The internal struggles of a young guy with high functioning autism

[ShamarZ15]

Hi I'm Spartan,
I'm making this thread to talk about some of my struggles through life and the everyday struggles I face. I've never had a girlfriend before I guess it was because people thought I was slow or girls thought I was ugly and weird. Tomorrow makes two years since my father passed from cancer, and I literally watched him transition from one world to the next while was on life support. I needed counseling since I was so traumatized. I feel like nobody loves me and understands me, it just sucks. I doubt anyone here would change that.

 

[kay]

Sorry you are feeling so bad, unfortunately I can relate. My dad died from cancer when I was 11 and, though I never saw him on life support, I had to see him all skinny and jaundiced and so out of it I don't think he knew me. No counseling for me either, actually I was shoved aside by the relatives I stayed with(my mom stayed with my dad, in his room, hours away). So during the six weeks my dad was dying in the hospital I was expected to go to school everyday and not bother anyone. It still bothers me sometimes and I'm pretty old now.

 

[Southern Discomfort]

That's terrible. I'm sorry for you loss.

 

[ShamarZ15]

Sorry you are feeling so bad, unfortunately I can relate. My dad died from cancer when I was 11 and, though I never saw him on life support, I had to see him all skinny and jaundiced and so out of it I don't think he knew me. No counseling for me either, actually I was shoved aside by the relatives I stayed with(my mom stayed with my dad, in his room, hours away). So during the six weeks my dad was dying in the hospital I was expected to go to school everyday and not bother anyone. It still bothers me sometimes and I'm pretty old now.

I wish I had a girlfriend to comfort me right now.

 

[Streetwise]

i watched my mother die from the worst form of Lou gehrigs disease the nurses had ever seen
Ive never had a relationship im a lot older than you
what i want is that my mother never became ill not anything else
and not to be mentally ill
talk to people at aspies central there so many like you

 

[ShamarZ15]

i watched my mother die from the worst form of Lou gehrigs disease the nurses had ever seen
Ive never had a relationship im a lot older than you
what i want is that my mother never became ill not anything else
and not to be mentally ill
talk to people at aspies central there so many like you

oh my god that's awful l'm sorry you had to go through that.

 

[ChrisC1983]

please don't think i'm trying to berate your situation in any way.. my father is alive, but i had a significant amount of family trauma between age 11-13 (one of which being my fathers mental breakdown, so.. for me.. even to this day he's more like a terrible step father i got stuck living with who happens to remember more about my childhood than i do. what i remember of my father, shows up for about 1 minute per every day i don't see him. seriously.. 1 month is about a 30min conversation before he turns back into the usual bipolar him that i know. and there's been plenty of other problems but that being the most relevant probably.

i'm 33 now. i had a 1yr girlfriend about 10yrs ago (1st and last time i had sex).. had a sort of non-gf 1yr ago (no touching) and nobody else. by no means is it what i wanted in life. i actually want to be that live-in dad kinda guy who gets to help do projects and help with school and relationships (boy or girl doesn't matter) and school troubles and chaperone field trips and all that.. and i've wanted that since i was a young teen. and just like girls in their 30's i'm pretty sure i hit that "omg i'm never going to have a kid, my life is over" phase (honestly i've been suicidal since my fathers breakdown so it takes a while to separate any negative feelings from that... which is why i was with the ex non-gf)

life always continues unless you stop it. you don't need to actually kill yourself to stop your life, but if you dwell on things that stop you from making overall positive non harmful decisions, you're stopping your own life. you always need a good moral compass, but you need to allow yourself to enjoy as much as you can (and lets face it, it's tough enough to enjoy anything when sounds/lights/people are always constants and always problems at the same time) and while enjoying life, the other things will eventually fall into place. until then, just keep working on yourself. nobody will ever be perfect, but if you can learn and fix something about yourself every chance you get... you'll be able to find somebody you're really supposed to be with because you will have figured out who you are and how you can show people who you are.

and so long as you know all of it is good, don't care what negative comments people give you and push out the negative ones you give yourself. somebody looked at you.. it doesn't mean anything more than that. whatever you thought their glance meant, you really have no idea. maybe it was "i hate that guy", but who are they? some random angry stranger.. who cares? most likely it was "oh, human" because they noticed a shadow or something. i like to say "you're not that special" lol. it's a little counter intuitive to some other sayings. but.. literally.. you aren't that special to most people. you're "that guy" on the street. and 20 seconds later a new "that guy" will pass them. so long as you don't vomit or something you probably won't even become a memory. it sounds a bit odd, but if you take your importance back from everybody you gave it to.. you can become important again. once you can feel better about being you.. others can feel good being around you, and you'll find a girlfriend (my ex non-gf got very angry at me calling me both "perfect" and a "unicorn" in the same angry vomit of words.. which just struck me in a fantastically entertaining way. i'm not used to any compliments let alone from people who i can tell myself don't have ulterior motives to do so... she dumped me saying she "had no idea" i liked her... i can get into it later if you want)

 

[Polymath14]

I've had multiple love interests and two relationships. My first relationship lasted a few months and the relationship that came after that is still going on to this day.

It's a lot easier to get someone to fall in love with you online than it is in person. It was very difficult for me when I first met my girlfriend in person to get used to her but as time went on, it became second nature.

I used to meet a lot of women through forums when I was younger and then afterwards became closer to them over IM. I would suggest you try that. I don't think you necessarily need a girlfriend to comfort you, though. You probably need a friend.

How to keep a girlfriend is a whole other story. I'm even having trouble with this as she's threatened to breakup with me a hundred or so times over the course of our almost ten year relationship because of the way I behave. I don't want to lump it all onto aspergers, but I do think it plays a significant role as some of the source of her unhappiness with our relationship. She thinks I'm a robot sometimes who lacks compassion. Emotions are difficult for me to understand, especially hers. Most of the time our relationship is in a decent spot. I think most of our relationship in one way or another has problems that are formed out of misunderstanding each other.

We're moving in together (just bought a house) and getting engaged.

Being a software engineer has been a pretty good job for an aspie I'd say.