OBSESSED WITH LOVE
What it’s like dating when you’re on the spectrum
Rai Jayne Hearse never understood why she acted the way she did, until a diagnosis changed everything. Here, she explains what life is like for a woman with Asperger’s syndrome
Ilook up at Simon,* watching as he zips up his jeans. He stares at the brick wall, then the dark sky above. I wait.
“So we should probably get back inside,” he mumbles.
I struggle to get up. I’m laced into a steel-boned corset, and the gravel below me is digging into my knees. They’re covered with grazes that sting.
Simon doesn’t notice. He begins to walk away from me – back to the local rock club where my friends and I spend every weekend night. When I make it to my feet I trot along silently beside him. He’s not attracted to me. I should know this. I shouldn’t be attracted to him. He has a girlfriend. He’s cruel.
Two hours earlier he’d taken a handmade birthday present – given to me that night by a friend – and smashed it to pieces. When I asked him why, he’d replied simply, “Because it’s funny.”
And yet something inside me is telling me that if I keep doing this, if I keep giving him exactly what he wants – as I always do – he’ll become interested in me.
I’m 20 years old and maybe that’s why I keep letting men treat me this way. Or maybe it’s something else. Because I feel different, somehow, from my friends. But I don’t know why and I don’t know how to find out. I keep blindly following the social cues I see around me, hoping something will change.
Imagine you’re stranded in Tokyo and the only map you have is of the Lake District. But everyone you meet assumes you have the right map, that you know where you are and where you’re going. Like they do. That’s the only way I can explain what it’s like to have Asperger’s syndrome. I see, hear and feel the world differently to other people. But for years I didn’t know why. I figured if I did have something like autism then someone would have noticed. A teacher, maybe. Or my doctor. So I struggled on. Until, at 30, life became overwhelming.
I worried about everything. I sanitised my hands every time I touched anything. I was convinced my fridge was contaminating my food. I was missing important appointments. I was in debt. I couldn’t start a conversation with anyone. I got fixated on things – television shows, celebrities, the people I met – and I couldn’t let go of them. I had to buy every dress I owned three times. Some noises or touches seemed to cause me physical pain.
I went for a psychological assessment and discovered that, alongside OCD and anxiety, I also had autism spectrum disorder level 1. It’s more commonly known as Asperger’s, but I now prefer to call myself an “Aspie”. My diagnosis meant I could look back and view my life through a new lens. Finally, my history – particularly my dating history – began to make sense. I can’t recognise when someone’s not interested in me. It also means that when I like someone, I really like them. I can unknowingly cross the line into obsession. What I consider to be a conventional romance can actually be unwanted attention. I know of other female Aspies who have even, in extreme cases, begun stalking the objects of their affection, thinking they were just showing love. All of this makes it easy for us to be taken advantage of.
THE HIGH-SCHOOL YEARS
My first obsession was a boy called Adam Jones.* He had a cute “Mark from Westlife” (whose pictures and posters covered every inch of my walls) thing going on. I would just sit and stare at him in lessons. Which sounds, I suppose, not unlike how many teenage girls spend their time. This is one of the reasons why autism is more commonly associated with men. It’s thought that there are as many females with it as males, but we usually go unnoticed. We tend to get more fixated on celebrities, television and relationships – things that are dismissed as being “silly girlie interests”. A boy’s extreme love of space or numbers is easily picked up on. My fixation on Adam? Dismissed as a flippant crush.
Sometimes, Adam would sit next to me in science lessons. I was certain that this was a sign he felt the same way I did. So I upped my efforts to get him to notice me: I started to bring him a chocolate bar every day. I did this for two years. Of course he would come and find me, to claim his daily prize, and I took that attention willingly – again, convinced it was a sign he liked me back. One day I forgot to bring him a chocolate bar. He was so disappointed and I wanted to please him, so I gave him all my dinner money. He took it and walked away. I was hungry for the whole day. I would often hang around outside his house, dragging my best friend Kitty with me. I would walk past, over and over again, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. I ignored her comments about how weird it was. She obviously didn’t understand. This, I told myself, was what love felt like.
My crush on Adam lasted the whole five years of high school. But even with that buzzing in the background,
“If I keep doing this, he’ll become interested in me”
“My obsessions were intense but fleeting”
I met my first boyfriend, Carl.* I was 14 and spotted him in the crowd at a gig. I stared at him the whole night, until his sister came over and gave me his phone number. I texted him 20 times that first night. He replied once: to tell me he was 18, so we couldn’t be together. But I bombarded him with messages for the next three days, begging him to reconsider until he agreed. I hated being away from him. I wore his fleece jacket every day on a holiday in Spain, refusing to take it off even though I was sweltering. I didn’t enjoy myself on that trip – instead I just stared at his photo and moped around listening to Oasis (his favourite band). Kitty was furious with me – she kept telling me to get a grip, that I was ruining her holiday.
