Aspies For Freedom

Of course, sometimes!
My most profound experiences of intimacy were being at the bedside of each of two dear friends as they were dying.

I believe I'm capable of feeling intamacy, however I can't directly cite an example of me feeling it...

The emotion of jealousy is soemthing that seems truely alien to me... It's something I just can't comprehend. Why would I want something instead of someone else having that thing? (which is essentially what differentiates desire from jelousy. A wanting to have the car instead of your neighbour) It's even less logical when it comes to feelings towards other humans, since... Well... If you love someone, why wouldn't you want them to be happy even if it meant them being with someone else?

Actually, I'm not sure that there is a clear distinction between the terms looking at the definitions in dictionary.com

...The best distinction I've found, though, is that Jelous is something which is something todo with, or arising from, feelings of envy. (Definition 3 on http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=jealous ) Which to me seems to say that there is no difference between jealousy and envy except for something purely contextual. "I feel jealous" vs "I envy", as far as I can tell.

Thanks for the comments so far which have helped clarify my own understanding of intimacy.  In my opinion...

Intimacy is knowing about the other person, being interested in them beyond casual conversation and interaction, spending a lot of time together or talking about important, private things when you are together.

This message board is intimate in that people's deepest fears and confusion is discussed here.  Other message boards on the internet talk about common hobbies, which are not really defining aspects of the person's personality and thus much less intimate.  (Of course an internet message board is anonymous which is not at all intimate...)

Love is an emotional investment in the other person's well-being and romantic love is an emotional investment in the other person's well-being and continued intimacy.

Jealousy is a sense of loss when the other person's romantic love is directed elsewhere and thus the emotional investment is "lost".  Grief is our way of dealing with loss, and hence jealousy is a very sad, angry emotion.  For me, jealousy feels like my world is falling apart because a relationship that was a defining part of my self-image has changed and I need to redefine myself.  

Envy is a desire for something and thus has no grief attached, although it can be emotional.  But the words envy and jealousy may be interchanged, so the definition will really depend on the context.

I love the idea that we can participate in intimacy and love in different ways than usually described - say, by mending or baking.  I'm a baker and mender myself, but never considered those to be intimate activies although my husband talks about them being inappropriate when we are not getting along well or he feels disappointed in my disorganization, so perhaps he considers them intimate, too.

My final point was that if you have no feeling of jealousy, or a mild one that can be dismissed, perhaps it's because your condition gives you a different type of emotional investment in other people.  If you do not incorporate the other person's intimacy/love into your self-image, then losing a friend or relationship does not mean you lose a part of yourself, and sharing a friend or relationship does not mean you risk your personality structure and self-esteem.

There are advantages to the ability to feel jealousy - the intimacy I feel with my husband increases my self-esteem and self-image.  But as noted, it can be disastrous when we have bad times.

M, can you talk with your husband about what your internal experience of the world is like, without putting a label on yourself?  I'm guessing he knows some of your issues, at least from an external pt. of view.

Seems like every culture has a set of expectations for how people should behave and what they should want to see happen in their lives.  M, I wonder sometimes if you feel as if you were born into the wrong culture.  In any case, what you do with your time and energy is between you and your husband.  If both of you are happy with you "spoiling" him, then it's not for others to say you are wrong. You've mentioned in other posts, though, at various times that he wants you to get a job, and that you yourself want to get a job.  In this post, I get the impression that you'd rather not be out in the work world.  Or at least that you're ambivalent. I believe that many neurotypical couples face similar issues...where for various reasons one spouse is unemployed or underemployed.  It's not peculiar to AS.  If you actually do get a job, then your husband might have to lower his expectations for other things you are providing him, so it would be a trade-off.

That's the sense I have about you, from what I've read.  That you'd do just fine in a different day and age. Seems like every culture has its people who seem misplaced.  For myself, I'm grateful not to have been born into a culture where women were really restricted, but my mother, for example, would have hated to have been faced with all the options and pressures that women in contemporary western culture now face.

[quote="tiateale"]Intimacy is feeling joy,security, a sense of wonder, warmth and/or a feeling of wellbeing in the presence of another, it is a "give and take" and "take and give". Giving is caring for the other person and trust is involved in the taking.

