What's it like to "be in love" for someone with Asperger syndrome?

When I really looked at the whole thing, I still coldn’t see a point.

Hmm. I’m not sure that non-aspies see a point either. Do you feel the need to identify a point before you can give yourself over to an adventure?

I an Aspie that has been married for over ten years to a girl I started dating in 1994.

Granted, it’s sometimes hard for her as I am not exactly communicative most of the time, and when I am, it often takes me a few minutes to wrap my head around the sort of things that my wife and most other people grasp intuitively (probably in much the same way I understand technology intuitively while others don’t) She often misgauges my mood, especially since when I get my attention diverted from whatever I am thinking about, there is often a split-second of visible annoyance as I am yanked out of the little world in my head and back to reality; she doesn’t quite get that such a thing is merely due to the shock of “shifting gears” and sometimes takes it as actually being mad at her. By the same token, I sometimes take her raising her voice as a sign that she is upset when she isn’t.

After being together so long, I have learned to read her mood fairly well though; something I am not good at with people I don’t know nearly as well as someone I’ve slept with for over a decade. But like I said above, we still sometimes send/read the wrong messages.

I have come to accept that she is not nearly as excited about my phone getting the upgrade from Froyo to Gingerbread as I am, but I still sometimes forget that she doesn’t have nearly the appreciation for cars that I do. She has come to accept that I sometimes ‘geek out” and am a bit of a magpie when it comes to technology.

But we manage to overcome whatever issues that come up as a result of me being me as we complement each other nicely; we each have what the other lacks and, as a result, we make a great team.

As for what it’s like from her side… I’ll have to forward this to her and she can get to it when she gets out of work. I know what it’s like to be an Aspie in love, but I only have a vague idea as to what it’s like to be in love with an Aspie, and I think you might be interested in getting both sides.

@jerv If you don’t mind my asking, do you remember ever going through that all-consuming, obsessive feeling of “nothing matters as much as being with her” that most new loves seem to go through?

@thorninmud While she is a very important part of my life, I never got that distracted. When we met, I was still in the Navy and about to go to my first ship, so I was a little… distracted.

Still, we were sweet enough together that my mother and stepfather almost got diabetes from the sugar overdose.

I know someone who is an aspie and he went through that all-consuming, obsessive phase. As far as I know, this isn’t really even a disease; it came up now and is as medically dubious as any given anxiety or panic disorder. As far as I know, they’ve had aspies throughout history; most of them were probably geniuses and had hard time forming relationships (let’s grant that) but this didn’t even become an issue until recently, when every form of difference becomes a ‘psychological problem.’

@thesparrow You are correct that we’ve always been around. I’ve heard many suspect that Nikola Tesla and/or Bill Gates were/are Aspies. From there, you go downhill.

While I will grant that some things are over-diagnosed and that there are a lot of hypochondriacs out there, there are also many people who have serious issues that you just marginalized in a callous manner.

It’s one thing to have difficulty forming relationships, but there are some Aspies that are literally unable to function in society; they can’t even interact effectively with a cashier at the grocery store. (Fortunately, unlike low-functioning Autistics, we will at least know that there is a person there…) The same goes for anxiety; some people worry more than they should while some will actually go catatonic in situations that you might find merely annoying as opposed to stressful.

As for not becoming an issue until recently… 1941 was when it was first even noticed, and it didn’t become an official thing until the early-‘90s. If you want to talk something that didn’t become an issue until recently though, look at peanut allergies :D

@jerv Really, they won’t know there’s a person there? That’s .. really strange. I’ve heard that they sometimes see people are objects, or are more emotionally connected to objects than people. For a long time I thought my BF was an aspie because his brother apparently has it, and I was obsessed with self-diagnosing him, but I’m positively sure he doesn’t have it..he’s easily distracted by things like TV and I took that to be a symptom, failing to note that I myself can become easily distracted too…

yep, I have a friend who’s very anxious so I get that. she has to take herbal mint supplements to calm her down. The only time I’m ever anxious is when I smoke too much pot.

