Advice/reassurance needed, I'm feeling sleep deprived and so confused.
Been spending a lot of time with this guy having met him this week. Felt a romantic and intellectual connection I've never felt with anyone before. There was something both naive and very wise about him that I found both cute and incredibly attractive.
He told me last night (first time spending the night with me) that it was mild aspergers, which really I'd guessed. He'd just put a name to it.
The real issue comes that this is my first relationship and honestly the first time I've experienced love. This is his second relationship. We'd both acknowledged and avoided saying out loud that we were transparently both clearly wanting to say the 'L word'. I said it by accident last night, indirectly, but still managed to say something so close that I basically said it. I meant it, but I shouldn't have said it. It's been a fucking week.
Now that I guess the emotional floodgates had been opened the word was flying back and forth last night and this morning.
But now today, despite how I feel, I KNOW this is too premature. Yes we're both feeling love but we're both wrong to say it: me for my inexperience and bad judgement and him because of how his brain works.
I'm seeing him tonight, he was going to stay but I'll tell him I need some space.
I'm fairly certain I can tell him this and he will definitely understand - he definitely has a very high and controlled emotional iq. It's more socially that I've seen him miss indirect signals.
I think L word aside we could be good for each other. Brilliant attraction on all fronts and plenty in common.
Am I doing this the right way (L word aside)? I want to be able to say I love him properly eventually. But now I'm realising I can't love him yet and am aware I will have managed to really fuck up the foundations for whatever this could become. I feel incredibly guilty. Of course I also really don't want to hurt him, which I'm afraid of doing thanks to how conflicted and disoriented I'm feeling about the craziness of this last week.
Should mention I'm not diagnosed on the spectrum myself but I've got some traits in common that made me immediately understand a lot of him when I met him.