Emotional wall with partner?

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I'm dating a NT girl right now and we get along really well. We have a similar sense of humor, and she knows about my Aspergers and has helped me to cope with it and to understand the NT world a bit better. Anyway, I really like the relationship overall but for as long as we've been dating there's been an emotional wall between us. We can have good experiences and lots of laughter but even while I seem to be having a good time on the outside, on the inside I still feel isolated, like it's someone else having those experiences and I'm just watching them. I just can't seem to connect emotionally with this girl no matter what I try. At the same time, I don't want to break up and try dating other people because I feel like she's a really special person and I value what we have together so I know that I do have some kind of emotional attachment to her. I've had this problem with other partners in the past too, but this is the first one that makes me want to make it work because I can feel the potential for something great if I could just knock down this wall. Has anyone else had this problem? Are there ways to overcome it? Is it just a sign that I haven't found the right person to be with yet? Any comments or advice would be much appreciated.

The fact that you feel a potential means that there is something there. Plus the fact that you feel the desire to try and work through it. Do you know why the wall is there is the first place or has it always been there? IMHO I think it would be a great loss of an opportunity not to explore, discover things about yourself. And you'll gain a loving partner. So don't bail out.
Really explore and connect with your feelings when you are feeling ambiguous. Try and be mindful and find the root of those feelings. Esoteric I know, but it does work.

I've heard tell of a "glass wall" that always divides Aspies from their friends and lovers.

Dunno if there's any help for it. If you and your partner really have each other's happiness at heart, and make each other feel safe, then I don't see any reason why you couldn't connect more deeply. Just taking a significant interest in each other's hopes and dreams, and looking after each other, ought to help, though maybe you already do that.

I've been known to do this "trick" where I manage to divine a partner's feelings instead of my usual response which is to take everything literally and argue about the logical flaws in what they're saying. When I get that trick right, it's hard to feel distant. Cultivate empathic listening, if you aren't already.

It certainly helps if I'm very physical with a partner - lots of reassuring hugs and suchlike.

Maybe it would help if you were to look at exactly what you're seeing that you're construing as distance. Are you looking for what you already have, or is your behaviour with her somehow falling short of the mark when it comes to little signs of closeness? Or is it more of a communication thing? What about her behaviour? Any shortfall there?

In my last relationship I felt that I was doing everything more or less right, and clearly had a lot invested in the relationship, but the whole thing had the feel of an academic exercise somehow, and I was uncannily calm when we broke up. Looking back now, she had very little compassion for anybody, and a lot of contempt for most folks, so I think my distance may have been a reaction to that......I can't feel very sentimental or empathic about hostile, bitter people. In a sense it's their compassion that makes them lovable.

I would suggest your concerns might be an illusion caused by the end of the intense "honeymoon" phase of the relationship, but you say it's been distant from the start, so I guess it's not that.

Sometimes there are transference issues that keep couples apart emotionally. So if a partner starts yelling at me and gets dismissive or cruel towards me, then even if it was just a passing mood, and they apologise, I have a hard time becoming open to them again. I think they remind me of my mother who drove me away from her emotionally with her harsh personality..

Thanks to both of you for the quick replies.

Yeah, that sounds about right.


That's a great suggestion. I'll give that a try next time I'm with her!


Neither of us are perfect, but I think we do pretty well as a couple with communicating. She's aware of my Aspergers and the difficulties it can cause with communicating feelings and seems to accept it for the most part. What I find simultaneously interesting and distressing is that outwardly we are getting along great, laughing and smiling and such, but on the inside I just feel really disconnected from the experience, like I'm watching a movie shot in the first person. We'll have moments that I feel like there's the start of a feeling (possibly because I know that the experience looks exactly like a strong emotional moment I've seen in a movie or from looking at others) but then the feeling stops there and leaves me thinking "yup, that could have been a moment where I felt connected to her".


Thanks for the advice. I've been trying to explore my feelings when I'm feeling disconnected but I've never managed to find anything deeper that's driving how I feel (or rather don't feel). As for not bailing out I really don't want to but she wants me to either commit to marriage or end the relationship, and I don't know if I can do that unless I have some confidence that there's a way to work through this disconnect. There's certainly value in having a loving partner that's willing to work through issues together but I have to wonder if there's just something about her that's making it difficult for me to feel close. We don't have a lot of similar interests and that has tended to be the way I feel close to others in the past...

Sounds like alexithymia.....also I've heard tell that Aspies often just don't know the look and feel of a relationship, which I guess adds to the feeling of things not quite gelling. I've often had a feeling of "is that all it is?"