AS Women and Relationships

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It is true that there are men who actively dislike women, yet are still attracted to them physically... so maybe it's that they need that 'femininity' to be sexually attracted, even if it must come coupled with other aspects that annoy them. If those mentally annoying feminine attributes are taken away, the sexual attraction goes too, so they prefer to put up with the former than lose the latter.

Or maybe it's simply that we do tend to take things literally, so when we hear men complaining about women (and women complaining about men) we assume they do actually mean it. Perhaps it's only another form of social 'banter' that's just 'the done thing' and NTs understand a whole other level of meaning to it. I've even wondered if it could be just a way of reinforcing the gender roles and thus, when done in earshot of the complained-about gender, being an indirect form of flirting - effectively saying, "Look how different I am from you! I'm a member of the opposite sex - take notice of that!" Not being able to 'just know' these things invites many logical theories...

I was suspecting that about the empathy/mirroring, and that it applies to more casual encounters and relationships as well. In everyday life, I reckon that's what most people grow up experiencing, whereas I didn't experience it for 3 decades. Perhaps there needs to be an element of narcissism to feel such connection in general; I don't know. I suppose narcissism's the wrong word, but when interacting with other autistics, I can feel good and actually like myself (and them!), which maybe I mistake for narcissism (though I don't think of that in terms of good and bad; it just is.)

when i talk about "mirroring" i am talking abotu the capacity for an analytical idnetificationwith someone that then leads to feeling in me. it is cogntive - as most things are with me. I do not intuit purely from the gut - everything is processed analytically. As I have matured and gotten older, i have been able to compensate in parts for a lack of mirroring intution with this slightly different form of it.

When I talk about "narcissism" i use the word in a somewhat contentious fashion, in order to stress our autistic "self-driven" view of things. I have oodles more interest in my self and my own little world than most others who i knowwho are not autistic.
It is my beleif that we can indeed bring this qualityinto our relationships rather thanhaving to constantly alter ourseles to fir with others. and thebest scenario i have experienced has involved me and another autistic. There are some fundamental similarities that make the relating a bit easier. To talk with someone about executive functioning problems and not be told to "smarten up and get it together," but rather have someone relate and identify. This has been very good for me.
and so, it gets to the level of sexual relating - and how a mutual care can develop because each has an understanding of what it is to be autistic. That is the kind of mirroring I am talking about. it has not ever happened with someone who is not autistic. There is SO MUCH to wade through in terms of trying to negotiate fundamental differences and that becomes hellish.

anyway, i am referring to a scenario where two people are virtual, geographically distant and who knows, perhaps that is WHY it works.

I think that all 3 of your theories could be right, depending on the person or the situation. The 3rd theory you mention has been one of my theories too. I just know that for years I took it literally, and I kept thinking I must be a "great catch" because I don´t do this typically feminine behavior! It took quite awhile for it to dawn on me that they actually like it, even though they complain about it.

I actually wanted to answer this- (I´ve been mulling over this today), because I think I understand what you mean. I seem to be able to feel aesthetic attraction- with no sexual desire- much more often than sexual attraction. It´s like, I get a real pleasure out of looking at some men, and I feel attracted to them, but without a sexual feeling. In my case, though, there are some instances where I do feel something sexual for somebody, but I can´t really explain why it happens with one person and not another. It does seem to happen more often with people who I am particularly close to, if we can mutually relate in some way....maybe it´s something like the mirroring millie was talking about? Unfortunately, usually these attractions stay unrequited. I also think I feel sexual attraction less often than the general population. This can be problematic, as sex seems to take center stage in most modern relationships, and people move quickly. If the sex doesn´t happen within a given time, most men don´t seem interested in any kind of relationship or friendship whatsoever. I think this is one reason why I find it so hard to get into relationships in the first place.

Although I do have a sex drive, it´s strange; much of the time it doesn´t seem to be directed towards any specific person. I sometimes have wished that I could feel more for people, but I can´t change it. It is just the way it is.

