1. He tells you as he is making out with you, “Someday your future boyfriend will be really glad I taught you this.”
2. He corrects and critiques the way you break your bread, showing you how to separate the roll into four equal pieces.
3. He stays up all night scraping the black factory-painted pinstripe off of his truck because he can’t sleep until it’s entirely gone.
4. He stays up all night making cardboard hotels for cats, convinced he will be rich off of his invention.
5. He owns a limo, but it turns out he’s the driver, and he likes to tell you often what he watches the passengers doing in the backseat.
6. He explains that he likes you a lot, and will share a bed with you, but doesn’t feel comfortable sitting on the same couch as you.
7. He steals your expensive perfume bottle (again) and “secretly” gives it as a present to his other girlfriend.
8. He doesn’t have driving insurance and totals his truck while on a secret rendezvous to the mountains with his other lover, and then asks you to come get him at the hospital.
9. He says, after your first dinner date, which he planned to be out of town, that he is too drunk to drive home but has conveniently already booked a hotel room nearby.
10. He promises he just wants to cuddle.
11. He says he has a romantic surprise for you, and when you enter the room there is a “toy” and a video camera set up.
12. His father tells you, after your lover has gone missing for three days: “He is just like me, a player, and he ain’t changing.”
13. His mother takes you out to an intimate lunch and tells you, “You are so smart and lovely and kind, why are you with my son?”
14. He takes you to an antique store to teach you have to shoplift.
15. He sells you a stereo that he bought with his roommates “stolen” credit card.
16. He doesn’t come and find you when you run out of the house crying.
17. He calls his ex-girlfriend when you are still in bed together.
18. He has rearranged the photos of you as a couple each time you come over.
19. He lives with his sister, has no job, is addicted to pain-killers, and is a chain-smoker.
20. He makes you gag.
21. He makes you wish you lived on another planet.
22. He says, “I don’t love you, I’m certain.”
23. He is the roommate of the other really odd guy you dated.
24. He has an ex-wife that warns, “Watch out, he is trouble.”
25. He enters a room and every woman wants to give him his number, and he takes them.
26. He has deep dark brown bedroom eyes, and he knows it.
27. He shows up late all the time, and always has a very detailed excuse.
28. He says, “It depends, are you planning on losing weight,” when you ask him if you should cut your hair shorter.
29. He tells you how to dress.
30. He tells to wear long fake fingernails painted pink.
31. He is in therapy with you and seeing another therapist with his wife.
32. He enters the athletic gym, and the male employees look at you, raise a brow, and say in a derogatory tone, “That’s your boyfriend?”
33. He was the first man you saw after breaking up with your other boyfriend who was the first man you saw.
34. He claims he cannot tell you where he lives because it is a temporary situation and he can’t give you his phone number because he doesn’t have a phone.
35. He plans a party and not one person shows up.
36. He asks your father for your hand in marriage, shortly after his mistress, holding a baby, kicks down his apartment door in an attempt to kill you.
37. He does things with himself at stop signs you know are plain wrong, but he insists everyone does it.
38. He lies to his mother.
39. He yells at you because you packed the camping ice-chest wrong.
40. He tells you that your suspicions about his cheating on you means you are paranoid.
41. He likes beer with his breakfast.
42. He takes you out to drink “brain freeze” alcoholic shots for the first date.
43. He tells you all about his special adventures with his guy friend, with a twinkle of love in his eyes.
44. He takes you to a party and you find him half-naked in the bathroom with his ex-girlfriend, and he claims she is helping to adjust his Halloween costume.
45. He tells you how you could be prettier.
46. He asks you to buy something for his mother’s birthday because he can’t afford it.
47. He takes you on an out-of-state trip, via airplane, to his hometown and disappears in the early morning to meet up with a past lover.
48. He calls you from a phone booth, a few blocks away, claiming he is out-of-town working for a few days.
49. He doesn’t say, “You are beautiful.”
(He points out your mistakes often, like forgetting to add number 50 to this list.)
Please protect your aspie daughter. Teach her she is worthy. Love her unconditionally. Pay attention to her. She doesn’t know as much as you think she does. She thinks, like herself, that everyone is kind-hearted and filled with good intention. Teach her about red flags, about predators, about liars, about trickery, and about manipulation. Teach her about appropriate behavior and conduct. Consider her an angel on earth, uneducated about the ways of this world. Hold her and cherish her. And above all teach her how special she is.
This was my first album; I used to play this song over and over and over. I memorized all the lyrics. I was so awesome.
Random thought: What if the reason why my dog is so very happy to see me every morning is because in her reality one night is 100 years!
Everyday Asperger's 
I saw a lot of my ex-boyfriends in this post. Creepy. And sad that we had to learn the hard way. Thanks for sharing.
Oh, so you know the ICK factor. 🙂 thank goodness we are all the wiser now. hugs xo
What a wonderful post to remind us that we do need to protect our aspie daughters! I also love your random thought! 🙂
thank you; that was my intention. I thought this would stick in the memory more than a what-to-do list. At least it does for me, because I can picture each sentence and set emotion to it. Thank you for commenting. 🙂
Thank you, I saved this list in my computer.. time flyes so quiqly.
I am glad my experience could help in some way. 🙂
I wanted to laugh AND cry reading this, Sam. Great post! And I love that random thought too xx
aren’t you a gem… I kind of laughed, cried, and cringed. Poor innocent me, she really hadn’t a clue. Thank you for your kindness; always appreciated. ❤
Sam, I know some of those are true for you because you have written about them; I do hope ALL of them aren’t true, If they are, I feel so sorry for you.
