It is widely said and accepted that the autistic person has serious trouble connecting with the world around them, particularly on an emotional level.  This ranges from grief, to happiness, and from joy to despair.  The emotional state of others is something that is completely beyond my capability in comprehending.  When I see someone getting emotional over an event or situation, I find myself confused and bothered that I am unable to share in that moment with them, whether it be through tears or great enjoyment.  Perhaps, though, the area which I most fundamentally misunderstand or have trouble deducing is what is referred to as ‘love’.

What is love?  From what I have been able to gather throughout my academic and philosophical pursuits, this is a very difficult concept to define for anyone, autistic or not.  The term means so many different things to everyone who uses it.  We hear people claim they love their spouse or significant other; they love their family; they love the outfit they just purchased; they love that piece of furniture; they love their job.  Clearly the actual word ‘love’ is not meant with the same intention, force, or meaning in each of these situations.  So how is it that love can be most appropriately understood?

Edgar Schneider, in his discussion of autism, refers to the Greek definition of love.  This definition involves three levels or types of love.  The first is philos, or love of the mind; the second is agape, better understood as love of the heart or soul; the final element is eros, which refers to sexual or physical love.  For someone with autism, great value can be found in this sort of dichotomy, for it allows people like me to be able to describe in some sense what I understand love to be.

From what I have been able to observe throughout my lifetime, when someone refers to another person, namely a partner or family member, and even friends, this is when we would use the agape understanding of love.  It is a feeling from the heart, where there is some kind of internal response, which can manifest itself physically at times, and it is almost innate.   We have all heard the saying, “I love person x so much it hurts.”  It is this sort of love which I find most interesting, primarily because I understand it the least.

Recently, I witnessed the marriage of my best friend.  I was asked to be a part of the wedding party, so I had a front row seat to the festivities, and I confess that I spent the entire day trying to logically deduce what was going on around me.  There was an enormous gap in understanding between what I was seeing and what I could understand.  It did not seem all that long ago that these two people barely knew each other, and their relationship was known to be her loving him, and him ignoring her.  Yet, somehow there I was standing in a Church, in a tuxedo, watching the two of them getting married.  Is this even possible to comprehend through logic?  Clearly not.

The typical explanation he gives me when I ask is that, in the span of two months one summer about six years ago, they began spending more and more time together, and fell in love.  I have fallen a number of times, on the sidewalk, on ice, or even in malls, but never into this thing called love.  I have questioned him about this a great many times, and each time he explains it to me in exactly the same way.  For some reason, though, I simply do not get it.  One day, people are total strangers to each other, and the next, they are in love. 

I can claim that I have been in love.  Dating has never been an activity I have taken part in.  This being the case, I have been in two relationships, which others tell me I can safely define as serious in nature.  These two relationships were by far the most difficult things I have ever done in my life, and I use the past tense because they both ended.  In reflecting upon the two in their entirety, it is plain to see, in some way, that I was in way over my head and the two women that were brave enough to tolerate me for extended periods of time deserve some sort of medal.  To this day, I am of the belief that neither had any idea what they were in for.  The agape version of love is beyond me, and always has been.  I do not feel connections to people based on family relations, long-term friendships, or even intimate dating experiences.  My emotions and everything they entail are purely logical in nature.  This is where the Greek philos comes into play.

Autistic people are often described as detached, cold, or emotionless.  I do not believe this to be the case at all.  In the minds of many, I choose to be what is sometimes called robotic in nature and that I refuse to allow people to get close to me out of some sense of insecurity or distrust.  The number of people throughout my life which have told me I put up ‘barriers’ when dealing with people and I should let people into my life is astounding.  Besides being an unusual concept, it is also an impossible one for me to comprehend.

How do I go about loving someone when I have never done it before?  Imagine trying to actively love another person without knowing what is the proper way, or the improper way, of doing so.  Asperger’s Syndrome is not a socially learned behaviour, nor is it a choice.  It is a neurological disorder which governs my patterns of behaviour and brain function.  I am not able to feel the agape sense of love because I am physically unable to.  I did not make a choice to misunderstand the emotional state of everyone around me, and to lust for solitude at every turn.  Instead, I was born this way.  This is not to say that I do not love.  I just do it differently.

