Pretty much I was Liam in college. Now that I am an adult with a wife and toddler and have done extensive reading and self improvement - I came to realize what I have is aspergers. I recognize Liam immediately from the fingerprint of the descriptions being given of him, I was and still am that guy.
Aspergers is a catastrophe for relationships. You are weird, can’t read social cues, make the wrong remarks and facial expressions, everyone detects there is something wrong with you and avoids you (as the author felt a strong urge to do in this story and as she mentions her peers did likewise).
As a result, people with aspergers are rapidly isolated by their peer group (and they don’t even know it is happening). They tend to make inappropriate and overly blunt remarks that get them into trouble (Liam sharing about his unhappiness with parking when everyone else was relating a personal story).
Because your peers detect there is something wrong and avoid you, your social skills remain bad and only get worse. There isn’t a chance to fix them and frankly no one feels like owning that project, nor are they qualified to do so. Look what the author’s reward was for being nice to this guy, he interpreted it as a romantic overture. Not a great motivation to help.
To make matters worse, the general populations understand of aspergers and even that of trained professionals such as therapists is shockingly low. They just think you are weird.
Her advisor calling him a sociopath isn’t inaccurate. Both people with aspergers and sociopaths don’t really do empathy. Aspergers is associated with egocentrism. It would certainly seem that way to normal people.
By the time I had gotten to college with aspergers I had been severely bullied for over a decade due to my lack of social skills and weirdness. It makes you a target for lifelong harassment.
When I encountered women who I felt were attractive and tried to date them it was a complete failure because I had zero concept nor the tools to progress a relationship normally. Despite being a robot, I can assure you that I still have normal desire for human connection, just no way to achieve it.
Normal people have at least a degree of understanding about how to build rapport and common sense about how to progress a relationship or evaluate a member of the opposite sex and whether they are reciprocating or not. Aspergers people have nothing except some very rudimentary mental templates of what is supposed to happen, I only understood relationships through depictions in porn and popular movies, neither of which are helpful, realistic or accurate.
The consequences of having someone with aspergers walking around with intense human needs and no way to get them fulfilled combined with no social skills is catastrophic for everyone involved.
Look at the damage this did to the author.
One thing that is incredibly unhelpful is the politicization of things like “white / male privilege.” This isn’t male privilege, it is a severely damaging untreated mental condition.
There is nothing privileged about me being bullied to the point of suicide and stumbling around trying to form normal human relationships with an untreated mental disorder and the damage caused by my doing that.
College was not good, I became suicidally depressed based on a lifetime of everyone around me communicating that I am unwanted and being unable to form normal relationships. I am quite amazed I did not commit suicide.
I had similar incidents like what happened to the author. I met a girl I really liked and we dated and it didn’t work out. I couldn’t figure out why and became intensely obsessed with her and spiraled into suicidal depression. Fortunately I kept it entirely to myself and after she asked me for space, I managed to leave her completely alone (unlike Liam here).
I suspect even if I had gone for help they might not have been able to understand what was wrong with me.
Thanks for this comment. I'm only nominally familiar with Asperger syndrome, but from what you say here it does sound consistent with Liam's behavior.
As time has progressed since this incident occurred, I have adopted various opinions about Liam's psychological profile. As I said in my article, at first it was necessary for me to believe he had some sort of disorder in order to forgive him. At other times, I needed to completely ignore it. Giving any thought to it felt like an attempt to excuse or justify his actions, and I needed someone to say "It doesn't matter. What he did is still wrong." Now I have enough emotional distance from it where I'm interested in what happened from an academic point of view. If Liam is suffering from an undiagnosed and untreated medical condition that could provide even a partial explanation for why he behaved as he did, I'm interested in that.
In Liam's specific case I do feel like male privilege, entitlement, and outright chauvinism played a role (I say this because of the blog post he wrote and other chauvinistic behaviors I witnessed). It may be possible that these character traits were born out of male privilege + Aspergers.
I am sorry that you went undiagnosed and treated for so long, and that you were bullied. Craving and needing human connections but largely being unable to attain them sounds like hell on earth to me. Especially when you don't know how to acquire those skills on your own and you aren't getting the help you need because no one understands the problem. I am quite sure I cannot begin to fathom the misery and despair you must have felt.
