There is a TL;DR section below.
I made a thread on here a bit back about an issue I was having with my boyfriend who is on the spectrum. I got emotional, it leaked out onto him, and he was basically convinced our relationship with on a downward spiral. After that we agreed to see how things would go. He said he wanted to give it time, if things got better they'd get better, if they got worse then he'd want to end up. Of course in my head I knew this was a bit more complex than that. Things in any relationship can't just get better when your issues are something that takes work between the two of you. After having a long talk with a lovely fellow on this forum via PMs I was able to clear my mind and figure out what our issues may have been and it was a domino effect of misunderstandings that I felt some communication could have resolved.
Basically, he felt I was being too needy and demanding. In reality I'm really not all that demanding. I just enjoyed spending time with him. I'll admit I was feeling sensitive by the changes in his behavior because I guess he had fallen out of his honeymoon/puppy love/cloud 9 phase of the relationship. He basically fell for me pretty hard, came on strong, spoiled the hell out of me, crashed hard unable to keep up the level of affection and romance he was giving me, and then I wasn't sure how to take the sudden and drastic changes in his behavior.
Not to mention I was going through a very stressful time with classes and an internship so I was left feeling emotional at times.
My random bouts of emotional breaks were what made him really question the integrity of our relationship. I was having a very bad day at work, my boss was piling on more work than I could finish, all with deadlines for the day before, that day, and the next day. This leaked onto him a bit. DISCLAIMER: THE REMAINDER OF THIS PARAGRAPH IS NOT HOW I USUALLY ACT! On the way home I texted him about my day and at some point I told him I loved him, hoping he'd say it back. Seeing and hearing the words always made me feel good. Except he didn't say it back. Instead he replied with "Oh yeah?" And I responded with "Are you going to say it back?" to which he replied, "I was going to..." Again, I was having a bad day. I wasn't upset with him. The rest of the day went okay until I was talking to him just before bed. I went to tell him good night and say I love you as we always have when parting but that time he just hung up right after I told him I was going to head to bed soon. I called him again telling him I wanted to say good night. Again he cut me off short. I immediately texted him saying I loved him. Some time passed and I received no response so I texted him again saying "I wish you'd say it back to me." He responded with "I wish you wouldn't force me to say it." Just FYI, I had never forced him to say it before. Not to mention he had always had no problem saying it back.
The next morning I left him a text apologizing for how I had behaved the day before. He became distant and eventually told me he was honestly unsure of what he wanted to do at that point because I had forced our relationship into a state of limbo. We weren't broken up but we weren't where he wanted to be. He claimed that all we did was 'fight and watch movies' together and that obviously isn't true. We'd been together for 6 months and I can list all of our conflicts, none of which had lasted more than a few hours except for the last one I mentioned. And he has this tendency to blow things out of proportion. It's like if my tone is off he will assume I am mad, and if I am acting mad around him then I am mad at him and if I am mad at him then we must be having a fight.
I found it really frustrating that he was making such claims and honestly believed that and all I wanted to do was talk it out with him. For 2 weeks I tried to get him to talk to me about it but each time he'd just stop responding to me so I figured it wasn't yet time and decided to give him some space and let things cool down. A month passed and things were definitely getting better.
Then last Wednesday we supposedly had an argument. 2 weeks before that he had asked me if I wanted to try out a new game with him. We are a partly long distance couple (2 hours apart) and so a lot of our time together is spent online. During our last fight he had claimed that he wanted more time gaming together, so of course I was trying to find more games for us to play together. And that was when he proposed the game which was going into beta. On the first day of beta he declared that he didn't like it. The next day I asked if he'd give it another shot because I wasn't sure what else to suggest and I felt he hadn't given it much of a chance, but he said he wasn't interested.
