dating

316: 50 Reasons to Leave Your Lover

| Aspergers Girls

Me 4

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!

Day 215: Why You Don’t Want to Date Me

| Aspergers Girls

Why you don’t want to date me…

1) Well first off I’m married, and that can get complicated; and my husband has a black belt in a particular branch of martial arts, which I can’t spell tonight. So it would be a surprise attack.

2) I used to sing a song about my grandmother’s boobs when I was younger. I taught the song to my younger cousin. We would stuff our shirts with socks, cup our hands over our chest, and sing together: “Grandma’s little boobies go boom, boom, boom, boom. Grandma’s little boobies go boom, boom, boom!” It was a favorite party song. I choreographed the whole thing. On the first line our hands would shoot out in front of us. On the second stanza, we’d drop our hands down with each boom, until they almost touched the floor. Grandma’s boobs weren’t little, still aren’t. Don’t know why I called them little to begin with. But sometimes I still sing the song. Only now I’m crying in the mirror. (Don’t ask me how this is related to dating. It just is. Boobs are always related to dating.)

3) I get super excited. Just ask anyone who has ever taken a walk with me. I like to process when I walk. I like to process even more when I am first getting to know someone. I always apologize for my rambling. And I always get the same half-smile and bewildered eyes, in response. People usually say, “It’s alright.” But I secretly want them to tell me they really enjoyed all my insights. That has yet to happen.

4) I am a very picky eater and will stress over where to go out to eat. Then when I finally decide where I want to eat, I will take forever to decide between the three things on the menu that I might like. I discuss the pros and cons of each particular appetizer. I analyze the menu and point out to the waitress misprints and errors. I question the authenticity of the food description. I try to remember is it farm raised salmon that’s better or wild. I interrupt patrons to ask what they have ordered, and if it is indeed any good. I will taste your food from your plate without asking, especially mashed potatoes. I try to help people. Once I interrupted a couple and said: “Based on your conversation, it sounds like your grandson might have Aspergers.” No worries, I introduced myself first. The grandpa wasn’t too thrilled. I heard him say: “Boy, that lady has got some big ears on her!” I didn’t take it personally because my ears weren’t showing.

5) I will ask you many questions, such as: Is there anything in my teeth? Do I look bloated? How much do you think this would cost to make at home? Do you like the food? Are you full? Did you get enough to eat? Do you want dessert? Do you know soda is bad for you? Are you having a second soda? How are you going to work off all that soda? Are the refills free? Did you leave enough for the tip? How much? Are you sure? What do you think of the waiter’s personality? Would you hire him? Can I have the rest of your potatoes? Want to guess what color I’m thinking of? Will you guess the number? Did you have a good time? Do you like me? Do you think I’m pretty? Why?

6) As a former teacher and mother of three energetic boys, I am programmed to play games for survival. While we are waiting for our food, I will likely engage you in a game of hangman, connect the dots, I-Spy, and guess the animal I’m thinking. Electronics are not allowed at the table, as I require your full attention. And it is important to follow all my rules. And don’t even try watching television. Before we sit down in a sport’s bar, I will make certain there are no televisions in your line of vision, as to not take away from our time together. Of course, I would question why you were taking me to a cheap sport’s bar to begin with.

7) I am not a meat eater, and haven’t been since 1984 (the year I was born). So, if you ask me to help you cut your meat, especially ribs, I will try to use a butter knife and the ribs will fly across the table and plop on the floor and people will stare. But you will likely cut your own ribs, and I will give a look of disgust and tell you that I hate meat breath. Then I might, depending on my mood, remind you of one of the many documentaries I have viewed. I might even write the name down for you on a napkin. I will then eat your mashed potatoes when you are not looking.

8) I will compliment you. I will tell you have nice eyes or a nice smile, and mean it. I will likely compliment the restaurant staff, as well. Then I will stare at parts of your body that don’t look perfectly to scale. I will point out the facial hair that needs to be shaved, the rouge eyebrow hair, the freckle that looks questionable, the blemish, the grey hair, the wrinkled shirt, the old shoes, the nostril hair, and whatever else catches my attention. Unless you are a stone statue perfectly carved, I will find something to wonder about. I will obsess that perhaps you have a terrible disease or are allergic to something, and that is why there is a pimple on your neck. I will point out the bug bites on your arm. I will try to memorize your face, close my eyes and reopen them, and see if I can remember your hairline and freckles. Most of this I will do in my head and not say aloud. So I will be sitting there preoccupied, with a weird expression on my face, and one eyebrow raised high, and not listening to a word you are saying.

