I am Engaged to a Wonderful Jewish Asperger Girl (Part II)

(Part I)

So how did I propose to my one and only dream Jewish Asperger girl? Well, like in most relationships I suspect, she really proposed to me while allowing me the pretense of going through the motions of asking her to maintain the facade of my manly control in this relationship. So a few weeks ago Miriam announced to me that she intended to have an engagement party in August. Naturally, I was curious as to who would play the role of the groom at this engagement party and decided to volunteer my services before some other guy tried out for the part. This past Sunday, I took Miriam to the Aquarium of the Pacific. In the last post, I mentioned that Miriam's special interest is the South Pacific. It is actually much more specific than that; it is in Palau. In case you have never heard of Palau they are a group of islands several hundred miles to the east of the Philippines. (Lionel Spiegel had heard of them because of some of the tropical life off its coasts.)

(Here I passed her test to find Palau on a map, thus making myself a suitable partner for marriage. Naturally, any person with designs on world conquest has to know something about geography.)


The aquarium possesses an entire section on coral reefs based on the ones off Palau. Thus making it the perfect set piece to stand in for Miriam's favorite place in the universe.

How to make it a surprise? The disadvantage of being an Asperger is that it makes you a really bad liar. The advantage of dating an Asperger is that they are very easy to lie to. So I simply told Miriam that I was taking her out on a simple date to the aquarium with a picnic dinner. She believed me. To confirm her belief she checked on a bottle of wine we had just bought to see if it was still in its place. It was. I simply grabbed it afterward when she was not looking and stuck it in my knapsack.

So we headed to the aquarium. As a good boyfriend, I obviously let Miriam take the lead and she took me straight to the Palau exhibit. That finished we went through the rest of the museum. (For some strange reason the people who run the aquarium think that people want to do things that have no connection to Palau like pet sharks.) Heading out of the aquarium, I suggested that we go back one more time through Palau. I then told her to find the most magical place in the exhibit. She parked herself right in front of the red snapper fish. (Miriam, like me, tends to associate love with eating even as she fails to apply this philosophy to its logical conclusion of kitty and human.) While having her stare into the fish tank, I stood behind her and said: "I know nothing of the customs of Palau, how they ask certain questions, but as a western imperialist, I feel entitled to simply make up whatever Palauan customs I wish. So I going to do it this way. Miriam, would you turn around?" She turned around and I asked her the question that was burning on my mind at the moment. "Would you have dinner with me by the shore?"

So we walked to the shore and had a sunset picnic dinner with leechee fruit, which grows in Palau, for dessert. Afterward, we walked along the shore toward the setting sun. I then had Miriam look out to over the water to the sun and once again spoke to her: "This is the closest we can get to Palau without a boat or plane, but I promise we will go there eventually."

She then turned around, and I had pulled out the bottle of wine. She then went into gasps of "oh my god" a bunch of times, before eventually kindly allowing me to ask her an embarrassing question that did not involve food.

I already know where we are going for our honeymoon. I hear some of the islands near the Philippines are quite magnificent. The natives do not particularly care for nuclear weapons so I guess I will have to give up on conquest.

   

I am Engaged to a Wonderful Jewish Asperger Girl (Part I)

For starters, I would like to apologize for the lack of posts this past month. Things have been happening in my life that I could not talk about with my readers. Now that things are official I am very pleased to share everything you.

This past February I received a call from my aunt. She had been telling people about me and someone had contacted her about a girl in South Pasadena named Miriam Albin.

My aunt informed me that Miriam was really smart, into anthropology, had Asperger syndrome and was quite pretty. At which point I stopped my aunt to tell her that I was already looking at a picture of this girl. As soon as I heard the name I Googled her and found her Facebook page. (Life in the twenty-first century.) Soon afterward, I received an email from Miriam. Apparently, she had Googled me in turn, found this blog and failed to be offended by its contents. So we started talking, largely through Skype. (Long distance dating in the twenty-first century.)

There was something absolutely refreshing about dating an Asperger. While we do have our differences (she likes the South Pacific and is all bubbly and friendly, while I like European history am usually found lurking in a corner contemplating taking over the world), it is amazing how similar our learned defense mechanisms are. We both fear accidentally giving offense to people over things beyond our understanding so constantly ask people whether we are bothering them or what they would like. Applying this method to another Asperger leads to some good comic exchanges:

"Is it socially appropriate for me to say this?"    
"I have no idea."
"Do you care if it is socially appropriate?"
"No."
"Oh good."

And then there are the back and forth monologues to be mediated the following way:

"Sorry for going on a random side tangent. I can stop now if you are not interested."
"Is this one of your special interests and does monologuing about this topic make you happy?"
"Yes."
"Ok as long as you do the dishes while you monologue."

Being informed that there are aspects to building a relationship that cannot be conducted over Skype, I flew out to Los Angeles in April for a weekend. I met her parents and they found me to be an Asperger, who is also responsible. Following quid pro quo logic naturally, she flew out in June to meet my family and they found Miriam to be an Asperger, who is also lovable.

