cards until my last partner..........couldn't be true logically, but somehow, in a strange sense, it was. Emotionally I guess there's a difference between truth and correctness.


Thanks. I'm getting up to speed these days. I only took a week or so to spot my last partner's hypocrisy, though it was a real screamer. Another story for another thread............it's pretty bizarre stuff.


I should have added that I don't always manage to be so enlightened about jerky behaviour. When I can't work out why it's happening, I can flip to "coldly and quietly render the deed impossible" mode, though more recently I've been learning to complain more effectively.


I still don't know if I can spot passive-aggressive behaviour. I have a feeling I was subjected to rather a lot of it, and I should check myself over for it because from what I've heard it's very bad karma.



Just knowing I've expressed it here is a help. Thanks for reading it.


I've heard of the legendary "talking past the point" that Aspies do described as a "mini-meltdown." Do you get tons of thoughts, splitting in all directions, and a compulsion to get them all said?

I've always been able to work fine while going through big emotional upheavals. I think there is comfort in technical work; maybe it gives the emotional side of the brain a rest. And Aspie special interests are often technical, so there's a kind of double comfort. How did the dissociative thing manifest itself?

Well, compliments are different though. An insult or something, well thats an ego thing, who cares. Mine can take a direct hit from a nuclear weapon without a scratch.

But a compliment, that's different, its manipulative. Sometimes not in a bad way, you praise someone for doing good work in the hopes that they'll continue, but sometimes in a bad way. Usually somebody wants something and they won't come right out and say it, they're trying to trick you into it, and its so clumsy and painfully obvious.

I'm very sorry I've taken so long to get back to this thread. This has been one of those weeks when everything pops up at once... So I'll try to answer a few things in this post, although I still don't think I have time to say it all.

As far as reading and writing go, if you can encourage him to do anything, it can't hurt, but at the same time, these things will only work if he's at least somewhat willing. I'll have more to say about that below, but that's the short answer.

As far as using a numerical scale, "angry 1", "angry 2", etc. it might work as a stopgap measure, but I'm not at all sure it's a good idea in the long term. Why? First of all, although there are words that you might be able to map to a scale (say, angry = angry 1, really angry = angry 3, and furious = angry 8 - or whatever you wanted to do) there are other words that really aren't quite the same as angry at all. Peeved, irritated, annoyed, none of those things are anger. If he is hyperlexic, and he is incapable of understanding these shades of meaning, I would guess there are one of two things going on, or a combination of both. One explanation is that he simply never learned that much about that side of life. If his personal interactions didn't teach him, and he didn't read much fiction, then he would never have had a chance to learn what those various words meant. The other explanation assumes the "intense world" theory of autism (which I'll assume you're familiar with, and which I suspect holds at least some truth, whether or not it is completely accurate). In this scenario, his feelings are so incredibly intense - and lesser feelings are possibly so bottled up until they explode that he remains unaware of them - that he can't understand the difference between these words because all he experiences are the most intense variations. That actually seems plausible to me; in learning to shut out various annoyances, I've also learned to be oblivious to them that I'm not even aware they're annoying me, until they drive me into a rage. And so on. This works for just about any range of emotions you can think of. And even where I haven't learned to ignore them, I will feel emotions intensely. There was an article about a girl with cerebral palsy, in the second grade, whose parents obtained a DNR for her - a travesty, in my opinion, but that's not the point here. By the time I heard of this, the girl was already dead. You might see that article, look at her picture, and feel some sadness, but I felt real grief when I discovered she had died. The day I drove past a burning building in my town, then later learned a cat had died in that fire, I was shattered. (I love cats.) I had to fight to keep from becoming hysterical.