Then Wednesday night last week he IM'd me and started casually talking about how he'd been playing the game and started telling me about some of his experiences. I asked if he was interested in playing with me and he said kind of, but he was playing on a European server with someone he works with. I admitted to him that hearing that kind of frustrated me and I was feeling kind of bummed because I had been looking for a game for us to play together and it sucked finding out that he had been playing the very game that I was wanting to play with him (that he asked me to play no less). He responded with "Yeah I can understand that." Not much else was said about it that night. Everything seemed fine.
Then the next day I got a text from him while I was at work saying that after our argument the night before it became clear to him that we just don't work. We don't mesh well and we're constantly bumping heads. This was kind of out of left field for me. I didn't view our exchange from the night before as a fight or argument or anything like that. Heck, I wasn't even mad at him!
I wanted to talk to him about it. It really drives me up the wall that he never talked to me about anything. He'd just misunderstand something, get this false impression about me, and pass some serious judgment about me and our relationship without even trying to talk to me about it or hear what I think and have to say. I can't change how he feels but he is utterly wrong on his reasons for breaking up with me. And this is unfortunately when I'm finally getting to my point.
TL;DR SKIP: (btw for those who skipped, we were in a semi long distance relationship)
Ever since our break up he honestly hasn't been acting different with me at all. The only thing we don't do is use pet names and say I love you. He texts and messages me as soon as he's awake or online (he works from home). At night when I get home from work he calls me on Skype and asks me if I'd like to play a game or watch a movie. That or we just hang out on Skype talking. If anything he's been acting closer and more eager to spend time with me even though the very things that supposedly made me needy and demanding, things he claimed he couldn't give me, are things he is willingly doing right now post break up...
Not to mention when he broke up with me he claimed we didn't mesh well together. This doesn't seem like the behavior of two people who don't mesh well together.
And if we bump heads, we're going to bump heads regardless of whether we're a couple or not. So when he broke up with me I expected him to distance from me significantly.
So I'm not sure what the heck may be going on in his head. Though I'm beginning to feel like if it keeps up I should tell him it's either all or nothing. We're basically acting like a couple still (minus forms of affection) so other than his feelings I don't see why being a couple could be so bad.
I made a thread on here a bit back about an issue I was having with my boyfriend who is on the spectrum. I got emotional, it leaked out onto him, and he was basically convinced our relationship with on a downward spiral. After that we agreed to see how things would go. He said he wanted to give it time, if things got better they'd get better, if they got worse then he'd want to end up. Of course in my head I knew this was a bit more complex than that. Things in any relationship can't just get better when your issues are something that takes work between the two of you. After having a long talk with a lovely fellow on this forum via PMs I was able to clear my mind and figure out what our issues may have been and it was a domino effect of misunderstandings that I felt some communication could have resolved.
Basically, he felt I was being too needy and demanding. In reality I'm really not all that demanding. I just enjoyed spending time with him. I'll admit I was feeling sensitive by the changes in his behavior because I guess he had fallen out of his honeymoon/puppy love/cloud 9 phase of the relationship. He basically fell for me pretty hard, came on strong, spoiled the hell out of me, crashed hard unable to keep up the level of affection and romance he was giving me, and then I wasn't sure how to take the sudden and drastic changes in his behavior.
Not to mention I was going through a very stressful time with classes and an internship so I was left feeling emotional at times.
My random bouts of emotional breaks were what made him really question the integrity of our relationship. I was having a very bad day at work, my boss was piling on more work than I could finish, all with deadlines for the day before, that day, and the next day. This leaked onto him a bit. DISCLAIMER: THE REMAINDER OF THIS PARAGRAPH IS NOT HOW I USUALLY ACT! On the way home I texted him about my day and at some point I told him I loved him, hoping he'd say it back. Seeing and hearing the words always made me feel good. Except he didn't say it back. Instead he replied with "Oh yeah?" And I responded with "Are you going to say it back?" to which he replied, "I was going to..." Again, I was having a bad day. I wasn't upset with him. The rest of the day went okay until I was talking to him just before bed. I went to tell him good night and say I love you as we always have when parting but that time he just hung up right after I told him I was going to head to bed soon. I called him again telling him I wanted to say good night. Again he cut me off short. I immediately texted him saying I loved him. Some time passed and I received no response so I texted him again saying "I wish you'd say it back to me." He responded with "I wish you wouldn't force me to say it." Just FYI, I had never forced him to say it before. Not to mention he had always had no problem saying it back.
