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ASPartOfMe
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Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,243
Location: Long Island, New York

13 Mar 2023, 1:28 pm

The philosopher, who lives with her husband and her ex-husband, searches for what one human can be to another human
Behind a Paywall

Quote:
few months into their relationship, Agnes and Arnold had a bad fight, and she came across a copy of Cook’s Illustrated that Ben had given her for Hanukkah years before, inscribed with a loving note. She remembered that she had been happy at the time. “I was just, like, Wait a minute, maybe I’m just doing the same thing again. The veil was lifted with Ben, and now it is being lifted again.” But she was consoled by the idea that she and Arnold were philosophical about their relationship in a way that she and Ben had not been. Agnes, who was diagnosed with autism in her thirties, felt that she and Arnold were trying to navigate the problem of loneliness—not the kind that occurred when each of them was in a room alone but the sort of loneliness that they felt in the presence of another person. Most couples struggle with a version of this problem, but it often feels like a private burden. For Agnes, it was philosophical work, a way of sorting out “what one human can be to another human.” It seemed to her that Arnold had come to her with a question: Is it possible to eliminate the loneliness that is intrinsic to any relationship, to be together in a way that makes full use of another person’s mind?

Agnes has generally avoided speaking publicly about being autistic, in part because she worries that people will find it preposterous for her to use a label once closely associated with people who are nonverbal. But she feels that the diagnosis helps her understand her immunity to the pull of a certain received structure of meaning. In addition to the philosophical underpinning of her marriage to Arnold, there is perhaps an autistic one, too, in that most of us learn to ignore all the subtle ways in which we settle and compromise, based on our received sense that this is the way relationships work. Agnes never assumed that those social conventions inherently made sense.

I just quoted the part about autism which while relevant to this section does not do this lengthy article justice.


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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman