Snapshot of thoughts about intimacy and sex

There are many thoughts that compete for space in my head when I'm reminded of sex, touch, more-than-platonic affection... When I see couples in the park, or they could be friends for all I know, like a young woman on her stomach, another above her giving a massage. An even younger man, with more than a touch of boy in his face and a sigarette, and a tough haircut, a woman or girl his own age inching closer. When I see someone in a really nice dress, covering what seems to be a nice body, waiting for someone else. Or to the other end of the scale, the grand stuff  – a TV show where someone acts out of love, sacrifices and is renewed for love. Where lovers have each other's back.

There's the thought that my life, both internal and external, has changed so much that in not too long, I could be able to take part in things like that again. Hanging in parks-things, if not the grand gestures. Or kissing. Then the other thought that maybe I won't, because behind each thing I've fixed so far, there has been new obstacles, and new ones behind those, on and on. And I think how for a while, I did go around doing those things. In so unhealthful ways, ways that couldn't go on. But there were flirtations... some of those nice thrills... moments of more-than-platonic affection... But it's so very long ago. And even I do meet someone tomorrow, who's to say it won't be the only time for yet another eight-year period?

Unlikely. The final thought to enter is that having a kiss, or a touch, or an orgasm with someone is not a very well defined goal, the goal must be to live a life where such things crop up once in a while. The goal is the have abilities (internal), habits (external) where I come into contact with people, where I can be good to the people I know

... the thought of "it's been so long, and who knows how much longer" intrudes, and is explicitly about sex now, and maybe it's not so bad after all? It's not that they are foreign to me, all those thoughts, they are me. Sexual frustration is a common feeling, sadness and longing are common feelings, they belong to me too.  As does hope, and looking forward, and meticulously working to change. Maybe the life I want is really a life where all those things belong, where they don't have to compete for space.

And maybe people to share them with, occasionally.

