Can people with aspergers syndrome find love?

mikep wrote:Having a girlfriend or boyfriend who is genuinely interested in who you are rather than how you are makes a difference.

Damn right, and you oughtta be thankful.

mikep wrote:I do not understand how NT's can claim to understand them.

My intent is not to 'correct' the original post, or offer pearls of unsolicited wisdom. However I need to say this as clarification for those who are muddy on the concept:

NTs do not understand emotions. They simply have them and never have to think about them as long as they live. Same as our hearts' beating, same as our brain's sending pulses to it.
It is our, aspies' burden to understand them.

From my experience, people with Asperger's don't have emotions any more or less than NT's. We feel lonely, sad, angry, happy, etc just the same as they do. It's just that our template is set up a bit differently, and (again, from my personal experience) we don't tend to rely upon them as being concrete and factual as NT's do.

For me, my most motive emotions (the ones that cause me to react the most) are the ones shrouded in or born of confusion.


But I will agree with what I believe Constructor might have meant - that my emotional state is not important enough for me to make life-altering decisions based on it. My actions stem from what NT's consider to be a chillingly cold logic. If a relationship has no forseable chance for success and the con's outweigh the pro's it's time to cut bait and walk away. I don't particularly care whether I'm lonely or not. Any emotion gives the same confirmation of life; they all make you feel alive.


I do agree 100% on Constructor's view of relationships, with a few extra variations. I have absolutely zero tolerance for games, charades and false-fronts. My blunt honesty is (apparently) rather bone-jarring to most neurotypicals, but I expect nothing less from anyone that wants to enter into a relationship with me on an equal basis (be it romantic or otherwise). If I have to be constantly looking for ulterior motive or meaning, the whole thing just becomes so frustrating that it's not worth it.

The difference I have with Constructor is that I've sort of taken it a step further. I don't even bother to consider any female as a potential girlfriend. I just look for friends in general; people with whom I can have conversations about things we both find interesting - people that can challenge me intellectually and whom welcome the challenge I provide. I find the odds to be grossly against me that such a person would ever exist in a member of the opposite sex whom I was also physically attracted to, and whom felt all the same things about me.

Thus, logically, it is unreasonable for me to expect to find such a person or to plan any aspect of my life around that possibility. Should it actually happen I would redefine The World As I Know It (tm), but that's a bridge to be crossed when someone gets around to building it.

Instead, there's just two kinds of women in my mind: those with whom friendship is viable, and those who aren't interesting enough to be anything but potential sex-objects (and unfortunately for me I'm not shallow enough to find meaningless sex even remotely fulfilling. Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt.)


Yes, relationships of an adult/romantic nature can work for people with A.S.

Yes, NT's and Aspies can get along, fall in love, and live happily ever after.

And yes, if that should happen to you as an Aspie you should probably spend a not insignificant amount of time being unabashedly grateful for your fortune. (Incidentally, you'll score points with the NT if you remember to tell them how much you appreciate them and their understanding of you.)


Me... I just think that my life will be infinitely simpler and contain far less disappointment if I expect a few good friends and little more. Romantic relationships always require much more work and have infinitely more frustrations and headaches. Personally I've had enough for this life.

Although I’ve had no professional diagnosis, it does seem as if I am a sufferer. It’s less than a month since I first heard of AS, and consequently I’m on an extremely steep learning curve. I suppose everyone’s circumstances are different, and what I have to say just adds to that general melting pot of differences. I am a 68 year old male, and the thing that’s paramount in my mind at present is that whereas previously I had been blaming the rest of the world for being out of step, now I know it was me. The area of life where I presently find all this disturbing is knowing that I will never be able to show affection (as most people understand the term) to another person. I have a female partner who has been with me for 13 years, and just the other day she commented on how she noticed the couple next door speaking to each other in “affectionate” terms; obviously she noticed this because of how it is missing in our relationship. Whilst, as a probable Aspie, I cannot empathise with her over this, I guess I can still understand it at an intellectual level. Knowing I am powerless to change my core being is most frustrating. I would like to experience another person’s genuine affection, however without being able to give it myself, the chances of it happening are remote.