Many of us do feel things very intensely. The appearance of no feeling is often due to the fact such intensity gets bottled up inside us. Or because we don't know how to express it to others, or have simply learned to hide it from others for fear they'll find it inappropriate. (I was visibly less upset after my best friend died in high school, than I was the day I learned a strange cat whose name or appearance I didn't even know had died - but I can at least write calmly if a bit sadly about that cat now, a year or two later, while just short of thirty-six years later, I'm still not fully over Michael's death - but it was such a deep wound, it took days to even begin recovering from the shock enough to express anything; I was frozen, not by lack of feeling, but by far too much feeling.) Whatever the explanation for his inability to understand "shades" of emotion, and personally I'd guess it's at least somewhat due to both of the suggestions I've offered, he will have fewer problems in the long run if he can learn to understand it. And a mathematical scale will only allow him a very limited grasp of what the words can convey, if he can learn to understand them.

This is where I think a fuller explanation of the basis for my suggestion about reading and writing fiction might help. I learned to read very early, and by the time I entered first grade, I was reading Readers Digest, and comprehending the intellectual - but not the emotional - content that I read. I could tell you all the facts that I read, but I couldn't understand much of the feelings I read, except those that happened to make sense to me. I was labelled a "genius", the "little professor", etc., a classic aspie. At that time, I was only interested in reading factual books (the obsession I remember most clearly was with "sea stories": I read everything Edward Rowe Snow had written up to that point, and A Night To Remember, and the stories of the Andrea Doria and the Morro Castle) and science fiction. (I was young, and somehow, I had the idea this was science, that the authors were predicting the future as accurately as they could.)

The librarians used to try to get me to broaden my reading, but until I exhausted the portion of the shelves I was interested in and could find nothing more on that subject to read, they got nowhere. It used to drive them crazy; it was odd enough they had a little kid who was browsing in the adult stacks and reading the books - and some of them used to quiz me, because until they got to know me, they couldn't believe I was reading them and understanding anything - but to have me sticking to such 'narrow' reading was awful, in their eyes. My second grade teacher got the idea I was Satan incarnate (perhaps not literally, but she thought I was lying about everything, and tormented and bullied me throughout the year) and passed that on to her close friend, the principal of the school where I went to third grade. By some miracle, I wound up in fourth grade in a school where every one of the teachers and staff I dealt with were at least reasonably competent and understanding. (At first, they thought I was a problem, but once they figured out I was by then able to read college textbooks and understand the content - and yes, one of them gave me a college textbook without telling me, and tested me on it afterward - they figured out I was bored to death and tried to help me as much as they could.) A lot of things happened that year, but one of the first was when my reading teacher, without actually forcing me, strongly urged me to read other fiction. I thought it was all pointless, but finally, to shut her up, I read a few books. She started me out with classics, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Lorna Doone, a bunch of others. They were set in just enough of a different world (in terms of time period) that I got interested, then hooked. And started reading just about everything I could get my hands on.

In a weird way, my visual problems helped here, although I didn't understand how this worked until years later. I have a rare condition where my eyes never developed normally, so I have no functional retina at all. Instead, my eyes developed so what in most people would be their peripheral vision is my vision. I can't see very far, but I can see, close up, over a wider area than most people. So I'd move my head back and forth, scanning the page, and I could read and comprehend a full page in perhaps thirty seconds. I was functioning almost like an organic scanner. That allowed me to read up to twelve or thirteen books a day sometimes.

Now, in some places, you'll see it claimed that reading can "cure" autism. No. It can't. Period. I am still very neurologically different. What reading did do for me, and I can look back and see the shift in me clearly, now that I understand myself better, is help me understand more about the world I lived in. Not nearly everything. For one thing, I was missing one crucial fact. I thought, except for my vision, I was "normal". So I didn't have the information to interpret everything correctly. But I did gain more understanding of emotions, of other people, of "soft" subjects. I learned to think beyond black and white, although my thinking is still very different, I can see shades of complexity others usually miss. Writing, which forced me to think about the world and understand it in ways completely different from those required of a reader, did even more to develop my mind. (I answered another question with some thoughts about what genres might help; that might give you some more insights into how this worked.)

