Undiagnosed brother showing obsession with girls

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Bluebell81
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29 Jan 2018, 3:40 pm

Disconaut wrote:
I had a weird thought, but it might work. Many people with ASD like "guides" in areas they are interested in, in my experience. Maybe compile some Youtube videos about dating (preferably by women) into a playlist, as well as a bunch of articles? That way, its a "research endeavour", and not "you're terrible at this thing"


That is a really good idea. Thank you I will get together some bits that may help.



Aspie1
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29 Jan 2018, 10:04 pm

Disconaut wrote:
I had a weird thought, but it might work. Many people with ASD like "guides" in areas they are interested in, in my experience. Maybe compile some Youtube videos about dating (preferably by women) into a playlist, as well as a bunch of articles? That way, its a "research endeavour", and not "you're terrible at this thing".
Such a guide already exists: the Red Pill. I learned a lot from it: what women like, what women dislike, and the evolutionary mechanisms behind it all. Unfortunately, this material is pretty controversial. It's up to the OP if she wants to teach it to her brother or not.



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29 Jan 2018, 10:37 pm

Aspie1 wrote:
Disconaut wrote:
I had a weird thought, but it might work. Many people with ASD like "guides" in areas they are interested in, in my experience. Maybe compile some Youtube videos about dating (preferably by women) into a playlist, as well as a bunch of articles? That way, its a "research endeavour", and not "you're terrible at this thing".
Such a guide already exists: the Red Pill. I learned a lot from it: what women like, what women dislike, and the evolutionary mechanisms behind it all. Unfortunately, this material is pretty controversial. It's up to the OP if she wants to teach it to her brother or not.


http://www.doctornerdlove.com/the-red-pill/

Dr. Nerdlove is great, and I bet the brother could learn a lot from his blog.



Bluebell81
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30 Jan 2018, 8:01 am

Thank you I will have a good read after work today. I know I will provide a starting point and it is up ti him where his research and reading leads him. It is really helpful to have links that others have found valuable.



The_Face_of_Boo
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30 Jan 2018, 8:31 am

Bluebell81 wrote:
The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
I don’t understand how having AS makes one not to understand “No”.

This is probably a serious manners issue or serious impaired IQ issue.

How severe is his autism?


I would say he is very high functioning. He has lived on his own for several years, held down jobs successfully, changed his routine and travelled abroad without issue. He is able to be in loud unpredictable situations like busy bars. He has a higher than average IQ and two degrees with a 1st class honours. He now works in finance. It does make sense what other people have said about him not understanding a sudden change in tone. Every person he has become infatuated with did flirt with him initially and the girl at work went for several drinks just him and her and opened up a lot of private stuff to him. I think there is a very large gap between his emotional and social maturity and other areas of his life. He showed zero interest in dating at all until we sadly lost our mum 8 years ago. That shook his world as he relied so heavily on her. Since then he has been seeking someone to fill the void of companionship. As time passes he gets more desperate and I think he feels some panic about getting to 40 still alone.


I don't think it's useful to make him read long books and blogs at this point yet - you need a quicker way.

This is something more fundamental, you should talk to him and tell him with all honesty that there's always a possibility that any woman may reject him , even at any moment, and it's always possible that a woman would say No even if she was initially interested in him, and even if they were in the middle of making out or sex, a No is always to be expected and not stopping is an act of harassment/assault. Period.

You said earlier that he sent a wink text after he received "No.Means.No" - so really....it's not really a matter of failing to get the tone or the nonverbal cue since this happened over text and her message was crystal clear - there's no hidden cue here.



Disconaut
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30 Jan 2018, 8:56 am

Bluebell81 wrote:
The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
I don’t understand how having AS makes one not to understand “No”.

This is probably a serious manners issue or serious impaired IQ issue.

How severe is his autism?


