Dating another aspergers lady

[Mr_Alex]

Is it just me or I rather date a lady with aspergers syndrome,has anyone experienced that they feel comfortable about dating someone with aspergers syndrome?

 

[bentHnau]

It seems great in my imagination, but I don't personally know anyone with asperger's so I can't say. I know that I'm inclined to hope that people with ASDs are compatible in certain ways such as low emotionality, but that is not necessarily the case for any given person.

 

[MoCoffee]

I personally would feel more comfortable dating a man with Asperger's than an NT. I recently broke off my engagement to my NT because I can't handle the degree of togetherness he expected. He would want to spend every free minute together and expected to be able to drop by my place any time he wanted. I ended up feeling so anxious that I just shut down. As a woman with Asperger's, I would be far more understanding and willing to give space to an Asperger's man, than someone who is not on the spectrum is likely to. Best of luck and love to you both!

 

[King_Oni]

I'm currently in a relationship with someone who has Asperger's. And, the more I think about it, I think one of my previous, long-term relationships... she showed significant traits of it (but I wasn't that aware of it, since I got in touch with a psychologist and got my diagnosis, well after we broke up).

So I think it's fair to say I have my fair share of experience with this.

Much like MoCoffee I'm not really interested in spending every free minute together. I need my personal space and time. It seems that aspies in general understand this better. Perhaps it's that my current girlfriend has her own hobbies and interests and on top of that lives about 100 miles from me. But as of what I've experienced with Aspies both in real life and on forums, be clear to what they want. From the beginning I already told my girlfriend "I don't have this need to hang around 3 days a week, every week... coming over once every 2 weeks is plenty". So that's some kind of "explicit"rules I guess. I just made sure she understood what I wanted, just to not make it an uncomfortable situation for both of us. It would be stupid to break up over something as trivial as being "overwhelmed" because it works out fine otherwise.

I must add, I've dated NT women as well. With significantly worse results. But it really varied from person to person what exactly was the issue. It's not necessarily their fault for not understanding me. For what it's worth I didn't understand them. It just didn't work out. Just not always over the same reasons. And to add, I sometimes wonder how much of these reasons can be attributed to Asperger's to why it didn't work out even.

 

[Ehmagerd]

It seems kind of cool. Sometimes I think it would be great. If I hear a woman has asperger it can get me excited. But I think that is misguided as there are more important things than whether or not someone has asperger's. Other aspies can often annoy me as much as NT's.

 

[Alabamaguy57]

Is it just me or I rather date a lady with aspergers syndrome,has anyone experienced that they feel comfortable about dating someone with aspergers syndrome?

I would sure try it if I ever met one. Might work out better. But it would have to be a woman who enjoys plenty of physical contact and snuggling up every night. I don't think I could handle one that wants to be alone most of the time.

 

[Thesaurusrex]

Regardless of Aspie or NT, a relationship will have its own set of unique issues. Dating another person with Asperger's/on the Autism spectrum does not necessarily mean you will get along better or things will be easier than they would be with an NT. Of course, there are positives to AS/AS relationships. Though whether Aspie or NT, what matters most (in my opinion) is how you communicate, how well you can work together, and how well and able you are to meet each others needs - or lack thereof.

 

[Dakura]

Relationship is definitely all about communication, my last girlfriend actually broke up with me because she thought I didn't like spending time with her. Even though it was because I needed some personal space and time, by the time I explained to her she had already moved away from me (she was too hurt). So yeah, communication when you can is important!

 

[Fluttershy]

I'm fairly positive my partner has Asperger's, although she is not diagnosed. She shows a lot of the traits. Some we have in common and can relate, but others we are polar opposites on and it makes things hard. As in, I tend to show a lot of emotion, she tends to be distant. There are a lot of pros and cons to it. She understands a lot about me I don't feel like others would or would be patient about. But then some things tend to multiply, like both of us being bad on our cues and body language just results terribly sometimes.

