Obsessive love

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Does anyone else get plagued with anxiety about their partner? I never used to have this problem, but my current gf is tripping all my alarms. A couple of times it's been almost unbearable. I can't make it stop, either. At work, at home, in the car, in my dreams. It's draining and embarrassing.

While there are some things she's done that legitimately concern me, for the most part I believe her. If she were someone else's girlfriend I'd look at the evidence and say "don't worry." I'd like to think I'm rational enough to simply dismiss my fears, but apparently not. I'm rational enough to recognize them, but that doesn't help.

I'm not sure what to do about this. I've had irrational fears before, but not love related (terrorist attacks, hypochondria stuff). Medicine helped those, but apparently can't touch this.

It's weird that our brains are capable of valuing someone so much that the anxiety of doing so makes the situation intolerable. The only thing that seems to work is emotionally distancing myself from her, but then what's the point?

I totally get the same way in a relationship, it's like a catch 22 situation. Don't know how to help it though, sorry.

I have this problem with woman and it has turned them away on occasion.

i totally feel you. it's so hard. when i start to really care about someone and we are not in consistant contact with each other... not does't have to be all day every day but consistent... then I freak out. And I think about nothing but, wonder what they are doing, why they aren't calling... blah blah blah.... it sucks.... I like you often want to cut my looses and run while I'm ahead and before I get in deepr and hurt worse.....I have no advice unfortunately....If you figure it out let me know.

Ah, the lovely hell that is impulse control. It's a fine line between apathy and uncontrollable magnetic pull.

For this one, you're either gonna need the willpower of a sociopathic pamplonan bull(Me),

Or you're just gonna have to inform her that this is a drawback of you. Intensly passionate, possibly uncontrollable love, and I would SUGGEST giving her veto power to say something akin to "cool it" when you lose your objectivity.

So in NT:

"I can be a bit intense. Tell me when I need to tone down the clingyness, please"

yeah, I know what it's like...

The best thing I could advise you on is to just bite your tongue and let things happen the way they happen. I can tell you from a general perspective that telling her straight up your weakness is probably NOT going to help you out. Any guy, aspie or not, will automatically lose a whole bunch of points with women by talking all dramatic and admitting their flaws. But I remember, I'm speaking in general terms...the woman you like could be different, I don't know her...but in every situation I've been it, it leads to an extreme loss in attraction she might have for you. And it's all about attraction.

If it gets too bad... you have my sympathy...it can be extremely detrimental, I know it...I guess if it gets too bad, I could only advise that you continue the relationship to the best that you can, and things should get better in the end. And Breaking it off (while it might eliminate the obsession/anxiety with said girl in the long run), it will not solve the problem...the anxiety is merely a symptom of a problem that will carry on to a different girl/relationship that you have in the future, so I wouldn't suggest that.

Thanks for the input, everyone. Glad to see I'm not alone. Given that I can't really control this, I think I'll simply have to conceal it as best I can. I've spoken out to her a couple of times about it, and yeah, it does nothing but dig you into a hole quick-like. I get it, too. I've had a girlfriend that obsessed over me, and it got old rather fast. Best busy myself with other things and back off. I'll let everyone know if I ever find the magical balance.

I really can relate to you here mate.

Every relationship I've had - the ones that were actually worth something anyway - I messed them up because those intrusive thoughts, the anxiety and insecurity, just wouldn't go away.

I ended up "cutting loose" and dumping them before I could get hurt... which always led to me realising what I'd lost a week or so later and REALLY feeling bad. That's when the real pain started for me.. couldn't leave them alone or accept that it was over because of what I'd done. Actually end up convincing myself that it's THEM who'd hurt ME, it hurt that much.

Ironically enough, this has happened again quite recently. Finished a girl who had been in love with me for about 5 years. She "finally got to be with me", a concept completely ridiculous in my eyes, because I find it really hard to understand how someone could love me.. and I finished her after about 2/3 months. Completely shattered her. She then went on to have a miscarriage, neither of us knew she was pregant, she wasn't that far along. Once again, I realised what I'd lost and now it's too late to get it back. She finally told me where to get off about 2 days ago, said she never wants me to contact her again..

But, such is life .

Best advice I can give man, is DON'T let it ruin what you have. Until you get absolute, concrete, undeniable evidence that she's being unfaithful (or whatever it is that's causing the anxiety), DON'T let her go. Whenever she's not around, constantly keep yourself occupied with things that you enjoy and utterly engage your mind.

Best of luck man .

Yeah. When you get too focused on one thing, it's easy to forget the world is still the same. Being able to shrug off failure is invaluable.

The fact you can pick that sentance out from everything else in my post shows you're already a step ahead... if you can see things in such an optimistic light, it'll be hard to go wrong!

I had this happen with a girl that I considered for all intents and purpouses just a friend.

Thing is, she had some issues of her own and I worried about her.

The worrying went out of control to the level of being obsessivly protective of her. Extending to not just trying to protect her from others I knew didn't have the best of intentions, but also trying to protect her from herself.

She eventually interpretted it as me having fallen in love with her and that broke my relationship with the best friend I ever had.

This is probably "THE" biggest issue between my husband and me.

For the longest time, before we knew he was AS, I couldn't understand why he worried so much about non-existent problems. I couldn't understand why he would say he loved me, yet at the same time, seemed so paranoid about what I was thinking about him. I find myself often reassuring him that I'm not "evaluating" him all of the time. He calms down for a while, but then starts up again.

To me, NT and all, this didn't seem like a desirable situation. To me, your spouse/partner is "home", and home is where we feel comfortable and loved and content. I would ask why he was with me if I made him so uncomfortable. No real answer. Just said that's the way he's always been.

Knowing he has AS helps, but it's tough for me to see things from his point of view.

When I was younger, I too had severe problems with insecurities and clingyness. I scared away a guy or two. I worked very hard to 'train' myself to get those thoughts out of my head. Even now, I have to rationalize and reason with myself to make those thoughts stop. Unless the person has given you REAL reason to distrust them, don't let it get to you! From a person who's been really cheated on, take it from me, you will KNOW in your heart when they have. Example: a person says they are going shopping, but comes home with NO packages; they act weird about answering the phone in front of you, when it was never a problem before, etc. If there are NO real things that set off your internal alarm, then remind yourself that you're just being insecure. Replace those thoughts with better ones; my girlfriend loves me... I know she's not answering her phone because she said she was getting her hair done... or whatever. You get the idea. By replacing the bad thought with a good one, you will get the relief you need.

Also, I cannot stress this enough. Communicate with her. Explain AS if you haven't already, and that this can sometimes happen. I suspect the reason for your insecurity, going on for so long and getting worse, is that you haven't told her of this insecurity. If you could just get reassurance from her that everything is okay, it should ease up or go away altogether. (That's how it works with me anyway. I tell my fiance and he says loving and encouraging things to help ease my mind and then I'm fine.)

So ask her for patience and communication. If the person truly LOVES you, then you both can work it out. And if the person cannot handle your level of communication or is too easily scared away, then they are not the right person for you, I PROMISE YOU THAT. I never thought I'd find the person for me, but I finally met my true love when I was 39. He is also aspie so we share our clingyness and insecurities and give the other all the encouragement needed. Works out great actually.

I knew a girl that was kind of like this. She had a lot of problems, with herself, and with other people (especially with ones taking advantage of her). She actually liked me, but I was mainly interested in helping her out, instead of getting invloved with her, because we both had too much baggage at the time. Anyways, she got upset that I didn't want to go out with her (she took it that I didn't like her, not even as friends), and refused to let me or anyone else even attempt to help her. Yeah, it sux, but what can you really do?