Asperger issues or he is just not that into you...or both?

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After reading yet another excruciatingly painful saga of another woman on this forum, who is in love with a man who is rejecting her and she attributes his behavior to possible ASD issues....

It made me wonder, once again, in this kind of situation, what is Aspergers here and what is just plain old vanilla, 'he is just not that into you'. It seems to me most people who post here asking for advice from the resident Aspergians who hang out here, have a lot of trouble discerning between those two categories.

Every time, some poor woman is throwing herself on the rocks of a man's indifference to her and just plain rejection and she posts here saying, 'is this Aspergers?' Should I hang in there? I haven't been keeping strict records here but I have yet to see a 'happy ending' to any of these posts.

Am I missing something here? I read these heart wrenching posts and I wonder why do these women keep making excuses for what is apparent to me. He is just not that into you, sorry. Being on the spectrum may intensify the experience and complicate the relationship but really, it is what it is. If he or she wanted to stay involved with you, they would, right? Or am I all wrong?

I've noticed the very same pattern. Perhaps they're so convinced of their own attractive qualities that they refuse to believe any man wouldn't fall in love with them on subtle command.
Sometimes, a pattern seems to become fashionable in this subforum. A while ago, that was nice guys and male virgins, and after that it became this pattern.

Me neither, and I've been here a while.

I used to point out cases where I thought the guy(or girl) was just not interested in, rather than unable to, attempt to save their relationship. I've found that in most cases, when people are given advice they don't want to hear, it will either be ignored, or briefly contemplated but then nothing will change. Months later they're still banging their head against the wall and banging on about small acts which apparently show that, secretly, he's madly in love and really does care inside (doesn't help that they're backed up by 3 or 4 other NTs in the same boat who go 'oh, my guys exactly the same! it just means he really cares!!'... ).

wow, sorry, that was all a bit cynical. I'm not implying that you should dump your partner just because the Internetz tells you to, but equally, it seems a lot of posters here are lookign to validate situations in which they are clearly unhappy and have been for quite some time.

Basically, I think you should take your partner as they come, AS, NT or martian. People need to stop reading into minor acts to try and varnish over multiple hurts and mile high grafitti that says 'I don't care'.

Sometimes somebody isn't ready for a relationship. They might be in a few years, once they grow up, or find out how it feels to be on the other side, but often that's after dating multiple people and getting heart broken, before finding 'the one'. Along the way, they've learned (or ought to have) what happens when you don't pull your weight in a relationship; you get dumped.

If someone hasn't had much dating experience and is more emotionally immature, then they may have yet to learn all this; that doesn't mean they should be coddled or excused, it means they need to learn it. Sometimes talking to them sorts it out, but if that doesn't work, you need to stop wrecking your head and let them find out the hard way.

The type of people that feature in these posts, seems to be immature, selfish and entitled amongst other 'wonderful' qualities (notice how every single one of them is described as 'caring' ). These are traits which all people have, but learn to control as they get older; I really believe that if you put up with them in a relationship, you are condeming yourself to a life of 'parenthood' to someone who will never need, or get, the opportunity to grow the f- up.

/rant. (can I just be clear, this is directly at a specific type of partner, AS or not. Many are very hard working and do care about their partners. This post is not about them)
(heavily edited for spelling!)

Last edited by Lene on 18 Apr 2012, 10:26 am, edited 2 times in total.

I think you're all correct in your assessment, and I've seen this pattern, too. Many times I just feel bad for her (it's usually a her) and want to say, "Oh, *honey*..."

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 3:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's a good point, and I think you're probably right in that friends and family may be trying to say the same things. In many cases they've turned to WP to hear that they are making the right decision. In some cases, I think they probably are. Some stories are really sweet and it's fairly obvious that both partners are determined to understand each other, but a lot seem to be very one-sided (AS or NT partner doing all the compromising). Since they're asking for advice, I think we'd be doing a disservice to everyone by not pointing it out.

Last edited by Lene on 18 Apr 2012, 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

Right, and this seems to be a kind of female disease or wishful thinking because i remember at some point it was "Oh, he has this feelings, it's only that he can't express them ..." SSDD -- same s**t, different day.

I guess it's a twisted and disguised kind of helper syndrome; they don't want to see what is but instead what could be.

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 3:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think the confusion is that this usually starts when the relationship gets more serious, then he starts drifting away and not saying how he feels. And in most of the stories it seems that it was going great before this. Then when she starts inquiring about whether or not the relationship is going to lead to marriage, he shuts down and is seemingly unable to express if that's what he wants or if he intends to continue in that direction. And they are wondering why this is happening, and if the guy does have ASD then it will be hard for her to tell whether he is uninterested or if he is having trouble expressing it, and they are looking elsewhere for some insight in trying to figure which one it is.

