Aspies For Freedom

I have never had a problem with impulsive or risk taking behavior.
Drugs, just say no.  Sex, just say later.  Alcohol, say the same, but not when driving.  Credit cards, treat them like fire or nuclear fission, useful if kept under control, dangerous if uncontrolled.  

Eating disorder, that is debatable.

I wonder if Asperger is associated with any enhanced effects of the prefrontal cortex (we never get into trouble much).  I am thinking of the video for Rock the Cradle of Love by Billy Idol (the restrained geeky business dressed guy is such a contrast to the wild girl)

It sort of seems like RoboCop, additional Prime Directives such as
4.  Don't go out with non-Christians or
5.  Don't date co-workers (tenacious, I am not sure you fully understand the significance of this among those of us who have careers, some might say past co-workers too, this is no cake walk CJ, especially if a company attracts excellent men and women)

I admit anything else is stupid really

and sounds similar to Tim Homer
1.  Date an Aspie
2.  Date a liberal
3.  Sex by the third date (I remember that from either Roy Valentine's The System or How to Succeed with Women by Ron Louis and David Copeland)

CJ, yes, we have had marriages here too.  I think five or six, but it usually means
a. usually, one employee left after the relationship started (in all but one case, she did) or
b. in one case, a wedding last March, she left before the relationship started

The most recent of these was March.

It troubled me because I had to reflect on it.  Was it my fault for being single because I followed the strong suggestion of Company policy to not even consider so much as a previous co-worker as a date?

I was happy for them, though.  

Several of the things I figured out as a result of this were

1.  If I can maintain a watertight emotional bulkhead between things like being single and being an excellent employee, I need not lose my job and become an out-and-out total loser.
2.  In the agricultural era Saudi Arabia was a desert, a WASTE land.  NO VALUE.  In the industrial era Saudi Arabia is a land of treasure (oil): the oil in fact was always there, at least as long as people were on the planet, but people did not know they needed oil, nor did they bother to drill looking for it.
     Maybe in the computer era people will give the technophile Aspies a lot more positive attention, huh?  I am a Web developer
     Japan is a land with few raw materials, except for the best kind: the one between the ears.

We also have and have had some relationships short of marriage.  One has lasted years.  Sadly, a former colleague had a daughter with yet another former colleague who ultimately dumped her.  The woman helped me find a great apartment close to the office and also got me out of an Aspie mess, and she deserved better, but look on the bright side, the little girl is adorable like her mom.

Our employee manual indicates "office romances" are "discouraged" and furthermore indicates

"distracting"
"disruptive"
"working relationship between co-workers is often irreparably damaged"
"additional dangers of perceived or actual favortism"
"potential for sexual harassment litigation against employees and the Company"

I might add  "if you lose both your job and your heart over it, you might be fairly close to a complete loser"

It is no cake walk, CJ.  We attract great people.  It is hard to find great people outside these walls.  People outside these walls have a harder time understanding people like us and don't try nearly as hard.  Every company has its front line people in certain departments.  One of the arms of this company does conference planning.  That branch is all female and disproportionately young, blond, and trim.  It is not just talent and intelligence and somehow the sociologist in me wonders if it is not an accident.  (We discussed this at lunch once: flight attendants do need to be thin to move through airline seats, but do they need to be young?)  

Usually positive imagination (not getting personal, mind you) helps, to remind oneself that It Could Happen To You (and Maybe It Will.... And It Could Happen Like This.....)

I need to add something my Chinese colleague said

Marriage is like a city under siege,
everyone outside wants to get in and everyone inside wants to get out

From the looks of Wikipedia, Monica Lewinsky was about 22 to 23 during her relationship with President Clinton.  I don't think her prefrontal cortex was fully formed yet.  

I think Al and Ziggy would have given Monica a 98.7% chance of completely ignoring me or shooting me down, by comparison to the President.

I guess that is why I am skittish about dating under 25, knowing that a good percentage of these women are just overgrown children, and psychological theory is on my side here.

No, CJ, the employee manual does not prohibit friendships

My office neighbour is trying to get me to drink more water, attend more meetings of Overeaters Anonymous during the week (each session has a temporary deterrent effect against misbehaviour), do multiple gym visits per week (we are members of a Golds Gym across the street, they recruited our staff, including me, as members in 2000 when it was $25 a month and never raised the rate, there was an original one time fee as well but that was 7 years ago and now they are sorry they stuck with it), drink more water, and lay off the snack machine and candy dish for visitors (it is Halloween next Wednesday)

I have friends at church and from college.  

It is the romantic relationships I have trouble with.

Max, are the workplace marriages more resistant to divorce?

And I would pencil in..... if you do lose a love and a career in pretty much the same fell swoop, it is really going to hurt.

At least it isn't so bad being single if nobody can deny your professionalism, intelligence, and dedication to your work, the respect of your colleagues is very important, especially if they can sense that you are dealing with something emotionally heavy and still carrying on....

Has anyone ever been in shoes like this?

