I’m afraid I can’t handle my long distance relationship with my ASD boyfriend. (Deep diving into multiple angles of the ASD literature, I now suspect I am also not neurotypical.) He gets nothing really out of being in communication with me through text or phone calls (I hate phone calls) and he doesn’t notice that I make visiting him my top priority, and he does not do the same. His experiences in prior relationships, being “in trouble” a lot, have made him extremely averse to conflict, so it’s really hard to have any kind of conversation about my intimacy needs, which, when we’re in different cities as we usually are, he generally views as tedious. This man is irreplaceable. He’s brilliant, funny, kind, and strong in some areas where I’m weak. I love doing projects with him at his house. And relationships have always been by far the single most difficult aspect of my life. In some ways I’d struggle no matter who I was with. All of that notwithstanding, a year into the relationship it’s not gotten any easier to stand by and wait while he’s virtually absent for weeks at a time. Every time, I think he’s moving on emotionally. He’s not. But I *cannot* feel secure in these stretches of absence. That’s perhaps my deficit. I don’t know what to do if he doesn’t want to reciprocate my compromising, and we can’t talk about it without him then withdrawing for a month at a time. I’m thinking of just filling my time with other things, and kind of…. matching his level of contact, and seeing if I stay in love. I don’t want to lose him, but I don’t trust the situation enough yet to move to his city. I’m frequently heartbroken. Sorry for the rant.

Posted by taylor.lee.werner at 2023-04-19 23:19:56 UTC