The question I want an answer to is:
Do MOST PEOPLE, actually feel love for who they're with, or do they stay with who can give them things and make them feel special?
Mostly make them feel special.
Aspies feel love. They may not express it the way other people want it expressed. Then again a lot of people express love in a way the loved person may not like.
To say we don't really love or only love selfishly is very unfair. How many Aspies have been treated like crap by siblings or parents and still love them?
One might just as well ask if normal people are able to love aspies in an unselfish way.
YES!!@!!!!!!! D:<
Okay, so one can argue that the whole Wojciech thing can just be a crush, but a crush usually lasts from a week to a couple months. This one lasted 3/4 of a year. Tells you something about being on the right track, correct? I'm trying to get a chance to at the very least see this guy alive (and not just in a photo). I keep failing, but I STILL TRY. If this were a regular crush, I may have given up a long time ago. And trust me, I give up on things easily. What motivates me to do all this for something so seemingly small and overlookable? Love.
Yes, it's obsessive. Yes, I act like a movie character about it. Yes, it's onesided because he doesn't know. But I WANT him to know. I want this to work for me. For us. Love doesn't come in only one form. It is different for each relationship. No matter how hopeless it sounds, it's still love.
Well Aspies do feel love we all are human.
Yes.
In my case, this manifests as:
1) Extreme interest in looking at nice girls, I mean, really extreme. For example, on a bus, I can be looking at a nice girl and completely dream away (not even thinking anything sexual).
2) Getting totally obsessed with a girl, even if she does not want me. This keeps going for years and will not go away even if she makes it clear she does not want me. HOWEVER I will NEVER actually harass her in any way. In fact, with this girl, she did not even know for 2 years that I felt anything for her! She had a relationship and I knew I didn't have any chance, and so I never told her, and she never even noticed anything about me being interested in her. And even now, though sometimes I just have an uncontrollable urge to tell her (online) what I feel for her, I do not bother her with it and all too often I ask her whether she does not feel uncomfortable with me occasionally saying such things.
I feel love so strongly sometimes that it's overwhelming and scares people... because I don't always know how to express it in a way that people can take and I used to not be able to feel strongly about someone without me smothering them.
I have learned a lot though... and thankfully my kids LOVE to be loved as much as I can dish out.
Witty response to top question:
Do Aspies really feel love for others?
Do NTs really think logically?
Witty response to top question:
Do Aspies really feel love for others?
Do NTs really think logically?
That made me laugh.
I agree with Seven. I have that over abundant "WOW" feeling when the love response gets activated and can be both smothering and silly. I also do the Dante thing (pining for Beatrice). I was in love with a man for almost two years now-- only to find out that he does not love me (even though we are very close friends). I sometimes mistake other displays of interest for affection, which is a problem. (was in his case)Otherwise I tend to be critical of myself and others when they present problems. I'm not being cold, but I want to help solve the problems, not sit in a morass and do nothing. Whining rarely helps anything.
forgot something:
Oh stop with the machine hate. Just because NT's compare us to robots doesn't mean we should put the hate off on the robots or AIs (even just characters). That irks my duck. Are we going to go around kicking the Ford Ernies (home robot concept, very cool, should be in production in a few years) just because they're machines? What does that sound like? Oh, NTs hating on stuff that isn't like them.
As far as Star Trek. I believe Data had emotions (better, I'd say, than most of the characters) he just couldn't explore them because everyone was telling him he didn't. The emotion-chip was a cop out on the character. I think the relation to an Aspie might not be so much in his actions, but in the fact that just because his weren't "human typical" didn't mean they weren't there. I agree though, he is not a textbook Aspie or Autie.
Heh. Yet another vote for "Yes, of course we feel love".
We may be perceived as not feeling love, because we don't know how to communicate it very well. For example, some of us don't like touch, and so might not hug/kiss/etc.; many of us are introverts, so that the five hours a week we spend with someone may mean that we really, really love them, when an extrovert's five hours might just mean an acquaintance relationship. We can't read emotions very well; so that being perceptive enough to predict and thus be "in tune" with someone we love is a skill that can come only with time. We might not want to look into somebody's eyes.
We don't know how to detect emotional needs, though physical ones are obvious enough to us... We may not detect that a friend is sad because a pet just died, or know how to help them; but we do want to help them... It is much easier to help someone in a material way; my primary way of showing someone I like them is to help them with some bit of work, or give them something, or do something for them. We are just more concrete in showing love than NTs are; and we might be clumsy about showing it, but we do feel it.
Love, in a basic way, is simply wanting the best for the person you love. That is a very concrete concept, one an Aspie can easily understand and feel.
And Aspies learn, just like anyone else; and while social skills might be hard, we can learn them, just like someone who's dyslexic can eventually learn enough to read and understand Shakespeare--it just takes effort and maybe a little tutoring. When the thing that you need to learn about is a single relationship, it's just like that dyslexic person learning to read a single poem... With practice, familiarity means he gets better at it. Same with an Aspie learning how to interact with only one person--there's so much less to learn about just one person than you need to interact with the whole world.
If you are an NT in a romantic relationship with an Aspie, I recommend simply asking, "Do you love me?"--maybe in writing, in an e-mail or something, so that the Aspie isn't blindsided by such a weighty question. Getting a yes-or-no answer isn't certain, of course; you might get something like, "I don't know yet." And that's OK; because that's true of a lot of NT relationships, too.
Yes I do feel love, Infinitely more so than NT's of my age!
I just have a bit of trouble expressing it...
I consider the question a bit offensive...
Do NT's feel love, or is it just physical attraction meant to pass off as love?!!
Instinctively, I want to say "of course we feel love; we're people, aren't we?" But then I realize, I don't really know. Never having experienced life as anyone but myself, I can't know for sure whether I experience love, or any other emotion differenly from other people. I know I express myself differently, but I really have no idea whether or not the underlying feelings are the same. So, yes, I'm sure aspies/autistics, myself included, do feel love. But whether it's the same as other people feel love, I don't know. I doubt aspies/autistics love more or less than neurotypicals, but perhaps we tend to love differently. Maybe we all love differently; I don't know.
I think sometimes I've witnessed NT's assuming that love = emotion and they are lost when the emotion is gone and don't know how to 'be loving' if they don't feel it. I think this is why many people give up on relationships when they are going through a bad patch.
One of the things my husband says he really loves about me is how loyal and consistant I am in my love for him. Even if I'm not always showing it in obvious ways, he can COUNT on me. And I've noticed this with my aspie friends. Once they love you, you're in and they will be there and it takes a LOT to offend... and they are willing to work things out. Where as with some of my NT friends (not all of them) it's very easy to offend and they are quick to move on to more exciting people.
It might not be across the board this way, it's just tendencies I've noticed.
My loyalty and devotion coupled with lack of being able to percieve when someone has 'lost interest' and assuming everyone is as loyal as I am has led to seriously painful realizations that someone who once WAS my friend, isn't anymore. And I just didn't get it...
So, to me TRUE LOVE is not just how you feel, but how you hang in there and are on their side and loyal to them. In that way, I would say NT's often lack love, even though they are extremely affected - they rely on that too much and don't always know how to use their BRAIN to love people.
Truly though - I have learned a ton from my NT friends and husband on how to express emotions and affection in ways that they can understand - and it's been mutual. Many of them tell me they learn from me too.