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Anonymous (reply to Anonymous)

Hello, I'm the one who made the anonymous comment that you're replying to. Just to reply to what you've said:

"It's not hate and bigotry. It's people not wanting to get hurt badly by the real problems AS can bring to a relationship. Specifically, to the NT partner. Other people's not wanting to get hurt by you is not bigotry against you."

What I'm seeing in the comments are a lot of value judgements about AS people and it's these value judgements that I see as hatred and bigotry. For example, one such comment which I replied to said something similar to "He has no empathy and he'll never understand love. Your daughter shouldn't get involved with him" in response to a mother who was asking about her daughter who's boyfriend has AS. First of all, as someone with AS, I know that this isn't true because we do have emotions, and can love by the way, but just don't always express them well plus there's no evidence that we lack empathic response once we know what a problem is. So, yes, we actually do have empathy, it's just that we don't always pick up on the non-verbals so sometimes you have to tell us verbally. Such a statement is a value judgement because implies that we have no emotions simply because we don't always express them like other people. Just because we don't always show emotions does not mean that we don't have them.

"And no, they don't have to line up to get hurt so that you can have a chance at romance; that's not fair either."

This is another value judgement and another example of what I'm talking about. So, you're saying that AS people are people that shouldn't be in relationships because they'll only end up hurting anyone who they're in a relationship with? If you don't want to deal with AS related issues fine but there are other people who have had successful relationships with aspies, so it's not your place to make a judgement call that we shouldn't be in relationships.

"Much of the AS-perspective advice about relationships boils down to "if they love you, they'll just deal." The irony is that the AS partner really has no idea how much they're lightly suggesting the NT partner deal with, and deal with alone.Yes, it absolutely sucks. But you've got no call to criticize people who describe their own bad experiences with AS partners (and yes, it's very often because of the AS, not because the AS partner had some totally other source of trouble)."

So, to take an example, where in the above article does it say that the NT partner must just deal with the AS issues? I don't see that written anywhere, what I see is advice for the NT partner to tell the AS partner what feeling verbally in order to compensate for their difficulty in picking the non-verbals. If what you're complaining about in AS/NT relationships is a lack of social and emotional reciprocity then following this advice is to make it easier for AS partner to reciprocate, I don't see how it's saying that you must just suck it up and deal with the lack reciprocation.

April 6, 2015 - 1:24pm

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