Heartbreaking
May 30, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Tonight at 8pm ABC’s Nightline is airing “Echoes of Autism: Paul in Love” at 11:35PM (ET/PT). Correspondent John Donvan will profile
Paul DeSavino, a 36-year-old New Jersey man living with autism who says he’s in love. But does he really know what it means to be in love and to connect? His mother, Marlene DeSavino of Rivervale, NJ, describes how his condition makes it more difficult for him to connect with others: “He goes off into his own little world and that’s the difficult part in having a relationship. It’s because he leaves them. He could leave them cold and he can’t open himself up. He doesn’t know how to do that yet.”
I remember watching Nightline’s report on adults with autism in which Paul was shown riding the bus to work and singing “Feelings.”
The press release for Echoes of Autism: Paul in Love is entitled CAN A PERSON WITH AUTISM SUFFER THE PAIN OF A BROKEN HEART?.
Based on the rising anxiety that Charlie has been communicating to us in his words and his actions, I would say that he is feeling sad—heartbroken—at the impending closing of his school, just as he felt when a certain South Asian Indian girl was no longer in his classroom. Charlie used to edge out the other children in circle time to sit next to her: It might be puppy love but it was, yes, love.
An autistic person can suffer the pain of a broken heart.
Wow, that is really grating, isn’t it? The implication is that we’re completely deviod of feeling. Quite the little ‘pill’ to drop in the mix for anxious parents who are in distress already. ‘My autistic child can’t even love me!’
Bah. I’m sure it sells papers and tv programs, this sensationalism. Too much in the vein of autistics as unfeeling, non-human animals who are better off dead. “They don’t really feel things the way we do, so they don’t mind brain probes that keep them docile…”
And the ABC Nightline site bills the show as “exploring autism and love”—-makes me think of “exploring animal wildlife”…..
What I find appalling is this idea that autism professionals can somehow read our minds and know what we can and cannot feel.
Indeed yes—imagine if the situation were reversed!
I’m looking for firsthand information about Autistic adults in relationships. Or people in love with or in relationships with autistic adults. I’m just curious about what life will be like for my child, and how I can help make things a little easier for him. He’s 13 years old and starting to notice girls.
I have a 29 year-old brother, who is a high-functioning autistic. He is unable to work or drive and lives with my father. He is socialized in the community and is in social situations frequently. He feels that he is “missing” something in his life and that something is a mate. He craves a relationship so badly it is becoming somewhat of a problem. Of course, he has never had a girlfriend but sees everyone else with a mate and thinks he should have one too.
I wonder if it might ba a good idea to set our loved ones upon dates. Perhaps with arranged outings with people who have some knowledge of autistics, our family members will be encouraged to experience adult relationships with caring people.
“I wonder if it might ba a good idea to set our loved ones upon dates. Perhaps with arranged outings with people who have some knowledge of autistics, our family members will be encouraged to experience adult relationships with caring people.”
Blind dates are one thing and can be cool, but arranged relationships have a pretty bad track record (unless one counts staying with an unloving spouse for the sake of tradition as “success”), autism or no autism. So if your son or daughter’s date doesn’t want to continue the relationship, don’t pressure her or him to do so and remember that no means no.