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Love or Obsession: When a Person Becomes an #Aspie’s Special Interest

An except from Twirling Naked in the Streets and No-One Noticed…

According to the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), having an “encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus” is a core symptom of AS.

I’ve had many special interests/preoccupations/passions/obsessions through the years beginning as young as three years old. My three-year old self was completely preoccupied with baseball; my fifteen year old self—boys, or more precisely a boy.

That is not an unusual preoccupation for a fifteen year old girl, but what we need to look at is the intensity and focus. When focused on an interest or area to the exclusion of everything else, and everyone else in your life, is this not considered obsession? For the autistic person our obsessions and passions are soothing, calming, a place to hide, decompress, regenerate—a place of quiet peace. But what happens when your special interest your obsession is a person?

Love can be joyous and healthy but obsession can be seen as unwanted attention, smothering affection, and in the extreme…stalking. To make matters worse, the mind-blind teenager will usually never know if she steps over this line. How much is too much exactly?

The first few months were perfect. We cruised the neighborhood with the windows down, wind in my hair—and his, which was possibly longer than my own. My friends faded into the background of my mind, nothing else mattered, no-one else existed. I was in my one friend, one person allowed in my life at a time mode—other people were far from my thoughts.

I went to school—ok to the candy store, went to work, and hopped into this car at night to drive around. I wanted to stay roaming the neighborhoods like that all night long, but he needed to meet his friends. Every night around eleven o’clock he dropped me off at home and left to hang out with the guys.

At first I tried to be accommodating, to make him happy. I needed to be home before midnight or my father would flip out anyway I told myself. But as time went on it became harder, and harder to let go—to understand this strange need for his friends. Why not just stay hanging out with me? What was wrong with me? I began to take it personally, not understanding that others may have feelings and needs different from my own. I couldn’t see it; I couldn’t understand it; his behavior made no sense to me.

“If you loved me, you’d stay!”

On New Year’s Eve we had a fight. He didn’t stay. I called and left messages on his voicemail like a crazy stalker, hung-up and redialed again. The return calls never came. What did I do?

For the next few months I could think of nothing else.

He wouldn’t even speak to me, giving me no reason at all.

I began dating someone else, just to keep my mind off things and keep myself occupied. Make no mistake about it; he knew all about my obsession with my ex-boyfriend, and how I desperately wanted him to dance with me at my sweet sixteen. Why that boy hung around me I’ll never know.

It had never occurred to me that I was hurting someone’s feelings, how could I if I was truthful with them? He knew that if my ex showed up at my Sweet Sixteen party, that it would be the end of things. I told him I would let him dance with me on my birthday if you know who doesn’t show up. I was still holding out hope. I’d invited him, and I thought maybe just maybe he would show-up and surprise me—and he did.

The night was a blur after that, we were back together and that is how it would always be, wouldn’t it? I’d never considered any other scenario in my head—ever.

These relations were all-encompassing; I wanted to spend every free moment together and assumed that he wanted that too.

Jeannie Davide-Rivera

Jeannie is an award-winning author, the Answers.com Autism Category Expert, contributes to Autism Parenting Magazine, and the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. She lives in New York with her husband and four sons, on the autism spectrum.

3 Comments:

  1. i wrote about this too a few times because i discovered something awesome and amazing about this very thing from a video with tony attwood! 🙂

    heres the video.

  2. Wow: this is such a great insight. I’ve worked with Aspie clients who express exactly what you went through. Except I’m not sure that they’ve developed the amount of insight you have at this time. I hope your entry hopes both NTs and other Aspies better understand the dynamics of relationships.

    • Thanks Steve, it has taken a very very long time gain insight and perspective on things past. Relationships, now knowing that I was missing so much of the “unsaid, unspoken” words was a hard thing to come to terms with. But, it did put much of my experiences in a perspective that has begun to make sense.

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