^^^this


but also, i've noticed the same patterns people have spoken of in the thread, where it seems like "s/he's just not that into you", but more often i see the pattern of "s/he's a bit of a jerk". i don't think aspies are necessarily more likely to be jerks than NT males and females, but since this is an aspie forum we get to hear about it....

I noticed a trend where the woman becomes obsessed with the guy early on & the women misses obvious cues that the guy is a real jerk or that he simply isn't into her. The woman starts making excuses for his behavior to try to find a way to justify it to herself & her family & everyone else who is trying to help her. Trying to help her hear the truth that she wants to deny upsets her & then she gets mad at the members on her or Aspies in general.

I also noticed a trend where the woman is aware that they guy is having problems but she doesn't accept the guy the way he is & keeps pressuring or encouraging him & it becomes kind of a parent child relationship which leads to both of them feeling resentful. Some of those women may really be trying to work with & help their guy but it would be a lot better if they would try to research AS & came here asking for advice earlier.

I have seen some post here by women who are really trying to work with their guy by researching AS & really listening to the advice they get. These post seem to be rarer than the others but it is really great that those women are posting here.

Yeah, if it was a NT couple with no suspicion of ASD, they would be posting the same story on some other forum instead of on here.

Women do that too. So do NTs (either gender). This is just different expectations about how casual the relationship is.

Not necessarily with Aspies. Some Aspies get obsessed in the begging of a relationship(I do) & some try to hide, ignore, deny, or try to change some of their Aspie stuff. They get stressed out by that after a while & their obsession fades or something major happens that causes them to shutdown &/or meltdown & Aspie's behavior changes. It comes as a shock to their NT partners & sometimes the NTs make things worse by overwhelming the Aspie & not giving him or her the space to deal. Suddenly changing behavior like that can make the NT feel like the Aspie doesn't care about them anymore & sometimes the Aspie is so overwhelmed from thigns that he/she doesn't want to do the relationship anymore. That leaves the NTs feeling confused & kind of used & hurt

Well the language is a little imprecise here. "Casual" ... the common idea about that is there's a connection between level of commitment and emotional intensity (a link I don't see and can't understand). Casual implies a low level of both, since they're commonly thought to be associated. But I think for some people they aren't. So there's different expectations.

It's probably more common for there to be problems for Aspies, since expectations are less likely to match up, and the problems are likely more intense. But it's still a common problem.

With me, for instance, as the security in the relationship goes up, I want to relax and expand my space to a sustainable level. The amount of space I forego early in a relationship isn't sustainable indefinately. Giving up more space than I can afford in the long run, is to me, part of courting - and temporary. This has led to problems with people who have different expectations (they usually expect the space to shrink and the emotional intensity to increase, rather than the other way around).

Yes we (NT's) do have a lot of trouble with that because we are used to dealing with NT guys/girls. If we had an NT love interest, we would just ask our NT friends their opinions. But more realistically we would be more in tune to what's happening because we ourselves are NT and know what certain behaviors denote.



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I don't believe this is the thought process. At least not in my situation. I'm sure there are people out there NT and AS alike who feel that they are God's gift to creation however for the most part I think the issue here is that the things that we do to attract the NT crowd doesn't always work for the AS crowd. I flirted with my Aspie for 8 months before he got a clue that I was interested. Maybe he had an inkling and just wasn't sure. Whatever it was if he had been an NT guy that 8 months would have been an 8 minutes.



Yes this why NT women come here. If they were dealing with an NT guy and he started behaving this way they or at least I would know he's on his way out of relationship. But with an AS guy is that really the case? Knowing what we (NT's) know about AS we can only wonder if this is why he is acting this way. We don't want to give up before we are sure that he is just being a jerk and "not really that into me" .



As an NT woman, I read some of the posts and think the same thing...



hmmm...a female disease? So this doesn't happen with AS guys???

I feel the problem is that NT women (yes most of the posters are women) use forums as an Aspie manual. I like to use the forums for guidance. No one knows my Aspie so no one can tell me what he's thinking. Only he can do that and the folks here have nudged me towards effective communication with him so that I can find out exactly what he's thinking/feeling.

Have mercy on us NT's a lot of us are trying hard to navigate your planet. Obviously we've found (or think we've found) someone who makes us want to move to your planet.