This is exactly how it happens for me, every time. The combined aesthetic appreciation and emotional urge is strong enough that I feel I can be quite honest in saying, "He is HOT!" The increased heartrate/'butterflies in the stomach'/other secondary physical responses are all there... just no sexual arousal, no desire for sex. In fact I perceive it as being so much a different thing that if I try to mentally connect it with actual sex, it's a turn-off, and the brain's disappoined that this great feeling has been spoiled by something slightly 'icky'.



There are what some people in the asexual community refer to as 'demi-sexuals' - who do experience sexual attraction, but only towards people who they have strong emotional feelings for as well. Spoke to one girl, for instance, who said that the reason she had a desire for sex with her husband was because she loved him so much, and why anyone would have sex with someone they didn't love deeply was almost as bewildering to her as it would be to an asexual. Perhaps that label might be close to what you experience?

just lost a BIG post for this thread. UGH.
try again....

I am interested in this discussion above, Hovis and Morgana.
I actually think part of our struggle in relationships is the great difficulty with multi-tasking.

So, this affects the WAY we find someone attractive. For me, attraction is a very fragmented thing. There is the BRAIN attraction that ALWAYS comes first. it is all about the brain to begin with. Then, there is the sexual and the emotional (the latter being my weak point and all that empath stuff??? eek.)

What i note is that in my experience with relationships i am unable to multi-task in terms of these three realms. Sex time is sex time. Intellectual discussion time is discussion time. Emotional time is emotional time (usually means an experience of rudimentary emotions in myself that lead to meltdown, and limited understanding of emotions in others!)

From what i can gather, most people hold all these various facets of themselve together quite nicely AND THEN they interract with others and there is a kind of smooth flow of interaction - conversation, touching, leading to intimacy, a bit of brain discussion thrown in, a bit of touching and hugging or "sharing" through physicality or through empathy.

Now that is really going to affect the beginnings of a relationhips- or even how we as Autistic people might like someone. This is why it is fraught with SO MUCH agitation, anxiety and turmoil for us. We cannot juggle and multi-task all these various aspects of a relationship. They are quite separate in some of us. They are in me. That has never really changed. and then we have to read the facial expressions and the body language and listen to the frigging words coming out of mouths.

Many people find relationships hard. But most people have a more fluid approach to it. i have four sisters - one i suspect may have a lot of AS traits, and the other three have been fine in developing relationships. The three that seems ok are so SMOOTH in how they deal with this kind of thing. One minute they are touching a partner's arm, the next talking about a current affairs issue and the next moment laughing about something.

THis is not the trajectory for me. Mine is all single units. Mine is more like the following:
Sex time -- which means f*****g, basically. CAN be spontaneous BUT on my terms as it is too hard for me to shift focus from something else to sex. I do not like being touched outside of sex, and within that realm there is a certain pressure required etc.

Brain time - similarly brain time is brain time.

Special interests time - world and partner and family f**k OFF.

Emotions time - described above. It also involves scripting - saying the "right things at the right time," like all good aspie/autist chameleons. The verbal expressions from my personal script are also my catalyst for feeling something "appropriate." I can monologue on my own feelings but struggle to hear someone else talk about theirs, and all my emotions based talking IS COGNITIVE AND ANALYTICAL. (case in point - this thread while others are out in the world building relationships, we women are all here on WP ANALYSING THEM. )


I do not have a flow of these parts within myself. Perhaps the only time i do is with my special interest - which is why these are so important for us...they are the realm of unification of self for me -- something that cannot be achieved by way of relationships with others. And bear in mind, most people derive unity of self through a degree of social interaction and by way of intuition and empathy and intuitive mirroring with others WITHOUT oodles of cognitive processing to get there.

SO, this kind of splitting or segmenting of attraction that Hovis and Morgana mention - the aesthetic appeal and the mental appeal WITHOUT the sexual appeal (and if it leads to sexual attraction - the eek feeling - which is perhaps a kind of overhwhelm we go into,) is, I suspect, an issue of difficulty with multi-tasking. WE cannot do all these things at once like others do, and most people struggle with relationships WITHOUT the autism thrown in to the mix.

so, in relation to this multi-tasking issue ---- It is really only post 40 years of age that i have been able to get a grasp of this in myself....
And accepting that this is ok, has only really happened in the past year since my diagnosis.
As Outlier mentions - the first 30 years were devoid of any mirroring. For me -cognitive OR otherwise. I very much relate to this.

