Rdos blog

I recently researched love and relationships in Aspie-quiz. First I added a number of typical romantic questions from a swedish quiz posted on aspergerforum.se. These questions didn’t go very well and showed mixed relevance. While the traditional romantic questions seemed at least weakly linked, they showed no consistent linkage with the Aspie/neurotypical dimension. Instead, some questions were linked to neurotypical compulsion (“Do you enjoy a good love story?”) while others seemed linked to Aspie communication (“Do you tend to lean towards your partner when you are at a restaurant or party?”).

Something needed to be done to resolve this. Therefore I added another nine questions from older versions of Aspie-quiz that seemed to be related to the topic of love and relationships. This seemed to clear up the issue.

The primarily linked questions now are these (intercorrelations are in  range 0.4-0.55 which is much higher than between romantic questions that have 0.2-0.3):

1. Is it harder for you than for others to get over a failed relationship?
2. Have you experienced stronger than normal attachments to certain people?
3. Do you tend to become obsessed with a potential partner and cannot let go of him/her?
4. Do you refuse to give up on a relationship or potential relationship that others would not bother with?

Here 2 and 3 seems to be the primary traits, while 1 and 4 are problems these causes in a non-Aspie adapted world. Both 2 and 3 have simlar relevance (a little above 0.4 correlation with Aspie-score), and are best related to each others and to the problems 1 and 4. This means that Aspie attachment to people is mostly related to obsessions with a potential partner (partner obsession) rather than to other compulsive traits. One can imagine this behavior can lead to stalking when combined with other traits.

Now, using these now established Aspie-traits one can look at linkage for other traits in the romance quiz. First, let’s look at the trait above characterized as linked to Aspie communication (“Do you tend to lean towards your partner when you are at a restaurant or party?”). It is linked to the following traits:

1. Do you refuse to give up on a relationship or potential relationship that others would not bother with?
2. Do you save love-letters?
3. Is it harder for you than for others to get over a failed relationship?
4. Have you experienced stronger than normal attachments to certain people?
5. Do you tend to become obsessed with a potential partner and cannot let go of him/her?

It seems evident that this trait is related to the partner obsession trait from above.  It also shows linkage to one of the core romantic traits (2).

Finally, looking at the core romantic traits, it is evident that these clusters are also related to partner obsession. The romantic cluster looks like this:

1. Do you save love-letters?
2. Do you enjoy a good love story?
3. Have you and a partner ever had a song of your own?
4. Is it harder for you than for others to get over a failed relationship?
5. Do you refuse to give up on a relationship or potential relationship that others would not bother with?
6. Do you tend to become obsessed with a potential partner and cannot let go of him/her?
7. Do you tend to lean towards your partner when you are at a restaurant or party?
8. Do you hope to meet the “right one”?
9. Do you believe in fate when it comes to love?

This seems to show that romantic traits really can be said to be Aspie in nature, but because Aspies have so many failures in relationships many of the individual traits shows no significant correlation to Aspie score (and in some cases shows correlation to neurotypical score). To research it, linkage studies between traits are needed, and partner obsession must be taken into account. Romantic love in fact seems to be a form of partner obsession.

Another (odd) cluster is this:

1. Have you been in love with more than one person at the same time?
2. Have you experienced stronger than normal attachments to certain people?

Contrary to the traditional view of romantic love, partner obsession doesn’t seem to be a monogamous thing. Here being in love with several people at the same time is shown to be related to partner obsession.

There are some other clusters related to sexuality as well:

1. If you were single, would you find casual sex (one-night stands) rewarding?
2. Do you have compulsive sexual behavior, e.g. spend too much time on sex or switch sexual partner frequently?

Finding these traits positively correlated is rather strange because 1 is correlated to neurotypical score while 2 is correlated to Aspie score. However, here it is also necesary to look at opportunity. Aspies seldom can persue casual sex and this is pretty much why they answer this question negatively. It is an issue of opportunity. The second question doesn’t need a real partner, but can be persued with pornography.

A final cluster shows how these traits are related to other sexuality issues in Aspie-quiz:

1. Do you have compulsive sexual behavior, e.g. spend too much time on sex or switch sexual partner frequently?
2. Do you have unusual sexual preferences?
3. Have you have had long-lasting urges to take revenge?
4. Are you hypo- or hypersensitive to physical pain, or even enjoy some types of pain?
5. Do you tend to say things that are considered socially inappropriate?

Compulsive sexual behavior is related to unusual sexual preferences. It is also related to an urge to take revenge (this could be the missing trait that creates the stalker).

So what does this mean for the average Aspie? Not much as the correlation with Aspie score is weak. What it does show is that romatic traits must have been part of the original Aspie profile before these traits diluted into the general population. It also shows that the romantic traits did not evolve in a simple male-female monogamous environment.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Aspie-quiz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.