The next morning I left him a text apologizing for how I had behaved the day before. He became distant and eventually told me he was honestly unsure of what he wanted to do at that point because I had forced our relationship into a state of limbo. We weren't broken up but we weren't where he wanted to be. He claimed that all we did was 'fight and watch movies' together and that obviously isn't true. We'd been together for 6 months and I can list all of our conflicts, none of which had lasted more than a few hours except for the last one I mentioned. And he has this tendency to blow things out of proportion. It's like if my tone is off he will assume I am mad, and if I am acting mad around him then I am mad at him and if I am mad at him then we must be having a fight.
I found it really frustrating that he was making such claims and honestly believed that and all I wanted to do was talk it out with him. For 2 weeks I tried to get him to talk to me about it but each time he'd just stop responding to me so I figured it wasn't yet time and decided to give him some space and let things cool down. A month passed and things were definitely getting better.
Then last Wednesday we supposedly had an argument. 2 weeks before that he had asked me if I wanted to try out a new game with him. We are a partly long distance couple (2 hours apart) and so a lot of our time together is spent online. During our last fight he had claimed that he wanted more time gaming together, so of course I was trying to find more games for us to play together. And that was when he proposed the game which was going into beta. On the first day of beta he declared that he didn't like it. The next day I asked if he'd give it another shot because I wasn't sure what else to suggest and I felt he hadn't given it much of a chance, but he said he wasn't interested.
Then Wednesday night last week he IM'd me and started casually talking about how he'd been playing the game and started telling me about some of his experiences. I asked if he was interested in playing with me and he said kind of, but he was playing on a European server with someone he works with. I admitted to him that hearing that kind of frustrated me and I was feeling kind of bummed because I had been looking for a game for us to play together and it sucked finding out that he had been playing the very game that I was wanting to play with him (that he asked me to play no less). He responded with "Yeah I can understand that." Not much else was said about it that night. Everything seemed fine.
Then the next day I got a text from him while I was at work saying that after our argument the night before it became clear to him that we just don't work. We don't mesh well and we're constantly bumping heads. This was kind of out of left field for me. I didn't view our exchange from the night before as a fight or argument or anything like that. Heck, I wasn't even mad at him!
I wanted to talk to him about it. It really drives me up the wall that he never talked to me about anything. He'd just misunderstand something, get this false impression about me, and pass some serious judgment about me and our relationship without even trying to talk to me about it or hear what I think and have to say. I can't change how he feels but he is utterly wrong on his reasons for breaking up with me. And this is unfortunately when I'm finally getting to my point.
TL;DR SKIP: (btw for those who skipped, we were in a semi long distance relationship)
Ever since our break up he honestly hasn't been acting different with me at all. The only thing we don't do is use pet names and say I love you. He texts and messages me as soon as he's awake or online (he works from home). At night when I get home from work he calls me on Skype and asks me if I'd like to play a game or watch a movie. That or we just hang out on Skype talking. If anything he's been acting closer and more eager to spend time with me even though the very things that supposedly made me needy and demanding, things he claimed he couldn't give me, are things he is willingly doing right now post break up...
Not to mention when he broke up with me he claimed we didn't mesh well together. This doesn't seem like the behavior of two people who don't mesh well together.
And if we bump heads, we're going to bump heads regardless of whether we're a couple or not. So when he broke up with me I expected him to distance from me significantly.
So I'm not sure what the heck may be going on in his head. Though I'm beginning to feel like if it keeps up I should tell him it's either all or nothing. We're basically acting like a couple still (minus forms of affection) so other than his feelings I don't see why being a couple could be so bad.