We have a developmental delay or difference in some areas, and i think it relates back to all of this stuff.

As for my current "virtual" scenario....I am making some ground here and am experiencing things at 46 i suspect others may experience at, say 13 or 14. i can wholeheartdly embrace this kind of immaturity. it is the first time in my life i have sincerely cared about someone on all levels. I have NEVER been able to do this before and have it reciprocated. But bear in mind - because of distance and because of the virtual nature of the relating, the processing of information is easier (written and via screens) and that means one can glean and comprehend and mull over things at a slower and for me, more manageable pace without the ususal overwhelm, and there is not the complication of the usual sensory integration stuff - that has led every other partner in my life to describe me as a total weirdo. i am not - i just process touch and random expressions of affection -on a bad sensory day - as if they are aggressions coming my way and so i flinch, retaliate and ghasp in shock, accordingly!



And at the present time, with this kind of relationship, there is something to be said for being a big kid in an ageing body......teen fun and a bit of wisdom feeding the situation in a really nice way. it's late in coming. But i know i will at least die knowing what it is to really care about someone and love them in my own way - something i have never really experienced before except in a purely animal maternal sense with my son. (which is very different.)

millie, I think this is a very interesting theory. Another thing it reminded me of was the fact that there are some asexuals who have a physical sex drive - and simply masturbate to take care of it - and are romantically attracted to others, but don't see the two things as being connected (and therefore are quite correct in seeing themselves as asexual, because they do not experience sexual attraction, the desire to actually engage in sex with another person). I'd like to know how many of this type are Aspies.

Although on my part I don't even experience an urge to have sex for the purpose of sex, nothing else, why someone might do is still logical to me. And likewise, emotional/romantic attraction is logical, and I do experience that. I'm the other way round to you: big on the emotions, even though I still have immense trouble expressing them; not into the sex.

What has always been the real mystery to me is the link between the two - i.e., being in love with someone and that leading you to automatically want to have sex. I don't see how the one is connected so strongly to the other. They're two totally different things to me, to the extent that I can say that I'm interested in one and not the slightest bit interested in the other. Most NT sexuals find that almost impossible to grasp - how you could say you were in love with someone, but not want sex with them. I suspect that, although you yourself do like sex, you might be able to understand it.

^ Hovis, i relate. Prior to my dx this past year, I knew for a LONG time i was fragmented in this manner. I had been told i was severely dissociative , but somehow it seemed more than that. THere are parts of me that simply do not fuse together.
Nor, for the first 36years of my life or so, i would say that sex and feeling care for someone were two entriely separate things.
Over the past number of years there has been some capacity to have these co-exist side by side BUT NOT together at teh same time.

I think it IS a case of multi-tasking in me, anyway. Compartments. This segment. That segment.

As for masturbation, i think i mentioned earlier in the thread it is prpbably one of my preferred means of sexual gratification, along with object fetish - which relates to the objects or details of body parts BELONGING to someone i like. do not worry. I am not a serial killer. the most satisfying way for me to see these detailed parts of the body - and it may be something like the hand, or the foot or toes, or a small part of the tummy or something - is with pictures of them. I do not have to sever the part from the body to get sexual gratification! (thank goodness!!)

and this is also why i found prostitution feasible and very gratifying (so long as i took opiates to deal with the sensory problems) - because it allowed for a very clear, single-focused approach to sex that had the complexities of multi-tasking removed by virtue of its clear-cut nature. (i do not want to go back to prostitution now, but i did find its singular focus quite easy to deal wtih and far easier than dating and relationships.)

