Asperger's and Girls (12 page)

This rule, or set of rules, is so ingrained that when it comes to dating, most people won’t take a second look at someone who doesn’t fit their demographic range.

Our society is rather obsessive about this; every time a famous woman dates a man who isn’t within a few years of her age, there are dozens of TV and entertainment-magazine articles. If the man is more than a few years her senior, the stories are scandalized; if the man is her junior, the stories are exaggerated “you go girl” applause. Either way, the message is clear: being with someone who doesn’t “fit” you makes the relationship the equivalent of a freak show.

In fact, as late as 1967, thirty-eight of the United States of America had laws on the books that made intermarriage of whites with any non-white illegal. Nowadays, we have people who bend over backwards to show how okay it is with them when people of different races marry—once again calling attention to how strange something is with loud and overdone noises of acceptance.

Girls (and guys) with AS are not nearly so likely to take these societal restrictions into account. Many of us lack the social awareness and social skills to efficiently pre-judge people by category. We are just more likely to date and marry people who don’t fit the standard. If the people around us can be accepting of this, the situation is unlikely to be any worse than any other dating or marriage relationship. It may be better, as it may well be based on internal qualities more than external qualities.

My own husband is just thirteen years my senior (not the biggest age gap you’ll find by a long shot). Many people have seen fit to assure me that the gap is no big deal without me asking.

Fortunately for me, my parents had a pact that they made when I was very little. They promised each other that they would not say anything negative about anyone their children dated or married. They knew that such comments divided families and drove many people to become more attached to the guy (or girl) their parents disapproved of.

After all, if you have to defend your boyfriend to your parents all of the time, you are constantly thinking about how great his strengths are and how small his flaws are by comparison. He looks better and better the more they attack him. It creates an us-against-them mentality, as well. Parental disapproval is excellent glue that can cement a relationship quite solidly

Thus, the first time my dad met my husband Gary who is closer to my dad’s age than mine, he made no negative comments to me, even though I think he was a little thrown by the age gap. The reason I think so is that Dad said to me, no less than five separate times, “Well, he seems to be very... mature.”

Dad was trying so hard to say something nice he kind of gave himself away, but I knew about the pact and also that Dad would get used to Gary Now Dad thinks I’ve got a really great husband and says lots of nice things about him.

I’ll always appreciate the fact that when Dad was thrown off my the age difference, the only thing he said was, “He seems very mature.” To me, those words were the sound of the dad who really, really loves me, even if I don’t stay within my own demographic.

Appearances Count, But How?

The next three myths are variations on a theme:

• The way to get yourself a man is to be feminine or dress in a certain way
  
• Act like the kind of person that guys want and you’ll get a guy.
  
• Men are afraid of smart women who speak their minds.
  

These rules are fabulously commonly believed. What one wears on the first date is considered to be of tremendous interest; hiding certain personal traits is considered to be par for the course. I’m not just talking about putting one’s best foot forward; this often involves taking on an essentially false persona.

Fortunately a fairly large number of girls with AS just aren’t comfortable being fake; they may dress up in Star Trek uniforms for conventions, but they’ll be hanged if they’ll wear nylons for a date.

The reality is that parents and friends will often give dubious advice along these lines in the hope of “softening” a girl with AS. The reality is no matter how well intended this advice is, it’s like setting a time bomb.

You see, no one can be fake forever. No one can hide her true self while wearing itchy, impractical clothes forever. At some point reality will kick in. Oh, will it ever!

Don’t try to change a girl with AS in order to help her get a date. Work with her within her own comfort zone, and don’t worry that this means that guys looking for a more standard model will pass her by.

A man who is put off by bluntness will simply not be able to deal with an Aspie long-term. A person to whom a specific kind of appearance is vital is not going to be able to cope with a woman whose dress-sense must take into account both sensory issues and an inordinate amount of time spent in hobbies such as, say, feral cat capture-spay/neuter-release programs or anything involving horses.

For me, being guy-bait just never happened. After I had been married to Gary for some years, I was talking to a good friend (a research psychologist with a strong interest in relationship psychology). I mentioned that while pictures from my teens and twenties showed I was pretty cute, somehow I’d never attracted many guys, while my (no-less-adorable) kid sister had to beat them off with a stick.

My friend replied, “Jenn, you do beat them off with a stick!”

She went on to explain that my attitude toward guys in general involved challenging them in “guy” areas, such as computers, and basically meeting them much more on a guy level than a feminine one. She told me that my behaviors were a giant signal to any guy who might be interested to BACK OFF.

I did find this information useful, not because I wanted to attract guys, but because I wanted to be less off-putting and more approachable to other humans when it was appropriate to be so.

More importantly, when this conversation took place, not only had I been happily married for several years, but also this same research psychologist had asked me for relationship advice several times. She felt I had one of the best marriages she’d ever seen.

Popular beliefs that encourage you to hide your true self really are just myths. You don’t find your one true love by being fake; you find him by living your life and being the best version of you that you can achieve. A girl or woman with AS isn’t going to find her best life by trying to be neurotypical, but rather by striving to be the best darn Aspie she is able to be.

The advantage of this is that if you try to be your best YOU, you have permanent benefits that will last all of your life, whether you are alone, married, or in-between. The Aspie who is taught to be someone she can’t really be won’t have permanent benefits, but rather permanent stress.

Where Is the Love?

Where to find love is a matter of much conjecture, but most people seem to start in the areas indicated by the next two rules.

• Opposites attract.
  
• Heavily social places and events are good places to meet people.
  