He might be too old for this. He's had more time to become set in his ways. He probably doesn't see any point in fiction, and if he has so much trouble understanding emotions, it would be hard for him to understand. I wish someone would write fiction geared to helping those of us who need to gain understanding develop it. (Yes, that sparks an idea in me to try that, some day, but I'd need time to think about what was required, and to experiment.) So I don't know how much good my advice will do, directly. But at least if you understand what is possible, and how the process works, you might get some use out of it. (On a tangent, but still to this point - writing books that set out 'rules' to write successfully are all crap. They give you the rules that worked for that writer. Those rules probably won't work for you. The only writing books I've ever found that were really helpful, other than providing snippets of information and a few points here and there to ponder, are those where the writer explains their process, and why they do it that way, so I could think about it and adapt it for my own use.) For that matter, writing is a great tool for learning to get outside your own head - you have to, in order to create characters. If you tried writing about your guy, you might understand him better. I'm not suggesting you publish those stories, just that using him as a character would force you to try to get into his head, to try to understand why he does what he does.

Edited to add: Please forgive the poor writing in these posts. These are "first drafts", written just about as fast as I can type, without much editing. As long as they aren't incoherent, I'm trying to get these thoughts down, while I can. If I had the time, I'd edit for brevity and clarity.

No,no,no!! ! I like Hyperlexian! I think its hilarious when she shuts threads down. I enjoy her posts. She's posted on my threads in the past.

Indeed you do!


Exactly. Even shallow compliments help support NTs' emotional well-being ("I botched everything else today, but at least that nice lady liked my hat.") The amount of affirmation required varies widely from person to person. E.g., my mother needs a LOT more than I do. I much prefer infrequent but substantive compliments, over frequent superficial compliments.

I'm still grappling with the intensity and rigidity of AS guilt over telling even "mild stretchers." Most NTs have areas where the unvarnished truth is very painful, and unnecessary; we are WELL aware of our innumerable imperfections. From my point of view, if there is anything to feel guilt over, it's causing such unnecessary pain. This may be one reason why my grandfather's household rule was "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." But that was an imbalanced solution that led to another problem: it stifled open, honest discussion.


This describes my Aspie. He very rarely compliments me, but when he does, I know he REALLY means it. To lesser extent, I'm the same way.


That mindset is really hard for me to understand, but I don't question it. Mainly he's offended by compliments about his physique, due to that sense of feeling like a piece of meat. Much like women with big bosoms, who feel like that is the FIRST and ONLY thing people notice, and they've heard it all zillions of times. He was also in a highly skeptical, mistrustful phase, which is long past now. Even so, I switched over to complimenting other things, like his voice, his smile, his ability to explain his state of mind, his dedication to his kids, etc. Things he likely hasn't heard very often. He gets awkward and goofy and says he doesn't know what to say. I suggested "thank you." So he giggled and said thank you. I have considered suggesting that he could reciprocate, and compliment me too, but that just seems so obvious. Maybe not?


Thank you! You're friendly to interact with. I actually enjoy long talks with people close to me. Even my Aspie has remarked that 2 hours of talking with me seems to zip by in 5 minutes. (I perceive it the same way). With others it depends on my level of mental energy. Usually I'm thinking or decompressing and want to be left alone. I prefer the written word (texts, email, threads like this) because I can absorb the content, and respond, on my own terms. For that reason, telemarketing phone calls INFURIATE me. How DARE they invade my time and space, and expect me to drop everything, to listen to a sales pitch. If I don't have it, either I don't need it or can't afford it, so piss off. Of course I never speak to them that way - they are just doing their jobs - but it takes major effort to be diplomatic.

So, it is easy for me to be respectful of my Aspie's time - who knows what he's in the middle of at any given moment. Therefore, text messaging is our default mode of contact. Occasionally he will have a lot to say or ask, in which case he'll drop the text stuff and just call.


