desperate NT girl who needs your help!

Post Reply New Topic

Hello guys! First of all; I want to say how much of a help this website has been during the past month or so. I have been scrolling through your the topics and it has helped me understand Aspergers a lot. Here is my question ( I am sorry if this is a lot to read but I want to provide you with as much information as possible)

In december I have met my soulmate at a party. We have plenty of mutual friends and I have been sort of friends with his Brother for a bit longer. Anyway, he lives 4 hours away and we have the same ethnic background. We both share the opinion that we will only marry within our ethnicity ( felt like saying this at the start):

His behaviour has been weird from the start but here are the signs that lead me to think he has aspergers:

1.He does not reply to text that are meant as statements, mostly only to questions and often ends the conversation aprubtly without explaining why. He later would compliment me about how " happy he was that I never complained about his way of communication"

2. Pretty early on he told me ; " You will one day get really mad at me, but I will never be able to get mad at you. When I get mad, I get really mad, but you will get mad at me.

3. He is very smart and works/studies engineering and speaks very very eloquently to the point that he uses words and phrases that someone his age ( 27) would not really use on a daily basis:

4. I believe he somehow has a routine because he gets really mad when he cannot go to the gym on the days he has to. He will stop a phone conversation to brush his teeth and that cane take up to 20 minutes:

5. He will say he will call and then just ' forget' about it and later act as if nothing happened.

6.He mentioned to a friend that he is so happy that he can actually " talk" to me because he cannot do it with a lot of people as most he cannot relate to. ( I am a very assertive person and we share the same interests so its easy to have a conversation)

7. When we flirt, he usually has to clarify if we are flirting and only when I reassure him that I was " indeed" hitting on him he will engage into flirts with me.
When he flirts or makes remarks they are usually off the comfort zone of many peoeple such as once he told me ' your ass is so nice I would like to hide in it'.

8. Once I called him ' weird' because of his disappearances for a day or two with little to no contact and he wanted me to explicitly explain to him in detail " what was weird about him". That was apparently not enough, because later on he came online talking about movies and books and in the middle of the conversation he just thre in ; " You think I am weird?"


9. He would sent me pictures of himself and the places he was at ; e.g. mall, in the car driving, on his day to the gym, etc.. without request as if he was trying to visually communicate with me. Yet, when I sent stuff back he would not reply or rarely say anything. Once I was jokingly referring to his face expression as weird and he immediatly responded with ; " what? what do you think is weird about my expression?"

10. When he likes something he gets borderline obsessed with it. It could be any topic really.

11. His family seems to have moved with him whenever he went. Almost as if they did not want him to live alone or something because wherever he had to swtich schools or go to Uni the whole family would move with him.

12. He has had a girlfriend ( or two) before and when we talked it was almost as if he was apologising for his past girlfriends e.g. ; "they were nothing serious and they were not ( name of our ethnicity) so I never got jealous or anything because I know it was not serious:"

13. At dinner with our friends ( about two months after we got close) he would sit next to me and sometimes gaze into my face as I was talking, almost as if he was reading me. He would even stop chewing when he tried to listen to me.

14. He would place his arm around my chair or touch me a lot and even at a party the next day, whenever i touched him subtly he would drag me closer to him and hug me. Yet when I asked if he wanted to go outside and ' get some fresh air' just us two he declined and looked almost frightened:

15. By the end of the night he would almost run away from me ( so it seemed to me) yet when I was leaving his best friend ran over to him to tell him that he should say goodbye. He hugged me three times and said that h would call me later:

16. He called me 4 times drunk that night , talking about how much he likes my body and how awesome I was ( typical guys stuff though). He had intrdocued me to his friends as " the most awesome girl ever" throughout the night.

17. When I later complained about his continuing issue with communication ( not always replying , sometimes disappearing etc) he told me " ( my name), I like you a lot please don't get mad at me, I have problems I dont want to talk about"



18. Whenever I was mad he would not reply and disappear for a few days and then come back as if nothing happened: He would only always say " I am sorry for my behaviour. I like you a lot" etc etc

19. After we told each other how much we liked each other and my first set of complaints had reached him he suddenly seemed to back off. He would not call as frequently, disappear for more than a few days etc... This was the time when someone close to me suggested Aspergers and I found too many similarities.

