Dating a man with Asperger's... overwhelmed.

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ToughDiamond
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15 Mar 2012, 4:45 am

heathergracie wrote:
He has friends, and he is in frequent contact with them. According to many resources I have found, none of these things should be the case with many aspies. But it’s all true for him......

.......a friend of mine (who my boyfriend has not yet met) invited the two of us over for dinner in about a week’s time. When I mentioned this to my boyfriend (over the phone), he panicked, basically having a slight panic attack. It was very stressful and scary for me, and draining for both of us. When I talked to him the next day, he was feeling calmer and we are now (I hope) ready for this little dinner party.


I expect his apprehension was because he was going to have to deal with new people. He's not nervous about his established friends because he's used to them. I'm much the same myself. I'm usually fine with people I know fairly well, but put me in an environment with people I don't know, and I feel like a fish out of water. He's quite successful for an Aspie, if he's managed to build up a circle of friends at all. Many of us fail to do that.

He sounds like a brave man to me. Although he's clearly aware of the dangers of new people, he nevertheless was willing to give it a try, purely for your sake.

It's a shame he's been deserted by partners in the past. It's good that he's able to articulate his fear that you might do the same. If I were you I'd try to give him a lot of reassurance on that.......I wouldn't promise anything for the distant future, but anything positive you can say about your feelings for him in the here and now would probably help. Aspies are said to need a lot of reassurance sometimes. A lot of the trouble between me and my exes was because they weren't very good at reassuring me.



myth
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15 Mar 2012, 6:25 am

Thanks for the update, heathergracie! Good to hear that the night went well :)


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techstepgenr8tion
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15 Mar 2012, 7:21 am

heathergracie wrote:
Also, my friend had made a sarcastic comment, telling him at one point, "Hey, you're supposed to be making a good impression here..." She meant it entirely as a joke (may have even winked at him), but when we left, he feared he had made a poor impression. We talked it over, I assured him she meant nothing by it, and he let me know he would probably need a day or so to process things. Knowing this is so helpful!


Eww...yeah, I know that feeling. Even though I know people are clearly joking when they say things like that I know (he probably does as well) that there's usually some grain of truth in that type of humor. Its on par with telling someone who's tense "You look nervous, relax!". I suppose the best thing he can tell himself is 'well, they liked me enough to joke about it at least!'

heathergracie wrote:
I am calling the night a success. It might not be what I would have labeled a success a month ago, but it was a good night. Thank you all for your input.

That and I think if he sees them again and as everyone gets used to eachother, unless he has a tendency to lose it on people over things that you haven't mentioned, things will work better. I think our general terror is that situations of that nature are mostly out of our control, if we socially ace it its luck, and I've experienced times where I'd go to a house party and have a blast, be able to talk to anyone, and then house parties where I could do no right socially - all just on the types of people I was dealing with and how much pretense was or wasn't in the air.


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