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Who_Am_I
Caffeine-Powered Human-Type Thing
Joined: Aug 28, 2005
Age: 24
Posts: 3216
Location: My body is in Brisbane and my mind is in the gutter. :D
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 Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:21 am Post subject: Re: Inability to love? |
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| DazzleKitty wrote: | She says they can LIKE someone, but it's a selfish sort of like. For example, an Aspie really likes their friend, but the friend doesn't show up to hang out with him, so he gets mad at him and takes it out on said friend.
Thanks in advance. |
Is this in a situation where the friend had arranged to meet the hypothetical Aspie beforehand? If so, should the Aspie just let their failure to turn up slide? I don't think so.
To answer your original question: I personally am not incapable of love, but I have difficulties showing it. I have, based on my observations, less of an ability to love than the NTs I know, but not a complete absence.
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I don't dislike humans, I just don't want them to inhabit the same planet as me. |
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Danielismyname
but a turtle
Joined: Apr 03, 2007
Posts: 5678
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| Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 5:57 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | 1 a (1): strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties <maternal love for a child> (2): attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers (3): affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests <love for his old schoolmates> b: an assurance of love <give her my love>
2: warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion <love of the sea>
3 a: the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration <baseball was his first love> b (1): a beloved person : darling —often used as a term of endearment (2)British —used as an informal term of address |
Perhaps this misconception arises out of the fact that people with ASDs can appear "cold"; they may have trouble defining emotions and then putting them to words, a lack of emotional reciprocity, and etcetera.
I have this lovely "autistic disorder" label, and I feel this emotion as it's defined above; I also have my own definition of such that transcends a simple summary. |
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dragonboy
ROAR
Joined: Feb 26, 2007
Age: 17
Posts: 1781
Location: wherever nature is untouched
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| Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:22 am Post subject: |
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i can love
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Nature, the true gem of the world we live in, dont let it die! |
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sands
Toucan
Joined: Dec 03, 2007
Age: 41
Posts: 270
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| Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:22 am Post subject: |
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I've never been around anyone autistic or not that wasn't capable of great love!
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Cassandra Lou
What's normal anyway? |
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Hanwag
Sea Gull
Joined: Mar 04, 2008
Age: 31
Posts: 201
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| Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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There is one thing that disturbs me a lot in the first post. It seems the TS is convinced that love is absent in Aspies basically because there is an egocentrical aspect involved. I believe it is certainly true that Aspies might look at a relationship from their own point of view and do prefer the other person to be good to them.
Now the big misconception: how is this any different in NTs??? There is no such thing as totally altruistic love in a relationship, relationships aren't about altruism! I never heard an NT girl say things about their partner who just walked away from them 'oh, it's so great he found the other girl, she is sooo good to him'. Can you even imagine that? No.
Ofcourse problems in relationships can come from autism, but an autistic guy is no more selfish than an average NT and some are even less so. Is our love not real because it is not perfect love? Well maybe, but truly no love is perfect. I am also wondering about your example on not showing up. So basically you are saying you don't mind if someone you want to be with does not come? To me that is a weird form of love. The only thing true about that is that the aspie might not be able to show the frustration in an acceptable way. If you cannot live with that, don't be with an aspie, fine, but don't think it's because there is no love possible. |
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Sedaka
Searching For My Catcher in the Rye
Joined: Jul 17, 2006
Age: 26
Posts: 5128
Location: In the recesses of my mind
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| Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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my love doesnt seem to matter.
i think my heart is calloussed after hearing myself being so susinctly described by those whom i have loved... and though i consider myself to have been different in everyone of those relationships... they all came to the same conclusions about me.
sometimes i think those relationships only lasted as long as they did because the person KNEW i loved them, despite themselves not knowing what they wanted.
(sorry, spell checker is off and i'm runnin round work)
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and yet i'm
still roaming these
empty streets at night
alone again only to find
there are no shelters here;
i must simply resolve
to play in the rain. |
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CaptainMac
Snowy Owl
Joined: Mar 10, 2008
Posts: 166
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| Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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I too have been told I'm cold, but also industrious. They call me "Iron Mac" because I never miss class (1100+ straight days of perfect attendance, including all of grades 6 - 12), always am doing work, and don't display any public affection outside of business-like handshakes and high fives.
