Surprise Aspie breakup

Post Reply New Topic

Hello all

Just over a year ago I met a girl I really liked. I'll call her Jane, although that isn't her real name. Jane is not a 'normal' individual and it stuck out from the start; turns out she is a high functioning aspie very like me. We have our differences, but we are overall at similar points on the spectrum. And we got on like nothing else; within 2 weeks I had asked her to be my girlfriend and she was delighted. For reference, we begun dating in December 2012 after meeting in mid November.

So for the next few months we got to know each other and our relationship moved steadily. We were going slowly but comfortably and it took a few months for us to really understand each other. Everything was nice. We had our first kiss in March although neither of us is crazy about kissing.

The relationship was pretty great. I felt independent but still loved. We gave each other space to do things but also had nice cuddles and I felt very close to her.

In August I had to go abroad for a month; I missed her more than anything but we got through it and I felt very secure knowing that we could do that.

After I got back we had our first and only sexual experience. It didn't go brilliantly; it was dark and she accidentally punched sensitive areas which halted progress.

For a few months I decided to let it go on fairly calmly. It was only in November that I started wanting to make our relationship more intimate.

Fast forward to Thursday. I had arranged to pick her up in the car and drop her by her house so we could exchange christmas presents. I got there, and she was nowhere to be seen. I phoned her and she said she had to go to a meeting (it was 10 minutes walk away from the car). Thinking 'humphh' I drove off. 10 minutes later I get a phone call and she begins shouting. Turns out she came to the pickup point and I wasn't there; she walked through the wet and cold and was furious. Swearing at me, shouted 'keep your presents!'. I didn't know what to do, so I turned around and went looking for her. She wasn't in either expected place, so I went to her house. She slammed the door in my face whilst screaming. So, basically, she had a meltdown.

Just the day before we had been happily curled up on the sofa together having a romantic moment; I thought we were happy!

Jane didn't contact me all night, and when I saw her the next morning she said she 'had to talk' and took me outside. I thought we were about to forgive and let live, I was happy.

Then she says 'What I did last night was terrible and it isn't how an adult relationship should be conducted. I want to be just friends, this hasn't moved anywhere. To be honest we are just friends. I wasn't looking for a boyfriend, I'm not special. If we keep going something like that will just happen again. I can't forgive myself.'

I was so stunned and I had no idea what to do.

I don't understand the problem. I think we both wanted more intimacy, and I had planned for that to happen by inviting her to spend 3 nights with me for my family's new years party. I thought this would have been a great opportunity for us to get closer and because it was stretched out over 3 days we could go at whatever speed was comfortable.

Jane has been INCREDIBLY busy with her work in the past week or so; a big deadline came up. She had a lot of commitments and was very stressed, which she doesn't react well to.



Does anybody have any idea what might be the problem, and what I should do now? I haven't recovered yet, I am still in shock. We were so happy for so long, and now she has completely turned around on me. I am trying to give her a bit of space at the moment, I really want to talk to her though. I feel like we should try to solve our problems, but I don't know what is wrong.

Thankyou for reading guys, I just don't know what to do.

talk it through with her but maybe via email or chat or something non confrontational

neither of you knows how to be in a relationship and there is also an issue of whether either of you is capable of being in a relationship - either fully or with eachother. The only way to discover this is to talk lots. I know this isn't ideal for an aspie, but being with people is about communication first and foremost, so you have to tell her everything that's on you mind and ask her to do the same and then take it from there.

Apologize.

What do you think she really was doing that would make you drive off?

@ Leafplant

I think you've touched on a key subject... Communication. As aspies it not a strong point for either of us, but I know I am always trying to better myself in this area because of this. On a day to day level I think we did quite well in general; if one of us was uncomfortable we could tell each other very easily and the other would back off as needed. Micro communication was good. Macro communication may not have been. I don't think I communicated that I wanted to be more intimate very well; I began to give her hints by touching her in more intimate ways when I held her and used a bit more euphamims in conversation but I never explicitely said anything.

Perhaps, in an AS/AS relationship, it is important for both parties to occasionally tell each other openly how they feel about the relationship. Good, bad, whatever. It could even be a routine! I imagine that would create a good, reliable communication link which we could rely on and would prevent anything going wrong.

Problem is, I've got these solutions AFTER she broke up with me...

