Can I fix it?

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Many years ago I got hurt bad. And I probably hurt others too.

Summary: I think I miscommunicated my feelings to people around me, getting hurt as a result, mishandled(meltdown) the situation and alienated myself. All fits within troubles of AS (which I didn't know I had) and later PTSD I have acquired.

Question: I recently reconnected with the subject of my romantic feelings. Could I somehow repair the damage? I didn't know I had AS back then, and there was no one to help me cope. Does telling people about the AS condition help heal and forgive? If I had AS and didn't know it, is it really still my fault? (I'll take the blame on the chin, but I'm just asking)

Full story:
She (let's call her Lady-A) and I (I'm a guy with probable AS), were working on something after school for a competition. I liked her for a while before then, but when she started showering me in attention it clicked. I was happy to have her around me. It was the 3rd year on the team for both of us, and we've been around each other for a while. Apparently she had a fascination with my work as she often specifically mentioned it in her blog with raves. But me being me I was absorbed in the work, the deadline was coming up and I had a competition to win, and I wanted to win bad. When I went home though, I thought of her often. I never considered myself having a great life, and always thought that I would die by my own hand. I thought I would die in my 30s. With her for the first time I pictured myself grow old.

On walks from school I would talk about team members with my best friend (BF) who is also on the team, I recall mentioning that I had particularly liked being with Lady-A. BF has been dating someone since the year before (call her Lady-B), also on the team. Lady-A and Lady-B are best friends.

I couldn't work up the nerve to tell Lady-A how I felt, but I had a great idea: I will tell her at the finals competition (we are bound to be euphoric when we went, it will be perfect).

The competition came, it was a tough fight. After day 1, there is an afterparty to let teams mingle. Food, live music, etc. I asked Lady-A to come with. She said she tripped on the stadium and fell and hurt her knee, she wanted to go home. I said I will carry her. I said we will have a great time. She came to the afterparty by way of Lady-B.

At the afterparty I met up with BF, Lady-A, Lady-B. I was sticking by Lady-A, working myself up to beat the social impairment to talk a bit. I can't do smalltalk unfortunately. At some point Lady-B pulled me away and said she wanted to show me something. I was friendly with Lady-B but said I wanted to go back to Lady-A and BF. Lady-B told me to give them (Lady-A and BF apparently) some space.

Next day at day 2 of competition we did okay, but nowhere near the win that I wanted. Our machine took damage during one of the early rounds and we couldn't reliably score enough to keep up the ranking. At the end of the day I found out that the team doesn't have the funding to go to the finals competition. It was a hard pill to swallow, and my plan to tell Lady-A goes out the window. It was time to pack up and go home.

Upon returning to school I was looking for my friends. I see everyone except Lady-A and BF. I asked where BF went. Was told he went outside. I went outside. I found both BF and Lady-A behind a corner, giggling. I knew something was up but spoke with them like I had no clue. Lady-A told me to wait for her inside.

Afterward I hurried home because I felt sick, and I didn't want BF near me. BF raced out and caught up to me anyway. I told him a knock-knock-f#@k-off joke, in a really mean tone. He asked me what was going on... He was clueless.

I ran the rest of the way home in tears. I got home and threw up. A bit later I went outside and punched an oak tree. I beat my hands into a bloody pulp on the tree. After that I went to my room and sat on the floor in fetal position in a corner, crying, bleeding all over the place. A couple hours passed. My mom arrived home from work and discovered me in the corner, with my injured hands wrapped around my knees. She asked if I had been in an accident, if I had been struck by a car. I don't remember much afterward, when I came to my hands were bandaged and I was told that I could lose my hands if exposed joints got infected.

Next day in school I avoided everyone. I also could not grip a pen to take a test, my hands were far too messed up. I heard BF and Lady-A were "officially" dating. After school I ran directly home. I cried, my body shook. I got chills. I was in so much pain I had to move from the bed to the floor. I lay on the floor, shaking and crying, for the next 3 days. I was forced to go back to school because I would be expelled if I missed any more days. I continued to avoid everyone.

I had a class with Lady-B, she asked me to talk to her online. We did, but I was not ready to tell her what was going on with me. She asked me to go to the park with her. Eventually I agreed to. There she asked if I liked her. Through a frown I laughed it off and told her to "quit being silly". I was friendly with Lady-B because she was (now ex- apparently) girlfriend of BF, but I was not attracted to her, not at all.