I am an Aspie and I was talking to my friends who are NT's especially my one female NT friend.  Sometimes when I talk to my female NT friends that I definitely feel intimacy sometimes and sometimes when I do feel intimacy, and I do like what I am feeling, I get all childlike and funny inside to the point that I can't take it further because I am laughing at myself and feel funny.

how does one deal with feeling funny inside?

Hi LM,

Well, I am not sure what you are suggesting with your recent post.  I am grateful, as well, for your intelligence.  I admire it, and I admire the very rigorous way you go about considering any idea.  I admire equally the fact that you are a housewife and mum, since I think those roles are important and require their own wisdom.  I consider you highly admirable as a thinker, and I think your position as a homemaker does not detract from, but rather enhances, your ability to think through issues.

I think that the topic of intimacy can and ought to be approached from a variety of perspectives.  The evolutionary biological approach and the psychoanalytic approach may yield different and perhaps contradictory conclusions about any feature of human life, like intimacy.  I am open-minded about the insights one can obtain from psychotherapy, and I am also open to the insights you develop using other approaches.

I strongly agree with the funny Richard Dawkins quote at the end of your post!!  I am not a strict cultural relativist by any means.  Our bodies are undeniably implicated with our experiences of being-in-the-world.  There are physical constraints that make extreme cultural relativism look silly.  

Do you think femininity is culturally constructed at all?  Partially?  Or not at all?

I am wholly unfamiliar with theories about autism and Asperger's syndrome.  

I have a high IQ and I distinctly recall, as a young child, the way that my intelligence differentiated me from the rest of my classmates.  Later, as a teenager, I became mindful of the imperative to conform that dominated my social landscape, and I rebelled against it.

Now, I am seeing just how much misery is created when people are asked or compelled to conform to someone else's idea of normal or good.  

I am not very interested in learning about theories of autism personally.... unless those theories can help me with my interest.  I am interested in learning how to facilitate feelings of well-being in myself and in others, who may be like me or unlike me, but who are (equally) entitled to live a happy and healthy life.

I have to say that his definition of cultural relativism is a little overextended into technological relativism for my taste.  Cultures develop to allow groups of people to build, collect and trade the things which they value, and thus bring more value to their lives.  Some cultures value jet airplanes and some do not.  That is cultural relativism, not the technological relativism that Dawkins confuses in this case.  I can value jet airplanes, and thus use them or even fly them, without having to give up the cultural relativism that permits me to appreciate and protect cultures that do not value them.

I know some of these "flakes," and it's not that they don't value our technology, they just don't think it should always be the option of first resort.  They turn to it only as need dictates, not as a matter of default.  Sure, there's the rare individual who utterly devalues these things, but I don't know any of them who fly or even own cars.

Your mileage may vary, especially in California.   :roll:

Lili Marlene, awhile back in this topic you wrote, "We all live inside our own brains."  THANK YOU!  I have felt that for a long time because I don't "empathize" as strongly with others as I think I "should," and my best explanation for that, after years of considering myself to be selfish and "seriously lacking in humanity" (my own words!), has been something like what you said.  I think "empathy," in the sense in which I understand it (feeling other people's pain & sorrow as if it were your own) is overrated.  If someone is in a crisis, what's wrong with her loyal but far-less-emotional friend staying calm & doing practical things that need to be done?  It sure beats having BOTH people incapacitated by grief (at least in MY mind it does)!  I also saw some mention of male brains vs. female brains in this topic, though my (NT-like? ADD-like?) undisciplined little attention span was not up to the task of following the entire debate.  I have often read that women will empathize/commiserate with a suffering friend, whereas men will stay more detached & look at the crisis as a problem to be solved.  I have often thought that I "think like a man" in that respect---I'm not very good at the sharing-of-sorrow part; I'd much rather offer solutions!  Anyway, thank you for confirming that each of us has a unique experience of life & that no one should be expected to know EXACTLY how another person feels!  Maybe I'm NOT so bad after all... :grin:

Ah, you sound like one of my friends...she has no illusions about the menfolk & warns me about their wicked ways, probably because she knows how little sophistication I have & doesn't want me to be led astray!  :lol:  Not that that's likely at this point.  But I must say, I've met many males (as well as females) who are far more sensitive than I am, far more able to grieve for others, and I'm usually glad I don't have that capacity. It seems to bring so much suffering!  I don't know how these sensitive people keep going through all that pain.  Guess I'm thankful to be a brute. :?

Hmmm...does he have some kind of anxiety disorder?  Is he being treated for whatever-it-is?