@TheygoMew

I drove off simply because I thought she was busy and couldn't make it. She asked me if there was another time we could do it on the phone. I had no idea that she would try to come and find me, so I was surprised when she called 10 mins later. That was just one of those basic misunderstandings which happens to everyone and I was ready to make up with her for it. She was probably more in the wrong than I because she slammed the door in my face when I came to try and apologise and talk to her about it, but I'm not worried about that and I was prepared to forgive her.

Thanks for your responses guys, I'm trying to work this through in my head to I can figure out what went wrong. If I can fix this I would be an idiot not to.

What worries me most is that she said 'to be honest we are just friends'; I'm not sure if her feelings have changed.

All these suggestions to "talk, talk, talk" are not taking into account the fact that after an anxiety attack and meltdown, it is typical Aspergian behavior to need recovery time in solitude to decompress from the stress.

My recommendation is that you make sure she understands that your feelings have not changed and you're still there if she changes her mind, then leave her ALONE for a while. A few days at the very least, maybe a week or more. Once she calms down, she may decide she overreacted, or it was just a stupid misunderstanding and that there's something to the relationship that's worth preserving.

Or she may not.

In any case, I think the worst thing you can do at the moment is crowd her or pressure her about her thoughts or feelings. That's only likely to make it worse.

wow. even though she's aspie, her behavior sounds total NT

sorry to hear about this incident.

i'd say give her time but let her know that you're giving time for both of you to think things through so she knows you're still interested in wanting to be with her.

I think you might be right on that one Willard. I've decided to leave her without contact for a bit, I'm thinking until after boxing day at least. Maybe she will start to miss me. I know she has been so stressed lately. The lack of any information is frustrating, it is so easy to speculate... I can't even concentrate on obsessions!

I disagree completely. Maybe the reason she thinks you are only friends is because you re backing off too much.

Don't crowd her, by all means, but if I were you I would send her either a text or an email to say what you said to us here - that you care about her and would like to try and make the relationship work if she wants to give it a chance and when and if she is ready. THEN leave it to her to get in touch if she wants to.

But. you know, do whatever seems right to you at the end of the day.

Oh yes because aspies don't have feelings and everything we do is nothing like NT's. That is a stereotype.

So both of you are Aspies. But what do you both understand about men and women? Take the Aspie card out of the equation and think about your masculine side, and her feminine side. She was upset and it was an emotional thing. You have to remember that women are usually more emotional than men.
When you take into account the emotional aspect that women go through, and the Aspie equation of her feeling stressed out due to work related projects, she was probably more overwhelmed than you might think.
This is now going to make me ask you... when she needed to talk to someone about how she was feeling, did she come to you? How did you respond when or if she did that?

Leafplant may be right in the fact that either one of you two or both don't know how to conduct a relationship. She has in fact said something that seemed very self-defeating to the relationship with these key words that you highlighted in bold. What sticks out are "..I'm not special..." and "... I can't forgive myself." This seemed odd to me and self-defeating at best.

What for?

A thought provoking response... She did talk about her feelings sometimes, but never very much and it was usually no deeper than 'really stressed'. I'm not sure if she does let her feelings out like that. Whenever she did that I always listened to everything she had to say and made little comments, and I usually put my arm round her to give her a little hug if she was feeling 'touchable' at that point (because sometimes she just doesn't want to be touched; fairly standard aspie stuff).

I also thought the self defeating stuff was a little odd. She said 'I can't forgive myself' right after I said I could forgive her for it. After all, she has only done this twice in a whole year, and TBH if you're going to date an aspie you've got to expect it occasionally.

What you said though got me thinking. Why is she self defeating? One of the things a relationship can do is make you feel wanted and good about yourself. Perhaps she didn't feel special because we failed to communicate our want for intimacy to each other? Now that I think of it like that it makes good, good sense.

Arrgghh! This just seems so easy to fix; we just have to agree to tell each other what we want openly and then from there everything will fall into place.

I'm thinking I invite her to a neutral place and ask her to explain what went wrong and I can tell her what I've been thinking. I'll say to her that I think it could go one of three ways:
A) We could stop communicating completely. This would be difficult, because we have the same friend circles so we would always bump into each other...
B) We be 'friends'. I know this wouldn't work for me because all that suppressed emotion would drive me crazy.
C) We could rebuild a better relationship by learning from our past mistakes. This just seems like the best option; we get a better relationship and we don't have to deal with any painful regret. Heck, having this experience will probably make us appreciate each other a lot more too.