My Aspie is the same way. Here's a question. If/when he is ready for a relationship, I can think of many small but significant physical, material, tangible actions he could take to help me. Things I think he would be good at, and enjoy. But he gave everything he could to that bloodsucking ex-wife, and it was never enough. So after what he's been through - and after what I have been through - I am afraid to admit that I have needs. I'm quite self-sufficient, so the things I have in mind are minor and specific, compared to the amorphous black hole he was used to. When the time is right, should I just set aside the fear and say it?


I had a bit of difficulty spotting it too, because of my incorrect assumptions. When there is conflict or disagreement, I want to be sure emotions are settled, then clarify the problem, find a solution, and get back to living life. I assume my partner, who I love and respect and think is intelligent, thinks the same way. Wrong!

My ex-husband and an ex-boyfriend were both confident to the point of being cocky - outwardly - but in fact felt very insecure and threatened by all kinds of things about me. Their feelings of inadequacy was the problem to be solved - but both felt it would be unmanly to admit or discuss it. Those insecurities got expressed as veiled hostility, in ways where I would be upset because they'd been ambiguous or misleading, but allowed them to claim innocence. I had nothing specific or terrible to point to, and they'd simply dismiss my frustration, as if I was the source of the problem. Repeatedly, until l slowly I realized the whole point was just to see me hurt, upset, and frustrated - like they were. Passive-aggressive behavior is NOT ok, because it transfers A's pain to B, simply because A doesn't want to deal with it.

In contrast, I'm very active-aggressive. If I'm upset, I do my best to express it. explain why, and propose a solution. So to my mind, that behavior broke just about every rule in the book - and was much more "unmanly" than just explaining. So in the case of the ex-boyfriend, I stomped his ego as hard as I could, and it was war for the remaining two years of graduate school. I won, and I still think he deserved it. In the case of my ex-husband, I just said "enough" and filed for divorce. It made them both feel even more inadequate to get their asses kicked by a girl, and, good. Maybe they won't such a**holes next time. Maybe that sounds harsh, but everyone carries around pain and insecurity. We are under no obligation to carry someone else's too.


Sometimes - that's another reason I like writing. It helps me organize my thoughts. My most productive thinking is when I'm pouring it into a keyboard!


It's very hard to describe. I just felt very blank and disconnected, like I was operating someone else's body. I could work and run and sleep, but I was unable to maintain a relationship with my husband. I explained that I was working as hard as I could to recover myself, but still he took it personally, as if I was inflicting pain intentionally, rather than maybe in need of medical attention. All he could think of was his pain and unfulfilled needs. As payback, he sold my car, dropped me from his health insurance, and expected accolades for not dumping me with the homeless people under a bridge somewhere. What a crumbum. Anyway, that was a difficult time I'd really rather not revisit, if that's ok.

I hope your weekend isn't too awful. I have a lot of work to do, so I may be gone for a few days, but I'll be back.

I just had to comment on a few points here.

At least in my case, my devotion to truth is deeper than just a sense of guilt. Actually, I learned to lie fairly early, after being called a liar so many times by so many people when I wasn't - my second grade teacher actually accused me of lying about what I could see, repeatedly, in front of the entire class, and got the school nurse to back her up, and her friend, the third grade principal, spanked me in front of the entire school for lying when I hadn't, and somehow convinced my parents to believe her, even though they usually did listen to me. Finally, I figured truth must not mean what I thought it did...

That was a bad period. I lied, a lot, off and on. Some of it I used as a "smoke screen". But I learned something. Even "harmless" lies mess with reality, in your own mind, and in the mind of the person you tell them to. That is not a good thing. I still have the ability to lie, but I much prefer not to, because of the damage it does. I do try to avoid issues that might be hurtful, and I've become pretty skillful at dodging most things. But I think for most of us, our attachment to truth is a matter of instinctively understanding what I learned all over again the hard way, that bending the truth bends reality inside our minds.



Are you sure you're NT? I could have written most of what I've quoted above - except that I am not always able to be diplomatic to people who are accepting money to invade my life with their sales pitches. And you've described very well the reasons I find writing to be the most comfortable form of communication.