to leak and stain and smell at the center of all attention

Back when I wrote about the fear of being found out, the fear that people I cared about would see within me and discover who I really was, a word I used to describe what that would be like was "disgust". A commenter on that post asked if I could go into what I meant about that, and I've been thinking about it... what is it about my inside to be disgusted about? Well, one answer is that my actual insides can be a little disgusting.
One image I get when I think about being found out is of someone barging in while I'm on the toilet, and at worst, while I'm in the middle of wiping myself. Another is that if I get too enthusiastic, too excited about something, if I really let go, there's a danger I might wet myself. I read about someone's most awkward sexual moment: when he shat himself in the throes of orgasm, and I was terrified to learn that such a thing could happen. If I were to dance closely with someone, I'd worry that I hadn't cleaned my underarms properly, or had forgot to change some piece of clothing; that I'd smell. If I were to get naked with someone, I'd worry that I hadn't cleaned my penis properly, that it would taste or look bad.
My body... I don't really know what to say about my relationship with my body. Sometimes, I'm not really aware of it at all, sometimes I'm hyperaware of it – this, I suspect, comes with the autism, or at least is magnified by it. I had some motor difficulties as a child, mild, but enough that it was noticed. A certain clumsiness, talking with a lisp, trouble learning how to hold a fork.
Well into my teens, I had problems with naming body parts: I knew the difference between an arm and a leg, but would frequently point to my elbow and call it a shoulder, and I couldn't quite tell where on my leg the hip or shin or ankle was.
And also a reluctance to take part in physical activity... Partly because I couldn't keep up with the other kids. Partly, as I've realized in later years, because I was overwhelmed and confused by the sensations that went with it. The things that happened with my body – sweat breaking out, nerves tingling, aches and pains being highlighted. Disturbed digestion, growing fatigue. Numbing of other senses. These sensations, they are so intense to me, so intimate.
So I suppose I don't get so well along with my body.
It's not that I'm particularly displeased with it. I... like it well enough, or don't have a strong opinion either way. I haven't been conscious enough of it to form a strong opinion. I know that some other people like it, because they have told me. I'm not particularly displeased with it – what I am is disturbed by it. It's been in the way a lot. It's been the locus of so many unpleasant sensations. And it's the source of a lot of unclean things...
My train of thought goes off in different directions here, and rather than try to fit them all together, I'll make a list of them and see where I end up.
1.
When I read what I just wrote, it brings to mind a number of recurring dreams. One is where I know how to fly, but I don't like it at all. Once I'm off the ground, I can't get back down. I struggle to touch down, but the ground repels me, and I'm dizzy. Another is where I need to move, but rather than obey me, my limbs just tingle dizzily. Or when I'm in a foreign city and need to go to the hotel, but I have absolutely no sense of direction.
I suppose these are pretty common dreams. The thing is when I think about them, and then about my body-awareness issues, the emotional content is the same.
By the way, I just had such a dream. I had been to my cabin on the Swedish coast, which was not on the coast but in Gothenburg, which was not in Sweden but in Spain. And now I needed to get to the airport. It was a long trek, I had to spend the night at a hotel on the way, and when I finally got there, I discovered that I had lost my blue schoolbag containing the family dog somewhere on the way. I had to find him before the rest of my family joined. Was he at the hotel? I hoped so, but no matter how far I walked, I know I didn't get any closer to it. In fact I wasn't getting anywhere at all.
2.
Physical exertion is one thing that will cause the body to leak. Mostly sweat, but bowels and bladder are also affected.
3.
While it doesn't actually happen, it's easy to call up the image of me stumbling, knocking things over, walking into people – it's apparently something I'm afraid of. In these images I will try to tense up, but the exertion makes me lose control of my bladder. This has actually happened. There was a year or two of my life, not so long ago, when I frequently wet myself just a little, and I couldn't understand what caused it. Then I noticed how the muscles used to push the bladder had been tied together with those I use to reach forward. The way fingers on the same hand can be bound to move together, you know... When I stopped doing that, the problem went away. One of many little aches and pains that reduced body-awareness can bring.
4.
The various body-sensations are the main reason I'm uncomfortable with physical activity, but there's also the matter of movement in the visual field. When I move fast, the world moves fast around me. Again, I don't know how is with others, but I think I'm more sensitive to movement than others.
The first time I sat in an open car... it was only a few years ago... the sensation was so intense I had to keep my eyes closed for several minutes before I got used to it. I get the same when I'm a passenger on a bike. Never learned to ride a bike myself, this could be some of the reason. And the one time I rode a horse – same reaction. The horse moved rather slowly, so maybe it's a vestibular thing as well?
Anyway, this also affects the bladder. Actually the beginning of those problems was on a plane trip. I suddenly began to leak, then became very conscious of such things – that's probably what made my muscle groups mix up. Plane trips are also more vestibular than visual... and come to think of it, so is my fear of walking into things. So maybe I should look into vestibular hypersensitivity someday.
5.
Another thing: Not quite keeping track of my body means not quite keeping track of hygienic issues, like how I smell... And even though my personal hygiene have been adequate for a long time, I still get the fear that I may have overlooked something, neglected or forgotten some crucial part, a food stain on my shirt, a sour smell from my t-shirt, and did I remember to put on deodorant, and is my hair maybe to greasy? (I have long hair.)
There are just so many parts, all interconnected, and while there probably is a system to it, that system is hard for me to grasp... like those dreams. The ground repels me, direction escapes me, and there's the tingle, a restless numbness. (And this description I think fits autism in general, not just the bodily aspects of it.)

*

I have mentioned several times how writing and revelation go so well together. How a piece of writing is energized by revelation, and how the setup-payoff relationship between mystery and revelation leads me to discover things as I write. This piece, an answer to "how does disgust fit into this?" have led me to some big ones.
First, hypersensitivity. I have been aware that I'm probably hypersensitive to proprioception and muscle senses, and that I probably have an unusual degree of control over specific muscles. But on a larger scale, motor skills and body awareness have been recurring issues. The image I just mentioned, of the tingle, the restless numbness, brings a bit of sense into how the hyper- and hyposensitivies fit together.
And it's become clearer to me than before that I also have issues with balance. Not in a way that hinders movement, but in a way that can make me tense up as I move.
The other thing is that my feelings of disgust, and their contribution to my fear of intimacy, are a quite clear matter of social anxiety. I haven't recognized that before because it's a different kind of anxiety than I'm used to. The anxiety I'm used to is the one with unpleasant sensations, the one that feels like fear. But other kinds of anxiety don't come with a high experience of fear. They make you avoid things before you even get to that point. That's how I've been avoiding intimacy.
I think a good step towards being open to intimacy would be to calibrate my understanding of personal hygiene. Get a better grip of the unknowns. Learn what types of leaks, smells, and stains are acceptable, even expected (I mean, the sexual side of intimacy usually involves all three), and what types should be avoided, and then some effective ways to take care of them. And I suspect that I can find this knowledge easily, that I can ask around in places where such questions are appropriate. Perhaps even you, the reader, have some idea of what I'll need to know?

