Splashstorm
Member
I recently learned about Asperger's and realized my best friend of 4 years has it. (We're both females; she recently turned 21 and I'm turning 21 in a month.) We were so shocked to learn that there are all these other people like her in the world. A very cool/weird thing I read was that best friends/lovers of aspies are usually extremely intuitive and empathetic, and those are my main traits!
In general, we are total opposites-- I'm crazy, bold, slight trouble-maker, very open & tolerant, super laid-back, and love thinking big about issues of the world and philosophy in general. She is extremely cautious about everything, has high anxiety, goes by rules all the time, not as open about things as me (but she is also very kind, so I can usually convince her to be more tolerant of whatever it is she is against), and she really doesn't care much about the world around her and it's issues. The only thing we really have in common is that we are both wholly kind, open, honest people. Everything else, not so much! We don't even have common interests, so it's crazy how good we are together.
We communicate very well because we are both so open and honest. At first her bluntness hurt my feelings, but we've long-ago talked it out and now I've just accepted that that's just the way she communicates and she isn't trying to hurt my feelings. We talk through all our issues all the time, and we always make up really fast. We don't hold grudges against each other and let those grudges fester and slowly poison the friendship. When we're good, we are actually good, with none of that passive aggressive stuff that I've experienced so often with other friends.
Shortly before I learned she was aspie (about two months ago), we had an epic 3-week falling out, where I almost stopped being best friends with her. My whole life, I've been the type of "warrior" friend that would literally rush into a fire to get my friend and would walk a thousand miles for them. As you all can imagine, I increasingly felt like she wouldn't do the same for me, so I thought the friendship was getting too one-sided and I assumed it was just because she couldn't care about me as much as I did her. I understood she had extreme anxiety, but my thought process was "At the end of the day, if she cared enough, she'd be able to fight through all her fears for me."
In the end, I managed to get myself to really believe that her anxiety was not an "excuse" but a very valid reason why she couldn't do things for me (I understood anxiety was a mental illness, but I'm the type to believe that "love conquers all" so I didn't think fear was a good enough reason), and I had to really come to terms with the fact that maybe it wasn't fair to measure our friendship in the same way I would measure a "normal" friend, because she wasn't "normal."
A few weeks after we made up, I found out about Asperger's, and I read a post where someone with aspie said something along the lines of "My close friends don't understand that even though I really want to do something for them, sometimes I just can't." I was near-tears reading things like that, because it EXPLAINED SO MUCH, and was more proof to me that she did, in fact, care about me a lot, she just couldn't express it in the way I thought it should be expressed.
Getting back with her was one of the best decisions I've ever made. We are stronger than ever, and we've begun exploring the sensual side of our friendship (before, we had both been completely anti-touch-- the only time we touched each other at all was a hug before saying goodbye; there were no light shoulder pats, no nothing). Now we can spend hours cuddling and touching each other (caressing each other's faces, platonically holding hands, running hands through hair, pressing our foreheads together, drawn-out hugs, holding each other's faces, touching each other's necks, etc).
I even asked her to be my queerplatonic life partner, which are partners that live together for life, can raise kids together, can even get platonically married, but are not sexual/romantic partners, though they can act like it, with very touch-feely stuff like hand-holding, sleeping in the same bed, chaste kissing, etc. They may each have their own sexual/romantic partner and marry that person instead, but their queerplatonic life partner would always be their primary partner (equal or above their sexual/romantic lover). My best friend's reply to that was that she wanted to come back to the topic later, because queerplatonic, along with our new sensual friendship, would be "too weird" for her all at once. Her reply surprised me because I actually expected her to give me a straight-up "No, I'm sorry, I want to just get married, have kids, and live life like everyone else" because that would be the regular, traditional lifestyle that I always thought she wanted. I know that if she's even remotely seriously considering being queerplatonic partners, I must indeed be very important to her.