I would say he is very high functioning. He has lived on his own for several years, held down jobs successfully, changed his routine and travelled abroad without issue. He is able to be in loud unpredictable situations like busy bars. He has a higher than average IQ and two degrees with a 1st class honours. He now works in finance. It does make sense what other people have said about him not understanding a sudden change in tone. Every person he has become infatuated with did flirt with him initially and the girl at work went for several drinks just him and her and opened up a lot of private stuff to him. I think there is a very large gap between his emotional and social maturity and other areas of his life. He showed zero interest in dating at all until we sadly lost our mum 8 years ago. That shook his world as he relied so heavily on her. Since then he has been seeking someone to fill the void of companionship. As time passes he gets more desperate and I think he feels some panic about getting to 40 still alone.



Hmmmm, this makes me wonder if it's an emotional issue rather than the AS. Like the other poster said, someone with high functioning AS is still going to get "no means no", and without much difficulty.



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30 Jan 2018, 7:16 pm

Disconaut wrote:
Bluebell81 wrote:
The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
I don’t understand how having AS makes one not to understand “No”.

This is probably a serious manners issue or serious impaired IQ issue.

How severe is his autism?


I would say he is very high functioning. He has lived on his own for several years, held down jobs successfully, changed his routine and travelled abroad without issue. He is able to be in loud unpredictable situations like busy bars. He has a higher than average IQ and two degrees with a 1st class honours. He now works in finance. It does make sense what other people have said about him not understanding a sudden change in tone. Every person he has become infatuated with did flirt with him initially and the girl at work went for several drinks just him and her and opened up a lot of private stuff to him. I think there is a very large gap between his emotional and social maturity and other areas of his life. He showed zero interest in dating at all until we sadly lost our mum 8 years ago. That shook his world as he relied so heavily on her. Since then he has been seeking someone to fill the void of companionship. As time passes he gets more desperate and I think he feels some panic about getting to 40 still alone.



Hmmmm, this makes me wonder if it's an emotional issue rather than the AS. Like the other poster said, someone with high functioning AS is still going to get "no means no", and without much difficulty.


Not necessarily, if they have a lifetime of social failures behind them that they attribute to other people rather than to themselves. "She doesn't really mean no, I've irritated her but she'll come around once she remembers how great/unique I am"



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31 Jan 2018, 2:45 am

It's not a AS thing, It doesn't require any social skills to understand a verbal rejection, it just requires a minimum level of English comprehension.

There are three types of men who wouldn't take No as an answer:

- Abnormally narcissist men: who believe they are every woman's gift.
- Totally immoral
- Totally mentally unstable, like due to an abnormal childhood upbringing**.
- Totally low IQ (to be ruled out for this one).

**You mentioned he was too attached to his mother, was he super spoiled?


I have a friend/colleague who's very introvert and very smart (freelance senior programmer) and married to someone like him, they have one son and they run a little shop. His wife works also as freelancer.

I went to their shop once, and their 7 years old son was standing there drawing and painting a mess on a wall, and his parents were just standing there behind the cashier desk, I was like "wouldn't that mess make a bad image for your shop?" - and his father was like "we don't like to tell him No for anything". That's insane!

I can see this child is likely to become a person who would have hard time to take No for an answer. And I have witnessed that many times when I worked with the colleague, in innumerable times, when I was talking work things with him over Skype I hear his ~7-yrs son is like "Who's talking? Stop, take me to the arcade games / or let's play PS3" - and the guy just says 'sorry i have to go" and disappears for hours! Even if the work deadline is close.

One time I was talking to the guy over skype and I heard him suddenly running away, later I learned that he run after his child who just just left to the street when he got upset and not getting what he wants

If the guy wasn't every competent I would have changed him from a long time, but his long time disappearances are becoming increasingly unacceptable.

So as long his mother is working and isn't around, he always needs attention 100% and play time and never allows his father to work, and they never taught him to take NO as an answer.



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31 Jan 2018, 3:13 am

Aspie1 wrote:
Such a guide already exists: the Red Pill. I learned a lot from it: what women like, what women dislike, and the evolutionary mechanisms behind it all. Unfortunately, this material is pretty controversial. It's up to the OP if she wants to teach it to her brother or not.