20. I wrote him a letter telling him that I would accept him ( I did NOT mention aspergers or that I THOUGHT he had it because I would want him to tell me, if he knows) and very lovely words that would reassure him that he could trust me. He previously had told me that he did. Anyway, he read the letter and never replied to it or mentioned it. He would call me two days later and stay on the phone with me for 3 hours and yet not mention what I wrote...

21. However, I felt as if more and more he was not ' paying too much attention' to me anymore yet when we spoke it was just as before. It was just less. A lot less. He asked me to call him more often, yet when I did he would never pick up instead call me out of the blue WHEN he could. One night i got mad that he AGAIN did not have the time for me and he called me next day on a sunday morning at 8 am.

22. On the 09th of april then, two days before my birthday I wrote him a letter about how I felt and how we would need to sort out a routine ( he would have to make me part of his routine) if he wanted this to work out. I told him that he had a day to think about it, make a decision and that he could call me by the end of the day and we would solely discuss a new routine and that if he did not do that I WOULD LEAVE and break off any contact with him for good.
He took the entire day and then came online 1 hour before ultimatum ended and said the following:

him : hello (my name)
me: hello ( his name)
him: what are you doing
me: nothing, you?
him: well, I was supposed to contact you regarding your ultimatum?
me : yes you were
him: what is wrong ( my name)?
him: I feel like I have disappointed you deeply
me : yes you did
him: what is this about now?
me: I think my letter was clear enough, what is it that you need clarification of?
him: well; I don't understand the following ;
When I do not call my friends they might get mad at me but they will never feel disappointed when I dont such as you do.
My question is : Did we, in your opinion, pass the status of friendship ?
me ( very very mad at this) : Yes we did, matter of fact you did. With everything you said and everything you have done , including asking me out and including having your friends tell me and hint out more than friendship. You cannot possibly be such a coward now to suggest that I am delusional enough to imagine such sort of think. But you know what? thank you for making this so easy for me!
him: making what easy? for you to break up contact with me?
me: yes, I wish you all the best!


** he did not reply to that anymore but my reaction was based on the assumption that he wanted to make it look like he did not even notice that we were behaving more than platonic friends. That disappointed me. However, when my friends read what he wrote they were pretty sure that he just wanted a firm confirmation that we are more than friends before actually engaging into any discussion about routines with me. They said I was too hot-headed.
A week later I wrote him a message saying " Sorry that it ended this way but your behaviour left me with no other choice" and he just said " happy belated birthday".

So this was it! What do you guys think? can you explain his behaviour or am I completly delusional and nuts?

Also, do you think there is any chance I could make this right? Meeting up quickly might be not possible and would have to be planned long ahead as he lives 4-5 hours away...


ps ( before you assume that these things up there are not enough to assume romantic feelings, here is more):
1. he would talk very intimate and family related issues with me ( his friends pointed out that he would never even do that with them)
2. he often would state how much he fancied me physically
3. He would flirt
4.He asked me out on a date ( but i had to cancel it) and online/on the phone would say things such as ; " if you were here right now I would hold you warm under the blanket" or " I would like to spank your ass right now " or " I missed you too I should call more often"
5. he told my best friend 3 months ago that ; " for now its friendship but i think it is leading to more"
6.he would share everything about his past with me
7. his friends pointed out that he would never call them, yet he would call me twice a week
8. His parents would know about me
9. His friends would behave in a' funny' suggestive way around me....


Thats all Thank youuu for reading this and taking your time with answering ( that is, if you do )!

Well, I can understand perfectly his behaviour. Indeed, the one more difficult to understand is yours. Dont' take offense: I have asperger too, so I feel more related to his way of seeing things.

Several points:

# He wants to be with you. That's absolutely clear.

# You broke with him and he's respecting your decission. In general, aspergers, we mean what we say. If he asks you out, he means clearly that he wants to have a relationship with you. He doesn't need to talk about it one hundred times: he already said it. If you break with him, he understands that you don't want a relationship with him. What he means is exactly what he says.

# Socializing is stressing. Sometimes he needs to disappear. Sometimes he needs to relax. Answering a sms means to change from 'relaxed' to 'alert' mode (yeap, I'm not kidding). So, sometime you say, 'well, tomorrow'.