A few days later I cracked and told Lady-B how I felt about Lady-A and how everything turned out with BF. Lady-B apologized profusely, saying it was her idea to hook up Lady-A and BF, and that she (Lady-B) wanted to date me. She begged me that no one must know about my feelings for Lady-A.

I held out for a month, it was wearing me down because I had to lie to Lady-A and BF about what was actually going on. But I could hold it no more. I called Lady-A and told her how I felt. She told me to get some sleep. I tried again to get through to her online. She said that our attraction was mutual, but it was then, and she is dating my BF now. There was a lot of confusion and misunderstanding (okay, seeing AS yet?) it was really spiraling out of control over the next few weeks. It was hurting me yet I was coming back for more. In rage caused by frustration I said I will kill BF with a blunt axe. Lady-A told me that she doesn't want to know me anymore, and she hates me for hurting her relationship with BF. I went silent for a week, during which I felt I didn't want to live anymore (after all, I just went from seeing myself grow old to losing the one thing dear to me). I told Lady-A that I plan to end my life the next day, I said farewells to friends, and strangely enough they accepted it, it was weird. Lady-A was in tears. The next day, my final day, I was joking and laughing, I wanted everyone to remember me as a fun person when I die. In the middle of the day I was called into the school office... Lady-A was distressed and told her counselor about what had been bothering her. I sat across from the counselor not saying anything. She asked me if I could guarantee her that I will not take my life, I said no. She let me go and called my parents at work. At the end of the school day I went home, walking slowly, because I knew it was the last walk, and I am about to die.

I went into the house, went to the garage. Took a stretch of towing rope and made a noose. I secured the noose to the garage door brackets and got up onto a stool. I put the noose over my head and fitted it to my neck. I looked down at my feet. I began rocking on the stool. But in that moment I realized...

I was already dead. Dead inside. And that my death matters no more, because my life didn't matter. I was nothing more than an empty husk.

There was no one to stop me. No one.

Year and a half after that are kind of hazy, people say I was distant and detached. It was long since Lady-A and (former) BF stopped dating. It was time to go to college. My parents forced me to go to the one school I didn't want to. It was the school where the dreaded competition took place and it was my PTSD trigger. Every day I went there was like a punishment to me. Year and a half later I was suspended from college for poor academic performance.

Lady-A had somehow reconnected with (former) BF and they were long-distance dating again. It was painful to me. The earlier events largely repeated themselves, though I wasn't trying to kill myself (sorry, the empty husk) anymore.

Years went by. I missed the school reunion. When I found out I contacted Lady-A. We reconnected, somewhat (Former) BF is now married to someone else he met in college and has a kid. I told her that I want to meet up. I was planning to tell her about all these awesome books I've recently read, and one gripping developer story I read about and continued my research on. One of the subjects of the story shares similarity with me, and perhaps that was the reason why I like researching it so much. As it turns out the person in question has autistic traits. And so I began dissecting my mind. I realized I have Asperger's. My behavior closely conforms to reactions of a typical high-functioning autistic person (and coexisting developed PTSD). I hope that if I explain in detail how everything happened in the context of AS, perhaps she will understand. I hope she can forgive me. I had no knowledge of AS or have anyone help me cope when everything happened. I blame myself, oh do I blame myself.

Could this ever work?

By the way, yeah, I get it. It's high school "drama". But it happened to me. And I want to fix it. I never met anyone else like her.

Past damage is something you do not repair, but you learn from past mistakes, and avoid repeating those mistakes. The impact will wear off eventually, but if you continue to repeat the same mistake(s), you prevent the wounds from healing. Just be wise and give it time to heal for everybody by learning how to refrain yourself & controlling your emotions (the use of martial arts style meditation in the form of self-hypnotherapy to mentally command yourself to be peaceful at all times and in all situations, regardless of what happens, practiced on a daily basis at least three times a day, has been a proven effective-method).

That depends on the individual. They would need to actually care about you for some reason or in some way for it to be beneficial to tell them of your condition. The ones who care and have any desire to work things out will actually bother to research and learn about the condition. The ones who do not have any respect for you will simply use it against you.


That actually would have been a Blessing in Disguise for you. More on that some other day if necessary.

Just going to tell you that women are extremely jealous creatures (omg any ladies reading this are gonna hate me now ;o). They will do such things like hooking up Mr. B (BF) to Ms. A (Lady-A) in order to try and keep Ms. A from being competition for Mr. A (you) in order to try and obtain Mr. A (you). Karmic-History may also be involved.

