Feeling in love for real, and then it's gone?

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For all those on the spectrum,

Have you had the experience of feeling truly, madly, deeply, forever in love with someone, and saying you wanted to commit to them...and then just having your feelings for that person go away?

What happens, to make that happen? Or what is the progression of events or feelings (or whatever), that you have noticed you've had that has led to that?

I know this can be a merely human phenomenon (though I can't relate to it personally, as a human), but...for you, did you see it or attribute it to being a part of your ASD?

This has never happened to me.

From what I understand/have heard:

Sometimes, as people either get to know each other better through different circumstances and over time, they realize that they are less compatible than previously thought.

Sometimes, as people grow and change and go through stuff, they become less compatible/become different in ways that affect how they see and relate to and feel about each other.

I also think that people can retain some (maybe all, for all I know) of their feelings of love for someone, while not wanting to be with them anymore.

I don't understand how deep feelings of love and bonding could disappear overnight for no reason, but I think the realization that they are not there anymore could maybe happen overnight for the person who stops having them....even if the feelings didn't actually change overnight.

Love doesn't exist, all it is is chemical reactions in the brain giving you those feelings! Love is pointless!

That happened to me often when I was 16/17, being extremely immature - that type of phenomenon lead me to believe I only cared about their validation and nothing more. If they loved me, I felt my ego stroked and didn't feel it was necessary to feel anything anymore. If they did not, I loved intensely, and the less they loved me, the more I loved them.

That type of behavior, though, was extremely narcissistic and sociopathic on so many levels. If that explains anything for you, I'd recognize those kinds of behaviors and correct them immediately or just agree to never love anyone, ever.

Having said that, some people do just fall out of love for various reasons. It happens. People move on, find they aren't the person they thought they were, love someone else, desire a change in their life, etc..

My impression from people I'm around is women fall out of love in response to feeling (and being) mistreated. I don't know why men do. I don't see it as related to ASD, whatever the cause, at least in women. But I don't know about men. I don't understand men at all.

I don't think it is related to ASD (or neurodiversity). The opposite is though:, To be unable to get over somebody even when they have lost interest in you, and even if they mistreat you.

As somebody pointed out,, this sounds a lot more like narcisism or psychopathy than ASD.

I can understand initial infatuation, then those feelings fade as the relationship continues.

Say I like guy X, but over time my experiences of him cause my negative feelings to start reaching/matching the level of what positive feelings I had.
But I'm trying to preserve the relationship, keep things going well (-ish), so I'm trying to disregard the negative feelings.
One day or week or whatever, I "suddenly" realize that what I perceive as the downsides of the person (in my life) outweigh, have overtaken, the upsides of our connection.
Eventually I have to end the relationship, which comes "out of nowhere" to the other person-because I had (sort of) hoped I would feel more positively towards him again (but that failed to happen).
Instead of trying to rationalize staying with the person (what I had been doing), I'm doing the opposite, since I can't stand the person any longer.

What I'm describing isn't of the intensity/degree of what OP wrote, but it's related somewhat.

i think (at least part of) the problem is that most people can't tell the difference between fascination/infatuation and actual love (which to me means knowing a person as well as you can know someone who isn't you, and accepting all that you know, good and bad--in my estimation that is what proper love looks like), until they have themselves experienced both. it's only when you come to realise that you love someone completely in such a way that you can see the difference between it and the infatuations you had known previously. most human pairings (certainly most short term pairings) are based on infatuations rather than proper love, because we so often fall into relationships with people before we truly know them well; and it takes the time of coming to know them well to come to know that they are not right for us or that they aren't who we thought they were. because we are often not conscious of this process, we experience it as a rapid falling into/out of love, when what really happened was the typically and predictably brief life of an impulsive infatuation.

Focusing so much on feelings/chemistry is shallow. It sucks that human beings are wired this way. True love should be about more than that. It should be about companionship, i.e. a commitment to be there for each other.

I think starvingartist makes a good point.

For me, I choose to think of love as an action rather than a feeling. It's a choice whether to love someone or not, or sometimes whether to MAKE yourself love someone or not. The attraction to a person or an infatuation with a person is bound to fade. I've been with my SO for 15 years now and we've been strictly exclusive for somewhere between 9 and 11 years. Doesn't mean we haven't been attracted to others or tempted to be with others. Doesn't mean I never "fell in love" with anyone else. It just means we vowed to remain strictly monogamous with each other and not pursue whims of straying.

For us, it's like falling in and out of love daily. If the "feeling" isn't there, we just love each other anyway. We've stayed together for so long because we put our friendship above everything else in our relationship. If we don't physically or emotionally "bond" for weeks at a time, that's ok. If we just go through the motions, that's ok. If we both go to bed exhausted from the day and don't have but three words to say to each other the whole day, if sometimes we're not really much more than roommates, that's ok. If a relationship can't go any deeper than a "feeling" that may/may not be there from day to day, it's not going to last for the long haul. Just my opinion here, but I wonder if "feeling" you're "in-love" is not something we've just been conditioned to "believe in" through TV, magazines, and movies.

Don't get me wrong?there's plenty of genuine affection in my relationship. For some people, a relationship can be strained by nothing more than a bad day. A solid LTR can survive a bad YEAR--and we've had those! And the reason for that is our relationship is based on more than a "feeling."

The best advice I ever read is when you feel you just don't love someone anymore, love them. In other words, make the choice, the resolve to love that person. Love people through what you do and what you choose rather than what you feel. The feeling will come and go, and if that's what you're after (the feeling), it'll pretty much fix itself.