# What's it like



## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

I am still looking for help. I am a 58 year old Asperger and I have been married for 38 years. During our marriage she has had at least one EA/PA and during our separations she had had sex with at least seven others. Our marriage has been sexless for 24 years. I am not happy that all of this has happened but it doesn't really bother me, except that I can get very angry and depressed because of our lack of intimacy. Since my diagnosis my life has started to work, I have lost wieght, rebuilt much of my health and would like to have sex, but I'm sort of lost.
What does it feel like to be in love, to want some one and to be wanted back? How do I love someone when for most emotions the best I can do is mimic them? My wife is not giving me "red flags", her phone and computer are open to me and I know where she is and who she is with at all times (as she knows me) so I know she isn't cheating. I can't because of who I am. 
I have a limited grasp on these emotions, but would like to feel at least some of them. Can anyone tell me?


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## PBear (Nov 16, 2010)

So what's the question?

C


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## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

I guess what I'm asking is where do I start, what does it feel like to be in love, to be wanted and to understand the pain of loss? I don't feel any of these things and I don't want to live and die half a person.


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## TBT (Dec 20, 2011)

When you first got married did you not feel something?


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## Drover (Jun 11, 2012)

why dis you get married & stay married if you didn't feel those emotions? does it bother you when she cheats, given you don't feel those emotions?


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## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

I don't know. We had dated a long time and it was expected that we would marry.I was 20 and my wife 19, but we lived in a rural area and most of my friends were already married. At the time I thought I was in love.


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## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

Drover, There seems to be a wide range of qualities that Apies can have. I am a great mimic of emotions, and have the qualities of devotion and commitment in my make up. I am also very logical. My wife and I talked about what happened in her EA/PA and I understood. I thought when we were separated that she would date. Only since I started reading on TAM did I realize there might be other ways of feeling about it. Now I am struggling with that. The emotions I feel most strongly are anger, frustration, saddness, without the positive to balance them.


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## Bellavista (May 29, 2012)

Aspergers people have a limited ability to really feel connected to others. Many male aspergers have the emotional capacity of a 10-13 year old.

I think you need to stop trying to force yourself to 'be like other people' and work with what you have. See if there is a therapist you can work with, but really, you are the way your brain is wired with autisim spectrum disorders.


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## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

Bellavista: Thank You for your comments. That is why I am here. I am seeing a therapist and we are trying to figure out how I am wired. I can adapt to respond to peoples feeling very effectively, but I never understood that I had an emotional deficite till the diagnosis. I would like to know where the feelings end and the minic begins.


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## Gaia (Apr 27, 2012)

Maybe its not really a mimic. I havent been quite sure how to respond to your other post but have been thinking about it. Maybe at some level you do feel these emotions and the ones you dont feel so strongly about.... You amplify through this mimic thing? Im sorry if im not all that helpful thinking. What exactly do you think love should feel like?

Btw to your question on your other thread... Yes it is.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Bellavista (May 29, 2012)

Something I have noticed with our grown aspergergers son is that he seems to feel the negative emotions on a stronger scale than the positive.


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## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

Bellavista: Do you also find he respond physically to strong negative emotions, ie stomach cramps, pain,? As a child I did and as you say, I was considered emotionally immature. As you no doubt know ASD subjects will exhibit a broad range of possible behaviours, and one Aspie can be very different from another. I teach two Aspie kids and work with another at the High School level.
Gaia: And there in lies my problem, I don't know. When I think of my wife, and I have a very strong attachment to her, I feel empty. When she introduced me to her dates when we were separated, I felt nothing and when she asked if we could work on reconcilling, I felt a little relief.
I worked as a Teminal Care Nursing Aid in university, and was regarded as one of the most effective and caring Aids, but I did feel any pride, nor was I affect by a patient's death. I have coached girl's rugby and basketball and I am told the girls adore me. I support them tell them how proud of them I am, but win, lose I feel no joy and take no pleasure from it, except at a very shallow level. I was cheated on by a woman I nearly married. Years later she asked me why I didn't fight to get her back, that was what she wanted. I had taken her at her word when she said she had a new guy.
That is why I am so intent on learning more about feeling.


