Please, though, be careful with quotes like "…adults can't maintain close relationships. It's a limited life and it's limited in the area where people have an inherent need to thrive."

I'm a 51-year-old with Aspergers; as a child I had no special training in social skills. I have a spouse of 22 years, many close friends and a wide social circle, and am generally well-liked at work (I have worked full-time for the public library for 29 years). I write science fiction & fantasy (I have 11 books currently in print) and do a monthly book review column for the nation's leading science fiction magazine. I've traveled all across the country and outside it, and basically have a very enjoyable life. I don't consider my life "limited" and I don't think any objective observer would, either.

Yes, training in social skills (had such been available 40 years ago) would probably have made my awkward adolescent and teen years go a bit more smoothly…but whose adolescent and teen years did go smoothly?

I completely agree with you that IQ is important. And I think Ms. Trunk agrees with us too.

Her point is that IQ may be necessary but it is not sufficient. People would rather work with a likable dunderhead than a brilliant boor…and these days, people don't even need to make that choice all the time. Even where brilliance overshadows boorishness, there are plenty of brilliant and likable people running around. We need to be likable too.

What do you think?

Jeff Deutsch

First off, congratulations on taking the important step of therapy. And I wish you good luck with your dating.

I'm an Aspie life coach who helps fellow Aspies (and NTs who deal with us), and I know what you're talking about.

Let's switch the analogy a little bit. It's not a toothache, it's cardiac pain that masquerades as indigestion. You know something's wrong, but you don't know what.

Since you just don't see what's going on – subtle cues that aren't verbalized and even when they are, are phrased subtlely and euphemistically – you don't even know that's where the problem may lie.

And it can become a vicious cycle: as you become isolated from people, you miss out on the osmosis-like introductions most of us get to social life and unwritten social codes. Then as you emulate the proverbial bull in a china shop, people further pull back from you. They figure you have a bad attitude, not that you just lack certain knowledge. That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It can also throw you off the track of where to look to solve your problems.

And being human, you don't instinctively look in the mirror for the cause and the solution. You're ostracized, and like most humans you deny it, rationalize it, blame anyone and everyone but yourself.

Three things I reinforce to my clients:

If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten.

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it – including you already.

If you don't like what's going on, you need to find out what you can do to change yourself and change your life. And then you need to do some hard work and learn some not necessarily pleasant things about yourself.

Please feel free to drop me a line anytime, Steve. My fingers are crossed for you.

Jeff Deutsch

You both have good points.

I don't know whether an autism cure is already here, on the way or even possible. I do know that with patience, hard work and most importantly a willingness to face certain realities about ourselves and about the world, we Aspies can, as the saying goes, accentuate the positive and minimize the negative.

Alyson, you certainly have a good point in morality. It certainly would be better if others accepted us for who we were. That's not happening anytime soon. Even with the most generous counts of folks on the autism spectrum, the world is over 99% NT (neurotypical; not on the spectrum). Bottom line: Like it or lump it, we need to do the bulk of the learning and changing.

In fact, that goes for everybody, on and off the autism spectrum: The only behavior you can actually control is your own. If other people around you are jerks, unfairly write you off or whatever, you probably can't change their dispositions soon enough to benefit you – but you may be able to change how they treat you by changing the material (that is, your behavior) to which they're responding. Or you can leave for a more congenial setting – but there's no setting in which you never have to change anything about yourself because everyone else loves everything about you exactly as you are.

What do you think?

Jeff Deutsch

perhaps, but if you overcame autism it will open up a whole new world for you,people shouldn't stop learning or bettering themselves just because they left school or let a disease take your idenitity rather than the individial beneth the condition,you are more than you're disease.