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[ 216 ms ] story [ 2328 ms ] threadPretty much I was Liam in college. Now that I am an adult with a wife and toddler and have done extensive reading and self improvement - I came to realize what I have is aspergers. I recognize Liam immediately from the fingerprint of the descriptions being given of him, I was and still am that guy.
Aspergers is a catastrophe for relationships. You are weird, can’t read social cues, make the wrong remarks and facial expressions, everyone detects there is something wrong with you and avoids you (as the author felt a strong urge to do in this story and as she mentions her peers did likewise).
As a result, people with aspergers are rapidly isolated by their peer group (and they don’t even know it is happening). They tend to make inappropriate and overly blunt remarks that get them into trouble (Liam sharing about his unhappiness with parking when everyone else was relating a personal story).
Because your peers detect there is something wrong and avoid you, your social skills remain bad and only get worse. There isn’t a chance to fix them and frankly no one feels like owning that project, nor are they qualified to do so. Look what the author’s reward was for being nice to this guy, he interpreted it as a romantic overture. Not a great motivation to help.
To make matters worse, the general populations understand of aspergers and even that of trained professionals such as therapists is shockingly low. They just think you are weird.
Her advisor calling him a sociopath isn’t inaccurate. Both people with aspergers and sociopaths don’t really do empathy. Aspergers is associated with egocentrism. It would certainly seem that way to normal people.
By the time I had gotten to college with aspergers I had been severely bullied for over a decade due to my lack of social skills and weirdness. It makes you a target for lifelong harassment.
When I encountered women who I felt were attractive and tried to date them it was a complete failure because I had zero concept nor the tools to progress a relationship normally. Despite being a robot, I can assure you that I still have normal desire for human connection, just no way to achieve it.
Normal people have at least a degree of understanding about how to build rapport and common sense about how to progress a relationship or evaluate a member of the opposite sex and whether they are reciprocating or not. Aspergers people have nothing except some very rudimentary mental templates of what is supposed to happen, I only understood relationships through depictions in porn and popular movies, neither of which are helpful, realistic or accurate.
The consequences of having someone with aspergers walking around with intense human needs and no way to get them fulfilled combined with no social skills is catastrophic for everyone involved.
Look at the damage this did to the author.
One thing that is incredibly unhelpful is the politicization of things like “white / male privilege.” This isn’t male privilege, it is a severely damaging untreated mental condition.
There is nothing privileged about me being bullied to the point of suicide and stumbling around trying to form normal human relationships with an untreated mental disorder and the damage caused by my doing that.
College was not good, I became suicidally depressed based on a lifetime of everyone around me communicating that I am unwanted and being unable to form normal relationships. I am quite amazed I did not commit suicide.
I had similar incidents like what happened to the author. I met a girl I really liked and we dated and it didn’t work out. I couldn’t figure out why and became intensely obsessed with her and spiraled into suicidal depression. Fortunately I kept it entirely to myself and after she asked me for space, I managed to leave her completely alone (unlike Liam here).
I suspect even if I had gone for help they might not have been able to understand what was wrong with me.
Thanks for this comment. I'm only nominally familiar with Asperger syndrome, but from what you say here it does sound consistent with Liam's behavior.
As time has progressed since this incident occurred, I have adopted various opinions about Liam's psychological profile. As I said in my article, at first it was necessary for me to believe he had some sort of disorder in order to forgive him. At other times, I needed to completely ignore it. Giving any thought to it felt like an attempt to excuse or justify his actions, and I needed someone to say "It doesn't matter. What he did is still wrong." Now I have enough emotional distance from it where I'm interested in what happened from an academic point of view. If Liam is suffering from an undiagnosed and untreated medical condition that could provide even a partial explanation for why he behaved as he did, I'm interested in that.
In Liam's specific case I do feel like male privilege, entitlement, and outright chauvinism played a role (I say this because of the blog post he wrote and other chauvinistic behaviors I witnessed). It may be possible that these character traits were born out of male privilege + Aspergers.
I am sorry that you went undiagnosed and treated for so long, and that you were bullied. Craving and needing human connections but largely being unable to attain them sounds like hell on earth to me. Especially when you don't know how to acquire those skills on your own and you aren't getting the help you need because no one understands the problem. I am quite sure I cannot begin to fathom the misery and despair you must have felt.
I'm very glad to hear you're doing better now.