I think once someone's hooked, they're far more likely to try and make it work.
I wish everybody could be upfront about their flaws, but that's not how attraction works.
Maybe am misunderstanding. Hooked on what exactly? Would agree other people's meltdowns can be an heavy emotional burden to deal with, so can understand hesitation with that in particular. Husband finds many of my quirks and flaws endearing. Lack of time concept, ultra sensitive gag reflex, hypersensitivity to smell and touch, anxiety, paranoia, he finds it all adorable and to be an endless well of joke fodder to last until the end of our days. Some years into marriage, ran across a small piece of paper with his handwriting. It read: I can solve any algebra problem you could ever give me, and diagram any sentence you could ever speak, but just don't ask me for the time. He told me I said that to him on our first date and he found it so grand that he wrote it down when he got home that night. The reason I said it was because he was asking about my age; we discovered it was my eighteenth birthday and I didn't even realize it. He probably still has that scrap of paper somewhere.
I mean, right at the beginning when you're getting to know someone, you have feelings or the spark at the beginning...and it's as if both people have a choice as to whether to get involved with each other or not. e.g. A guy dates a girl, realises she's too clingy for his liking, though he still wants her, but has too much work (job) to do. Then although he likes her a lot, he doesn't want to get involved and really doesn't want to hurt her feelings. He has a choice to back out sort of cleanly, without too much emotional mess early on. If he dated her for a while, slept with her and made plans, it would be far more difficult to end it.
Yeh, I'd totally find those things endearing too. The lack of touch would hurt me though. I crave difference in other people. I also crave what others may find to be undesirable or unattractive. I like a person with some problems, that plus intelligence often makes them deep. An important one to add is someone who accepts different people themselves, I've known very dull people with AS who are unaccepting of differences and would rather do anything just to fit in. Heh, the last one I saw pretended he understood people just to agree with me, and joked and sidetracked the topic when questioned about it. He was my best friend at college and stopped talking to me when he got a girlfriend and was ashamed of his aspie side, and put down this other aspie girl in front of his friend. He never introduced me to any of his friends. I saw him again fairly recently and he wanted to go out with me. After seeing how dull he was, despite him about to get a decent salary (£33k) I told him I hated his (strong Essex) accent and that he irritated me. He was hurt, but I didn't really care because he was too shallow. And God, we were in a restaurant and he didn't want to tip the waitress in case it was "one of those companies that didn't tip the staff". It annoyed me cos he was being a total tightwad, it was only under a fiver and that money was nothing to him. He even went so far as to look up the restaurant and their policy on his mobile.
..Anyway. No doubt I'd love to date someone without problems too, if they have that depth. I sometimes wonder if all those who have depth have encountered problems that they just don't talk about. For instance, although totally not my type, my sister's boyfriend has an amazing understanding of people, and he understands what I tell him about my sister, and he knows he can talk to me openly about her and her temper, even though the family and everyone else is in denial. He's reasonably successful and has a decent salary, he's a manager of some team at an insurance company. Anyway, point is, apart from his epilepsy, he has depth and understanding without appearing to have problems.
It's as if some people are naturally older in the mind than others.
As for my meltdowns, my family to a point purposely wind me up. It's never been in me to be subtly aggressive to people like that.