Transforming
Transforming from, Transforming to. . .
The miracle of becoming YOU.
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About that LOVE thing….
My friend Lorelei wrote this a while back. It was this that gave me reason to believe that it was possible to actually have any Hope again in the nasty L word. No not Lorelei, hahaha. It’s the other L word. LOVE.
LOVE is something that I was very afraid of after my last experience. I feel it is something strongly connected to Hope and Trust. Those little dragons of mine seem to like to taunt me and follow me around constantly as a reminder that they exist nearby. And Hope, trust, and Love seem to be tantalizingly at the edges of my existence, but at least I am aware that they are within my existence now and able to be recovered thanks to Lorelei.
It may have taken her a long time to teach it, but she managed to get it through that thick skull and into the skin with these words when I first read them months ago. Before then, my existence was not nearly as vibrant. I wanted to make sure to share these. Loving again? It is possible to do, just like Hope… it follows you, it is there and can be done even when you don’t want to…. it is still there….. Joy might even happen too, who knows, hop on the trip, enjoy the adventure, take the journey. It might be worth it.
The Entombment of Love
The days of unbridled passion are over-how does love waver after so long a time? This is not easily answered. Length of that love should strengthen the bond, not weaken it. The years together should become years in which human love relationships become validated. Growth in each person is celebrated and transformed into deeper understanding and meaning, cherishing its longevity. Instead, over time the physically thrilling, emotionally fulfilling and completely all-consuming love changes and many times dies.
If one is lucky, falling in love with another person is one of the most important lessons in life. Feeling this emotional fulfillment may be felt more than once. Justifying that the love felt with another was nothing more than infatuation and that it was not meant to be. With this new feeling of immense happiness, this new love is ‘the one’. That it’s somehow destined by fate, its perfection is above all other tribulations. As if past relationships did not exist. Justifying that it was not ‘true love’ -it never occurred and is erased from one’s inner self.
When love is new, all signals of doom are ignored. The dragons that linger close are imaginary, the devils whispering in lover’s ears to use caution, to slow down, not to give oneself so completely, not to trust where trust is not yet merited. One smacks the dragon on his snout. Swat the little devils away from ears that only hear sweet nothings of never-ending happiness. Although the dragon and the devils disappear– they linger in the lover’s peripheral vision. Blinders make those ugly creatures invisible. The lovers only see a harmonious, glorified future and embrace the loving magical journey of a blissful life together. Giving oneself to another -believing that both the emotional and physical climax will last forever– for the absence of this immense feeling of utter joy would surely cause death. The continuation of becoming and being together surpasses all things in life. There is no room for speculation or questions – this love is unquestionable.
The inception of a love in its infancy has no age barrier on emotional attachment. When young, one can blame inexperience, but the truth is that the heart is everlasting, forgetting it once was broken. How can one live without the exhilaration of love and what it truly is? The delightful, euphoric, and unexpected feeling in the bottom of one’s inner self, rejoicing that the emptiness for so long is filled. Love stories begin like this –Consumed with the dedication to the beloved’s greatness and that this happiness will never end or change. How does one know when it’s over? Does the soul and heart mourn and suffer more because it loved so deeply? So many questions pertain to the uncertainty of the end of the image of forever – which is a notion, an idea, a hope for the continuation of a love that was committed to another love, to another soul? How can two people become one when they are two individuals, independent from each other? Only once in the in the creation of souls have two become one, only once can one say for certain that one body is within another. Which grows and inevitably becomes another being, only a woman can experience this; it grows from a bunch of cells to a human being.
The rites of the imaginary, of two lovers becoming one, is a fable that all lovers believe, the two souls make another soul – love that is unyielding and ever present within the two. That one small soul becomes independent and in time will join with another soul – thus multiplying and continuing the human chain. However, it’s a chain and circle that at times becomes broken, diseased, ugly, and eventually dies. The heart is broken, torn and suffers greatly in the midst of the end of the relationship. The dragon that was ignored and banished once again appears. It smiles, barring its large white pointy teeth in a righteous grin. The little devils come and once again sit on the lover’s shoulders snickering and screaming in ears so loudly that the ringing can cause insanity, but they only become louder. Their mouth smacking and teeth grinding without end while inside – the soul mourns and sighs with pain. The dragon with its green scaly odorous smell sits on the chest, making it hard to breath, the forlorn lover feels death approaching.
The heart that once beat for the union of a love that was to last forever now beats irregularly. The demons that at one time were burdensome – were cherubs, the dragon an Angel. But through banishing and ignoring those warnings, not hearing what they had to say when love was new, are now entities of pain. They stab, probe and gleefully rejoice in the constant suffering and inconsolable sobbing of the love that is dead. Recovery is not possible. No remedies alleviate the malady of the wound that had been patched so many times with the timeless hope of something that cannot be. The lover that fell for the promises that were broken, the lies that were told repeatedly, finally demolishes the bridge that allowed them to walk together above the ugliness below.
The heart breaks into smithereens, although it longs to fly over the destroyed bridge into the other’s breast, it is forever unattainable. The beloved’s spirit is closed, locked, and indifferent – the lovers bury their longings for each other in the tomb of failure. Can one surpass the grief of a cremated heart? Many have done just that, although a piece will always be missing it’s on the other side of the broken, dilapidated, and dangling bridge. Love-it’s a misconception, for when the heart feels- the head doesn’t think.