I was vulnerable for a little while

I was about to write this piece on vulnerability... how I don't even know what it feels like. There's this seeming contradiction about me. I share a lot of personal information, but there's this sense that I never really open up. I've been trying to figure out what that means...

It might have something to do with showing emotion. I've had some real issues with anger in the past, created a lot of conflict when I was a child, hurt certain people in my early twenties, and today I'm uncomfortable with any really strong emotion. Or it might have something to do with showing agency... I've talked a bit about that before, had a thread on the old forums where I learned a bit about asking for things, and I've improved, but I still overestimate how much wanting = imposing, which is really underestimating the other person's agency, assuming that they won't say no if they want to.

I have also been wanting to write about an event I was to some weeks ago. I had a lot of good interactions there, some with single people not outside my range of attraction. But the thought of flirting didn't enter my mind, not in anything but a theoretical sense. In itself a good thing: Being able to enjoy myself without that agenda. In a broader perspective, it indicates a trend: The thought of flirting hardly ever enters my mind, in anything but a theoretical sense. It's never there as an immediate option. No wonder that I never get around to do it.

Now, last weekend, I went to a pub with someone I've known a very long time. We had a bit to drink, and got to talk about personal stuff and shared history, and for a little while there, I became vulnerable. For about a day after, I felt happy about it, but also anxious and exposed. And I could confirm to myself that there is in fact a state of vulnerability, and that it's different from just sharing information, and that I've been avoiding it almost completely for years. No wonder that I never get around to such a vulnerable thing like flirting.

To cross that gap for even a little while feels like letting go of everything. It comes with the socialanxious fear if letting bodily functions go, to leak and stain and smell at the center of all attention. It feels like letting go of boundaries, and giving up the right to have boundaries at all. It feels like losing sight of others' boundaries, as if my feelings and desires could crawl out of me and devour anyone close. And if I had a little less of those fears, me getting close to people would become a lot easier for everyone.

I get a glimpse of other people sometimes

On rare occasions, I get it into my head that the people in my life have personalities. Then I step back and ask myself why this comes with the clarity of an insight. As if the idea had been foreign to me before. I don't think it is, at an emotional or interpersonal level at least. I don't think I treat people like zombies, or robots or things... I do worry about it some time, but I think they would react differently to me if I did. In fact, from the reactions I get, I seem to do a fairly good job at recognizing the personhood of other people.

Internally, though, there is a feeling of remoteness. Or maybe too much proximity. I interact with people on a now-to-now basis, I respond to their words, and their emotions – when their emotions don't overwhelm me. But I can easily get caught up in the immediacy of it. I respond to one particular facet of a person, and lose sight of all the other facets, lose sight of the whole. Like when I have a heated debate about politics with a friend, I forget, at least consciously, that he's also a fan of beautiful sunsets.

When I suddenly come to think of one of those other facets, that's when I get the clarity of an insight, and the sense that there's something I usually miss. And the sense of remoteness, isolation, existentially so.

There are arrows to be drawn between this analysis and autism, not surprisingly, as knowledge of autism is the clue I use to unravel it. Autism means a more fragmented processing of information, a more immediate experience of the world, a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. That's probably behind some of the seeming contradictions in my life (and from what I gather, many other autistic people experience similar things), like: How some of my senses can be simultaneously hypersensitive and numb. How I can be very strongly affected by other people's emotions, and at the same time have problems with empathy. How I'm good at seeing personhood in people, but at the same time lose sight of their personality. How I can be so open about myself, and still feel so profoundly remote.

Come to think of it, it's really not contradictory at all, the relation between sensitivity and numbness. When you try to look into a too bright light, the reflective response is to close your eyes.

I've spent the last couple of years changing, and the last five or six months even more. It's been a growth in emotional and interpersonal skills, an increase in maturity, a somewhat increase in my tolerance for intimacy. I am becoming more used to both people and sensory impressions. One measurable result comes when I'm writing fiction: I'm getting a grip on the personality of my characters, where before they were more like blurs. A similar thing is probably happening with the characters in my own life.

At the same time, I'm becoming more aware of things I'm missing (meaning both "overlooking the presence of" and "regretting the absence of"). I begin to warm up to the idea of intimacy, and I feel strongly that I'm not quite there yet. Insights of empathy followed by strong feelings of isolation are likely to occur more often in the coming months.

