Did you love people before you knew that people were people?

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btbnnyr
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27 Oct 2011, 3:28 pm

I know I did.

Before I knew that people were people with minds and thoughts and feelings, or that there was such a thing as communication between people, I still knew that I loved the warm fuzzies who spent a lot of time around me - my parents and grandparents.

Communication and socialization are not necessary for people to love each other. Looking people in the eye is not necessary. Speaking to people is not necessary. Touching people is not necessary. Knowing that people are people is not necessary. Knowing that people have minds and thoughts and feelings is not necessary. Knowing what minds and thoughts and feelings are is not necessary. Maybe these things are necessary for NTs to love each other. Who knows? I don't. But I know that they were not necessary for me.

What about you?



MagicMeerkat
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27 Oct 2011, 3:33 pm

I still have a hard time comprehending love. A lot of people think I am a closet lesbian, but I am just an auromatic asexual.


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Last edited by MagicMeerkat on 27 Oct 2011, 8:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.

safffron
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27 Oct 2011, 4:14 pm

From my childhood memories, I loved my dad first because I felt safe with him. The craving to feel safety and trust in others has never left me, decades after I learned that dad wasn't perfect and no one else is.


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Bloodheart
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27 Oct 2011, 4:24 pm

I remember I was largely indifferent - people who I had regular interaction with were 'the warm thing' (mother), 'the authoritarian thing' (teacher), 'the drunk sleeping thing (father)...lol, or something to that effect. No love for them, no time for them full-stop really.


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AdamDZ
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27 Oct 2011, 4:35 pm

When I was a kid I felt like everyone around me was insane. I grew up in different reality though: Poland, Eastern Europe in 70s and 80s under Communists. Life was kind of hard back then. Looking back, I don't think I ever loved anyone. I was afraid of my parents, I felt some respect and fear towards teachers but I generally disliked everyone and just wanted them to leave me alone. I wasn't indifferent either, I wish I was. I was more like angry, annoyed and upset most of the time if I had to deal with people. I never felt safe with anyone. I only felt safe alone.

I think I loved my first wife, but that was all the love I was ever capable of, a surge of emotions that extinguished quickly once she started causing problems for me. My second wife... it's more like I'm comfortable with her and I know she loves me so I'm respecting that. It was her who initiated the relationship and I'm mostly doing this marriage thing for her. I decided it's a nice thing to make someone happy. So I'm trying. But if she says one day "Screw it, I've had enough of your weirdness, I'm leaving", I'll be like "What time will you be gone? Please don't forget to leave the keys. Need help packing?"



League_Girl
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27 Oct 2011, 5:11 pm

I first heard the word love when I was five years old and didn't know what it was so I thought I loved everyone. I would even say it to my friends and couldn't understand why they didn't like it. I think I did love my parents and I just didn't realize it. I remember I felt safe around them and liked how they took care of me. I didn't understand the word love until I was much older. I learned you are only to love your brothers and sisters and your parents and your kids, no one else. I even knew you are to love your partner. Then there is the other love like loving movies or loving your favorite food.



Taylor1002
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27 Oct 2011, 5:32 pm

I think I realized that other people had feelings when I was pretty young, and I can barely remember not knowing that. I think that before I knew that I really liked the company of certain people and didn't want things to affect them badly, but that's all I remember :?



sunshower
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27 Oct 2011, 6:44 pm

I did not fully understand the three dimensionality of people until I was 16. I believe I loved people before then though.


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MrXxx
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27 Oct 2011, 7:30 pm

I'm guessing that what you mean by "knowing people are people," is becoming aware that they are sentient beings, with thoughts and feelings of their own, separate and distinct from your own.

Intellectually, I always knew everyone else was, but living and acting as if they were was not so easy. I didn't even realize I wasn't acting that way. Generally, the way it usually played out was when I would form an opinion or feeling about something (pretty much anything), and assume that everyone would feel the same way, given what I knew about whatever it was. When others would express thoughts and feelings different from my own, it would take me off guard, and still does sometimes.

Whether I felt any love for anyone wasn't even related to that.

Frankly, I didn't even understand the concept of love until I became fairly old, say around my late twenties. I knew a set of "feelings" I would get sometimes, that I called love, but I fully understand now that it wasn't love at all. It was more of an infatuation than love. For close family members, like parents and grandparents, it was different than for certain girls I became infatuated with, but it was somewhat similar.

Love, to me, now, isn't a feeling at all, but that's a whole other discussion. My view of what love is and means is very different from most people's views, even Aspies.

Love, to me, is primarily a verb. It's something you DO, not something you feel. For example, I love my wife, but that's really not a feeling. It's what drives me to be there for her every day, do things for her, and help out. I AM though, infatuated with her, and THAT amounts to the feeling I get when I'm around her. It is very nice to have both, but love is what drives us as a couple, not the infatuation. Without the love (in the VERBAL sense), there would be no infatuation.

So I guess I would have to say, "No." I didn't really love anyone before realizing and accepting they were people in and of themselves. Because it wasn't until I did realize that, that I could truly love anyone in the way that I now understand love.


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pokerface
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28 Oct 2011, 1:02 pm

btbnnyr wrote:
I know I did.

Before I knew that people were people with minds and thoughts and feelings, or that there was such a thing as communication between people, I still knew that I loved the warm fuzzies who spent a lot of time around me - my parents and grandparents.

Communication and socialization are not necessary for people to love each other. Looking people in the eye is not necessary. Speaking to people is not necessary. Touching people is not necessary. Knowing that people are people is not necessary. Knowing that people have minds and thoughts and feelings is not necessary. Knowing what minds and thoughts and feelings are is not necessary. Maybe these things are necessary for NTs to love each other. Who knows? I don't. But I know that they were not necessary for me.

What about you?


That is so very true. I couldn`t agree with you more!



Callista
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28 Oct 2011, 1:50 pm

I would say probably yes, but I don't have any memories that early, so I can't tell. I knew people were people by the age of two and a half, when my first memories start.

I do know that young NT children, before they are old enough to think about other people's state of mind, do care about people. They have this "egocentrism" in their dealings with others--they think everybody else thinks like they do and can't yet figure out that other people are thinking different things from them. But despite that, they will still show empathy. A two-year-old whose mom is crying might toddle up to her, concerned, and try to give her a hug, because that's what she does when he's crying. Or he might give her a toy, or offer her his half-chewed cookie. He doesn't understand that she is thinking different things as he is; but he does care about her despite his lack of social sophistication.

That's probably the way autistics who haven't figured out theory-of-mind will react to others. They'll not be able to juggle all that mental stuff, but still care about others, and maybe be clumsy in trying to comfort them; but they'll still care.


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