All of us have a bundle of suffering that we carry with us every day. One of the larger items in my own bundle is a condition called Asperger’s syndrome (AS). I don’t know all the nuances of this condition, but as I understand it, Asperger’s syndrome results from a person’s brain being “wired” neurologically differently than the brains of most people. AS is pretty rare: one source says that it occurs in 0.024% to 0.36% of the population.

Without getting into all the details, a significant effect of AS is that I will very frequently misread nonverbal communication–those subtle, unspoken cues that can add so much information and context to the words a person uses. This effect has proved very difficult in my relationships with women.

I often misread women’s interest in me. I have tried to initiate relationships with various women, in a polite and friendly way, but long after my male friends assured me those women were not interested in me.

At other times, I have been utterly clueless about women who were very interested in me. One woman I used to work with was extremely interested in having a relationship with me, but she was also rather shy. After several actions on this woman’s part, two of my closest friends at work told me how interested she was in me, but I just couldn’t see it. Duh!

In 1992, I broke off the longest and most serious relationship I ever had with a woman. We had been talking about getting engaged to be married. My girlfriend was devastated when I said I needed to end our relationship. At the time, I was experiencing spontaneous memories of the childhood sexual abuse I had suffered at the hands of people outside my family. I was overwhelmed and having panic attacks regularly, so I could not stay in the relationship. After my girlfriend and I broke up, she became suicidal and received psychiatric treatment and a prescription of Prozac for 6 months. To this day, I can’t really understand why it was such a big deal for her. I knew she was fond of me, but I never picked up any clues that would indicate the intensity of her feelings for me.

The lyrics to this song from 1972 express pretty well my sentiments about this situation.

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It’s hard to make a disclosure like this. I thought about it a lot before writing this blog post. Ultimately, I have decided to share this part of my life because perhaps it will help someone else. I hope it does.