(The poetry challenge, by the way, appears to be abandoned for now. I'm quite satisfied with what I got out of it.)

Hirundo tries to understand sex

Let me interrupt this slowed down stream of poetry for a bit to talk about my relationship with sex. It might contain a little too much information for some people's taste… possibly including my own. It won't be very explicit, but I will move into some private parts of, well my mind. Not the other private parts. But anyway, more poetry will be coming up shortly.

My relationship with sex is that I like it a lot. I like it physically, but I also have an aesthetic interest in it – I like it as a thing to watch, to share, and as a craft to practice, the thought of giving shape to someone's pleasure. I also like it as a cultural and artistic theme, so-called high culture or so-called low. I like other people's interest in it. I'm curious about it. I would… also really like to do it again someday…

To be clear, I have done it before. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, I was more or less sexually active. That is, I was in a few relationships, and had a few affairs, and sex took place. Still I did have a hard time finding romantic and/or sexual partners. It was almost impossible to express any interest, I just kept chewing at the words. I wished very badly that someone else would take the initiative, sit me down for a talk, or pick me up in a bar, but on the occasions when they did, I didn't handle it very well.

I was once asked by a woman at an event if I wanted to go home with her, for example, and was so surprised by the question that I answered no and ran away. Then I spent the next five years regretting it, which in itself indicates a not so healthy view of things.

I had always been embarrassed about my feelings around sex. Liking it. Being curious about it. Wanting it. I didn't even want to show myself that I wanted it. My sexual fantasies were almost always about a placeholder with a penis rather than about me, and that placeholder didn't get to make any active moves. He was just happily swept away by events. My erotic writings never really worked, because I couldn't get into the characters' motivations.

I wouldn't allow myself to imagine that a person I identified with could desire or be desired by someone sexually. It didn’t quite fit together with how I saw the rest of myself. I couldn't quite accept that this confused but sometimes charming mind also carried a body along with it. It was as if other people would find it distasteful if they knew, distasteful or even disgusting.

There's that word again, disgust… what I used in the post about being mentally undressed, about people finding out who I really am... It was as if wanting anything, at all, from the world was too much of an imposition on it. And disgust is obviously a keyword that I will be exploring in a future post.

After November, 2006, my period of other-person sexual activity has come to a complete stop. That's when my last act of physical intimacy took place. A lot of just-in-case condoms have met their expiry date since then.

For a long time, I more or less resigned to this. It seemed to be just one more of those things I didn't understand about my life. One of those areas where there was a large missing gap between the things I wanted and the things that occured. I wanted something to happen; it just didn't. It might even be for the best, as the way I handled whatever intimacy that did occur, as mentioned, was not all that healthy anyway.

How to find partners was just one those missing gaps. One among many. One of the most complicated. In 2006 I was just becoming aware of them, and I had started to work on some of them.  It was the beginning of that very protracted turning point in my life that I'm still not quite done with…

Slowly, as I realized I couldn’t become a therapist, went into therapy myself, began to take my writing more seriously, a mental list emerged, of things I wanted to improve in my life. Because finding partners would require a whole lot of more basic, social skills, I put it at the very bottom of the list. Something I would possibly dare to consider at some eventual point in the future. Hypothetically, of course.

When I did get to that point on my list – only a few years ago, I did it through introspective writing. I wrote about all of it on my Norwegian blog, as a sort of extreme exposure therapy. Then I posted a link on Twitter, and felt as if I had told the whole world that I was some sort of slobbering gnarly creature of want. The world didn't see it that way, of course.

The next spring I got braver, went deeper into my fears, frustrations, and longings, trying to figure out things like: What kind of sex did I want? What kind of people was I attracted to? Now fear of showing sexual agency had been tuned down, what were the other missing steps that stood between me and some occasional sex? My embarrassment now became a guide. When stuff became hard to write about, it meant I was onto something extra important.

It meant I was on the trace of a subject that was unclear to me. Things being unclear to me is actually a topic for a future post, the way something can be impossible to grasp, until I suddenly get some insight or other, and then everything becomes obvious and I realize how clear it should have been all along. Like, I keep wondering why no one ever picks me up at bars, and then I realize it's because I never actually go to bars. This is the center of those missing gaps between my intentions and my actions; behaviors I can't begin to change because I don't know that they are there.

