Break-up: Aspie style!!

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Agreed

Was the reason behind it ever discussed? I haven't read all the posts.

May I ask why the "no looking back"? Circumstances change, people can come to look at things differently...why the need to have it be permanent?

~Kate

That's an excellent question, I've always thought the necessity to be "self-evident".

After thinking about it, the best I can come up with is the need to be free of the baffling complexity of the situation which I am fundamentally unequipped to deal with - it's an elegant, and empowering solution to an intractable problem.

Aspies can be a "bull in a china shop", hurting people left and right despite the best intentions - sometimes just withdrawing from the situation seems to be the best solution despite the personal sacrifice.

Kind of like "Edward Scissorhands"

Best. Explanation. Ever!

We started talking about it when asked for some insight into why my fiancé broke off our relationship with a quick e-mail then cut off all contact. I was struggling with the idea that our relationship meant so little to him that he could simply walk away, draw a line and move on. We talked about it being a defence mechanism, but there was debate as to whether it was more prevalent in male Aspies, possibly as a result of the high prevalence of bullying experienced by male aspies, or just a trait of men generally.

Eloquently put Grisha. It makes me feel slightly heartened to think my ex had my best interests at heart, even just a little. I knew he cared about me and would never want to hurt me - your explanation fits very well with what I thought I understood of him. It just makes me slightly sad that he wouldn't let me help him cope with it all...

Maggie xx

Thank you. I needed some sort of explanation because nothing made sense to me, and now at least I have some idea of what might go through someone's head. I hope it's something like that with my ex, because it means I am not the problem and it's none of the thousands of things I've imagined. It's not self-evident to the other person. Anything but, especially when the other person is an Aspie. We sit there and go "what the f*ck" and obsess till doomsday.

~Kate

My reasoning behind an "aspie-style breakup" is different than what Grisha said. I see a romantic relationship as, first and foremost, a business arrangement of sorts. The guy provides romance, compliments, etc., in exchange for hugging, kissing, and other delights. "Feelings", whatever that is, is something that comes with the relationship. Now, the two people involved can get along wonderfully on a personal level, but the underneath it all, the driving force is exchange of romance and physical pleasure. When the girl breaks up with me, that exchange is gone, and with it, the associated feelings. Now, I always strived to be the best boyfriend my girlfriend can find: I took her to romantic places, gave her compliments, called her, and made her feel special. But when she breaks up with me, she waives her right to all that, thus ending the communication. To this day, I have not kept in touch with any of my exes, although all break-ups were quite peaceful and clean.

That's probably why it baffled me when I heard of people keeping in contact with their exes, being friends with them, still having feeling for them, or worse, sleeping with them. This raises the questions: Why did you break up if you still have feelings for the person? and If you chose to break up, what are you benefiting from seeing the person? After all, the main thing that separates a relationship from a platonic friendship (the exchange of romance and sex) is gone. So what's the point?

If it helps, consider this analogy: you pay an instructor to teach you how to hang glide. He ends up being a really cool guy: he gets you psyched about the flight, addresses all your concerns, explains everything you need to know, and tells you interesting stories from his time in the US Air Force. If you're female or gay male, you may even become infatuated. But once the flight is completed, you thank him, shake hands, and go on about your life. While he was a great instructor and made the experience way better than it would be otherwise, the foundation of it all is that it's his job to teach you to hang glide and your job to be a respectful client. Once the lesson is done, so is that arrangement.

Wow - now I'm intruiged... What you have just described, in an NT world, is not a "romantic" relationship but, to be blunt, a prostitute-client relationship. I wonder if we are now getting to the bottom of why some Aspie-NT relationships are fundamentally and fatally flawed...

