building and maintaining relationships

An Adult Aspie Looks at Friendship

Having trouble making friends? For people on the spectrum, this is a common situation. A recent study indicated that of the participants, more than half the children with ASD did not have a single close friend. How does a person learn to live with that?

I have been fortunate to have one or two friends who have remained constant. But mostly? Friends come and go.

My approach to friendship is different from that of people who seem to know all the rules of bonding and building peer relationships.

Occasionally, people come to have some meaningful connection with me, and then, for the most part, sooner or later drift away. And that’s okay because they always leave me emotionally richer, with lessons learned and experiences shared that I would not have otherwise had.

I have let go of my expectations of a life-long friendship when my life intersects with others. If we have no interests in common, or not enough to sustain a typical friendship, that’s ok.

Not forming a lifetime bond with others is not a failure.

I see my role as bringing light into their path just by virtue of being me. I want to offer them a gift, introducing an upbeat, pleasant moment into their day. I may do this in many ways: with kindness, validation, humour or encouragement.

I see our meeting as a connection, not a life-long commitment.

I believe connecting with someone new occurs at a meaningful time for both of us, and that we are each somehow important in that moment for the other, assisting each other along whatever path we are individually, or jointly, travelling.

It is not for me to judge others, to work to improve the people who come into my life, or to see if we can converse comfortably for hours … although it is always a pleasant surprise when a lengthy, satisfying conversation occurs!

Actually, shorter connections feel safer for me, I can avoid having to analyse whether what we have discussed or disclosed is really appropriate.

Just a connection that however fleeting, will be rewarding in the moment, and remembered with pleasure.

That’s not so hard to live with!

Aspies & Social Relationships: Where Our Problem Lies in Interpreting Facial Expression: The Prefrontal Cortex.

As Aspies, we know we have difficulty reading facial expression in conversation. But why?

This is a question that Arlin Cunic addresses in her article Are Asperger’s Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder the Same.*

I was fascinated to learn that when we are in conversation with others, how anyone reads facial expressions is determined by the routing that occurs in our brains.

In the case of a person with Asperger’s, the brain sends the image for processing to the Prefrontal Cortex. This is the area of the brain that deals with judgments and planning.

In the Prefrontal Cortex, logic rules.

However, conversations between two people in a relationship are often fraught with underlying emotion, an aspect of the exchange that is unrecognized in the Prefrontal Cortex.

So, how do neuro-typicals process facial expression?

In most people, the translation of facial expression occurs in a different area of the brain. The amygdala, Cunic states, is where emotion rules and this is the part of the brain to which conversational signals are transmitted and processed in non-Aspies .

And other people, when reading facial expressions, will have an automatic emotional response.

This does not happen in Aspie brains, where the emotional message is subjected instead to logical analysis.

This logic-based interpretation of emotional content is one reason why, then, some of us are hugely challenged in the area of building and maintaining relationships.

Take an instance where someone we love has a life-long dream of being an actress or an architect. Or when a partner says they need more touching, a more physical expression of our love.

When they convey to us that they want to pursue that dream or they need us to be more emotionally connected to them, we are most likely to process this information objectively.

We may list the pros and cons, the factors in favour, and the factors that weigh against this possibility.

But we may not have the emotional comprehension, the emotional connection necessary to understand how important this issue is to our loved one.

We may even create ‘logical’ defenses or arguments, objective discussions clearly designed to show why it is not a good idea at this time to fulfil the other’s wishes.

This can be hurtful to our partners, as it illustrates a complete lack of understanding of and empathy with our partner’s emotional needs.

Most likely we will nevertheless continue to process the information logically, because the prefrontal cortex is uniquely wired to deal only with rational and logical considerations.

As a result, we may be unable to comprehend why anyone would even want to do something that to us seems frivolous and unnecessary.

We may angrily protest that our partner has heard nothing we have said.

In fact, the opposite is true. We have not heard what they have said.

We may well be incapable of doing so, unless we stop and listen. Unless we can accept that there is something in the message that we are not getting. Unless we allow them to lead us to that understanding.

Perhaps the person who wants to try a different career already has a good paying job that they would put at risk.

Maybe life together is quite pleasantly predictably organized and pursuing the new occupation would be disruptive both to the current routine and your joint finances.

Logically, their dream makes no sense to us, and therefore we may deem it invalid.

We may not be able to recognize the emotion and passion that accompanies these and other conversations. We may even deem the expression of their needs as inconsequential, a foolish request.

The relationship will probably end here, because we simply cannot ‘get’ the other person’s point of view. We are attempting to successfully process with logic, a request or desire that requires an emotional interpretation, and emotional support.

Knowing that we may well fall short in emotional support of our partners can give us pause. We can stop and reconsider what they are saying to us.

We may never fully understand or empathize with the emotion that accompanies their need, but I believe we can learn to recognize when these conversations are happening.

We can learn to express appropriate responses, and commit to behaviours that acknowledge another’s emotional needs.

Is it worth it? Giving in, when logic argues against it? Think about the relationship and what it means to you, how being together enriches your life. Think it through, and then decide.

Margaret Jean

Asperger Me!

Category Archives: building and maintaining relationships