Pursuer - Avoider relationships with an Aspie

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I'm probably an Aspie (undiagnosed, suspected for the last year), but I am finding myself in a pattern with relationships that goes back to my first experiences with girls in middle school. I can relate pretty well with women in general, although I have a lot of trouble keeping them as *just* friends and almost always push boundaries for more, despite my best efforts not to.

I will also tend to find somebody I consider ideal, I pursue them, sometimes for months or years. They avoid intimacy with me, but give me enough friendly contact to keep me interested, but ultimately they either have to escape far away from me, or I have to drop them due to some crisis that makes the relationship impossible.

All the while, I am able to find "healthy, normal" NT relationships, short term anyway. But the prospect of being with somebody that wants to be with me causes me to lose all interest, and I find myself either drawn back to my earlier Avoider-obsession object, or finding a new one entirely to chase after.

I keep telling myself that love was involved here someplace, but I know better now. After around a dozen pursuer - avoider obsessive relationships in my lifetime, the current one dragging on into year # 6, I am becoming exhausted with the whole prospect of dating and being with women in general.

Does anybody else fall into this pattern of chasing after emotionally unavailable partners, at the expense of all other relationships? How does one force themselves to "settle" for the normal mutual relationships that keep coming my way, and stopping themselves from chasing after things I know I can never have?

Maybe deep down you realise that relationships cannot satisfy you. You are looking for the unobtainable because what is obtainable isn't what you want.

I sympathise, to a certain extent. Sometimes I've managed to spark a relationshp, even when others outside of it said 'no chance'. And then purposely derailed it, when it looked all set for more permanence.

Let's call chasing - travelling.

If you are travelling, then you are not arriving. You don't like the arriving because you have to settle for the reality. You prefer possibilities to realites?

How much is enough for you? Maybe not enough. So, what to do?

1 Keep travelling, just to pass the time. Why not? I mean, it's just another way of filling time between birth and death.
2 Change the way you see relationships and women.
3 Forget about relationships.

It doesn't really matter, as long as you realise that this probably is just a form of passing time to you.

Ben Gibbard does, all his songs are about this

It's not settling, that's the thing, only if you genuinely think you're better than people just because they see something to admire in you. Isn't there such a thing as mutual admiration?

I have the opposite problem, I fall only for people who at first seem to be people I get along with but they turn out to have this thing you do. It's weird, I wouldn't have any way of knowing because like you say you think you want it, til you can have it anyway.

I think it is a natural thing to like chasing the unobtainable, especially for people who are male, that is sort of the programming, but it's extreme in your case in that you NEVER let yourself catch the object. I think Aspies are more prone to this because they are smart, and therefore something tells them "save your energy for something better, you can't be devoting your energy to any wives and children." So instead they will just go along chasing things until they find "something better." Does this something better exist, I think not, it is an indefinable quantity, because there will always be "something better", newer, younger, prettier, more unknown.

And as for stopping yourself from chasing things only what by definition you can't have... well you are closing yourself off to the whole world of inside relationships, which is its own challenge that I would say is much more multifaceted and surprising than just chasing can ever be... you might be telling yourself "Oh she is very into me, this horse is dead" but you're kind of avoiding the fact that you do have to do reciprocal stuff to keep people liking you, so it's really not dead at all. I mean... could that not be an interesting challenge, seeing what happens when you give up the rope mooring you to your own island?

I get it.

Everything in your life is good except that you can't find a significant other/ connect with somebody.

This is a very broad issue.

All I can say is that you need to examine your behavior towards these women that you want to be more than friends with. If you can, observe what works for your friends that are in relationships. Do everything you can to not only be the most attractive person on the outside ( looks, money, car, own place) and what I'm about to say is going to ruffle some peoples feathers...

But when you look at couples, not only are they physically attracted to each other but they relate to each other in ways that are different than friends. For people on the spectrum, a lot of us come from parents who didn't really relate well to each other or had kids for the wrong reason and that makes it hard to relate well to people in a romantic way just given the genetics many of us have.

I'm just saying that it won't hurt to do self improvement work on yourself and expand your horizons. If that even makes sense.

I have this pattern. It is incredibly painful.

I am afraid of true love and intimacy. I don't necessarily know why. I use these relationships as distractions.

Also, I have some unfinished business from childhood (mother issues). That was the original unrequited love story in my life.

I have not "settled" for normal relationships. I am not ready. My self-worth is not high enough yet. I am doing better about not pursuing unavailable women. I'm not perfect though. I just admit defeat a lot sooner in the process.

I don't think this is an AS issue. I think it is a self-esteem issue. At least that is my experience.

I am reminded of the saying "I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member."

I agree it's a self-esteem issue. If a girl/woman wants to be with you, do you automatically assume there's something wrong with HER?

If you are only interested in the unobtainable, then you're never going to attain it. This is a classic method for avoiding failure by failing in a very different, but possibly less devastating, fashion. Effectively, a way of *controlling* failure.