Since then, I have been working on and off with things. Sometimes I would have to take breaks because I became overwhelmed by it all. Sometimes I would just lose interest. My libido can vary a lot in strength. I have worked mainly with thinking and writing, writing publically, gotten some good suggestions along the way. And I have figured out that it is not only about sex after all. While sex is there as a long time goal, the social and interpersonal and emotional skills I've had to learn have been good to me in a whole lot of ways. I have been rather immature for the most of my life in all these areas; I have the feeling these days that I am catching up, very fast.

There hasn't been any actual, physical sex with someone else. But as you can deduce from the wording of that statement, there have been a couple non-physical exchanges, some hot IM-ing on dating sites that were nice even if it didn't lead to anything more. This spring, I went out on a date, that also didn't lead to anything more. My erotic writing has improved, as I'm able to understand both agency and desire now. And I do have fairly satisfactory sex with myself. Besides being nice, it makes me need a partner less, and that will make things easier when I do eventually find one.

Thinking out loud on my Norwegian blog, and later at certain discussion forums, has been a large part of the development over the last couple of years… and my frustrations with sex and intimacy has been a large part of the introspective writing voice I have developed. It's something I am likely to write more about, and this post has been posted as an introduction to that, as well as an overview of where I stand today.

The people whose approval I want

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the sense that to gain the approval of people I like, I need to submit my opinions and beliefs to theirs. When they describe a certain social or political problem, (like the issues of bias and inequality I was reading about before I began this post,) I just have to take their word for it. But the people I like don't all think the same. Some of them have opposing views. It would be impossible to submit to all of their ethics at once. And even if I worked out what I was supposed to believe, I don't have the power to control my own beliefs.

This is where I take things out of proportion, probably fueled by the fear that the people whose approval I want will find out who I really am, and then turn against me and hurt me.

The inner monologue runs something like this: How completely do I need to submit? How deep inside my mind do I have to let them, how far beyond my normal level of awareness, how far beyond the borders of my Self?

DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: You don't.

Yeah, how can I go about to meet the standards of those people, if it requires me to reach down to the basic cogwheels of my mind? How can I make a conscious effort to change the very components of my consciousness?

DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: Are you listening to me at all? You can't. Now I advice you strongly to stop talking for a while, because this is offensive to the people whose approval you want, making them out to demand such absurd things of you.

Dear reader: This is the Disclaimer Goblin. He's the part of my writing voice that inserts itself when I grow uncomfortable with my own words. The way to answer him is to examine that discomfort; that's usually how I learn from my writing.

But in this case, I'm a bit uncomfortable with his words, because isn't it offensive in itself to presume what other people would be offended by?

DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: Yeah, there's that. I guess we're in the same boat on this.

So rather than offensive, let's say I'm being unfair to the people whose approval I want.

A lot to ask
It is unfair to them partly because I need their approval just a little too much. With those insecurities I talked about before – the fear that I never belong, the fear that I have a disgusting side to my personality that I'm barely able to hide – I would need more than a bit of convincing before I believe in someone's approval.

That's probably one reason why I worry about intimacy in general. When people get a closer look at me, I begin to concern myself too much with their approval. I have been on the other side of that, I have a particular case in mind, with someone who concerned themselves too much with my approval. At its worst, in that person's eyes, I felt like nothing more than a substitute for those whose disapproval he had met with in the past.

But on the other hand, people are allowed to have needs. We are allowed to be insecure. Intimacy in particular makes room for both of these. The problem is when need come up against boundaries. When we go along with things because we are insecure, or when we disregard the other person's boundaries because their disapproval makes us too afraid to deal.

It looks like I am becoming better with boundaries, in great part because I've learned how criticism isn't always fatal judgment. Maybe I can relax a bit more now, around the people whose approval I want.

Standards to live up to
I was also being unfair above because I made a straw man out of other people's social? interpersonal? ethical? values – I'm not exactly clear on what kind of standards they are, only that I made a straw man out of them. No one has called on the thought police, no one demands that I should edit my every thought, at least none of the people whose approval I want, they're not like that any of them.

Unreachable standards are in a way comfortable to deal with, because they are so very easy to disregard. That could be one motivation for making them out to be impossible, unfairly imposed, a call for complete submission. I suppose some people do that: Look for a reason to disregard those standards because they just aren't that interested in meeting them. On the other hand, it could also be that someone doesn't quite understand the standards in question. Things that aren't properly processed can often appear unreasonably black-or-white.