A romantic relationship, in an NT world is far more than a simple exchange of physical pleasures (although that is a great part of it ) It is (and now I find myself tasked with the difficult job of defining love at the end of a night shift) a coming together of two people who find themselves with a sparkling physical attraction to each other, a fundamental compatibility and and with an attraction to each others soul, such that the other person enhances and completes them on a spiritual and emotional level. To quote Richard Gere "a guy that will wake you up ay dawn just bursting to talk to you because he can't wait another minute to just to find out what you'll say"

I would be utterly devastated, and deeply offended, if I found out that my "other half" considered our relationship in the terms that you are describing. What happens to your relationship when your wife is in the throws of morning sickness or post-natal depression and cannot provide you with "hugging and kissing." Does she no longer fullfill her purpose?

A relationship based on attraction at a spiritual level surely cannot come to an end without residual feelings, repressed or otherwise, and I personally feel the need to respect my ex, with whom I have shared my a portion of my life with at a most intimate level, and the relationship, to which I have dedicated such energy and emotion.

Might this fundamental difference in attitudes to a relationship go some way to explaining the difficulties that many NT-Aspie couples experience, and also why many Aspies become overwhelmed and run when they meet someone that finally starts to enter thier soul, in a way that they never imagined a person could?

Maggie xx

I'n not really sure you can help an Aspie "cope with it all" in this context. There is no cure for Aspergers.

Any attempt often seems to degrade the relationship to a "parent-child" sort of dynamic, which is actually kind of humiliating, especially for guys - leaving is the one card you can play that always restores the balance.

As for me, I need to feel accepted, one can always smooth out some of the rough edges with properly expressed feedback, but an Aspie is an Aspie and an NT is an NT, and the burden of branching the gap cannot always fall on the Aspie in a relationship of equals.

Some. I personally have never approached a relationship in the manner described above.

My boyfriend has broken up with me "Aspie style" 4 times in 4 1/2 years. The first breakup lasted 1 1/2 years. The other break ups have lasted anywhere from 6 weeks to 5 months. We've currently been broken up for 8 weeks. I'm trying to understand why he returns. Is it possible that he feels the problem has somehow disappeard and he returns because he won't have to deal with it?

In the situation as described I would never return and never look back, so I can't really offer any advice there.

OK... maybe I overdid it with the business exchange thing. First of all, by the time helping my wife with the morning sickness enters the equation, the relationship shifts from an exchange of romance for sex, to something almost family-oriented. She's not just my wife anymore; she's a partner in raising children. (Jewish weddings, in fact, are viewed as a first step in building a new family.) While I'd still want to get sex and give romance, providing a stable environment for a person you brought into the world trumps satisfaction, romantic or sexual.

Second, when a relationship based on deep spiritual connection comes to an end, when there was a deed spiritual connection, why would the relationship end in the first place? That almost seems contradictory. And if you still have feelings for your ex, as I hear many people say, why would you break him with them in the first place? Unless, of course, the ex did the break-up unilaterally, in which case, having residual feelings is kind of understandable, since you had no choice in the matter.

Third, sorry, but I still don't get the whole "spiritual connection" thing. It doesn't mean I didn't have feelings for the girls I've dated. Quite the opposite, the feelings were there and they were real. But they were tied to the relationship: they kicked in when the relationship started, and switched off when she broke up with me. Now, I fully respect my exes: I never write anything bad about them online, never bad-mouth them to my friends, and make an effort to return anything that wasn't specifically a gift. I just don't see the need to keep in contact; after all, the force the kept me and her together, the relationship, has ended.

Perhaps a more "spiritual" analogy will help explain things. Plato believed that the Forms were divine and separate from living things, while Aristotle believed that the Forms were within living things. Let's say the humpback whale became extinct. According to Plato, we still have the Form of the humpback whale in heaven, but according to Aristotle, we lose that Form permanently, because we have no humpback whales left on earth. In this case, living things are the relationships, and philosophical Forms are the feelings. Your view is more Platonic, mine is more Aristotelian; let's agree to disagree.

I'll very happily agree to disagree (although i can even agree with some of your less business-like ideas )

I also wish you well and I hope someday you get to experience the lovely sparkly spiritual stuff too...

Maggie xx