 

[Franco]

Two aspies can be highly compatible or extremely incompatible.

And if they are compatible, they should seriously consider whether they are eventually going to have children. Because it is evident that each of their potential offspring has, a priori, a 50 % probability of having an ASD severity higher than the average of the ASD severities of the potential aspie parents.

 

[Ste11aeres]

Two aspies can be highly compatible or extremely incompatible.

And if they are compatible, they should seriously consider whether they are eventually going to have children. Because it is evident that each of their potential offspring has, a priori, a 50 % probability of having an ASD severity higher than the average of the ASD severities of the potential aspie parents.

I hope that any of my future children have ASD. From what I understand, there is a 50% likelihood of each of the children having ASD, not a 50% probability that it will be more severe than that of the parents.

 

[Franco]

From what I understand, there is a 50% likelihood of each of the children having ASD, not a 50% probability that it will be more severe than that of the parents.

For a meaningful estimation of probability, you need to start from an assumption of the genetic mutations in play that is more or less approximate to reality. Research so far seems to point out that the genes playing a role in ASD are hundreds. For each gene, the relationship between the "A" (autistic) variant and the "N" (NT) variant could be that any variant is dominant, or that they just add up their effect. Since you cannot know a priori which form is dominant, the best assumption is that they just add up.

Let us then define an "autistic genetic load" (AGL), which determines ASD severity if we ignore epigenetic factors, that goes from 0 in the hyperconnected NT type to 10 in the completely disconnected severe autist. Let's have a couple of aspies with severities 4 and 5. You can write a program assuming that there are 100 genes in play that goes through all possible combinations of the parents' genetic configurations, and for each parental combination computes the AGL of each possible offspring combination of a sperm cell and an egg cell of those parents.

I have not written such program, nor am I interested in writing it, but intuitively I see that half of the possible offspring combinations have an AGL that is higher than the average of the parents' AGLs.

BTW, this model is in line with the notion of a continuum in ASD severity, spanning both the ASD proper and the Broad Autism Phenotype in the NT side.

 

[Franco]

An afterthought on the possible program just in case someone finds the idea interesting: it is best to assume there are 50 genes in play, with each gene represented by a variable with two possible values, 1 for the autistic variant and 0 for the NT variant. This way the AGL is just the summation of the values of both copies of all 50 genes, and the maximum AGL, when both copies of all 50 genes are the autistic variant, is 100.

 

[Ste11aeres]

For a meaningful estimation of probability, you need to start from an assumption of the genetic mutations in play that is more or less approximate to reality. Research so far seems to point out that the genes playing a role in ASD are hundreds. For each gene, the relationship between the "A" (autistic) variant and the "N" (NT) variant could be that any variant is dominant, or that they just add up their effect. Since you cannot know a priori which form is dominant, the best assumption is that they just add up.

Let us then define an "autistic genetic load" (AGL), which determines ASD severity if we ignore epigenetic factors, that goes from 0 in the hyperconnected NT type to 10 in the completely disconnected severe autist. Let's have a couple of aspies with severities 4 and 5. You can write a program assuming that there are 100 genes in play that goes through all possible combinations of the parents' genetic configurations, and for each parental combination computes the AGL of each possible offspring combination of a sperm cell and an egg cell of those parents.

I have not written such program, nor am I interested in writing it, but intuitively I see that half of the possible offspring combinations have an AGL that is higher than the average of the parents' AGLs.

BTW, this model is in line with the notion of a continuum in ASD severity, spanning both the ASD proper and the Broad Autism Phenotype in the NT side.

A. The causes of ASD are not yet fully understood.
B. In the case of genes, what about recessive genes being the ones that are passed on, or dominant genes taking over, or that sort of thing? Genetics are complicated.
C. It's not just a matter of what the DNA says, some DNA traits are realized, some are suppressed. This can be a result of many factors, including the mother's diet while pregnant.
D. Experience contradicts your theory.