I've got my small circle of close friends, mostly males but also some females, and they really don't care that I'm like that. They just think that's the way I am and that it probably had to do with my upbringing as a child (no father figure, an only child, not too many neighbors/family members to play with). They don't know of a diagnosis or anything...if they do they would have had to diagnose me themselves.
There has really only been one individual who I have been known to share warm feelings with. She's a friend from high school and seems to know how to read me--something even my close friends aren't able to do all the time. We have never gone on a date and probably never will although we have just hung out together. She's sort of a clone of me--works all the time, same personality quirks--but is a bit more outgoing and doesn't rub off as cold. (No idea if she has AS or not, if she does she's the same as me and is twice-exceptional: gifted and AS. I doubt she has it though since she's more social than me.) Also, she's one of these people like me who doesn't want a relationship because studies are most important to her. |
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DazzleKitty
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: Jul 21, 2007
Age: 20
Posts: 61
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| Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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I thank you all for your responses and input on this matter.
I too thought my counselor was stereotyping them in a very negative way and this shocked me since I respect her so much. Then again, she may have been stretching the truth to make me get over the past relationship.
Well, I decided to meet him again and he got straight to the point not even a moment after I arrived -"Do you want to get back together?"
I didn't know, and that was my response for the time being. His friend was with him too and we all went back to my ex's house. His parents told me later in the evening that I really broke his heart. He was crying and he got rid of everything that reminded him of me (like his Nintendo DS and some of his DVDs I think). I felt really guilty but thenI wondered - is he crying because his FEELINGS were hurt and he MISSES me, or his EGO was bruised?
I decided later in the night that I'd try it again, but today I'm feeling nervous over it. Of course, it's not like I'm married to him and I could drop him anytime I wanted, yet I'm too damn nice and would be afraid of making him cry again.
And one thing that bugs me is whenever I asked him if he really wanted to get back together (he earlier claimed his parents pressured him into doing it since he was happier when he was with me). I asked if he was only doing this because of his parents, or that HE wants to get back together. His response was frustrating "Doesn't matter to me." That's not an answer that is at all suitable to that question. Either you really want to get back together, or you don't. If it doesn't matter, then I feel as though I am not valued enough to get back together with him.
But whenever I said yes (through texting on our phones), he instantly started texting me like mad and wanted me to come over again soon. So that makes me believe maybe he did want it but was being too prideful? I don't know.
Okay, I am done. I'm just confusing myself. I'm probably confusing all of you, too. |
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little-bird
Snowy Owl
Joined: May 21, 2006
Posts: 135
Location: up the faraway tree
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| Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | This really made me suspect what my counselor was saying had some truth in it.
I inquired if the inability to love was true for all Aspies, and she said yes. The part of the brain that allows people to empathize and love does not work in them. |
....reading this sort of stuff makes me a little angry and freaked out. it just really irks me when so-called professionals have no insight whatsoever, and can dole out their mangled opinions behind a veil of 'authority'.
i can love. i can feel love. i can empathize. i think i am over-empathetic. but i have great difficulty in expressing my emotions, especially if they are intense. people experience and express love differently. many of the 'normal' and accepted ways of expressing love are built upon hundreds of years of societal convention. i guess other people readily adopt these ways of expressing love but for me it seems unnatural and sometimes insincere.
i guess what i am trying to say is that we shouldn't assume that there's a singular way to understand/experience things, and i'm a peeved that some counselors/psychiatrists do make this assumption.
okay. AAARGGH! now that's off my chest... |
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Dantac
Phoenix
Joined: Jan 22, 2008
Age: 30
Posts: 504
Location: Florida
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| Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 2:46 pm Post subject: |
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Let me put it this way...
You know those times when you're talking to someone and you suddenly realize that you forgot the word for something even though its RIGHT THERE in the tip of your tongue and no matter how hard you try to get the word to come out your mind just draws a blank?
That's how it is. I can have the deepest affection and respect for someone but when it comes to showing that my feelings come out blank. Or I can see someone get hurt or be in distress and want to help / comfort them but at that precise instant the feelings come out blank. I feel them but they dont come out.
It is only much, much later..after thinking about it.. that I can react in the way I would have wanted to. But of course, by then its too late. Same as when someone is an ass to you and its only that night that you're in your bed thinking 'man, I should have said THIS to that $#@ then' kind of thing.
So no, it is not inability to love. its inability to express that love at the appropriate time.