9) I will have to guess the amount on the bill. I will say, “Wait, wait, wait, let me guess!” Then I will calculate everything we consumed and add the totals up in my head, including tax. Then I will proclaim my guess. If I am within a dollar, I will smile so proudly. If I am wrong, I will go back and justify my answer, figuring out something I forgot, like the price of your soda. I will blame you for my error. Then I will lean over your shoulder to make sure you leave a twenty percent tip or higher; unless the service was terrible, then I will insist you leave fifteen percent exactly. If the waiter is exceptional, I will ask to speak to the manager about the wonderful service. I will tell the waiter first how great he is. And ask you to agree and nod. Then I will double-check the tip. I will still be worrying about the tip by the time we reach the car, and ask you to verify we calculated correctly. I will then ask if you remembered the boxed leftovers on the table, and ask you to go back and get them. I will complain if you have to use the bathroom, as I am tired, and want to go home.

10) You will be in shock, because on the first and second date, I was on my best behavior.

Day 72: Lessons Learned

| Aspergers Girls

Lessons Learned

1) When a young man says, “I’ll call you,” the statement is often equivalent to “See Ya.” It’s another form of goodbye, where you never see the person again.

2) Just because a man goes to couples counseling with you doesn’t mean he’s not married and also going to couples counseling with his wife.

3) People will most definitely look away and cringe, if you share up close photos of giving birth or breastfeeding. Then they won’t want anything you offer them to eat.

4) When you are a restaurant hostess at a popular night spot, even if your boss says to be honest with the customers about the wait time for a table, do not smile and say: “That will be about 137 minutes.”

5) If one hairdresser tells you that you should always wear bangs, that doesn’t mean you have to wear bangs for the next five years.

6) If a dentist says, “In order to blend in your dead front tooth with your other teeth, the best method would be dyeing all of your other teeth darker,” run and don’t look back.

7) When the orthodontist tells you, as a teenager, to wear the headgear and neckgear for your braces to middle school, don’t!

8) If a boy calls you cow eyes, don’t go home and cry, punch him.

9) When you are little, don’t wear the same hippy dress you love two years in a row for school photos.

10) Don’t play tunnel tag in the short, Italian wool dress your grandma gave you , unless you wear shorts underneath.

11) Tell your mom when you get your period. Don’t wait three months, and don’t use the free, plus-size, super absorbent, expandable tampons that the gym teacher passed out!

12) Don’t buy life insurance and agree to automatic payments from your bank account, and then wait three years to research if the company exists. It doesn’t.

13) If you have just given birth, and you are sharing a hospital room with a new mother who talks nonstop on the phone into the late hours of the night, complain.

14) If you are an elementary school teacher, and spend three hours on a letter of recommendation for one of your fifth grade students, make sure you spell the student’s name correctly, especially if you don’t want to irritate the parents.

15) While a student in middle school, don’t draw pictures of different boys’ body parts, label them with names, descriptions, and insults, and then leave the illustrations behind at your desk on accident.

16) Even if you have dyslexia, don’t put the spelling words for the test inside the pleats of your cheerleading skirt. You will greatly disappoint your teacher.

17) If you have big ears that stick out, and people laugh at them, wear your hair down until you have high self-esteem.

18) If Italian in America, pluck thick Italian eyebrows, and remember Italian only has one letter l.

19) Don’t save a drowning honeybee in a swimming pool; sensing danger, he will buzz super loud warning his friends. His friends will land on your arm and sting you!

20) When a fake blonde, with a fake tan, and fake nails tells you, “You would look pretty with highlights in your hair.” Don’t say, “I prefer the natural look. I don’t like fake things.”

21) If your boyfriend’s mother invites you to a private lunch, with just you and her, and then says in confidence, “Don’t date my son. You are too good for him,” listen.

22) If you have the flu, and are ghastly sick, don’t beg your boyfriend to take you out-of-town to meet his parents for the first time.