# If you send a message saying, for example, 'I'm going to the library later' he understands that you're informing him. Unless he has something to say (as, for example, 'don't go, it's closed') he doesn't think he needs to answer.

So, tips.

You clearly want to go back with him. Otherwise you wouldn't be here.

# Call him to have a coffee and have the talk. Explain him how you feel as much clear and straight as possible. Tell him that you want to go back, but under certain conditions because you don't want to be hurt again.

# Make a list with all the things that disappointed you. Take this list to the coffee and make him read it. Look for a realistic solution for each point.

For example: you hate to sending a message and not being answered. He doesn't know if you're informing her or you want to start a conversation. Agree some code: if there's not a clear question issued in the message, you could agree, for example, that one asterisk '*' at the end means 'this is not a bloody report, so answer me, idiot'. And two asterisks '**' means 'in case you didn't realize it, I miss you and need some cuddles. NOW'. And so

Maybe you can ask him why he keeps asking "are we out of the friendship status yet?"

Only reason I can think he would ask that is that something didn't happen yet that he expected to happen, to signal that change.

I am almost 100% confident that he just wanted confirmation that you were more than friends. He wasn't trying to insult you or push you away. Aspies have a hard time reading body language and being aware of stuff like this. It was probably blindingly obvious to you but not to him.

One thing you need to do is stop reading so much into what he does and says. It infuriates me more than anything when NTs assume things because of body language, tone of voice, eye contact, social awkwardness, etc, bottle up those emotions and then passively-agressively get upset about it later, ASSUMING we know what you're upset about. We quite simply don't speak that language. Aspies say what they mean and mean what they say. Communicate your issues early and clearly and try to avoid "dropping hints" especially when it comes to issues as big as this.

I feel very bad for the guy, to be honest, because I've been in this situation before many times, where I did something offensive, didn't know about it, and it came back to bite me in the ass.

First of all, the not calling you thing when he says he will call is not an AS thing, at least not in my experience. Some people just don't do what they say they will, AS and NT alike. Believe me, that stuff annoys the s**t out of me too.

One important thing to remember is that those with AS can have a very difficult time determining the intent of others around them. Let's take your text about going to the library as an example. You say, " I am going to the library later." Why are you telling me this?

Is it simply to inform me of where you'll be? Is it an attempt to start a conversation of some sort? Are you hoping that, knowing where you are, I will attempt to meet up with you? Do you want me to text back supporting your decision to go to the library? There are several different ways to interpret your text, even in this seemingly simple situation. Situations like flirting are far more complicated.

However, once expectations are clearly understood, he has no real excuse for not fulfilling his obligations. Except for some executive functioning issues, I suppose.

I think that is it, then. There has been no kiss, and he can't tell by your body language, words, or facial expressions that you like him romantically.

My advice would be to ask him why he asked that and then tell him how you really feel and why there has not been a kiss yet.

I am also NT dating a 27 year-old (aspie) engineer. My input will not be as helpful as the input from people on the spectrum, but I'll give you my two cents anyway.

1. Based on your description, it sounds like he may have AS. Even if he does not, I feel that approaching certain issues using AS as a model will be helpful to you.

2. If you expect something from him, then you owe it to him to provide explicit instructions. You need to clearly say how you feel ("I am attracted to you and I would really like to have a relationship," followed by what you expect in that relationship). If you want him to do something, you need to be clear (e.g. "I need you to call me on my birthday, April 9").

3. There are a lot of social expectations that are obvious to NTs. They are so intuitive for us that we don't know how to explain them to someone on the spectrum. You need to sit down and think about something he may not understand and how you might be able to explain it.

4. When you are explaining your wants/needs/expectations, you will probably do so because he has failed to meet them. However, you must NOT come from an angry position. Remember that this is a learning process for both of you and it's frustrating for him, too. Remember that he is constantly trying to navigate a world full of us, whereas we have the majority privilege.

That being said, it sounds like he is interested in you, but he is probably hesitating because he is afraid that he is misreading your intentions and he is afraid of making you angry. I would suggest putting all of your cards on the table. If he doesn't want what you are offering (which I think is unlikely), you can trust him to remove himself.

Best of luck!