This part was a mistake, but I understand your feelings, due to having done similarly myself. Not only did I indicate to my equivalent of a Lady-A my desire to assassinate the equivalent of . . . responsible parties for causing me pain but, even before that, I had suffered through so much extremely unfair abuse that I was pushed into psychosis to the point of even having come up with extremely elaborate plans as to how to destroy the world and eliminate all humans on the planet to the point of extinction. Apparently, many of those plans that came to mind are already in place by other people in clandestine-operations, but I digress...

Just going to let you know that I have gone through enough extreme negative-experiences to the point that most people would have already suicided a minimum of four times if they were to experience the same that I did.

The wisdom now exists in this world that allows people to be able to learn to have stable relationships. From the sounds of it you have not actually re-united with her in any kind of official capacity but it sounds like something you desire. Swallow your pride and humble yourself, read all of the http://www.for-giveness.co.uk/ web-site, practice meditative-breathing on a daily basis at least three times a day like I mentioned earlier, such as in the manner of a martial artist who uses "chi" (bio-electricity) energy to direct his own thoughts/emotions towards being peaceful/forgiving, and you should be golden in regards to relationships (eventually). All relationships, for your information, are karmic in nature, without exception. You can succeed if you heed the wisdom (does not guarantee an easy task but even that is solely karma-based).

I am just going to end my response by telling you a story of a case that came from hypnotic-regression session of a hypno-therapist who stumbled upon para-normal phenomenon. The hypno-therapist had encountered the case of a couple who was having problems in their marriage. More specifically, rather, the wife of the husband treated him badly all the time, even though he was the exemplary example of the type of husband that any woman could ever desire. She was always mean to him, and she could not understand why, considering how he was always acting like an absolutely perfect husband to her, remembering all of the specific dates of all of their anniversaries, always kind and generous to her, and never acted negatively towards her in any way, regardless of how much she plotted to humiliate and make his life as miserable as possible.

When they were brought into hypnotic-regression sessions, the documentation revealed that they actually had encountered each other during a past life, the man being a Nazi-German Soldier, and the woman being a Jew, from the time of Nazi-Germany. The situation was that the woman was trapped in a tram-car, and the Nazi-Soldier witnessed this for himself, but continued on with his "duty" for patrolling around and left her, even though he could have easily gotten her out. She was basically begging to be released. They went out of view from one another. The following week, the Nazi-Soldier's conscience bothered him, and he went back to try and help the Jewish lady escape, but it was too late, she had already died, and the look on her face through the window gave him a chilling feeling and impression, one where it felt to him like the expression was communicating to him as if to say : "You did this to me, this is your fault I did, you could have easily saved me and let me out, but you ignored my cries for help, and now I will never forgive you !"

The Nazi-Soldier was so shaken by this experience, and ridden with guilt from the incident, that he swore and made a promise, that if there was absolutely anything that he could possibly do to make up for his irresponsibilty in letting her die, then he would be willing to do absolutely anything to make up for his mistake if there was ever a chance that he could possibly set things right and make things up to her.

With that having been said, apparently, the reason for the strangely turbulently one-sided relationship that they had, and especially considering that many of the lady's friends were envious/jealous of her, wishing that they had such a husband for themselves, turned out to be from a previous-life experience, one where the man felt so guilty that he wanted to do anything and everything that he could to fix his mistake of the past, and that the woman was so angry at the man for letting her die that she swore in her previous life that she would never forgive him for what he did. Once the couple learned of this, even though they originally did not believe in the existence of reincarnation prior to hiring the services of the hypno-therapist, the relationship between the couple changed, one where they miraculously no longer had any kind of one-sided issues with their relationship, and were finally able to live together for the rest of their lives in complete joy of one another's company.

Now that you have gotten an answer from someone like an older version of yourself what will you do ?

I would solemnly promise that I will not try suicide, no matter what occurs within the relationship.

The events you described happened in high school. You're older now.

Why not proceed with a clean slate?

I don't know if I still matter to her. Probably not.

What does it mean for a capacity to be "official"?

I don't know who I was in the past, and honestly, reincarnation is not within my belief system. What is the answer?

Thanks.

Is the slate ever clean? I believe AS tendencies have me trying to go back to the problem and fix it.

I'm not that optimistic at this point, I feel the clean slate ship sailed, if it ever existed to begin with.

I do appreciate your suggestion though, as I hadn't thought of a clean slate solution. Is it realistic?

I started with a clean slate right after high school graduation.

By and large, even though I've made a few mistakes in life, I succeeded pretty well.

