Aspie Relationships (maybe autistic relationships in general)
________________________________________________________________
Anyone who is autistic or has ever been in a relationship with an aspie knows how challenging (understatement!!) such things can be for us. I think there are several areas of difficulty...

Most of us wind up in an NT+AS match at least once. I tend to think that while not impossible, these matings are inclined to be extremely hard to establish and maintain with both parties happy. When I say happy, I don't mean euphoric-forever-madly-in-love. Just, happy-I'm-glad-we-did-this-and-we-like-each-other-still.

Why?

Partly because the NT has to adjust to us, and they're disused to doing so. Aspies are well aquainted with having to adjust to NT's and accede to them at times. It's the story of our life, after all... Herein lies another area of conflict and unhappiness: the aspie is *sick* of having to play head games and make concessions all day long, their entire life long. We want to be able to relax and let our hair down for a change, to be liked for who we really are. If the NT only likes us as long as we can maintain the "NT masquerade", it's not really us that they love; it's the NT mask that we're wearing (at an enormous personal price). It can't be maintained 24/7 for months at a time. The real person will show through when the effort of keeping up the facade proves too stressful or when the NT earns our trust enough that we start to let them see a little of our real selves.

A number of NT's that I've talked with online mention feeling dismayed and somewhat betrayed, or duped, when they find out that their aspie lover is more than just a little eccentric. No folks, we are very eccentric, and we do have areas of hardship in dealing with the world at large, just as you have faults of your own. Asking us to retain the mask ALL the time is....not love. Sorry. :-/

We're not perfect...not by a long shot. Speaking for myself mostly, I've felt isolated from the world for most of my life (uh, maybe all of it). It's like an invisible wall seperating me from other people. I can observe them, but I'm a foreigner. Not theirs. I routinely feel lonely...lonely in a way that I suspect normal people rarely do...like the deepest ocean, almost bottomless and with no islands in sight anywhere, not even a bird. This has been more or less the norm for me, and there are very, very few people who have been able to pierce that loneliness or to walk through my wall more than momentarily (at least I have plenty of tiem to think and mull things over). Can you imagine feeling deeply, desperately lonely, like a black void crying out in agony, while you are in the midst of lovemaking and your mate is having a great old time? I can hardly think of anything worse...but I've experienced that more times than I care to count, and far more often than it's been otherwise, unfortunately. It isn't about physical satisfaction, it's about feeling that someone knows the real you.

Library is shutting down so I'll resume this at home!!