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## RandomDude (Dec 18, 2010)

> I was cheated on by a woman I nearly married. Years later she asked me why I didn't fight to get her back, that was what she wanted.


... :rofl:
Some women can be so stupid



> That is why I am so intent on learning more about feeling.


I don't know how one can really intellectually understand let alone truly express the feelings linguistically that take part emotionally =/

However based on Bellavista's observations negative emotions can, and will block the rest. In fact I use negative emotions to help put certain emotions of mine into lockdown, sometimes subconsciously which confuses me other times consciously to protect my own mental state.


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## Gaia (Apr 27, 2012)

Have you ever felt extremely happy, content, excited, ect at random?
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

No. I am never satisfied with anything, I don't think I have ever been happy or excited. I can act like it though.
Random: I understand what you mean and I'm not sure I disagree with you. It is, unfortunately, the only way I can get a sense of what is going on in me. Yes I do feel things but it tends to be viceral and it is most often anger, anxiety, fear or sadness. It leaves very few tools to deal with problems.


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## curious2 (Jan 13, 2013)

I admittedly dont know very much about aspergers. I do understand that there can be a "flatness" emotionally but if you can feel negative emotion I dont see why you wouldnt be able to feel the positive. Maybe it has something to do with the defense mechanisims you developed to keep more intense negative feelings at bay. They must be heavily ingrained having gone undiagnosed for so long. If there were truly a lack of care you wouldnt feel sadness, anger, frustration or even the relief you felt when your wife came back.

Its difficult to put the feelings your asking about into words.

I am sure now that you are diagnosed and are seeing a therapist you will in time more fully experience a full range of emotions both negative and positive.


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## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

Curious, Its the level and depth of the emotions. I suspect that the body's reaction to negatives is stronger than the positives and it might have something to do with brain chemicals and receptors, but I don't know. I am never sure exactly what I feel, and I find it impossible to read how other people are feeling. As you said its hard to explain. I thought, as a child, that everybody was like me, I had to get older to realize my deficits. 
I realize that what I am asking is difficult, but have read TAMS and posted with people on TAMS I am at least starting to understand, but its mostly how to fall out of love, or the struggles around love. It took me till now to realize I do carry anger and resentment and that it shapes my reactions. I would like to find a balance, if that is possible. There are times when I just suck at being human.


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## curious2 (Jan 13, 2013)

I dont have aspergers and there are times when I dont know exactly how I feel particularly when those feelings are intense and sometimes even when they are not I have trouble expressing them. Feelings can be overwhelming and hard to pinpoint. Sometimes there are so many feelings hitting you at once and they can be conflicting.

From what you've written, you have a handle of others emotions and are able to comfort and encourage...look back at what you wrote, even if it is mimicking to some degree.

Dont say you suck as a human being. It isnt true. Tell that to the girls you coach who adore you or the sick people you cared for!

Just because you are more accustomed to more difficult emotions and so have a better understanding of them doesnt mean you cant experience or understand positive emotions.

You cant have the positive without the negative or vice versa..ie...you couldnt experience sadness if you've never known what it is to be happy...etc...

We all have deficits and weaknesses.

Give yourself time and you will find that balance you're looking for. Its there. You just need to recognize and develop it.


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## Thinkitthrough (Sep 5, 2012)

Curious2; To a degree yes there are some things that I feel at a very muted level, other times its a physical reaction and in most cases, nothing. I can act like I love the dog, or the cat, and though I have a strong connection to my wife, I can't say I feel it. I was the same with her as without her. When my mother died I felt nothing, except that everything my brother had done for the visitation and the funeral, even the music, pissed me off. I know emotion intellectually because as I go intoa situation I am always thinking and worrying about what is the correct reaction. 
I would love to be impressed by a piece of art, a sunset or the mountains. I would like to tell my wife I love her, and feel it.


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