But can you do "clean slate" with someone you know, specifically someone you shared a painful experience with?

What is your definition of success? How do you know you're successful?

Personally I admit to having a high standard for doing things, and I feel it drives me forward to excellence, however I rarely get any satisfaction. Are success and satisfaction coincident concepts?

I'm not as successful as you. I've been a data entry clerk for 36 years. But I will retire with a decent pension within 6 1/2 years.

Sometimes, friendship and love could withstand bad things.

I have no definition of my own for success. I can't conclude on it like that. For all I know consistency could be the success.

Actually I have trouble with open-ended concepts.

To be honest, I can't imagine myself doing the same thing for too long. That's one thing I find different about myself from typical autistics.

Is there something that gives you great pleasure?

Right now, I like watching old bowling videos.

I don't remember great pleasures, but small pleasures I do have. One of my small pleasures is watching hands. Hands of people who make things.

These for example:
Woodturning - Tumbling Bowl
Simple Sunset Skyline - Spray Paint Art

There was one I watched... I can't find it now. It was an old vet folding paper planes. Really strange source of enjoyment.

You had mentioned that there was a time when you said that The Feelings Were Mutual.
Unless you did something like have an affair to lose your virginity to someone else other than her, when she had feelings for you, I can probably guarantee that she still has feelings, but women tend to be very bad at being the initiators. She sounds like the type who would give up on you because she thinks that you are not interested in being with her. She will continue to think this way until you bother to stop wallowing in your despair and just go and try to make things up to her via creating positive-memories for her.

Yup, simple as that, all you need to focus on is how to give her memories of experiences that she can treasure if she ever finds herself reflecting upon life in the future, when reminiscing about her life-experiences. Find out what she wants to accomplish in life, and if you can find something that parallels between the two of you, then you can both start working towards that goal together. Each person/individual/couple has/have their own unique goals in life, and to give you some hints as to what I mean, a mountain-man and lady may work as a team together, such that he's chopping the wood whilst she finds good locations from where wood can be obtained to be chopped. The idea is that you want to find something that you can do as a team or have her assist you in accomplishing a big goal towards your future.

I used to play this MUD where I took this one girl with me each day for leveling up where she would keep me healed (and occasionally smiting the monsters) whilst I did most of the heavy rapid damage-dealing. I did not really say much, I just basically signaled her for her to follow me each day, and this would become a routine. She was also one of those highly unapproachables (like she had the type of personality that would be extremely intimidating to autistic-guys, perhaps even any guy at all, and I probably could have even made her my wife if I bothered to prior to getting banned for being pissed off at nearly everybody in the admin for one of their staff's extremely rude behaviour towards me one day).

Just think of something, anything, that you two might be able to do together towards working for a better future.

You don't have to know who you were, nor do you need to adopt such beliefs, for many people get by just fine without past-lives hypnotic-regression through other methods. I was asking you if you had decided upon a plan of action yet or not. From the sounds of it you are still unsure of what to do yet. You can probably start by sincerely apologising about how you had behaved before, and explain that it only happened that way because of how extremely hurt you felt, due to the feelings that you had for her. Now, here is the tricky part, for most people would tell you to ask her to give you another chance, but I say, from the very get-go of things, you need to talk to her like you are already in a relationship with her. What I mean by this is that, rather than asking for another chance at a possible relationship with her, just flat-out state that you will try harder from here onwards to improve your relationship together, then simply keep your word to behave yourself, and invite her to join you for activities that couples may do together. You can start with simple methods of spending time together, such as a walk in the park together, sitting together by a lake in order to talk about life and interesting experiences that you may have encountered, etc. I have given you, I believe, more-than-enough information for you to work with, and the rest is now basically up to you.

Intentionally or unintentionally I've been loyal to her. Whatever affinity she had for me I might have extinguished with my despicable actions. It's not a given. As for making new memories, there will be few opportunities. She settled a couple hours away after college (she went to college out of state). I may get a sit-down with her next month, but otherwise opportunities will be scarce even if we decide to meet more often. The whole thing is a severe stretch. Aside from a weird brand of sick or insensitive humor, some wacky antics and technical brilliance in my work I'm not exactly a charming guy.

You know you sound a lot like what the AS stereotype dictates regarding relationships. Rather than hopes I was hoping to see someone with experience to chime in to see if they have ever seen something like this salvaged.