Thank you, millie et al, your discussion is enlightening and thought-provoking. I can relate to much of what millie describes about fluidity and fusion of the various aspects of relationships. I am working my way up to hopeless at relationships. Just getting the intelligent discussion part working is a challenge enough, and this is supposed to be my strong point. Most of my special interests are things I enjoy in solitude and rarely talk about. If other topics enter the discussion, I'll listen intently and genuinely interested for hours, but will not often add anything meaningful. I may come across as interesting or even fascinating to people for a little while, but that tends to fade quickly. Not exactly the stuff connections are made of.

Then it gets worse. It is hard to respond to emotional stuff when you are not aware of your own feelings, sometimes for hours or even days after experiencing them. Relationships have natural dynamics, and when you can't even read your own cues, no less someone else's, your chance of knowing when a moment is right is slightly below zero on a good day.

Topping it all off, I don't like to be touched and am pretty much totally asexual - I am not attracted to anyone at all. While it's remotely possible I may someday find someone who awakens something in me and even understands and accepts my differentness, I'm not even sure that I would be any better off than I am today. Some people are best left in solitude, limited to brief forays into the outside world.

Last edited by melissa17b on 30 Mar 2009, 1:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've been thinking about this disconnection of attraction, intimacy, and so on. Early in life, I experienced physiological arousal without any association with sex, attraction, other people, or objects/body parts. It was detached. Later on, it was associated with body parts, but without being associated with other people, intimacy or emotions. Therefore, when very attracted to a person, there would be no sexual desire. Also, most of the time, I would not know the person or have interacted with them, and they would not be conventionally attractive; there would be something vague about them (or downright bizarre) that would trigger the attraction. I noticed others were mostly attracted to the conventional.

This type of attraction and lack of sexual desire lasted into my twenties. The relationships experienced in my twenties were neither based on attraction nor sexual desire; they were initiated by the other party and I'd fall into them accidentally and grow into them gradually. For years, I didn't experience arousal in these relationships, but enjoyed certain types of physical contact such as hugging (and think that's why I wanted to be/remain with them.) When arousal finally occurred, it was unexpected, in public, and not attraction or emotion-based ... more a reflex. It eventually led to a sense of intimacy, but not love or a similarly strong emotional bond.

Conversation within these relationships did not include intellectual or deep discussion; the other parties didn't interact with me in this way. I think some desired a deeper connection, but I didn't know how to initiate such. In my late twenties, I experienced a relationship where the other put me first. For a few months I felt some emotional closeness, but not love. I again struggled with the physical, though it was easier this time. Soon, they became more like another part of me, such as a limb, and the attraction diminished on my side; it was nice to have them in the background while I got on with my interests. It wasn't until my thirties I experienced (unconsummated) love, but it was not reciprocal as far as I know. I briefly experienced an integration of that and sexual desire, which is probably what most first experience in their teens, and it seems there's still gradual development occurring in that area, only now with far fewer opportunities for meeting people. Perhaps a complete (i.e., having all the elements), reciprocal relationship isn't likely to happen until middle-age approaches.

This pretty much sums me up. Although I've been romantically attracted to people, I've never felt any desire to have sex with them, despite having quiite a high sex drive. I know that when you fall in love with someone you're *supposed* to feel sexually attracted to them but I never do. The two things are completely separate in my mind - I just don't see the connection between romantic love and sexual arousal.

I started to have sexual feelings when I was very young, about 4 or 5 years old. Apparently most people are older when they first experience sexual feelings, which makes sense if sex is connected to romantic love in most people's minds, as people don't normally experience romance until they're in their early teens.

For a long time I didn't realise that the physical symptoms of arousal I experienced were anything to do with sex. At first I was too young to even know what sex was; later at school we were taught about sex but I didn't make any connection to the physical symptoms I occasionally experienced. When I saw people having sex in films, I didn't know that what they were experiencing was that tingling feeling and likewise when I got that feeling it didn't occur to me to think about sex. As far as I knew, they were completely unrelated. It was only when I was 18 that I realised that that sensation was sexual arousal and that other people wanted sex when they experienced it.

