Romantic relationships and Aspergers

[Musiq]

One thing i have never ceased to notice is that in nearly every relationship i have been in, whether it be with a man or a woman, i always cringe when touched….granted i do enjoy holding hands and what not, but everytime someone hugs or kisses me it only seems natural for my body to instantly cringe away…yet when i do it, it feels completely natural for me at the time. it honestly makes no sense in my mind.

And the topic of making out with someone, that requires more of an emotional feel rather than purely an intellectual feel.....something i find quite hard to do. While i have gotten better at masking my AS, and better still at conveying and understanding emotions, i've just never been able to connect with someone emotionally on a sexual level, and plus, it can only go so far.

Question is, is there any way i could possibly improve on that, or is there just no chemistry whatsoever?

[HollandofFrance]

i guess i have aspergers or something

i know the feeling

[Rainbowmum]

Sweetie , you are still very young,maybe you are not emotionally ready as yet ,and your body is reacting to let you know.mile:

I think this link might help you .
http://www.iancommunity.org/cs/articles/relationships

[East]

Sweetie , you are still very young,maybe you are not emotionally ready as yet ,and your body is reacting to let you know

Good advice Mum! Really...you summed up in one sentence what I was going to try to say in two paragraphs!

RaveBoy...I was 32 years old before I was OK with anyone touching me and my lover had a hard time breaking me down...but he did...he healed me actually. I could kiss as a sexual act but holding hands or just touching outside of sex was foreign territory for me. If you saw me today you probably wouldn't believe it...I am very intimate with my lover...so sometimes it just takes time and chemistry.

[dfiant]

With time comes experience Raver, no need to rush things

[mrk2010]

I know a guy who has Aspergers and he is in a perfectly loving relationship with his girlfriend so don't worry! You are quite young to be worrying about this I'm sure you will be fine. Aspergers after all is in the very light spectrum of Autism and yeah you may have some issues with different feelings but you shouldn't feel like you have to mask it, just be yourself :-) My friend with Aspergers is quite unaware of other peoples emotions because of his condition but he makes it work, his girlfriend loves him allcthe same. As for not wanting anybody to touch you, some people without Aspergers don't like that either. I don't like shaking hands with people or giving people hugs. So the moral of the story is take your time and do things at your own pace without feeling pressured.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

As Mum said, you are young, we are/were all pretty confused about the whole love/sex/emotions thing when we were in our teens. Many of us are still confused although we are in our 20's, 30's, 40's even older. It is perfectly 'normal' to be confused.

My Nephew (not by blood, I was kind of sorta adopted by his mother as a brother years ago) he has Aspergers. He has a crazy phobia of being touched by almost anyone, including his mum. His Grandfather and I are the only ones he 'trusts' enough to allow us to hug him.

He will sit on the couch right next to me - shoulder touching shoulder. Anyone else and he has to move as far away as possible (Much to the hurt feelings of his mother who would love nothing more than to wrap her arms around him and smother him).

I have no idea why it is exactly, neither does he. Perhaps it is our personalities? His grandfather and I are cut from two different - vastly different, molds - he is short and 'chubby' I am tall and lean-ish. I suspect its something about our personalities/character - the way we carry ourselves that make us appear to be more safe than other people.

He is exploring this now, trying to decide for himself why it is that he is comfortable with Grandfather and Uncle when it comes to touch. He has ruled out homosexual for himself - he is definitely attracted to boobies:tongue:.

He is 14, has a 'girl friend'. He is interested in sex, but is unwilling to get physically close (A mixed blessing at that age). While he has gotten to second base with her (He confesses much to me in text messages - perhaps more than I really want to know), but he tells me he was uncomfortable with the whole touchy feely part yet at the same time drawn to it (Boobies have powerful abilities, I suppose).

She really doesn't 'get' him, while she pretends to not care that he is Aspie, she demands that he acts 'normally' and is a bit too pushy. I really do not see them staying as an item for long.

For him it is both sensory input and social skills related. He wears dark glasses because normal levels of lights irritate him, he used to scream at just accidental, casual touching a person brushes passed him would cause him to go from calm and quiet to caterwauling in no time at all. He is also requiring all tags to be removed from t-shirts (they are irritating) and several other 'normal' things that have to be adjusted because it irritates.

He doesn't get emotions - especially in others. One thing that his grandfather and I both do is tell him how we are feeling and why we are feeling that. It is a hang over of therapy for me where I learned to communicate "I am feeling ____________ because of _____________." This seems to bridge that gap when we communicate to him how we are feeling - this may be one reason why he is more 'open' to us.

How this all relates to you and your issues is up to you to figure out.

I think what you need is a person who naturally communicates how they are feeling much in the manner that we learn in therapy "I am feeling ________ because _____." This will take the guess work out of the emotions your partner is feeling, thus making it far easier for you to know what is on their mind. Few people actually communicate how they feel, we all tend to internalize and bury many of our emotions, society teaches us to hide them.

I also think you should explore possible conditions/circumstances that allows you to touch/hug others. Are there people in your life you feel comfortable with touching/hugging? If so what is it about them that makes them more acceptable to you? Try finding the common denominator of all of them - thus if they come in different physical packages, tall/short, fat/thin, young/old, etc you can rule out a physical aspect.

Don't pressure yourself to find someone to do it with and to have a full attraction to. There is lots of time left and you will, eventually, find that right person to connect with on every level. And don't expect to find that person on Grind'r, or in bars and clubs - that person will most likely be found in a normal everyday setting and you two will just hit it off - often when you are not looking.

You will be OK.