Though I can't readily confirm it, there is very high probability that she is in a relationship with someone at the moment. I know she dated over the years and had a long distance thing going on for a while...
Considering that I was interfering with her relationship in the past (regardless of why), I will have to be extra delicate. In fact I might not even be in a good position to ask whether she is seeing anyone right now. I don't think I can act like I'm in a relationship with her.

For all I know I might be just an AS nutcase, and that relationship should not exist on any rational plane. It's possible that I seek something that shouldn't be. Yes, I do doubt myself.

From a pragmatical point of view, I'd say learn the lesson and move on. Explanations can be seen as excuses and lead to more confusion. Even if she understands the reasons for your behaviour, the behaviour itself might have changed the way she feels about you.

It's very rare to fix the damage caused by actions with words.

Your lack of confidence will put you at a disadvantage. Your lack of experience contributes to your lack of confidence. I am probably sounding blunt about this but it is my honest impression at the moment.

I assure you that I am not typical when it comes to AS and relationships. I do have experience though.

I have seen all kinds of bizarre relationships. Before I continue let me mention that I forgot to quote an expression : "First-Loves Die Hard..." ...assuming you were the first guy she ever had feelings for, she will be able to rationalise reasons to forgive you if you can keep yourself calm, and I speak with experience as being someone who had experienced very similar situations to yours before, that is why I bothered responding to your thread. I have also seen relationships where the couple ends up breaking up then later on getting back together, then breaking up then getting back together, sometimes even over a span of four or more total break-ups throughout their life-times (not that I haven't also seen relationships end up being ruined beyond repair due to careless mistakes either).

I am also going to tell you, from experience, that the moment you learn/realise that she has or ever did have any strong feelings for you, you will be able to move on with your life, and if it turns out that she never felt anything for you, then at least you will have learned not to waste unnecessary time over obsessing with her. I have seen a lot. Statistically, I interpret your odds as being kind of low, not because of the statistics on salvaged or so-called impossible relationships, but more so because you treat the whole thing as over just because she got into a relationship with someone else (I can tell you, factually, from experience, that if she had/has feelings for you, then her getting into a relationship with someone else is largely because she thinks that she may not be good enough for you, due to your lack of attention to her).

The rest is a bit too complex to communicate due to the fact that your situation is related to matters of the heart and emotions.

She probably is in one if that is the feeling you get. I have seen this situation before. A lot. The chances of her staying in those relationships for very long is also quite low if she's only doing it because of having given up on better and deciding that she may "settle" for whatever model-number of BF comes her way for now.

People like us on the spectrum tend to take relationship-parameters to the extreme. I mean, even I never real-world hugged a grown-up girl until after I was the age of 26 or 27 or something, refusing to even have any kind of such physical-contact with anybody unless I was willing to acknowledge her as my one and only wife for all of eternity, and absolutely never ever even so much as hugging anybody else who was not her. I have since changed a lot, have learned and experienced enough to be able to successfully womanise 80% of the female-population if I bothered to put my time into that pursuit (regardless of whether they are in relationships or not), and I was once like you, had no inclination to think that there was anything charming or worthwhile about myself (although that was largely due to the severe amount of unfair child-abuse I had originally experienced).

Also, you are not required to be in a relationship, and many people are actually happier without one. I also had discussions with an older man once who said that, the older he got, the more that he found that he valued the time that he could have to himself, instead of trying to explain to his wife that he did not have that kind of energy to be giving his wife as much attention (and sex) that she desired, due to himself being a 40-year-old man. How you deal with your emotions will be up to you. Finally, before I close out, many Aspies often achieve "firsts" that previous-generations never did (Aspies are considered to be responsible for at least 90% if not all the world's inventions after all), and I happen to be amongst those "firsts" who gives his own personal-experiences to you (although my relationship with my version of Lady-A is more along the lines of me eventually rejecting her).

Sure, you can salvage your relationship but, speaking from experience, you should not obsess over it either. The best thing to do is evaluate how important it is to you, and if it's really that important, then by all means use my experience/knowledge to your advantage, but if it turns out to not be worth the effort, then heed my other advice and wait until you have gotten older and gained more life-experience before bothering to even think about having a relationship. You would be surprised to see how many of those twelve-year-old girls may have secretly admired you and end up hoping to have a relationship with you ten years down the road since dreaming and knowing about you ever since they were teenagers.

Well no you can't fix it far too much time has passed. What you CAN do is basically start over though. Hell, if she's game and you're game anything can work.

I've had suicide attempts/thoughts breakdowns (kinda going through one now) over guys (a guy I guess) and to me it's always going to be a possibility unless he stops loving me.