Seashell, you may well be onto something here. Let's suppose that for the majority of sexual people, the discovery of arousal and the discovery of real romantic attraction happen round about the same time. One of the first things that causes them to become aroused is probably thoughts about or being touched by someone they also 'like'. Arousal and romantic feelings therefore, become at least somewhat intertwined in their brain.

But suppose that someone discovers them a considerable number of years apart? They begin experiencing arousal at the age of 5, but don't really experience romantic attraction of any kind until the age of 13 or older. Eight years or more is a long time in a rapidly-developing and changing child brain. By then, the former is going to be fairly hardwired in as something that is experienced, and perhaps taken care of, alone and has 'nothing to do with other people'. Even if, unlike you, they did know that the arousal was sex-related, they still may not have connected it to feelings towards others - especially if sex was taught to them in a very clinical, 'Tab A goes into Slot B' way, with no mention of the emotions that might be involved (that's certainly how I, and I suspect a lot of people, were taught).

^ Very interesting! I doubt there's much information available on it (due to social taboo.) My experience began at the age of 5. A few years ago, I decided to mention it to a roomful of people (university students) who were talking about similar subjects. No one had experienced it at that age (unless some were too embarrassed to admit it.)

I can relate to all of this. Sometimes I think that it's probably quite fortunate that I'm asexual, because even if I was very keen on sex, I still think that due to my difficulties in understanding people, great need for solitude, etc., I would still find it impossible to engage in a relationship and would simply suffer with this constant urge that I had no way to satisfy. Being romantically attracted to men means that occasionally the idea of a relationship flits across my mind and I feel a little lonely, but it's nowhere near to the degree that I imagine that someone who desires a sexual relationship must experience.

Although there seem to be more female asexuals, I've learned that there are, nevertheless, some men. Most seem to be the type who do have a physical sex drive (probably due to the stronger male hormones), but find it annoying and either ignore the 'manifestations' of it and wait for them to go away or take care of them very quickly and clinically, because the mental interest isn't there.

Wow, great discussions! And I couldn´t even get online in the last 2 days. Unfortunately, again I have a busy day at work today so I have to make this quick. But I will mull through this topic and answer again in the next days, slowly...sometimes that´s better anyway, as I then have time to get my thoughts in order.

millie: I´m so glad you rewrote that post, it was well worth it for us! Yes, that makes a lot of sense about the trouble with multi-tasking. I have seen other instances of this in my relationships, but I never thought about that issue quite so deeply before. It explains why I used to feel terrible when I was deep in an intellectual discussion with a boyfriend, and then, if he suddenly wanted to have sex, I couldn´t quit the discussion and switch over to being sexual. I had the same problem, as you described, when they touched me or hugged me unexpectedly at another time; (though I didn´t have this problem ALL the time, just often enough). And one of the reasons I dislike dating and getting to know men initially is the pressure I feel about deciding whether or not I´m attracted to them; I can´t seem to be able to focus on the whole interaction thing AND decide if I feel any attraction or not. Men are often confused or offended by me, because I don´t seem to know always what I feel.

Like some of you mentioned, I also experienced sexual feelings at a young age. I was masturbating by age 5. I never thought about it that way before, the separation of sexual feelings and emotions; but that´s very interesting, and it makes sense.

I seem to be a strange pot-pourri, myself. I am not turned off by sex, it´s just that with certain people, even though they are "hot" and I like to look at them, I just don´t feel that tingly feeling or want to have sex. I can have sex with people I´m not in love with; however, in order to have sexual feelings, I have to at least like them. On occasion, too, I have felt like I loved someone and wanted to have sex with them too, though this is rare, and, most of the time, these were unrequited. My greatest "love" was a man I never even knew personally...

Most of my relationships "just happened" too.I often just found myself in a relationship, not being quite sure how I got there! On a few occasions I had sex with someone even though I had no feelings (sexual or otherwise)- these were back in my younger days, I guess when I was trying to prove to myself that I was "normal". Not a good setup for a relationship, I must say.

And yes, I also seem to enjoy analyzing relationships more than actually having them! So, I will keep analyzing this stuff and come back...(tomorrow).