DarrenGMiller
First Post
I didn;t really have anything to add to this excellent thread before now, but since I can now contribute, I am going to do so.
I had just this experience. I made a commitment that was VERY important to me. Last month, my wife and I joined the church we had been attending. We had been singing with the choir for several months already, but actually joining this church was a huge deal. The bishop comes to the church and lays hands on you, etc. The choir director asked us, well in advance, what would be a good date/time to have a reception/choir party for you to welcome you officially. We set a date and time. The reception is scheduled for a Sunday evening. Now, I am a high school teacher, which generally leaves my Sundays free, but a week before the reception I am informed that our International Baccalaureate program, which I teach in, is having a banquet the following Sunday evening; the same Sunday as our reception, at the same time. I tried everything I could to get out of this banquet, but in order to preserve my professional status, I ended up having to go (I am 2005 Teacher of the Year at my school and it made the IB coordinator look good to have me on his team). So, I had to bow out of a reception shceduled just for me and my wife (she ended up going to the reception though... more on this in a moment). These things are a part of life.
My wife, on the other hand, has always had an intense fear of social situations. When we met, we didn't actually talk. She saw me enter a room in college and when I left, she followed me, then caught up and walked beside me. I was on my way to the cafeteria and when I got there, I sat at my usual crowded noisy table. She sat a few tables away at an empty table, obviously watching us being loud and obnoxious. I invited her to the table and practically dragged her over (I was a junior, she was a freshman and it was the first day of the semester). When I left the cafeteria, she just stuck in my mind for some reason. I had a friend who was an RA and had a list of the dorm each freshman was assigned to, so we looked her up (I got her name from a professor) and I walked through her dorm looking for her. I didn't find her room that time and when she saw me walk by in the hall, she didn't call out to me or anything and I didn't see her. The next time I walked through, I found her room and left a note for her to come to my room to watch a movie. She and her roommate showed up with a pizza and I don't think we said a dozen words to each other that entire evening. We knew from the moment we met that we were going to be married. We were on our way to a lake/park one day and passed this house (we had known each other for a week and probably hadn't spoken more than a score of words to each other, but were already inseperable). We both looked at the house, then looked at each other and that was it. We were married less than 2 years later. We have had 13 happy years together so far and hope for many more. I am a VERY social person; always the life of any party, telling stories and jokes and am sarcastic and love to debate. My wife, as I said, is terrified of social interaction. She has made an effort to get better because she is missing something from her life. I am her only friend. Like Ken, this has created a need for close companionship, but from a close friend of her own gender, or even couples that we can be friends with that are not just "my friends" but hers too.
My wife has never been interested in small talk and sees no value to BSing or flattering people. She will never "kiss up" to anyone to get anything. She tells people bluntly how she feels. I don't think she has AS, but she saw herself some of the symptoms. Anyway, she went to this party, because she desperately wants to overcome her social fears and difficulties. This has been a 15 year battle since we have known each other, but she is getting better a little bit at a time, in very small increments. She recognizes her problem, wants to fix it, but it is a long process.
So, it is possible to meet someone without involving yourself in the social scene, but since she left college, my wife has not had the same opportunities to meet people without socializing and this has been very frustrating to her. I know have several married guys in my D&D group and we went out with two couples (guys from my group and their wives) last week. It was incredibly stressful for her (whenever she is going to have to socialize, we usually argue beforehand about trivial stuff... she does it to keep her mind off the upcoming social interaction), but she enjoyed it. AND she went to that reception I mentioned earlier. ALONE. With many people she barely knew. She wants friends badly enough that she is making an effort to get through things that are painful to her in order to accomplish her goal.
On a side note, my wife is a wonderful person who is great with children. She loves them because they are uncomplicated and don't have the social baggage adults have. My students think she is great.
My brother, on the other hand, was severely bi-polar, borderline schizophrenic, OCD, you name it. He HAD to take a wide variety of drugs just to stay semi-functional. I loved my brother and only got to know him because of the medicines he had to take. When he was not on them, or they were out of whack, he was violent, self-centered, egocentric and a major a**hole. I am thankful for the prescription medicines he took (though not for the illegal ones he sometimes took when he was deep in depression and I am militantly against "recreational" use of drugs), because they allowed me to get to know a wonderful person; the person that he was before his use of illegal drugs triggered a latent chemical imbalance in his brain that caused his mental illness. He passed away on July 4, 1998 at the age of 37 of heart failure. Don't write off the power of therapy, or of prescription drugs to help you be the person you can be. Did they cahnge his personality? Yes, but they allowed him to bring out the personality traits that were already inside, but couldn't be expressed through his illness.