The next step was for me to make this a short distance relationship so I moved out to South Pasadena. Miriam's parents liked me so much that they agreed to put me up. Miriam lives nearby in a different house. Admittedly this was an unconventional living arrangement, but I think we both gained a lot from it. We have been doing all the day to day things that a married couple does besides actually sharing a house and sleeping together. Things like preparing dinner, cleaning the dishes and figuring out whose turn it is to monologue.   

(To be continued ...)

A Romantic Dish of Graduate Cooking

I am now in a dating relationship. For those of my readers who are Aspergers or members of an alien species, dating is a process in which the man, in this case yours truly, engages a certain female of interest in a ritual of semi-rational negotiation to convince said female that not only is he not an ax murderer, but that he is also intelligent, sane and useful. If all goes well the female will allow the male to get within a close proximity of her personal space at a level that would otherwise be not considered socially acceptable.

It is my understanding that, in this modern world, if one wishes to convince a female of one's intelligence and sanity one cannot merely offer free lectures on medieval apocalypticism no matter how objectively fascinating a topic it is. Women these days want a man who can show a softer side through the writing of poetry. (This must be because modern women have read G. K. Chesterton and support his argument that poets are much less prone to insanity than mathematicians and chess players.) This should be easy with all of my humanities training; I should certainly be capable of writing poems about medieval apocalypticism. (I am informed by certain sources that said romantic poems should be about the female in question. No, this is not narcissism on the part of women. Also, under no circumstances will I be allowed to write medieval apocalyptic poetry even if it features one's girlfriend as the Virgin Mary battling an evil ex-girlfriend as the dragon beast merged, through dark Japanese anime arts, with the Whore of Babylon.)

As for being useful, it is not enough to tell your girlfriend that within a few years you will finish your dissertation, become a doctor and that all doctors make loads of money. Women want a man who can clean and cook. So after moving everything presently on the floor to some other place on the floor and providing generous helpings of a natural saliva-based polish all around, I set to work proving my love by making my girlfriend a traditional graduate student dish, ramen noodles. I used a secret recipe known only to graduate students and written on the package. So not only do I demonstrate my basic cooking skills, heating water, placing a carbohydrate-laden product inside and not burning it, but also my knowledge of all the three Rs of education, reading, righting and rithmatic. My girlfriend already knows that I can write from all the time I spend on my dissertation that I will one day finish even though she has never seen it. (She is a pious girl with a lot of faith.) Now she knows that I can also read the instructions on a package as well as apply higher mathematics, taking the instructions and multiplying the ingredients by two.

Graduate student romance, reading, and applied mathematics coming together to make ramen noodles for two.

(Readers should feel free to offer their suggestions for graduate student romance that might apply to the non-deconstructed structures of the fantasy outside world and not just in the reasonable and rational ramen based world of academia.)

The Trap of Duty in Dating

As I posted on previously, I struggle with dating in some rather ironic ways. It is not that I do not care, on the contrary at times it is because I care too much, but it is an intellectualized caring lacking formal empathy. Because of this I get hurt from both sides. I am seen as uncaring; this is a damaging accusation since, as someone who often misses social cues, I cannot manage without a certain level of charitable understanding from others that I am ever malicious. On the flip side, since I do in fact care, I open myself up to being hurt.

To give an example, from one of my past relationships. Now to be clear, this relationship, in my mind, was an extremely positive one. It lasted as long as it lasted because we both came to it with the necessary goodwill and we walked away from it, for all the right reasons, but on very good terms. There have been many women about whom I would say they wronged me. Agnes is not one of them. Agnes visited me and got to meet my family. Things went very well, though afterwards, my father made an astute observation to me. He pointed out that it was clear to him, from watching my interaction with Agnes, that I cared greatly about her. When she was in the room she was the center of my attention and what I cared about was making sure that she felt comfortable. On the other hand, my father saw nothing to indicate that the feeling was mutual.

Of course in this situation it was Agnes who had gone out of her way traveling to see me; obviously, it was my obligation to look after her and make her feel that her trip was worthwhile. (Again this has nothing to do with any personal feelings I may have had toward Agnes at a given moment. She was doing something for me; I, therefore, owed it to her to respond in kind.) Also, I must admit that there is an element here of overcompensating for being an Asperger. It was drilled into me that, if I did not want people to think I was unfeeling, I needed to actively show I cared for people and keep them in mind. So in any situation in which it becomes actually relevant to me whether someone thinks I care, I am going to make them a conscious priority. Most people can get away with caring subconsciously so they can keep it at moderate levels. Since this is something I need to do consciously if I am going to do it all, I lack a ready mechanism to moderate it.

This gap between our mutual levels of attention, though, became very readily apparent when our roles were reversed. What ended this relationship was when, after traveling to spend time with Agnes, she informed me that I would be left to my own devices Saturday night. My response to her was that if I were single I would be looking forward to spending the evening playing Mass Effect, geeky, loserish, but loads of fun. If I were dating I would be looking forward to actually be spending time with my girlfriend. What I had now seemed to be the worst of both worlds.    