"I know it is really hard for _______ to get noticed by members of the (same or alternate) gender, but (he or she) still carries on, every day, doesn't say a word about it.... I hope those dumb people out there wake up and get a clue."

or

"I know (he or she) likes me but (he or she) will never say it because (he or she) respects me as an equal in the Office family.  I know it is hard on (him or her) and I really respect (him or her) for carrying on with dignity through all this garbage about how (women or men) treat (men or women) who are (overweight, Asperger, disabled, and/or _____)."

"I respect ____ for keeping (his or her) feelings to (himself or herself), that is what we do here.  We are fair, we are supportive.  We cannot let feelings run free or we will have prejudice, or meanness, or hurtfulness, or poor harmony.  And that is double and triple for our managers.  The superiority of our management and our customer service is in our self control, and keeping feelings where they belong."

When compared to my GS-13 Branch manager in the Census Bureau (blew her stack on a matter related to differences in gender, ethnicity, and education), the difference is night and day.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

CJ, I do make friends at Company related functions, and at church-related functions, causally.

Cases in point:

1. January 2006: After meeting a co-worker in accounting's married daughter, it isn't long before I neglect my own date and the daughter has to encourage me to pay attention to her.  But we find much mutual interest in things like end times prophecy, if memory serves also the peak oil thesis (oil production is going to decline as consumption only increases), Hurricane Katrina and the like.

2.  Summer 2006: I am also hitting it off well with an employee of another contractor whom ours is working with at a Happy Hour near K Street in Washington.  Coincidentally, you guessed it, she's married too.

3.  I also had a supportive friendship with one of our co-workers who later left us for Seattle.  Again, entirely platonic.

4.  Church: it seems I am always running into other intelligent people with some mild angle or interest in world events or international affairs, especially as we have members from Estonia, Ghana, and Angola.  One elderly fellow suggested group museum trips (it seemed to suck, I think).  

---------------------------------------------

Romantic affairs seem to be more complex than friendships.  As Groovy Druid suggested, "...you got her to like you, not love you."  I do the liking thing all the time, I have personality, intelligence, good character and some humor.

The times when I make friends are almost the times when romance is ruled out.  I think it says

1.  People always appreciate having fun, and especially with others with common interests
2.  People always appreciate others with personality, humor, and character
3.  People always need friends, and friends do not compete for existing friends or for lovers

------------------------------------

Commentary, CJ

Yes, I would say after being ignored occupationally and being kicked around for six months in the Census Bureau I have the occupational equivalent of an excellent marriage, with the exception that the river is getting dry.

Our management would have kicked my Census manager around for six months.  We realise that self control and keeping our feelings out of our work is important.  Some people actually make GS-13 without figuring that out, though.

We have the same excellent co-worker environment Census had.

We don't have the same in-house amenities (libraries, gyms, banks, stores) the Suitland (Maryland) Federal Center has (the SFC also has a wall topped with barbed wire) but we have a strip mall across the street with a chain supermarket, two restaurants, video store, bank, and gym.  

We don't have any barbed wire, but South Arlington is not Suitland, you can walk home at night, our managers don't say, live in Falls Church or Annandale where it is safer.  We have maybe more bus routes in our area (Metrobus 23 and 10 and Alexandria DASH) than Suitland did.  

Nobody mails us fireworks and makes us evacuate the building (and puts a SkyFOX shot of my fat body on the FOX 10 PM news), although contemporaneous with the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, what choice did we have?

Would somebody else (Devil's advocate?) also agree with?

"I know GuessWho likes me and I wish GuessWho would say it out loud?  Silence is kind of disturbing."  

compared to

"No, I never really liked GuessWho anyway, although we are parallel in formal education.  (Maybe) He is too old."

You know, Lucie1 is very nice.  Let me float a question, how close are you, Lucy, to Washington, DC?  Are you even on the same continent?

Gideon did introduce me to his sister.  She was working as a domestic.

I talked with her (Believe) by phone.  I take it she doesn't get out much.  I am not sure why.  I also didn't see a lot in common with her either.

It is my overly developed pre-frontal cortex.  There always seems to be a little voice in the back of my head that says what if you are sorry, and a woman preacher at my church that keeps reminding me how Christian guys get hurt in mixed faith relationships.

It has not always been easy doing nothing with non-Christian women.   They are often usually quite intelligent and involved with social change and politics.  Frequently the Christian women don't think I am Christian enough for them (so I get unusually low levels of attention from serious Christians and much more attention from borderline Christians and non-Christians).  And until I was 22 I wasn't saved either.

I think I most disliked doing nothing with respect to one woman named Julie, but I never heard her say anything Christian, and I mean, at all.

Actually the opposite is true.  I had a painful experience with a Christian whose boyfriend strongly prevailed upon her to lose me or else.... he'd beat me up.  So that was sufficient enough to discourage me from Christian fellowship for about a year and a half, and even then it was for lack of an alternative.  

For about 14 months I went from a 3.6 GPA to under a 2.0.  It was a nuclear winter emotional situation.  

I had figured out that Christians under 25 were vulnerable to all sorts of weaknesses.  After graduation I met a bunch of thirty something family people, workers, parents, spouses, home owners, mature Christians.  They stood up much better to my kind of testing and harassment.  Eventually I figured out Jesus was the reason they could and I couldn't (I wanted to live in peace like some of the Buddhist humanists on campus could but I couldn't, before I was a Christian).