23) Don’t date your weight-lifting trainers. Just don’t.

24) If you are getting a haircut as a teenager, and the hairdresser ignores you long enough for your wet hair to dry, before she returns, leave.

25) The movie Fargo is not a good first date movie.

26) Ask Dad before rearranging his entire dining room and living area.

27) Ask Dad before bringing the puppy home.

28) If you are going to miss one day of college for a funeral, you don’t need to write a letter and then cry to the professor in the hallway, in order to be excused.

29) French classes in high school and college are useless as a second language when you live in California.

30) When you have a long-term boyfriend, and you meet someone at the public swimming pool, you don’t give another boy your phone number and say: “I have a boyfriend, but let’s be friends.”

31) When a young teenager says he’s going to travel from his town 100 miles on his bike to come see you, he might just do that. Better to tell him ahead of time, you have a boyfriend and you aren’t interested.

32) If a young teenager says he’s going to drive his car across country to see you as soon as he gets a job, his license, and a car, probably not true, regardless of what he promises.

33) If you write enough letters to a school district office about the hard water from the sprinkler system damaging the paint on your new red Mustang car, when you park in the parking lot at the school where you work, the district will pay for all the employees to have their cars detailed; however, the superintendent of the district will not smile at you ever again.

34) If you consume too much Excedrin, iced tea, and soda at the same time, you will have a caffeine overdose; and to avoid a thousand dollar hospital bill, you will have to convince the health insurance company the trip to the emergency room wasn’t due to a panic attack.

35) If you’re a teacher and the principal says to you, “You should choose between raising a family or being a teacher, you can’t do both well,” sue him.

36) If an acupuncturist tells you about his failed marriages, his mortgage, his childhood, his parenting woes, and then spanks his wife on the butt in front of you, all while you are under treatment atop the table, don’t go back to that acupuncturist. And don’t feel guilty about not going back.

37) Doctors are practicing medicine.

38) You will offend a LDS person by calling them LSD, even if you have dyslexia.

39) Not a good idea to say, “That pisses me off,” in front of an entire fifth grade class, when you are a teacher.

40) No amount of protesting and letter writing or phone calls will keep a principal from assigning you to teach seventh grade, instead of elementary school, if she thinks you are a good teacher, even if you cry and tell her you hated middle school as a child.

41) If you kiss a mean ugly man enough times, he remains a mean ugly man.

42) When you ask a boyfriend, “Should I get a shorter haircut,” and he says, “That depends.” And you answer, “That depends on what,” and he responds, “That depends on if you are planning to lose weight, or not,” run away from the relationship.

43) The joke: When you’re dancing with your honey and your feeling kind of funny, and your nose is kind of runny, but it’s not, isn’t funny after the age of ten.

44) Don’t read your personal diary to fickle teenage girls.

45) When you are a kid, don’t announce to your seventh grade class you are wearing your first training bra.

Day 56: Nothing But a Heartache

| Aspergers Girls

 

At any given time, from the age of fifteen to twenty-seven, I tried to have a best friend and a boyfriend. This pair of people anchored me: the best girl and the best boy. In some ways, people would consider me lucky, as I seemed to attract the handsome boys. But some handsome boys, and boys in general, I later discovered, could be bad boys, too.

Many people with Asperger’s Syndrome have reported that they didn’t have a romantic relationship for a long time, if ever. Me? I instinctively clung to boys starting at the age of five. Probably as a result of the gap I needed to fill based on the absence of my father and the busyness of my single mother. Being an only child in a world of ghosts, precognitive dreams, and extreme sensitivities to people, places, things, while having an acute sense of sight, sound, hearing, and touch, left me longing to cling to something, if only for balance and retreat.

As I reached my teenage years, I became liken to a high-quality, food storage, plastic cling wrap. I’d seal a male over with my entire essence, and remain stuck there, in full-grip mode. I remember thinking I was experienced with relationships. Keen on how they worked, what to do, and how to keep a “man.”  But I wasn’t.  I was weathered for certain: rusted around the outside like a metal pole set out in the rain one too many winters. But I definitely wasn’t experienced.  I hadn’t the faintest idea of how to take care of my needs and wants, beyond lassoing a male to do things for me.  I was quite pathetic, in an unintentional, hadn’t-meant-to-be, way.