Teddy
all true! Yep, yep, yep. But don’t feel sorry for me; it’s okay now. I am in a much better place. 🙂
Um, you would have to be.
and some of them were the same person… 🙂
That figures. I can identify with that!
🙂 Really; it’s way in the past. And kind men, like you, really help me to see the light of the world. So thank you. I’m good and at peace.
Wonderful!
Oh dear……yes we do really need protecting! I thank god for the man I finally married after a traumatic (far too long) relationship and for the beautiful partner my daughter has and that she hasnt experienced to much of the pain some of us have endured. Great safety post Sam!!
This is a difficult post to read for me, because the guys I dated and married (except my forever Husband) were sooo much like these discriptions, just creepy when I look at it now. I was so innocent and uneducated as to these things, I literally had no clue how to be! All I could do was mimic the things I saw other ‘successfuf’ girls doing, I was always suffering. I wish I would have had a real mentor.
well, hey there Alyce….you aren’t kidding….I could SO use a ‘mentor’, too…I feel so clueless almost all the time….even today….though, today…even having one really good friend in “real life” seems to be too much to ask for…
I want to cry. i don’t believe in the concept of victimization. even not feeling like a victim of my past experiences, this list seriously makes me cry inside. it makes me cry for me and for you and for all woman aspie or not who experience these acts at the hands of men i now men are sometimes mistreated by women but i have not heard of many men with lists like this of things why experienced with women.
I’ve really been thinking about this post a lot. Some of these things I have experienced…being “used” by women when in unhealthy relationships long ago….and, a few of these, I am guilty of doing myself…since I had no concept of how to have a healthy relationship with anyone for a very long time…and I STILL feel like I am STILL trying to figure that out (but, that’s just the Aspie in me being too hard on myself). So glad you were able to get through that…and turn out to be the incredibly sweet person you are today….love you!!!!
Oh, Ron, I love you, too. You are a sweet, sweet honorable man, that is evident. And we are hard on ourselves because we desire to be the most beneficial beings we can be to others, and to me, you are a great benefit. Thank you for sharing and for your support and love. Blessings. 🙂
Being an Aspie and raising a daughter with Autism, I’ve already taken steps to protect her from the things I went through. Molestation and rape are heavy burdens to care for such a soft soul like mine. I need to teach her that her body is her own and I don’t care who it offends. My mother-in-law got her knickers in a twist once because I wouldn’t force my daughter to kiss her “goodbye” after a trip. We were teaching my daughter that it’s her body and if she doesn’t want to do something with it then she doesn’t have to. I don’t care that it hurt my MIL’s feelings. If someone had taught me that my body was MINE, I wouldn’t have been hurt. It’s a hard thing to teach when, at 28, I’m still learning it myself, but my daughter gives me great courage and even if it’s not something I take to my own heart, I will place it on hers. She needs to be protected in the ways that I was not. 🙂 Thank you, Sam.
I am surprised of what you wrote!!! I have aspergers and I’ve never been in a relationship with somebody but also I wouldn’t let anybody treat me as they treated you. Though also there are things in this list that seem ok to me, example: I would NEVER end a relationship because the numbre 2 in this list, that would be ridiculous! It would be more likely me loughing at him!!! XD. If he can’t understand what’s having good humour, it would be a very good reason for breaking up, and if he doesn’t like how I break my bread he’ll have to do it for me, at least some dozens of times until I learn it and decide his effort is deserving me to cut the bread in a right way (I won’t change if he doesn’t work for me to change!). I guess you are far more innocent than me… Anyway, after all you said I feel like I’d love to be in a relationship with even more aspergers than me!!!!!
wow!!!! me too!!!!!! When I think about how I just dated and married without a clue!!!! I actually feel embarrassed because one of the ex guys I see when I am in town, I live in a small town, and I just can’t believe I was with that person for like 13 years I remember now people saying, how did you get her? to a few or more of them. I sound so cruel I am sure, but it’s weird how my “eyesight” has changed only slowly over many years. Most the guys I dated or married did drugs, stole from me, cheated on me, lied allllllllll the time, alcoholic. I was touched inappropriately when I was between 7 and maybe 9. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t even tell anyone, I didn’t even think to tell anyone. How odd is that. It’s like I didn’t know anything about how to relate to people or what was good or bad, or dangerous or safe!!! I am married now to a decent man, he doesn’t get me, he’s never seen anyone like me before, I am sure we will have alot to work thru, as I didn’t realize how difficult I am to live with until we lived together after marriage. I get easily overwhelmed, don’t like certian sounds, loud sounds, well to me they are, I have meltdowns because there is alot more going on in the house, at least to me. And so I feel over the edge alot. And I can see his side too, he is thrust into a” world” where he is scared to do anything for fear I will get angry or become overwhelmed. Do you know any books for husbands in spanish?
thank you for sharing. I don’t know of any books in Spanish. It sounds like you are gaining a lot of self awareness :)))
I dealt with a year straight full of guys like this about a year ago. It’s one of the only parts of my life I like to pretend didn’t happen and I hated myself for even being in the situation. It does make me feel a little bit better knowing I’m not the only one who has been there. I’m still young(21) but I’m glad I’ve finally learned and am no longer in that situation.
I understand. Much love