Something which gives me hope is that she just reblogged this on her tumblr wall:

"Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear that the two of you, on some level belong together. As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different. You just work, whether you understand one another or you’re in love or you’re partners in crime. You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest circumstances, and they help you feel alive. I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but it definitely makes me believe in something."

She only reblogs stuff she likes, so go figure.

Any tips for rebuilding this?

Thanks guys

Self-defeating behaviours coming from men are going to be interpreted by NT women as you lacking confidence and being insecure. It tells them you are weak and they don't want that. When a woman does it however, we are supposed to let it slide regardless. Naturally, as men, we are supposed to be more sure of ourselves and where we stand. If they are unsure of where we stand, they won't ask. They want you to tell them. They want the assurance. You have done good here.

When an NT woman tells you the spiel she gave you after that meltdown, she knows what she is doing and she is giving you the subtle hint that she is no longer interested in you and is looking to remove you from her life. She is hoping you will do that for her so that she can save face and not have to do the dirty work herself. With the Aspergers diagnosis involved, I have a harder time trying to guage this.

Due to the confusion involved, the only thing you can do is ask to meet her. Drop her one text or e-mail to do so. But failing to do this will for sure tell her you're not interested and won't reassure her. Reassuring her leaves the ball in her court and lets her decide what to do. She has the power right now. Unfortunately, you have to let her decide this. Do your best to enjoy your Christmas season without thinking about this too much and spend the time with family. Be peaceful and joyful. Merry Christmas.

DISCLAIMER: sorry for the length of my posts guys, I've got a lot going through my mind and it is helping to put it on paper. I'll format the important bits which I want to discuss with bold to highlight them.

YES YES YES it all makes sense now!

The relationship became stagnant because we both felt like the other didn't want to move forward. This was because neither of us could tell the other what we wanted to do. Personally I always went through a cycle like this:
'I want our relationship to grow more intimate, I should tell her' -> 'But I don't know her boundaries with these things because we haven't explored them before, what if I upset her?' -> 'OK I'll leave it I'm sure things will get better soon'.
And that would just repeat and repeat and repeat every day in my head. Of course, she didn't know anything about this so she just thought I didn't think about it or care.

....hence why she never said anything either. We must have both got into a similar cycle! All that was needed was for one of us to break the cycle, and then the other would have more confidence to talk openly about it. We stagnated because that never happened.

She obviously felt like I didn't want to be intimate with her, which is why she didn't feel like she was special. When she said she didn't want a relationship, I think she meant she didn't want that stagnant relationship. Obviously she wouldn't have agreed to the relationship in the first place if she just flat out didn't want one. In such an emotional time it is easy to say things with imprecision, so I think that interpretation is true.

So all the things she said happened because of a lack of intimacy, which happened because we failed to communicate that we wanted to move the relationship on. There might be one key thing I am missing, but to me it seems like this is the key problem. It makes complete sense to me as it explains all the issues we had.

Looking back I think I was daft to not recognise that cycle I was going through. She might make think I was weak for it; I certainly do. Thing is, I don't like leaving a weakness in myself once it is identified; I think it just makes you worse. I think I'm going to tell her all of this, hopefully once she has calmed a little bit her

@AspieMike - 'They want you to tell them.... You have done good here.' I don't quite understand what you mean by this, could you elaborate? I thought I hadn't been clear to her, and that was the root of the issue. The rest of your post makes sense to me though and I agree with you. Thanks for your advice.

I think I'll give her a few days of space and then send a text to ask her to meet me after boxing day and before new year.

You did communicate with her that you can forgive her. You did communicate with her that you would like to continue the relationship. That much you have communicated with her based on what your posts have told me. She has that assurance. What she wants to do with that assurance is up to her. But your plan to wait a few days before replying isn't too bad. Think about whether you want to wish her a Merry Christmas before hand. Make sure you clear your head before doing this.

Oh my, sir, I know EXACTLY how this situation feels. I can totally empathise here. Hopefully you're not too stuck in the habit of not making moves that it still remains a problem assuming this relationship does get back on its feet (thats what happened to me :s).

Good on you for figuring out whats up, and having the attitude to do something about yourself now you know.

I don't really have much advice to offer, but good luck. From the sounds of things, its perfectly salvageable.