Maybe not good in his situation. The one time I had a look at it I found some things that could, if slightly misinterpreted, lead to a "no means yes" attitude. E.g. One of the guys was talking about women he met at bars who always say they won't have sex when they come to his apartment and then they do. Someone who already has a problem with boundaries might take that and similar things in the wrong way - like it applies everywhere and like it still applies if you can't read tone of voice or body language.

It's also more a guide for hook-ups than for dating or long term relationships.



Sea Breeze
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31 Jan 2018, 4:10 am

That wink thing is hillarious.



Bluebell81
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07 Feb 2018, 2:38 am

I do really appreciate all input on this, but it really has gone completely off what I originally hoped to discuss. I think the example with the girl is perhaps. Separate issue to tackle. What I was really hoping was for advice about the rest of his life. People are saying about spoilt childhood. I can completely rule that out. We had a wonderful, loving but very strict mum who sure as hell taught us to respect others and follow rules. We earned our own pocket money with chores from a young age, helped around the house, learned to respect others and nature. We stopped getting any pocketmoney when we hit 16 and had to pay our own way 100% through uni with jobs. I really don't think he has been taught to force his will to get what he wants. Anyway aside from that I am interested in whether the description of his life sounds like he could have AS. To reiterate a lifetime of seriously struggling to make friends despite people wanting to. He has obsessive hobbies which completely consume him such as sculpting figurines which he has done for 25 years now. He prefers his own company and struggles to understand social complexities. He can breal his routine but certainly prefers the same. An example is when dad moved house and he really struggled with the christmas rituals changing. To the point where he had to phone me and check if I was doing things at my end the way he was used to (we always have spag hoops Christmas morning for some reason). He had his first relationship age 33 and she pretty mucb gave him some training in how to be in a relationship. For example he doesn't drink tea do never thinks about it being polite to get stuff in for other people but his girlfriend loved it so she explained that to him. He tends to read into any subject he is interested in to great depth and will talk about it a lot. It is astrophysics this past few months. Generally he is a polite and courteous person and is very concerned when he feels he has caused upset. He will perhaps overthink things to my perspective but I know he is just trying to process it and understand what went wrong. He gets down and can't understand why women don't stay interested. I know it is probably the intensity of his affections plus what I have said about him struggling with smiling naturally. He has to put that on when appropriate but it can definitely seem creepy if done slightly wrong. All these things considered am I barking up the wrong tree with AS? I don't want to bring it up if I am most likely wrong.



honeymiel
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07 Feb 2018, 8:45 am

Bluebell81 wrote:
I do really appreciate all input on this, but it really has gone completely off what I originally hoped to discuss. I think the example with the girl is perhaps. Separate issue to tackle. What I was really hoping was for advice about the rest of his life. People are saying about spoilt childhood. I can completely rule that out. We had a wonderful, loving but very strict mum who sure as hell taught us to respect others and follow rules. We earned our own pocket money with chores from a young age, helped around the house, learned to respect others and nature. We stopped getting any pocketmoney when we hit 16 and had to pay our own way 100% through uni with jobs. I really don't think he has been taught to force his will to get what he wants. Anyway aside from that I am interested in whether the description of his life sounds like he could have AS. To reiterate a lifetime of seriously struggling to make friends despite people wanting to. He has obsessive hobbies which completely consume him such as sculpting figurines which he has done for 25 years now. He prefers his own company and struggles to understand social complexities. He can breal his routine but certainly prefers the same. An example is when dad moved house and he really struggled with the christmas rituals changing. To the point where he had to phone me and check if I was doing things at my end the way he was used to (we always have spag hoops Christmas morning for some reason). He had his first relationship age 33 and she pretty mucb gave him some training in how to be in a relationship. For example he doesn't drink tea do never thinks about it being polite to get stuff in for other people but his girlfriend loved it so she explained that to him. He tends to read into any subject he is interested in to great depth and will talk about it a lot. It is astrophysics this past few months. Generally he is a polite and courteous person and is very concerned when he feels he has caused upset. He will perhaps overthink things to my perspective but I know he is just trying to process it and understand what went wrong. He gets down and can't understand why women don't stay interested. I know it is probably the intensity of his affections plus what I have said about him struggling with smiling naturally. He has to put that on when appropriate but it can definitely seem creepy if done slightly wrong. All these things considered am I barking up the wrong tree with AS? I don't want to bring it up if I am most likely wrong.