I hope I belong to the second category, that I do, honestly, want to reach for a higher standard. Why would I care about the approval of those people in the first place if I didn't see the value in their social, interpersonal, and ethical standards? I've noticed a thing about myself lately, that sometimes I state my values in a way that just sounds a bit too right. Like I'm quoting some pamphlet. Or performing for an audience. It's the way I seen other people speak that way when they are new to a certain way of thinking, still glowing with the discovery, not yet able to work from the deeper reasoning behind. I hope proper understanding is a thing that comes with maturity.

It's really about myself
I am not really sure. Whether I deserve the approval of those people or not. They do seem to approve of me, mostly. Maybe they just haven't found out who I really am yet. Or maybe I should trust their judgment. I mean, I do. Trust their judgment. Just not when it comes to me, apparently. What I know is I want to deserve their approval. It's not just their approval I want, it is to be worthy of it. I think that's one criterion for the kind of people I want in my life: People it would be worth it to be worthy of.

Because it's not really about their standards, it's about mine. Their standards are not imposed on me, they are an inspiration to me.

I don't know how to edit my opinions or beliefs. Not to mention my perceptions and immediate judgments. I suspect, if I were to line them up... I wouldn't quite like what I found. There would be social, political, ethical trends that went against my own standards. A bias to what people I liked at first sight, or trusted at their word. If nothing else because such biases are common, they exist below awareness, and I have no particular reason to believe myself immune.

Am I doing enough about that? Am I doing too much? Trying too hard? The approval of the people I like would be a measure that I am moving in the right direction.

I know I have values, strong ones even. And that they have been mine all along. As I said, they are not imposed on me. They are also not new to me: Issues like bias and inequality are things I have been concerned with for years, although not very loudly. If anything is new, maybe it is that I am engaging more with the people whose approval I want, as I am engaging more with people all over, and that makes me vulnerable.

Or, as isolation has its own set of vulnerabilities: It makes me vulnerable in different ways than before.

It could be that just that kind of vulnerability is what I need to learn a more mature approach to values, to have values of my own, not just try to live up to other's. The kind of vulnerability that makes me open to criticism, correction. But also more receptive to the approval I actually get. Scary as it might sound, vulnerability means I put more trust in other people's judgment when they see some good in me as well.

If people knew who you really were

There's this phrase, this sort of hidden command, that I have been conscious about lately. Maybe because I'm in a social setting where I am fairly new, but where people respond well to me, and now I'm waiting for that moment when I say something without thinking that reveals my awful personality to everybody…

which is strange, because I don't think I am particularly disgusting – at least not today, or for many years, though there are things that I'm ashamed of in the past – but I still feel and act as if I had someone in there with me saying: "If people knew who you really were, they would turn against you and hurt you and it would be your fault."

More or less consciously, I have been telling myself that since I was a child. I had problems with my temper as a child, and well into my teens. I got frustrated with social situations, and I couldn't keep it inside at all. Hardly a day went by without some incident where I would yell and shout and rage, sometimes over imagined slights, sometimes over real ones. The adults around me tried to explain that some people enjoyed getting a rise out of others, and the best thing I could do was to control my temper, then it wouldn't be so fun to tease me anymore. And I tried to hold it in, but I had no idea how to do it. I had no strategies for self-control, other than to keep my outbursts at bay with pure effort, and inevitably, that wouldn't be enough. My resistance wore down, as I spent more and more effort, and in a day or two I was at it again. Yelling, screaming, shouting.

From my failure to deal with anger, I taught myself in a general way that my efforts weren't enough, that I just didn't have the ability to accomplish... anything really. I taught myself to be weary of people, and even more sensitive to slights. I taught myself that even moderate expressions of emotion were unacceptable. They were shameful and meant I deserved to be punished. And I taught myself that when I came to a new place, I had the chance to present myself in a better light. If I could only to keep my temper, they wouldn't find out how fun I could be to tease. And then, the first time I lost my temper, I'd say to myself: "This is it. Now they know. Now they will turn against me and hurt me and it will be my fault."

So I'm not quite sure any longer exactly what it is I have to hide, only that it must be something awful or disgusting, or else I wouldn't need to spend so much effort on it.