All in all, I'm very optimistic about our future together. Next year I am moving in with her, and I can't see my life without her. She is the most honest, conscientious person I have ever met. She has such a big heart, and even though most of what I say goes right over her head (I am an extremely abstract thinker and love to talk philosophy and ideas), I'm happiest when I'm with her. I feel sorry for people who don't take the time to connect to an aspie, because they really missed out. Aspies are gold. My aspie is my sunshine. :')
In general, we are total opposites-- I'm crazy, bold, slight trouble-maker, very open & tolerant, super laid-back, and love thinking big about issues of the world and philosophy in general. She is extremely cautious about everything, has high anxiety, goes by rules all the time, not as open about things as me (but she is also very kind, so I can usually convince her to be more tolerant of whatever it is she is against), and she really doesn't care much about the world around her and it's issues. The only thing we really have in common is that we are both wholly kind, open, honest people. Everything else, not so much! We don't even have common interests, so it's crazy how good we are together.
We communicate very well because we are both so open and honest. At first her bluntness hurt my feelings, but we've long-ago talked it out and now I've just accepted that that's just the way she communicates and she isn't trying to hurt my feelings. We talk through all our issues all the time, and we always make up really fast. We don't hold grudges against each other and let those grudges fester and slowly poison the friendship. When we're good, we are actually good, with none of that passive aggressive stuff that I've experienced so often with other friends.
Shortly before I learned she was aspie (about two months ago), we had an epic 3-week falling out, where I almost stopped being best friends with her. My whole life, I've been the type of "warrior" friend that would literally rush into a fire to get my friend and would walk a thousand miles for them. As you all can imagine, I increasingly felt like she wouldn't do the same for me, so I thought the friendship was getting too one-sided and I assumed it was just because she couldn't care about me as much as I did her. I understood she had extreme anxiety, but my thought process was "At the end of the day, if she cared enough, she'd be able to fight through all her fears for me."
In the end, I managed to get myself to really believe that her anxiety was not an "excuse" but a very valid reason why she couldn't do things for me (I understood anxiety was a mental illness, but I'm the type to believe that "love conquers all" so I didn't think fear was a good enough reason), and I had to really come to terms with the fact that maybe it wasn't fair to measure our friendship in the same way I would measure a "normal" friend, because she wasn't "normal."
A few weeks after we made up, I found out about Asperger's, and I read a post where someone with aspie said something along the lines of "My close friends don't understand that even though I really want to do something for them, sometimes I just can't." I was near-tears reading things like that, because it EXPLAINED SO MUCH, and was more proof to me that she did, in fact, care about me a lot, she just couldn't express it in the way I thought it should be expressed.
Getting back with her was one of the best decisions I've ever made. We are stronger than ever, and we've begun exploring the sensual side of our friendship (before, we had both been completely anti-touch-- the only time we touched each other at all was a hug before saying goodbye; there were no light shoulder pats, no nothing). Now we can spend hours cuddling and touching each other (caressing each other's faces, platonically holding hands, running hands through hair, pressing our foreheads together, drawn-out hugs, holding each other's faces, touching each other's necks, etc).
I even asked her to be my queerplatonic life partner, which are partners that live together for life, can raise kids together, can even get platonically married, but are not sexual/romantic partners, though they can act like it, with very touch-feely stuff like hand-holding, sleeping in the same bed, chaste kissing, etc. They may each have their own sexual/romantic partner and marry that person instead, but their queerplatonic life partner would always be their primary partner (equal or above their sexual/romantic lover). My best friend's reply to that was that she wanted to come back to the topic later, because queerplatonic, along with our new sensual friendship, would be "too weird" for her all at once. Her reply surprised me because I actually expected her to give me a straight-up "No, I'm sorry, I want to just get married, have kids, and live life like everyone else" because that would be the regular, traditional lifestyle that I always thought she wanted. I know that if she's even remotely seriously considering being queerplatonic partners, I must indeed be very important to her.
All in all, I'm very optimistic about our future together. Next year I am moving in with her, and I can't see my life without her. She is the most honest, conscientious person I have ever met. She has such a big heart, and even though most of what I say goes right over her head (I am an extremely abstract thinker and love to talk philosophy and ideas), I'm happiest when I'm with her. I feel sorry for people who don't take the time to connect to an aspie, because they really missed out. Aspies are gold. My aspie is my sunshine. :')
(Or a super cool and understanding NT like you, but they all seem to be out hiding, lol.)