Well, it’s not quite that simple. Some Autistic people cannot fathom that other people are not them and thus don’t know what they know. I am moderately guilty of this as I often forget that many people don’t have even the basics of many skills I have great detailed knowledge of. For instance, I consider setting tool lengths on an OKK milling machine to be an almost trivial task, whereas you probably have no clue what half of that sentence even means, let alone how to do it; I had to make a conscious effort to remember that you aren’t even an apprentice CNC machinist.

Also note that Aspies and Autistic people sense the world differently than most people… and often from each other. By that, I mean our senses are different. Myself, I have hearing that is fairly sensitive to sounds that others generally can’t hear, and can easily be overstimulated by too much noise that most people seem to be able to ignore. I don’t do well in crowds since I generally hear multiple conversations and, instead of tuning then out and regarding them as a murmur, I can’t help but listen to them all as well as all sorts of mechanical noises and the hum of the lights.

As for being more emotionally connected to objects than people, I think it safe to say that most people prefer things that don’t confuse them over things that are incomprehensible to the point of inducing fear. Inanimate objects are predictable; people are not. Machines are rational; people often are not. Objects are easy to understand; people are not.

ya, my boyfriend used to do that too.. I feel like he’s stopped a lot of it. He told me yesterday that he might have been diagnosed with Aspergers if he saw a doctor but i really don’t think he has it. The most annoying thing was when he would go on and on about things I didn’t get or want to even hear about, like politics or comic books. For the most part, I feel that our discussions are quite meaningful now.. maybe that is because we got closer as the relationship progressed. I gave him a chance even though he had his annoying habits, and we are quite happy together. Also, I’ve never seen a man cook like he does.

Ya, he’s told me he has that too in crowds. I had a panic attack once and I felt the same—everything was very loud, I could hear conversations very clearly. But I don’t think it’s that bad because we regularly go to bars and crowded places.

LOL.. ya, speaking on behalf of my gender, I’ll say that nothing is as hard to understand as a woman. I don’t think that’s an aspie problem. I think that’s a guy problem.

It is possible to be annoying and/or a geek without being an Aspie though. Granted, we fit right into almost any group of gamers, computer nerds, or hardcore hobbyists in the same way that this guy matches the couch ; a little different, but hard to spot based on the surroundings.

It’s okay. I spend a lot of time writing my novel (or reading). I can’t excuse myself by saying it isn’t a passion of mine.

Well, most guys I know are gamers / computer geeks. I just sigh and think about how utterly crazy we women are, trying to justify why guys like gaming so much. Although to be fair I do not have a shopping addiction.

As do I, just for different stuff.

@jerv, I just wanted to comment on this thought:

__“I think it safe to say that most people prefer things that don’t confuse them over things that are incomprehensible to the point of inducing fear.“__

Speaking for myself, I have to say that I have little interest in things that don’t confuse me at some level. There really isn’t anything that I do for pleasure that I would say I feel I have mastered.

I do theater, and it’s always scary to be on stage because we do not know what is going to happen. I write and have other people critique my writing which is sometimes hurtful and always scary.

I find women to be the most interesting thing in the world. I am not talking about engaging them romantically, but just to know them socially. I do not understand them. I like to try to learn, but it feels inevitable that I will do something that causes one of us to feel uncomfortable. I suppose you would call that fear.

I am drawn to spend time with my romantic partner even when she is in a bad mood, and I can calculate with some accuracy that something bad is going to happen. Whatever it is about the women in her that draws out the man in me overrides the part of me that warns me to be someplace else.

Lol.. Yes, my own special one just gave a long apology for being a grumpus yesterday at our amusement park date (the crowds thing). It is sweet. I feel bad but it kind of restored my spirits when he did this…

@6grant6: women ARE to be feared (loved but feared) and your fear of doing something to ‘screw things up’—as is so common with men—is completely warranted. We’re born with relationships and loving in our blood. Not so with the ‘rougher’ sex. However, we’re not born with a sense of direction or spatial awareness.