Love Story Time from a Newb

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Okay let me tell you a story that happened to me the other day. I was on Craigslist trying to sell some of my things, I got bored and started to browse the website. I noticed there was a personals section. I decided to take a chance and fill out a little profile thing and see if I got any responses. I ended up getting like 15 responses but most of the girls were not my type or some gay guys trying their luck. There was one girl on there that really caught my eye though. She was this cute little 100 pound Asian girl. Her email was very strange compared to the others all it said was " hey I'm 20, wanna meet up some time?". But she was cute so I agreed. Then I met up with her to get coffee. When I arrived at the coffee shop she had already ordered and was waiting for her coffee and she had a great sense of style. I saw her and asked if she was the girl I was looking for? But instead of a smile and a greeting, all I got was a "yeah". I thought it was kinda cute how shy she was. Anyway we got to talking a bit and I showed her some of my artwork and we talked about music and poetry and traveling and it was surprising to meet someone with a lot of the same shared interests which doesn't happen often. I did find it a little strange how she didn't look at me very often but I thought she was just trying to be cool or something, haha so I tried to kind of do the same thing of less eye contact to make her feel comfortable. At the end of the date I got a hug and she told me the date went well! I was on the clouds for the next few days. Anyway I got her to come on another date with me and we met up at the library at 5. She came back to my house and we listened to music and watched tv and she told me about how she was adopted from china at age 3 and how great her friends are and about her family. For being so shy she was very talkative, and very smart. Well eventually during the movie we were watching I decided to sneak in for a kiss. Then kissing turned into frenching then into more if you know what I mean. I felt like a king! Anyway it was getting late and she had to go home due to a curfew. I told her I would walk her to the bus stop because I was heading to a party in that general direction. So we set out on the walk and I've never seen anyone walk so fast! Anyway, on the way she told me that she had assburgers syndrome. At first I thought it was a joke or something because i assumed it was a disease like dementia or something. But she told me a little tiny bit about it and I told her I would have never guessed in a million years that she had it, but she does. This is when I started to feel extremely guilty for taking advantage of a handicapped girl. If I would have known I would have told her maybe we should wait to have sex because that's probably what she would have wanted. I'm not sure though because I don't know much about it. I just feel like a bad person. Anyway we were on the walk to get her on the bus to get her home on time but when we got there she wanted to come with me to the party. So we went over to my friends house and had some alcohol(probably shouldn't have let her do that) and she was funny and talkative and I was impressed at how well she socialized. But then she finally realized that coming to a party was a bad idea so I went to wait with her at the bus stop. She then became very stressed and paranoid while we had to wait, but eventually the bus came and I gave her a hug and kiss and she was off... That was last night. It was awkward not knowing what Aspergers was but I read a lot about it today. I feel like I can relate to a lot of the qualities that aspies have, such as honesty, high IQ, awkward at social events, interest in poetry, eye for detail, and lack of emotion. It's almost like I can be more myself around her. But I still feel like a bad person. I didn't think I could be influenced by someone this fast? To be honest I am a bit nervous, what should I expect? What shortcomings will she have that I can't expect her to do? Should I make decisions for her that I know are the right ones but she doesn't see it?(like how she should have gotten on the bus to be home on time) I do like her a lot but will she cheat on me due to lack of empathy? In a hypothetical situation, lets say we get married and have kids will the kids likely have the same disability or maybe even a stronger form of autism? I would definitely be interested in being her boyfriend(she said she has never had one before) but I would rather be prepared for what could happen then being as in the dark as I was last night. All in all it was a great night.

Hm... there is much to work in here.

From what I read, I assume that you don't have a clear idea of what Asperger Syndrome is. The fact that she has AS doesn't necessarily make her "handicapped", or incapable of taking her own decisions. When you say "Should I make decisions for her that I know are the right ones but she doesn't see it?", I'll answer no, you shouldn't. Sure, you could give her some advice, but making decisions for her because "you know best" would go against her free will.

In general, everybody is different. AS doesn't define her, she's still the same she was before, only that now you know about her condition. My advice is: just keep dating her, get to know her better, see what she likes and what she doesn't, the things she struggles with, get rid of any preconceptions you might have now. Lack of empathy, for example, many people are able to develop it, and besides, it doesn't mean a lack of morals, and from what I've heard people with AS are actually pretty faithful, so instead of projecting on her what you read about AS, again, just get to know her and see how she is.

Also, you've only had two dates! It's still a bit too early to think about children, don't you think?

Yeah now that I've had more time to think about it, I totally agree with you. I just needed to share my first opinion of the subject to understand how I actually feel about it. I just sort of panicked after hearing about it and now that I see how ridiculous my stereotypical view was I can move on to see where this goes. If I have anymore questions about this subject at least I can count on the support of this website to answer any of my " ridiculous" questions about dating an aspie. Thank you

^ no need to be so adversarial. If you read his second post, you'll see he was just panicking, and now he sees what he did wrong. I for one will gladly help if he runs into more issues, as will a good part of the WP community.

A single post is too little to pass judgement about someone (and it goes oth ways, I know, but I like giving people the benefit of the doubt)

When I read the first one, I must admit I was very indignant, for basically the same reasons as you are. But antagonizing him without offering any actual advice, that doesn't help anybody. The "All autistics are dumb" stereotype is a fairly common one, and if we want it to go away educating people about it is much better than just driving people away. If they ended up with a "All autistic people are rude and dumb" stereotype then we'd be doing it wrong

Also I am honestly curious, which part did you interpret as being passive-agressive? Maybe the one where he talks about his "ridiculous" questions, with quotes, but I interpreted it more as self-deprecating, but one never knows

I think you should cut him some slack, the OP is trying. He went through the effort of doing research and asking for help. That's more than most people would do.

Wow i had no idea i was being so offensive? And I'm pretty sure the only person being a prick here is Uwmonkdm. The point of my post was to express that I was ignorant on the subject of Aspergers and that I'm interested in learning more if I'm going to date this girl... That's the bottom line of intent here. Thanks everyone else for having my back. Haha but you guys didn't really answer any of my questions at all, you just succeeded in calling me dumb and rude in a variety of different ways. Even though the questions are "rediculous" (and yes I mean that in a self-deprecating way) , I would still like to know the answers. Aspergers is something I don't really understand. I mean who is to tell the difference between a very shy person and a person with Aspergers? There are so many symptoms listed online that if an ignorant person like me just hops on wiki and sees that, then I just connect all the symptoms together and am confused what it is? And I mean she is 20 years old. She is super smart and probably has like a bunch of different ways to cope with having Aspergers.

Haha "What the f**k is wrong with the world today" says the guy claiming not to be a prick. and the only reason i used the word handicap is because the girl im seeing called aspergers a handicap. Autism is a scary word though. The only real world experience I have with it is my 2 cousins, Seth and Celest. They both have a much stronger version of autism. Both of them will never be able to live on their own and can't do a lot of things. I was just searching for what makes Aspergers different then the other forms of autism like what my cousins have. Thanks uwmonkdm for being no help whatsoever in helping me do that...

But there is one thing you can answer for me uwmonkdm.
How would you define Asperger's syndrome?
My current definition is obviously very offensive to you.
I am just very curious on how you could word it to be accurate yet pleasing for someone with Aspergers to hear.
Feel free to just cut and paste a small definition that you like.