I tend to overcompensate this problem by doing special things for those I care about .. its just the timing aint always right. Like out of the blue offering someone a special gift or a trip or a compliment. I get a lot of shocked reactions out of that and for a split second.. its like the roles are reversed. They dont know how to react in the proper way to ME when I show affection. HAH.
the universe does have a sense of humor. We're proof of it  |
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stjarna
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: Apr 19, 2008
Posts: 55
Location: Psykologsoffan
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| Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 3:20 pm Post subject: Re: Inability to love? |
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| DazzleKitty wrote: |
My counselor has worked with Aspies and is a licensed professional in counseling, so I figured she knows what she is talking about. |
Remarkable. 
DazzleKitty, do not trust a single word this so-called "counselor" says. She may have a license but she is obviously NOT professional. I sincerely hope this kind of ignorance is rare. Request a refund asap! lol |
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silkboy
Butterfly
Joined: May 03, 2008
Age: 34
Posts: 12
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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| Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 11:30 pm Post subject: |
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It strikes me that all the responses here have been a little too quick and defensive. There is a real underlying question and a implicit assumption that when we use the word love we are all talking about the same thing. This is not the case at all. What is love after all? There is no easy answer to that question. The fact of the matter is that people with AS do not experience love in the same manner as would be expected of a "normal" person, and they certainly do not express it in a typical fashion. That being said that does not at all mean that something that can be called love is not felt by them. And lets not forget a moment that the AS designation actually fits a whole range of different people. To flat out express that someone with AS does not feel love is misleading at best and flat out wrong at worst. But, and this is a huge but, expectations of what it means for a person with AS to love may be far of the mark.
Love is not everything people expect it to be. Although love by almost anyones definition is a "selfless" feeling, the reality is that the feeling, like all feelings which we possess is ultimately selfish. We love because we desire to love. Ultimately we can never truly know another individual, and so our feeling for them are truthfully for our own benefit. Just as a NT will have expectations that may not be accurate of a AS persons feelings of love, the converse is also true. We learn to use this word love to describe a feeling we know that we have had all of our lives. But we are not all talking about the same thing.
Regardless of the question, there is something there, a feeling, that we all have learned to call love. This is not the same as with some psychological disorders where there is in truth no feelings of connections to other human beings. |
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biostructure
Sea Gull
Joined: Dec 18, 2006
Posts: 234
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| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 5:12 am Post subject: |
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Silkboy brings up a lot of important points, ones that I have thought about many times before.
One is that people mean different things when they talk about love, and express it in different ways. This in fact goes for any emotion to some degree, but I would say that ones having an obvious "trigger" like anger are much more likely to be universally understood, unlike ones that have to do with a person's overall assessment of another person or situation.
As stated many times before on here, I wonder whether I will ever experience the desire to have a permanent life partner, i.e. a marriage, family, or the equivalent. I certainly experience purely physical attraction, a sex drive, and also sometimes intense attraction to members of the opposite sex based on significantly more than just their physical appearance. I can easily see myself being obsessed with someone for a decent period of time, but after some period I see myself anxious to get away, be single, and get started with someone else. I do wish to have friendships, and many of these develop over long periods of time, but at this point I would not want to combine a best friend and sex partner/lover into the same person. I am amazed at how many people I meet are essentially sure that they want to get married someday, and those who don't feel this way seem 99% of the time to have a kind of trivial "I don't care" attitude about everything.
Getting back to Silkboy's comments, there is no excuse for a psychiatrist or therapist to disregard anyone's feeling because of an assumption that he/she "could not be feeling that" based on his or her diagnosis. It also is not constructive to label someone else's emotions as "primitive" or "basic" just because the person cannot (or seems not to) feel a particular emotion that is a main driving force in one's own life. It is possible, if not likely, that this other person experiences emotions that the person making the judgment of "primitive" does not experience either, or experiences much less. |
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Averick
Anarchic Aberrational Anathema
Joined: Mar 06, 2007
Age: 28
Posts: 1980
Location: Sorry, I'm no Jedi.
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| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 11:37 am Post subject: |
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| Well, I'm not sure our love is the same as their love. |
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dudeofthedead
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: May 06, 2008
Age: 24
Posts: 43
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| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 1:38 pm Post subject: |
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| I feel like I can't love sometimes. Even my parents, who are loving and compassionate, generate no emotions from me and I don't know why. I know I'm lonely and I want female affection, but I'm scared that I will never be able to feel or show my feelings the way everyone else does. |
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