We have a society that believes both that “birds of a feather flock together” and that “opposites attract.” The fact is that massive amounts of data tell us that people who have much in common are most likely to get along and feel they have a good relationship from date one straight through to late in marriage.

Girls with AS, even more than boys with AS, are often bombarded with variations on the idea that being more social and being a better person are the same. Females in our society are expected to be the social glue that holds families and pretty much every social group together. The anthropologists and social psychologists call a lot of this kin keeping, and females are the kin keepers.

Thus the pressure to be sociable is even greater for girls with AS than for boys. The pressure is pretty heavy on most kids with AS; the reasoning seems to be that if someone has a “disability” that makes them less interested in social activities, the “cure” is to make them be more social. (This seems to me much like curing broken legs through a regimen of jogging.)

The message sent is social=good, anti-social or asocial=bad. People with strong social skills are presented as being just plain better.

In the dating world, many of the standard places people go hunting are social realms, such as dance clubs, bars, and parties. A large fellowship group or other large faith-related social occasion is supposed to be ideal. If social=good, then looking for a fellow in these places is good, right?

Not really. It is nearly impossible to get to know people in places that are sensory nightmares, even for the neurotypicals. And the people who shine under those circumstances, the ones we are most likely to notice, are the highly sociable types.

After all those years of being pushed to imitate and hang out with the most sociable and socially skilled kids at school, many girls with AS will pick out just such people at social events. We’re just following a pattern we’ve been taught. For us most social occasions are something we do because we have to or because we’ve been told that we ought to. For the fellows who thrive in those places, social occasions are the best thing ever. See a problem coming? I thought you would.

Dating (or, heaven forbid, marrying) a fellow with a high level of social interests and needs can put a girl with AS in quite a pickle. She is trying to be good by following the rules about socializing that have been pounded into her head, but the actual social situations are stressful outings that involve both constant alertness and careful mimicry of others’ behaviors.

After a night out or group outing, an Aspie can be very drained and will need quite a bit of alone time for recovery. Meanwhile, Mr. Wonderful has been recharged through social interaction, and is ready to invite the gang over for pizza and a movie.

Aspie girls need solitude for recharging and for processing what has happened that day, as well as for general thinking and just for the pleasure of it. Sociables often find solitude irksome and will try to remedy or prevent it.

You see, the “empathy” thing works both ways. We have difficulty empathizing with sociables; they have just as much trouble empathizing with us. A sociable guy will
know
that solitude is boring and draining, and try to rescue his Aspie gal-pal from it.

The well-trained girl with AS, who has been taught that more sociable is
better
, may well try to go along with this, and strain herself to the brink of snapping. Or even go past the brink.

When that snap happens, watch out! A girl or woman with AS who has been sociable when she needed solitude is not going to mince words. The word “meltdown” does not do it justice. A person who is strained to her utmost ability to cope and then asked to do just a little more will have plenty of rage and no emotional resources for recovery. It’s not a pretty thing.

This isn’t just a dating and relationship issue, of course. Well-meaning parents and teachers can strain a girl with AS in the same way if they don’t understand the value of solitude and the stress of the social world. When romantic hopes and feelings are added to the mix, it can make for much more pain.

A girl with AS who wants to date the “right” kind of guy (can you say, “rule bound?”) and get both his and her family’s approval may do her best to patch it up with the fellow and go back to trying to fit his social whirl. The result can be a vicious cycle that will only end with a sad and ugly break-up.

What’s really sad is that the above is a best-case scenario. The reality is that there are two much more likely results for girls with AS who are pushed to go out to clubs and parties to try to meet guys.

One likely scenario is that girls (or guys) with AS will wind up being wallflowers and going home empty handed. That bald statement doesn’t quite express what the experience is like. Going on your own, milling around trying to find someone or some group that will let you join in, and then going home on your own adds up to real misery.

Being in a situation where one is judged purely on outer appearances and social finesse is not a good idea for girls with AS or other human beings.

The other most-likely scenario is sadly common. When a girl with a low level of social skills and/or a poor ability to read people goes to a highly social scene, she will stand out to the users in the crowd. The harder she is trying to meet people, the more she will stand out as a target. The victimizers, as well as the careless narcissists, will often pick her out.

Guys with great social skills who
use
women—for sex, for loans they’ll never pay back, or for sheer ego-boost—exist in every club, party, and bar. The fellow who knows all the right things to say and can stay up talking romantic nonsense all night in order to get that cash loan will be around. Avoiding social hot spots is a good way to get to know as few of these guys as possible.

That last section begs the question: how can I say at one point that girls with AS are likely to be attracted to guys regardless of social boundaries and at another that girls with AS are likely to be attracted to the kind of guy they have been taught is the “right” kind?

The reality is that the treatment and education that girls with AS get is very different from case to case. A girl who has an accepting family and who gets support from professionals who respect who she is will not be tightly bound by societal rules of who to date. A girl who is pushed to be the sociable, “normal” girl that she really can’t be will learn a lot of rules that are contrary to who she is and will cause her great pain as her “rule bound” Aspie nature ties her up in others’ expectations.

What the AS Girl DOES Need

Now that I’ve gone through the things that
don’t
work, there is an important question to address—exactly what is a girl with AS, or parent who wants to help, supposed to do about relationships and dating?

There are three main points that are of importance here: first, that not being “normal” is just fine; second, that the most important relationship skills are actually friendship skills; and third, that when it comes to the basic facts and problems of sex, ignorance is a very bad thing.