Published on 12, July, 2020
So here's a question of sorts that has kind of followed me around for many years and i wondered if other NDs felt a similar way or if it's just me...Ever since I can remember my emotions have been very confusing / vague I have 3 important people in my life my son, my mum and my ex wife (who I probably drove mad during our marriage with my behaviour though we get on great now and she is actually my carer so that's ok.) These three are the ones who I care about and who care about me but ive never really known what else I should feel and by that I mean love !!! I have never really known what that is I know if anything happened to one of these three I would be upset but that would most likely be in a self centred way as in how their loss would affect me. I often visualize scenarios in which harm befalls one of These three and to be honest my feelings are quite flat I know I should feel more but I don't know what that should be honestly there are times I get more upset when im interrupted or something happens that throws out my process or schedule or if I do something stupid like dropping something picking it up and dropping it again I feel like someone unseen is making this happen and I can get very agitated or angry...So i guess my question is do other NDs feel like this or am I alone in my behaviour ?
Hello Giddy,
No, I don't think you are alone. I've experienced - we probably all have - that crazy feeling that comes when we first fall in love with someone else. 'Romantic' love, for want of a better term. Whenever that's happened to me, it has tended to completely overtake me. I'm thinking about the person all the time, I can't sleep, I can't concentrate. I'm literally love-sick. But then, once that's subsided, I've always been left with this strange vacant feeling. Almost, you could say, a kind of indifference towards that person. Time after time, throughout my handful of unsuccessful relationships over the last 40-odd years, I've ended up feeling an affection for that person at best - much as I might feel towards a friend. I wouldn't call it love, though. People have told me - those who've been in long-term relationships or years of marriage - that it changes. Which of course it does. We can't have that romantic thing forever. But those people have told me that the changes make it stronger. And this I've never found to be the case. Maybe I've just always found the wrong person. Or maybe I'm simply predisposed not to really love someone else. I was married just once, to a woman I fell head over heels for. I was 40 at the time, so I figured I was old enough to be over that adolescent stuff - and that this time, it was real. We married within a year of meeting. We had a huge amount in common. She was like the special sister I never had. But within two years of our marriage, things were already breaking down. I felt huge affection for her. But we should simply never have married. We should have stayed friends instead. By the third year, we were two separate people simply living under the same roof. I found certain things irritating about her - and instead of overlooking those, instead of compromising on things, I used those as a further reason to detach myself from her. It was the first time in my adult life that I'd cohabited, and I found it very difficult. Having someone else in my house changed my psychological state. I wanted to be alone. When we finally divorced, after just under five years, I felt cold and numb. I was indifferent to her deep unhappiness. I couldn't even touch her. When she told me that she wanted us to break contact and never see one another again, it hurt me deeply. A few times afterwards, it caught me out and I would end up in tears over something small. It haunted me, too - the fact that I could behave like that towards her. When I finally had therapy - with the therapist who first identified what seemed to be ASC at the root of my problems - my attitude to my ex-wife was one of the things picked up on as possible evidence.
As to my mother... she was the most important person on earth to me. My rock and anchor. She meant so much to me that I didn't ever move far away from her during her life. I saw her at the very least twice a week. Often it was every day. I turned down opportunities to move away, even to emigrate, to be around for her. I was her full-time carer in her final months of life. I couldn't imagine my life without her being there. When she finally passed away last year, though, I entered a kind of emotional stasis. I got rationally on with dealing with her affairs, arranging the funeral, clearing her home. I never really shed any tears. She will remain the most important person who's ever been in my life, and I think of her every day. Every week, I visit the place where her ashes are scattered, and I talk to her. I have photos of her in my flat, and lots of memorabilia. But.... I'm fine, really. I never thought I could be this way without her. But I am. I think, in some ways, my independence - rooted, perhaps, in my autism - has made me self-reliant, and able to maintain a kind of emotional detachment.
Maybe some of that will resonate with you.
i never really felt that much one way or another my ex used to say "I love you" and then look at me waiting for me to say the same i would just reply "ok" which she wasn't happy with so i started answering with "love you too" but they were just words to me i liked having her around but that was it ive been on my own 15yrs now and im quite happy with that
i really can't abide lovey dovey crap i just don't get it at all
I find it hard to say, too. My ex-wife would say it to me, and my response would be much as yours - which she always took to mean that I didn't love her. It wasn't that I didn't love her. It was that I didn't know what I felt - whether it was 'love' or not.
I also couldn't say it to my parents, for some reason. I know it was 'understood', though.