Some socially demanding days
A few weeks back, I had some socially demanding days. First I was at a social gathering, had a bit to drink – enjoyed myself, but was also very conscious, about how I presented myself, about how well I did in conversation with others. Then I came home, ready for bed, and a conversation on Twitter from earlier in the day blew up. I have a bit too many stories that begins with something on Twitter blowing up. So I spent that night awake, arguing with others that were awake that night, trying to keep my mind clear, defending myself but suspecting that I was actually in the wrong.

The next morning, I went to another online place, and there was an upsetting argument going on there as well.  I manage to stay out of that one, but only barely – four or five times I began to type a reply, only to stop myself, delete everything, because I remembered I wasn’t up for this now. As the day went on, I saw that my instincts had been right. The things I wanted to say, in that particular context, would have come across as just a little bit disgusting. Just like the night before, in fact – my poor context-judging skills was the reason for that one blowing up as well.

From where I am now, I see the restraint I kept that day as a small, but encouraging accomplishment. It means an increase in my ability to control my social impulses, so that I get into fewer pointless arguments, for one thing, and for another, I'll be better able to deal with the changing circumstances that go with intimacy, now that I'm beginning to seek more intimacy.

But back then, drained from the effort of restraint, my thinking went more like this: 1) If I had said this thing, it would have made some people upset with me. 2) Good thing I didn't. 3) But doesn't that mean that their not being upset at me is based on false premises? 4) I have all these thoughts, all these impulses, that would earn a lot of people's disapproval, 5) so I guess that means I am deceiving them, and do in fact deserve their disapproval.

I was disgusted with myself for a while, felt there was so many people whose approval I sought, and they contradicted each other in their demands of me. One wanted me to believe one thing, another wanted me to believe the opposite, and me, I had no control over my own beliefs. My actions, words, yes, but beliefs? By the judgment of people I valued, my beliefs would be evil either way.

In other words: If people knew what I really thought, they would turn against me, and hurt me, and it would be my fault.

As I articulated that string of words, it began to feel like a firm, but illusory truth. It had the familiarity, the emotional resonance, of any firm, but illusory truth I've known. It corresponded so well to what I had learned to believe as a child. Someday I would lose control, and then they would find out what I was really like. Putting words to such a firm, but illusory truth lets me it them away as a foreign thing.

Now, at this point, my writing becomes a bit fumbling. (You don't see it, of course, because I back here some days later to clear it all up.) The fumbling almost always happens when I write. I doubt something I've said, or worry about something I haven't. Something in me wants to insert a paragraph or two where I correct and explain everything, but it doesn't seem to fit anywhere. I have given this something in me the name of the DISCLAIMER GOBLIN, and he is often essential to the evolution of the text. He points to things that are vague to me, or emotional, or both, and then he pushes me to understand those things. Sometimes I edit his comments out, sometimes I keep them in.

DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: Or to say the same with fewer words: You protect yourself from self-awareness with a huge bunch of words, Martin you coward.

Yes. Well, I know what you are going to say, but can you please hold it in for a while longer? Right now, let's just say that I know I'm not really that awful. I don't actually have any secrets that would make everybody I know despise me. It is an illusion – but a persistent one, and I'm curious about how it contributes to some other of my social issues.

So before you get to intervene, I will say some things about my discomfort with identity and social belonging, and my discomfort with intimacy and emotional openness, in light of the illusion that I have something to hide.

Identity and social belonging
I have always been careful not to give out the impression that I belong in a particular place. As a child, I would be anxious if I got near a school not my own, with school-child-identifying marks like a school bag on me. I would fill my head with explanations, excuses, in case someone from that school would accuse me of trying to pass as one of them. (If they find out who I really am…) Later manifestations of this have been my reluctance to talk about musical tastes, to wear t-shirts with print (except convention souvenir t-shirts), and to participate in activities I don’t master, like dancing.

It's probably also part of the reason I always feel the need to explain myself. Why I am present at a particular place, why I am buying that particular item, or going to see that particular person… I still fill my head with explanations, excuses, in case someone should accuse me of trying to pass.

That may be one of the reasons why I'm so vague about that event where I managed to restrain myself. Where it was, what it was about. It's not that it is some big secret, I'm just not comfortable with naming things, because just by naming them, it's as if I'm pretending to belong.

There are many reasons why I would be uncertain about fitting in. I do have difficulties with reading social situations, with learning the norms of a group, and I probably have been confronted with being in the wrong place in the past. There may also be traces of a fairly all-or-nothing view on sincerity, that gives the feeling that I am constantly being insincere. And I've recently come to understand how belonging always comes with social commitments, commitments I don’t always understand. I may go into depth on all of this in another post.