Love for me is purely intellectual, which is often accompanied by aesthetically pleasing elements.  Each situation in which I have ever used the term love had an intellectual appeal for me.  The love I generate does not arise from the heart, but comes almost purely from my mind, for that is where I live most of the time.  In order for me to utter that word, my mind has processed the situation and agreed to place the stamp of love on it.  Nothing in my life escapes my mind.  As a result, the Greek philos description of love is how I ‘feel’ love.  There must, if I am to take any interest or notice of a person, be an intellectual appeal first.  Without it, I will dismiss that person immediately, thus earning the description of being cold, blunt or arrogant.  To go beyond the intellectual stimulation and become love, an aesthetic appeal must accompany the cerebral facet.  In the two serious relationships I have been involved in, there were both intellectual and aesthetic elements working in tandem that kept my mind interested.  When these elements would fade, the relationship would take a turn for the worse.  This was not a conscious choice for me, as once the intellectual appeal decreases, my mind simply moves past that person or relationship.

My love for intellectual matters goes well beyond intimate relationships.  In the case of family, this is very difficult.  I am very lucky to have parents and a sister that have supported me throughout my life, even while knowing their son and brother was by no means socially normal.  They adjusted a number of parts of life, sometimes at their own inconvenience, to make sure their son and brother was as comfortable as he could be and was going to be able to do what he needed to do.  All of this being said, when I look at my parents and sister, I do not feel an inherent connection to them.  I share some physical features with them, I lived with them for years, and in the case of my parents, they brought me into this world.  I am grateful and humbled, but when they look at me and say they love me, I do not understand it.  If tomorrow one of them betrayed me or I felt they disrespected me in some way, I could walk away from them for the rest of my life and not look back.  This sort of reaction has occurred within my family before, and has created a number of strained relationships throughout my life.

The eros or sexual aspect of love is perhaps the most difficult of all.  Imagine trying to forge such a relationship with someone when touch, smell and every other sensory perception is hypersensitive.  The most basic encounters become anxiety-producing and feared, rather than an enjoyable part of a relationship.  Beyond the sensory issue is, again, the intellectual aspect of things.  Eros is, in many ways, illogical for me; many people describe this part of a relationship as fulfilling natural urges, but this is not something I have ever experienced.  In my late teenage years, I was fully prepared to enter the Catholic Priesthood and sacrifice any sort of physical contact for the rest of my life.  When I decided against the Seminary, it was based on my own philosophical problems with organized religion, not any fear of being unable to act on natural sexual urges.

At this point in my life I am single.  I have spent plenty of time questioning the concept of love, what it means to me, and whether or not I will date again.  Marriage is not something that appeals to me.  This has nothing to do with spending my life with one person, because if I could find a woman tolerant and intellectually stimulating enough for me to make such a commitment, I likely would.  My problems with marriage are with the institution of it, and the connotations often connected to it.

With the two relationships I have been in, I have learned more about myself than about women.  In both relationships, I was the problem; my distance, inability to provide the necessary attention, and distant nature all contributed to an interpretation that I was unhappy or unwilling to enter fully into a relationship.  Love is many things to many people.  It is described as beautiful, painful, joy-making, hate-creating, and life altering.  While I do not completely comprehend what most people mean by the concept, the Greeks were kind enough to provide me with a small portion of understanding into why I relate to people the way I do.  An intellectual appeal is essential for me to show interest in anyone, from the slightest conversation, to an intimate relationship.  Combined with this appeal of the mind comes the respect element, which does entail a rules-based sort of thinking.  I sacrifice a great many things for those I love, for I feel they would do the same, as the rules of the relationship dictate such dedication. 

While my mind tends to drive most of my actions, this does not mean autistic people do not ‘feel’; our feelings are just a bit more complex in nature.  It takes very special people to understand, tolerate and accept the autistic mind coupled with the seemingly cold, blunt and emotionless actions.  I have been fortunate enough to encounter and enter into relationships with such people, and those are the relationships which can be described as loving in nature.