Care, as I conceptualize it, is an expression of duty. For starters, I take dating and the responsibilities that come with it very seriously. If talking to someone in the first place is a big deal, how much more so if you are engaging in a series of meetings to negotiate a "till death do us part" agreement. (Part of being an Asperger is that one approaches everything with literal earnestness.) Furthermore, there is my quid pro quo morality. How can I imagine asking someone to treat me with charity, a virtual necessity living as an Asperger in a neurotypical world, if I am not prepared to give in kind? If I need to rely on other people thinking to themselves that, despite my very real flaws, they are in a relationship with me and therefore owe it to me to give me that benefit of the doubt to try to make things work then I need to feel obligated in turn to honor that relationship and always try to work things out. In practice, though, this feeling simply results in me acting out this sense of obligation for people, even those I actively dated, who do not reciprocate. To make matters worse, most seem to lack even a concept of such a quid pro quo sense of duty.

My Very Rational Approach to Love and Dating and Why It Has Not Worked (So Far)

The common adage that you hear about Aspergers is that we do not have emotions and we are therefore incapable of falling in love and pursuing romantic relationships. This is absolutely false. I have, for one, been in love many times, all failures to one degree or another, often with the other person not even willing to talk to me. In contrast, in circumstances where the situation has been reversed and I was aware that another person had feelings for me my position has been, whether or not I felt able to return those feelings, that the person had given me one of the nicest things possible, the knowledge that someone else cared about me, and that I, in turn, owed them something. Even if for various reasons I felt unable to return their affection, they deserved their chance to make their case and I owed it to them to hear them out with an open mind; above all else, I feel the need to avoid doing something that might hurt the other person. Following the author of Psalms, I see returning good with evil as the most unforgivable action one can do in this world. If one is to go based on my life experience it is neurotypicals, living inside their own feelings, who seem incapable of love.

Part of my problem, I have come to recognize, lies in how I conceive of love and the logical conclusions I take from it. Much as I despise Ayn Rand's concept of sexuality, there is something to be said for her notion of love as a rational decision that one chooses to make. For me, love is essentially an offer of loyalty in this difficult world. What I want is very simple; give me a girl that I am attracted to, can get a decent conversation out of and operates within traditional Jewish practice and I would be willing to offer this girl absolute loyalty. Obviously, there is more to a relationship than just this, but give me this to work on and I will figure out a way to take care of everything else. I am a rational and tolerant person, who respects the fact that other people have different and equally valid personalities from mine. Assuming that this other person is equally rational we should be able to meet each other half-way. I am also not bad looking and perfectly willing to allow the person I am dating to take charge of my wardrobe and my beard as best suits them.

So where does this entire process go wrong as it has so many times for me? For one thing, this is a very quick process for me. I should be able to figure out whether a girl fits my criteria in a matter of minutes; a few days if I really want to be sure. This creates a situation in which I have fallen in love and am willing to go all out with someone whom I have just met and who likely, at best, sees me as an interesting person. Furthermore, my instinctual reaction to falling in love is to take it very seriously. For me, there is no such thing as a person, particularly a girl, that I just casually talk to. If I am talking to a person on a regular basis at all then, by definition, the relationship is important.

This sort of relationship does not work with most girls, even the intelligent eccentric ones that catch my attention. They are likely to be turned off by my unreciprocated intensity. In this day and age, such affections are generally interpreted as marks of instability rather than honorable commitment. Also, most girls are looking for something with more empathetic depth to it. This is not something that happens in the short time schedule that I operate on. Furthermore, even in those situations in which I fail to turn someone away very quickly, the relationship still fails in the long term once the person realizes that I am not capable of developing such an empathetic relationship. What I understand is wanting something from someone else (in this case sex and affection) and making the logical assumption that the other person might want something from me (likely just for me to get out of their hair). The logical conclusion from this is that we should use reason to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement (say if I am affectionately told to get packing). This is the extent to which I understand how to relate to people. Any relationship outside of this framework is meaningless to me.

At a philosophical level, my approach to dating suffers from the same problem as all Kantian relationships in that it is ultimately impersonal. In Kant's moral philosophy, one always acts from universal principles and not from particular feelings. So one is not kind to a friend because you like their friendship. The friend as a person is irrelevant, just an object of categorical imperatives. Similarly, with my dating, the girl I am with may mean the world to me but is of little relevance in of herself. She is a person who happens to fulfill a set of categories. She could just as easily be replaced with someone else who also fit my categories and that person would mean the world to me.

Oddly enough, my approach to dating would likely work very well if I operated within the Haredi framework. For some Haredim, the practice is for the guy to meet the girl for the first time for a few hours in the girl's home with the platters for an engagement party already in place. In such a world it would come down to the girl being faced with a very simple calculation: "This Benzion guy comes from a good family, he is smart and funny. Even if he is a little odd, he is clearly not the abusive sort so why not just say yes."

I do have my sight on a girl (not actually dating her though). Let us see if, this time around, things work out differently.