But now I take note of the fear that I will slip up, that I will lose control and show people what I am really like inside; the guardedness I feel whenever I am new somewhere.

Intimacy and emotional openness
I think I appear as if I am rather open about myself. There aren't many things I wouldn't share. But from the inside, I don't feel that way. I feel that the majority of what is me is unknown to everybody else – a pretty normal feeling, I suppose, and also true. Personal experiences can never be shared, or the personal aspect of them can't. To share, we have to transform them from personal to interpersonal, from internal and subjective to something others can observe. In that way, we are all of us alone… and many of us lonely… then add autism to that, it's even in the name: The ability to experience things outside of one's own self is even further impaired.

But the way in which I am not open is about more than this. Right there, together with to loneliness of not being able to share, I have a deep fear that people might find out anyway. That people might actually move through that impassable space between my Self and the outside world – that they might become part of me, or that parts of me might leak out into the world and dissolve.

I have had experiences that felt exactly like this, that would have been classified as delusions if I had believed that they were real. As if people were actually inside my head, paying attention to my thoughts, making editorial suggestions. It was like that I felt that night when I needed to convince myself that I was not particularly awful or disgusting.

The almost constant imaginary debates I have with certain people in my life are probably also related to this.

When I think of it, the same is even true for my compulsion to share stuff about myself… like here, in this blog… what I put down here is only slightly edited inner monologue. I make up a lot of inner monologue in order to defend myself, and then that inner monologue becomes so loud that I can't stand to be the only one that hears.

The illusion of having something to hide
Some of the things I just wrote seem to contradict themselves a little bit. Like in the last paragraph: Because I am afraid of any real intimacy, I feel compelled to share as much stuff about myself as I can. Or further up: The way I work for better self-control, and at the same time want to learn to loosen up. But are they? Contradictory? I don't really think so. I think it is a matter of different kinds of sharing, different kinds of control

– but I can't get any further with that thought, because now I do need to listen to the DISCLAIMER GOBLIN.

DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: Right. Well. There are two things that you neglected… or maybe just "neglected"… to say! 1) That there are people out there with actual, substantial secrets that they have to carry. You know, real things about themselves that could hurt them if it ever came out. And it's a bit respectless, don't you think, to go on about your own imaginary secrets, this vague sense that you might have some unsavory personality trait or other?

Yes, I know. So to people who have a real and socially stigmatized secret, well… I know. That it's not the same with me and my imaginary flaws.

DISCLAIMER GOBLIN: Yeah, there's the other thing. 2) You shouldn't dismiss the possibility that you actually have some pretty important flaws. Like blowing up in anger! That's not always okay, you know. You've hurt people in the past, with your anger. To a smaller degree, you have hurt people in the present. It's not something awful or disgusting, and it's not equal to actual social stigma: It's something that's actually your fault and your responsibility to fix. You talk and talk Martin about how you hurt yourself by hiding away, but some of the things you should actually keep to yourself.

Yes, I know this too. When you pushed me about it up there it didn't quite understand what it meant, but I think I'm getting more of the meaning now.

I have always had problems with self-control. I have felt powerless against my emotions. Expressing strong emotion, or emotion at all, has become connected with shame. And I have hurt people with my emotions, so there is a kernel of truth to that shame…

That's something I have discovered with many of my insecurities. They usually do have a kernel of truth. It may not be pleasant to identify that kernel of truth, but once I do, it almost always turns out to be something I can handle. And even if it isn't, it feels better to be worried about something real than to be worried about something vague.

If I listen to my Goblin, and try to see my own flaws in proportion, I'll have a better basis for making that decision. If I let go of the contempt I sometimes have for myself, I'll be in a better position to receive and react to both internal and external criticism.

I called it a contradiction that I wanted to be more open and have more self-control at the same time, but actually there's no contradiction at all. Control isn't about keeping everything in, it is about deciding what to keep in, and what to express, and how. Openness isn't about sharing everything all the time, it's about deciding what to share, with whom.

Now that I am beginning to seek more intimacy – intimacy is about those people you choose to share more with. As I open up and get to know more people, both as groups and individuals, they will learn more about who I really am, and then they get to choose how much openness they really want. Intimacy is what happens when two parties make that choice.