My obsessions were intense but fleeting. Carl was soon replaced by Jon,* a friend of my cousin’s. I wanted to hang out with him as much as possible. I would constantly ask my cousin questions about him and it got so bad that she had to tell me to back off. Instead, I started to text him constantly. When he didn’t reply, I would call him, hang up, wait a few minutes and do it again. I eventually wore him down enough to agree to be my boyfriend. Perhaps he was hoping it would make me stop. It lasted three days. My constant texting and calling had intensified to the point where I went into his work – a shoe shop – walking up and down the aisles waiting for him to give me the attention I was craving. We broke up later that day.
MY TWENTIES
By the time I was 20, I was the bassist in an all-girl punk band and I had also fallen into a stable but fun
“He totally cut me of and I didn’t know why”
friendship group with the four girls in the band plus five other guys. Romantically, though, I hadn’t changed a bit. All I’d done was swap chocolate bars for blow jobs – and the men I obsessed over accepted them just as greedily, with little thought or care for my feelings.
Simon was part of our friendship group. And he was the sort of man who enjoyed flirting – with everyone. But I didn’t understand that. If he flirted, that meant he was into me. I couldn’t stop myself from giving in to him whenever he wanted it. Kitty was often angry with me. She knew I was being used but I didn’t want to hear it. His attention made me feel like a real person, not some unnoticed alien stranded on a planet that I didn’t understand.
During this time I also met Joe* online, a rugged, tattooed, chain-smoking American living in the UK. I adored him and he showed me the same attention, but I was never quite sure what our relationship was. Was he my boyfriend or was I just some fun? When he wasn’t with me I would text him obsessively, worrying that he would be with someone else. He told me to calm down, that I needed to give him time to miss me, but I couldn’t stop.
I was still a virgin because I found the idea of being penetrated terrifying. I didn’t want it, but sex was what people did and I liked Joe. If I could just have sex with him then we could have a relationship. When we finally had the chance to share a bed, one night crashing at Kitty’s boyfriend’s house, I was so excited. I didn’t have any PJs with me so I climbed into bed in my jeans. But when I kept refusing to take them off he got angry and shouted, “Take your f*cking jeans off!” I shook my head one more time and he turned over. We slept on opposite edges of the bed, our backs to each other and a huge void between us. That was the first and last time I would ever share a bed with a guy.
The next night I took him outside to a quiet spot behind the club where I unzipped his jeans, dropped to my knees, and tried my best to let him know just how badly I wanted him. He kissed me goodbye and said he’d see me soon. But he didn’t. He completely cut me off and I didn’t know why. What I did know was that I always interpreted things differently from everyone else. So what happened between us must have been my fault somehow. I had to learn from him – this is known as “masking” and is another reason why a female diagnosis of Asperger’s is very rare. We become very good at taking our cues from those around us, copying other people’s behaviour and not admitting when things feel wrong to us. The phrase “It’s not you, it’s me” made no sense to me. It was always me. There was something wrong with me that made me constantly mess up. Other people’s bad behaviour, in my mind, was dismissed as normal. I was the wrong one. I silently tortured myself for years after Joe, trying to figure out exactly what I did. Why did I ruin every relationship? Why didn’t I just take the f*cking jeans off?
THE ROAD TO DIAGNOSIS
Throughout the rest of my twenties I often found myself being “the other woman” – someone to fool around with on a night out when girlfriends weren’t around. There were no other serious relationships. I went on a couple of dates but would find myself sitting in silence and avoiding all eye contact. Sometimes I would even bring Kitty along and she would talk to my dates instead. I hoped that if they stuck around until I was comfortable enough to be myself then everything would be OK. But they never did.
The social anxieties I faced weren’t as acute with women. I was always much more relaxed around them. Especially one: Kitty. The one constant in my life, she knows what I’m thinking without me needing to speak. Seven years ago, when she was physically assaulted and I almost lost her, I realised that I was in love with her. Unlike my past obsessions, ours had been a slow-burning love, one I didn’t have to work at, where I didn’t have to struggle for her to understand me. She felt the same – and four years ago we got married, in front of rows of weeping guests.
There are still challenges for us. It turns out that my reaction to certain noises, smells and textures is something called sensory processing disorder (SPD), and is linked to autism. Some days I can’t bear to be touched. Sex and intimacy can be tricky. I also need my food to be organised correctly and not be touching on the plate. I don’t like to travel alone. I need to be reminded to shower, to take my medications. But Kitty understands – and she helps me. Since my diagnosis, I’ve been having CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and practise regular meditation and yoga. But just because I now know why I am the way I am, it doesn’t mean that I have been given the right map. Instead, I have a box of random words and pictures, and every day I’m trying to piece them together.
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