Sure, it certainly sounds as though it is. Here is the summary of the diagnostic criteria for ASD
All of the following:
1. Deficits in social emotional reciprocity - for your brother: not initiating friendships, limited interest in others, possibly domineering a conversation with his interests i.e. not great at back-and-forth conversation
2. Deficits in nonverbal communication - your brother: not picking up on the implication in the text message that the girl's interest has completely disappeared and she's not even joking (the fact that she had to send "no means no" suggests he wasn't getting the inference), abnormal or lacking body language/facial expressions/gestures/nonverbal communication i.e. flat expression is common
3. Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships - including difficulty adjusting behaviour to suit various contexts (winky face response to this poor girl in the above example, don't listen to Face of Boo (sorry :D ), this is a part of ASD - not getting hints and not changing behaviour accordingly), absence of interest in peers

Plus restricted/repetitive behaviours, at least two of the following:
1. Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, speech - you haven't mentioned stimming/stereotypy or tendency to organise/categorise objects
2. Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior - your brother using routines to reduce anxiety would indicate inflexibility and that change/uncertainty causes him distress
3. Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus - enough said
4. Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment - haven't seen much of this in your description but it's subjective, and you may not notice the ways that he copes with sensory issues if he has them

I hope that answers your question a little better. Disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist

I think the transgression in conversation here is just meant to highlight that even if it is ASD, a diagnosis is only part of the answer. He still needs to want to learn certain social/dating skills in order to resolve the issues he's having. An ASD assessment isn't going to wave a wand and "cure" him, but it might make him more open to learning about other (neurotypical) people

Why don't you suggest he take to the forums of WrongPlanet for more info and to ask questions?



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07 Feb 2018, 12:14 pm

Quote:
(winky face response to this poor girl in the above example, don't listen to Face of Boo (sorry :D ), this is a part of ASD - not getting hints and not changing behaviour accordingly)


:ninja: :|



Bluebell81
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07 Feb 2018, 2:05 pm

honeymiel wrote:

Plus restricted/repetitive behaviours, at least two of the following:
1. Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, speech - you haven't mentioned stimming/stereotypy or tendency to organise/categorise objects


I didn't think to mention it but he does do a repetitive behaviour when he is discussing something that he finds uncomfortable or infront of new people. He sort of clicks his tongue repeatedly between words. He doesn't do it at other times. I suppose I put it down to a sort of nervous tick.

Thank you for your thorough reply. It is reassuring to see that it is definotely worth bringing the topic up with him. It is such a hard thing to know how to approach and how he will react. I have suffered from severe depression and PTSD and I ignored signs for too long. Understanding there was something going on and seeking help really was the best thing I could have done. Hopefully he will want to investigate further and I will definitely refer him to wrongplanet.

P.S. apologies for previous awful spelling, I was being jostled about on a busy commuter train.



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07 Feb 2018, 2:51 pm

He needs to have a a wake up call and a serious talk - before he gets another wake up call in a jail cell.

Myself, i've never had problems accepting a "no". It hurts like hell, but i got it and accepted it. Over time it hurts less and less.


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honeymiel
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07 Feb 2018, 8:26 pm

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
Quote:
(winky face response to this poor girl in the above example, don't listen to Face of Boo (sorry :D ), this is a part of ASD - not getting hints and not changing behaviour accordingly)


:ninja: :|


I am so rude