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Love

Hope

I had the most profound realisation yesterday. All my interests are connected to love and passion. I live passionately, intensely. And this is why real life seems so dull, monotonous, boring and tepid when the surge of passion dissipates. When I get obsessed with something, I experience an altered state of consciousness. Usually I fall in love with an idea, a person, a philosophy or system of thought that is beautiful in its completeness and purpose, or simply an item of clothing. I don't want the object/person/idea to disintegrate, I want it never to go. Its radiance lifts me up onto a cloud, and I feel so overawed and blissful. But it is painful. Feeling this love so intensely also means that the disintegration or loss of that love catapults me into a chasm of bleakness and nothingness. If only it could last! This is why I fear change. Change equals death of order, beauty, perfection, symmetry, love. My life is all about love, but I don't know how to channel the emotion, and I have never received genuine unconditional love. But I am a person who loves deeply and craves love, in the romantic sense.

  • Hi Hope. You describe something that I was revisiting for myself only the day before yesterday! May I offer you some of my random thoughts?

    I've been talking to a parent about 'obsession' with regard to her daughter. I've surprised myself because I don't very often talk to parents - it's such a minefield - but something about the way this lady spoke of her daughter encouraged me. The interesting thing was trying to describe 'obsession' from our point of view. Here's what I said:-

    'Consider, though, that we cannot break [our absorbtion with a subject] even when we are valiantly being present in the shared world. This process will be taking up most of our thoughts. Even if I can put it aside, it won't be long before it insists on being thought about again. It's like an Artesian Well of thought that bursts up under pressure. If I try to do something else, it won't be long before I am forced to abandon it for my current 'obsession'. The process remains the same, even if the subjest matter changes'

    I've longed to be loved for most of my life. It is only since getting my diagnosis that (like my entire life) I've revisited the subject from my new point of view.

    Like you, I am passionate about whatever my current passion is. It becomes all-consuming, and there's definitely a great element of fantasy too. I see things as an idealised picture, and like you say, when a bit of reality creeps in the whole thing tumbles like a collapsing building, leaving both me and the fantasy in ruins.

    I know that I can love and be loved, but I don't know gow it might work. I look back on my failed relationships and think that I must have been incredibly difficult to live with, even though it was never my intention, of course. It would take a very special person to not only love and understand me, but also appreciate my qualities, I think. I don't know what the non-AS attitude to this is, but I've often seen partners of AS people saying how lovely their partner is and how much they appreciate the person.

    So it's possible then, but I still think that it must be hard for a non-AS to understand just how much our condition affects our daily existence. It doesn't stop us from being able to love, but in my case has often lead me to waste it on an unworthy recipient. Of course, I didn't know they were unworthy untill they went away, and often did so in a way that paid me back for being so 'horrible' to them. I don't remember ever being intentionaly 'horrible', it's just that now I understand how 'horrible' some of the manifestations of our condition can be.

    I guess it comes down to meeting the 'right' person, but you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince, One thing that would concern me is our vulnerability. Boys aren't only interested in one thing, but that 'one thing' is certainly a primary objective, and I get upset when I think that AS females are open to the worst kind of exploitation in this respect. In this day and age, one of the saddest effects of our culture of promiscuity is that this 'special' part of a relationship isn't 'special' any more. I don't think we pay any attention to how much trust and intimacy is involved, and someone using us in that way and then walking away is a devastating thing. I feel that I've been used as casually as a piece of toilet paper, and that hurts intensely when it pops up, as it so often does.

    I've thrown myself into new relationships, of any kind, with my usual obsessive passion, only to be dumped as casually as an old pair of shoes, having invested all of my time, money and energy. Watching my investment flushed down the toilet has been easily the worst part, leaving me feeling totally exploited and used. And I don't know about any of the other chaps on here, but I've cried many times because I felt used and abused, when all I wanted was to love be loved.

    I don't think I know how to be loved. Wish I knew the rules for that.