DM
I had just this experience. I made a commitment that was VERY important to me. Last month, my wife and I joined the church we had been attending. We had been singing with the choir for several months already, but actually joining this church was a huge deal. The bishop comes to the church and lays hands on you, etc. The choir director asked us, well in advance, what would be a good date/time to have a reception/choir party for you to welcome you officially. We set a date and time. The reception is scheduled for a Sunday evening. Now, I am a high school teacher, which generally leaves my Sundays free, but a week before the reception I am informed that our International Baccalaureate program, which I teach in, is having a banquet the following Sunday evening; the same Sunday as our reception, at the same time. I tried everything I could to get out of this banquet, but in order to preserve my professional status, I ended up having to go (I am 2005 Teacher of the Year at my school and it made the IB coordinator look good to have me on his team). So, I had to bow out of a reception shceduled just for me and my wife (she ended up going to the reception though... more on this in a moment). These things are a part of life.
My wife, on the other hand, has always had an intense fear of social situations. When we met, we didn't actually talk. She saw me enter a room in college and when I left, she followed me, then caught up and walked beside me. I was on my way to the cafeteria and when I got there, I sat at my usual crowded noisy table. She sat a few tables away at an empty table, obviously watching us being loud and obnoxious. I invited her to the table and practically dragged her over (I was a junior, she was a freshman and it was the first day of the semester). When I left the cafeteria, she just stuck in my mind for some reason. I had a friend who was an RA and had a list of the dorm each freshman was assigned to, so we looked her up (I got her name from a professor) and I walked through her dorm looking for her. I didn't find her room that time and when she saw me walk by in the hall, she didn't call out to me or anything and I didn't see her. The next time I walked through, I found her room and left a note for her to come to my room to watch a movie. She and her roommate showed up with a pizza and I don't think we said a dozen words to each other that entire evening. We knew from the moment we met that we were going to be married. We were on our way to a lake/park one day and passed this house (we had known each other for a week and probably hadn't spoken more than a score of words to each other, but were already inseperable). We both looked at the house, then looked at each other and that was it. We were married less than 2 years later. We have had 13 happy years together so far and hope for many more. I am a VERY social person; always the life of any party, telling stories and jokes and am sarcastic and love to debate. My wife, as I said, is terrified of social interaction. She has made an effort to get better because she is missing something from her life. I am her only friend. Like Ken, this has created a need for close companionship, but from a close friend of her own gender, or even couples that we can be friends with that are not just "my friends" but hers too.
My wife has never been interested in small talk and sees no value to BSing or flattering people. She will never "kiss up" to anyone to get anything. She tells people bluntly how she feels. I don't think she has AS, but she saw herself some of the symptoms. Anyway, she went to this party, because she desperately wants to overcome her social fears and difficulties. This has been a 15 year battle since we have known each other, but she is getting better a little bit at a time, in very small increments. She recognizes her problem, wants to fix it, but it is a long process.
So, it is possible to meet someone without involving yourself in the social scene, but since she left college, my wife has not had the same opportunities to meet people without socializing and this has been very frustrating to her. I know have several married guys in my D&D group and we went out with two couples (guys from my group and their wives) last week. It was incredibly stressful for her (whenever she is going to have to socialize, we usually argue beforehand about trivial stuff... she does it to keep her mind off the upcoming social interaction), but she enjoyed it. AND she went to that reception I mentioned earlier. ALONE. With many people she barely knew. She wants friends badly enough that she is making an effort to get through things that are painful to her in order to accomplish her goal.
On a side note, my wife is a wonderful person who is great with children. She loves them because they are uncomplicated and don't have the social baggage adults have. My students think she is great.
My brother, on the other hand, was severely bi-polar, borderline schizophrenic, OCD, you name it. He HAD to take a wide variety of drugs just to stay semi-functional. I loved my brother and only got to know him because of the medicines he had to take. When he was not on them, or they were out of whack, he was violent, self-centered, egocentric and a major a**hole. I am thankful for the prescription medicines he took (though not for the illegal ones he sometimes took when he was deep in depression and I am militantly against "recreational" use of drugs), because they allowed me to get to know a wonderful person; the person that he was before his use of illegal drugs triggered a latent chemical imbalance in his brain that caused his mental illness. He passed away on July 4, 1998 at the age of 37 of heart failure. Don't write off the power of therapy, or of prescription drugs to help you be the person you can be. Did they cahnge his personality? Yes, but they allowed him to bring out the personality traits that were already inside, but couldn't be expressed through his illness.
DM
But then, if she were at the bookstore waiting on me to decide, I might be just as frustrating!
as for the second part, this is why i always do my shopping alone. 