By my early twenties, after graduating from college with honors and starting my first teaching job, I was deeply ashamed of the woman I’d become.  And more times than not, I didn’t know the part of ME that I played in life—didn’t know my lines or even where to find the script. From one moment to the next I was changing.  In one scene I played the role of the dedicated soon-to-be school teacher, and in the next a desperate crazy fool clinging to whatever man she could get her hands on.  A fisherman in the game of love, I’d learned to bait my hook and cast my pole, but hadn’t known to catch and release.

As time passed, each man I met, no matter where or when, who showed the slightest interest in me, soon became my new love interest.  I was fortunate in high school to have had two boyfriends (at different times) that treated me tenderly and with respect. However, later, I dated men from all walks of life, most of whom were extremely damaged in someway or another.  And all who were addicted to something or someone.

The worst of being with a man came in not what they ever did, but what I let myself do.  I made men my bed, and I slept in them while walking through life.  And I fooled myself repeatedly into thinking I was content.  It didn’t matter if the bed was too small, or too big, or if it had lumps.  It didn’t matter if the mattress was missing all together and I was made to sleep on the cold hard floor.  It only mattered I was in the bed, or at least what I’d thought to be a bed.  My mind fooled me.  My heart fooled me.  My logic fooled me.  While all along my spirit wept.

There has never been such a horrible part in my life as the years I walked half-blind to my own wanting.  In essence I was a prisoner, unable to move forward, sideways, or even backwards without pushing, dragging, or tricking myself in any given direction.  Best to stand still in one spot—best not to move an inch—if that was possible.  But it wasn’t.  I had to keep going.  I had to keep stepping somewhere.

The highlight of my dating career had to be the season I spent with the habitual lying, sexually addicted Don—a man five years my senior, who behaved ten years my junior.  At first glance I’d fallen head-over-sandals in love with Don.  The summer day he confidently strode through the Catholic daycare where I worked, I’d tucked myself halfway behind a shelf of books and drooled over his perpetually sun-kissed skin.  He was everything I’d wanted, dark and handsome, and tall enough to look down at me with his bedroom eyes.

The times Don and I were together weaved in and out sporadically through a span of half a decade.  When I first met Don he was separated from wife number one; when I last reunited with Don, he was struggling to patch it up with wife number two.  I was the in-between, but one Don swore up and down he intended to marry.

The majority of our relationship played out like an ill-plotted soap opera, with me as the dimwitted, star-struck mistress, and Don as the notorious villain. I can laugh now, find many lessons in the journey with Don, even thank him for the crash-course in what-not-to-do ever again; but back then, having no other models for beneficial love relationships and no avenue for escape, I was stuck in the mire of pain and misery, a self-invented trap that I had no idea of how to release. I cried daily. I wrote dark or needy poetry. My focus from morning to-night was Don. My life was Don. My reason for living was Don.

There was the time I dialed his number obsessively, about twenty times, just to hear his voice on the machine; the time his lover called me and said: “Just so you know I’ve been sleeping with Don every morning after he leaves your house. I’m those ‘business trips’ he’s been on.”; the time he totaled his uninsured truck out-of-town, and called me to come get him from the hospital, even though he’d been secretly rendezvousing with another that day; the time Don and I threw a Halloween party (which I obsessed and over planned about) and no one came (except a few of my teaching program college mates), because all of Don’s “friends” didn’t respect him; the time I drank an entire bottle of wine and slammed my finger in the closet, because I’d yet again been waiting for Don to show up.

He had a habit of just not showing up. Just not being there. I’d come to expect it. To recognize the raw acid-burning pain in my chest that signified the abandonment soon to come. There was pain continually lurking behind the wall of my psyche. I’d be in bed, the only one awake, and ritually would cry up to the heavens, begging for a way out, for understanding, but mostly for a way to make him love me.

I didn’t know any better. No one had taught me. And Mother, though I love her, hadn’t prepared me. Everything I’d learned from romance came from Mother or movies, or maybe from watching soap operas or another person. I didn’t have standards. I didn’t know what standards were. And I didn’t know why someone wouldn’t or couldn’t love me. I thought everyone was good, everyone just, everyone honest, everyone sorry.