 

[Franco]

A. The causes of ASD are not yet fully understood.
B. In the case of genes, what about recessive genes being the ones that are passed on, or dominant genes taking over, or that sort of thing? Genetics are complicated.
C. It's not just a matter of what the DNA says, some DNA traits are realized, some are suppressed. This can be a result of many factors, including the mother's diet while pregnant.
D. Experience contradicts your theory.

A. There are two types of causes: immediate and mediate. The mediate cause seems to be genetic, though the identification of the genes involved, and of the way they interact between themselves, is still a work in progress and will probably remain so for quite a long time. That being the situation, you can either withhold to draw any conclusion until enough knowledge has been gathered e.g. 20 years from now, or draw some conclusions based on assumptions that are reasonable at this point. Either way is legitimate.

B. I agree that genetics are complicated, and I had actually said something along that line: "you cannot know a priori which form is dominant". Therefore it is reasonable to make some balanced simplifying assumptions ("balanced" in that they do not have a bias like e.g. assuming that the neurotypical forms are always dominant) that allow us to build a working model. BTW, making simplifying assumptions is a standard procedure in science.

C. I agree that epigenetics play an important role. But just as with genetics, it is reasonable to make some balanced simplifying assumptions, and in this case the best one is to ignore epigenetics altogether.

D. I am not aware of any published study surveying the ASD severity of a large number of children whose both parents are in the spectrum.

Having said all this, I think that I have realized where the point of argument may reside: my statement that "half of the possible offspring combinations have an AGL that is higher than the average of the parents' AGLs" is valid only for very fine resolutions of AGL, which may not be used in practice.

I will explain this using age. If you measure age using a fine resolution, e.g. in days, it is very likely that, even in a large group of people, nobody else will have your same age. Rather, everybody will have either an older or a younger age than you. The same goes for the average of the ages of two people: if age is expressed in days, everybody will have either an older or a younger age than that average. But if age is expressed in a coarser resolution of years, as it is in practice, then many people will have the same age.

The same happens with ASD severity, so that my statement was valid only for a fine resolution like that obtained by using 500 genes in a model. But with a coarse resolution, as is used in practice, the situation is completely different. To show that, I did two cases by hand, for 1 gene and 2 genes.

In the case of 1 gene, AGL goes from 0, when both copies of the gene are 0, to 2, when both copies are 1. The probability distribution of the offspring of two parents having AGL = 1 is:

0: 25 %
1: 50 %
2: 25 %

In the case of 2 genes, AGL goes from 0, when both copies of both genes are 0, to 4, when both copies are 1. The probability distribution of the offspring of two parents having AGL = 2 is:

0: 3 %
1: 22 %
2: 50 %
3: 22 %
4: 3 %

 

[Franco]

In the previous post, instad of "withhold to draw any conclusion" it should be "refrain from drawing any conclusion".

I apologize for the occasional (I hope) glaring faults in my English.

 

[arnoldmcguire335]

I would date anyone, either Aspie or NT, as long as they love and compromise me. Because if they don't... they're not worthy of it.

 

[Grumpy Cat]

It depends on each individual person. NT's are on a spectrum just like Aspies. Everyone is "unique".

 

[Shiznown]

It doesn't matter to me if a woman is NT, or AS. That being said, I used to want to find a woman that is AS, but through my experience women with AS seem to be much more prone to asexuality, or having a low sex drive. With my sex drive being very high, this would never workout. I honestly hope I'm wrong about this, but this is what I've noticed just from going to forums and talking to people.

 

[antimatter]

I am NT and I dated a woman with AS for almost three years. she was beautiful, beguiling, smart, sincere and had many other very beautiful qualities...HOWEVER, if you are a person who needs emotional reciprocity and someone to relate to on an empathetic level, you will end up very frustrated and unhappy. It's like an itch that will never be scratched and you may think you are going insane. Just my honest opinion. for the right man she would be great, but for me it was an epic fail. And yes, I am far from perfect and infinitely flawed myself; it's just a bad fit.