Tina Turner sang about this long ago:
“What’s love got to do, got to do with it
What’s love but a second hand emotion
What’s love got to do, got to do with it
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken”© Lorelei’s Musings all rights reserved
Direct Link to Lorelei’s story and site. Please follow her!
https://authormusing.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/about-that-love-thing
The Entombment of Love
The days of unbridled passion are over-how does love waver after so long a time? This is not easily answered. Length of that love should strengthen the bond, not weaken it. The years together should become years in which human love relationships become validated. Growth in each person is celebrated and transformed into deeper understanding and meaning, cherishing its longevity. Instead, over time the physically thrilling, emotionally fulfilling and completely all-consuming love changes and many times dies.
If one is lucky, falling in love with another person is one of the most important lessons in life. Feeling this emotional fulfillment may be felt more than once. Justifying that the love felt with another was nothing more than infatuation and that it was not meant to be. With this new feeling of immense happiness, this new love is ‘the one’. That it’s somehow destined by fate…
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Friendships/Relationships and Women on the Spectrum
Friendships pose unique challenges for women on the spectrum
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For most adults, having friends is key to happiness. The stronger a person’s friendships, the happier — and even healthier — that person is likely to be1,2.
Many autistic people have trouble making and keeping friends. This has led to the myth that they don’t want friends3. In reality, they long for friendships just like anyone else. But they face unique challenges in forming and maintaining them.
Autistic women, in particular, may have difficulty interpreting the social subtleties friendships entail4,5,6.
Our work reveals that they have difficulty responding to social conflict, understanding unspoken romantic innuendos and dealing with social anxiety. We need to develop interventions that help prepare them for these challenges.
Most of what we know about friendships in autism comes from studies in children, whose friendships are far less complex than those of adults. The few studies that examine relationships in autistic adults focus primarily on men.
We sought to understand how autistic women differ from neurotypical women in the challenges they face in forming and maintaining friendships, and the satisfaction they glean from the relationships. This understanding could point to specific strategies to help these girls and women navigate their social worlds.
Safe space:
We interviewed 15 autistic women and 15 neurotypical women, aged 20 to 40 and living in England, about friendships and other relationships. Our results are unpublished. The women are enrolled in a larger study exploring the social experiences of girls and women on the spectrum.
We asked open-ended questions such as “How do you choose your friends?” and “What is it about friends that is important to you?”
We found that autistic women tend to view friendships like neurotypical women do. They value the opportunity to share their thoughts and emotions with friends, responding with answers such as, “I can tell them anything at all and they listen.” They welcome the support that friendships provide, saying things like, “She’s always helping me a lot or I’m always helping her a lot.” They also appreciate the freedom to “be yourself” in a relationship, and say that friendships offer “a safe space.”
But we identified some important differences. Whereas neurotypical women tend to have large groups of friends, autistic women tend to have a few close, intense friendships. Sometimes these intense friendships became similar to a “special interest,” one woman told us. “My friends are all-consuming, the only thing you think about,” she said.
Women on the spectrum also differ from their neurotypical peers in how they respond to acts of social aggression, such as gossip or being suddenly cut off by a friend. Many of these women experience social anxiety as a result of such challenges, which causes them to limit socializing.
This anxiety can color how these women then approach all social interactions, regardless of whether they expect a conflict. For example, one woman said that because of her anxiety, she needs to keep her interactions with others brief. This can damage friendships over time.
Autistic women use the internet to maintain friendships more than typical women do, we found. Some women seem to rely on online messaging almost exclusively to keep in touch with friends. “That’s pretty much all my social life is, the internet,” one woman said.
Intense interests:
Women on the spectrum reported romantic relationships of similar lengths and levels of seriousness as those of neurotypical women, and said these were the most important friendships in their lives. “My husband essentially became my special interest,” one autistic woman told us. “I wouldn’t really say that I have friends apart from my partner,” another said.
One woman described romantic partners as “the ready meal of friendships,” because a partner comes with his or her own social network. Taking on a partner’s friends can alleviate the stress and anxiety of making new friends, but it can also leave a person isolated if the romantic relationship ends. Although some neurotypical women also make their romantic partners the center of their social network, this tendency is marked among autistic women.
Autistic people sometimes have difficulty understanding the implied meaning of a conversation or their friends’ social expectations, which can strain friendships7. For example, one woman described an incident in which a friend asked, “Does this dress make me look fat?” “Don’t be silly,” she responded. “Your fat makes you look fat, not the dress.”
The difficulties women on the spectrum have understanding other people’s motivations could also leave them vulnerable to harm — particularly in romantic and sexual relationships. More so than typical individuals, these women tend to interpret statements literally and assume other people have good intentions. “I thought we really were just having a coffee, and that isn’t what he meant at all,” one woman told us. These tendencies could explain why these women reported higher levels of sexual assault to us than the neurotypical women did.
We were heartened to find that all the women in our study reported becoming more self-aware and self-assured with age. As a result, they were increasingly satisfied with their friends — perhaps because they had learned how to end harmful relationships and focus on genuine friendships. One autistic woman explained, “I am now more picky about who I spend time with and who I trust.” Perhaps targeted support early on can accelerate this natural process.
Liz Pellicano is director of the Centre for Research in Autism and Education at University College London. Felicity Sedgewick is a graduate student in her lab.
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Friendships pose unique challenges for women on the spectrum
Freed by ASD 
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