I've been wondering that as well.

Oh yes. I've just had an unusual life. Personality type INTJ ("mastermind"), IQ 165, very secure childhood (an only), mentally highly flexible. Teenage years were horrible, due to psychotic father and zero stimulation at school. Figured out what I wanted to do with my life and was doing fine smoothly executing the plan. Then I got married and moved overseas for a third time - right about the same time both parents went totally insane and the whole family blew apart. I got derailed for several years, cleaning up everyone's messes and trying to make order out of chaos. For my efforts, I got shafted by basically everyone, and almost did not survive. So I have REALLY had it with people and all their needs. No one has ever given a damn about mine, so I just wanted to be left alone to attend to them myself. I mostly have that now. I'd been so busy looking after everyone else, I wasn't sure what my own needs even were.

Meanwhile, I discovered AS. I completely relate to the personality tendencies - geeky, intense, solitary, aloof - but none of the neurological aspects, like perceptual differences or social issues. It made me yearn to be me again. An NT wife coined the term "aspergated" to describe how she began to take on some of his characteristics. That could be part of it too.

Last edited by waitykatie on 05 May 2012, 10:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Long story short: a complex social fiasco had led me to break up with him. It didn't quite all add up, but I couldn't explain why, so I got on with my life. Then two years later, at a friend's encouragement, I looked him up. We had a long talk, still loved each other very much, but again totally misunderstood each other. I thought he was sending me away and that we were saying goodbye forever. Very confusing and traumatic. I didn't realize he wanted me to stay, and he didn't realize I could. So again we were heartbroken and got on with our lives, went off and married the wrong people. Only years later did it all click.


In social situations, yes, mostly the NT knows best. But only the Aspie knows what's best for him. What has worked before is, when it's just the two of us, he's in charge. When other people are involved, he'd best consult me or let me handle it. However, he has high levels of anxiety, and tends to panic, freak out or melt down. That makes it very hard for me to think clearly, in part because his intense emotions strike me as so out of proportion. He also tends to deflect my questions, if he doesn't understand why I'm asking them. I am hoping that his anxiety levels will recede, now that he is free of the ex-spouse, and feeling more secure about me.

I think most NTs would say they are - just at lower levels. Peeves and annoyances and irritations are cumulative, additive, and can escalate to full-blown anger if they continue to pile up. As you say, you're oblivious to annoyances until they drive you into a rage. Isn't that what happens? Anger 2 + anger 3 + anger 2 + anger 3 = ANGER 10 RAAAR!

Thank you for describing what may be going on here. I was not aware of such a thing as the "intense world" theory of autism - but I'd already worked that out on my own. He is intense about everything. I think you're spot on - he can't understand the difference between these words because all he experiences are the most intense variations. That is certainly how it appears.


Me too. Do you know the book All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome? Very cute, and quite true!


I have observed this with my Aspie many times. If I'm in physical proximity to him, I can literally, physically feel it. Some kind of energy just pours off him. It's easy to "read," so I know whether to stay close, back off, shut up, etc. I don't know if that is weird or not.


That is WILD. Incredible. Neato.


Who the heck claims that? I don't like the "treat/cure" mentality. Someone here at WP has a great signature slogan: "People with Asperger's do not suffer from Asperger's. They suffer from other people." LOL!

Thanks for the early warning. I'm still behind on my answers to your questions so that should dovetail well for me. My stress levels are down now the visit's over.....it was reasonably mature and respectful, but a lot was said and the sheer volume of ideas has left me feeling emotionally and physically drained. That's always fixed itself before. Hope the work goes well.

I don't believe in a treatment or cure for any impairments to the brain.
A lot of professors and scientists think that they can claim to come up with a substance of such that will do this but I don't believe that as it has to be something to cope with.
I prefer this: It's not that you can't understand people with autism. It's that people with autism don't understand you.

I've got autism and I don't even understand myself too well. Gets better over time though.