Undiagnosed partner - desperate for help!

Hi all,

So I was really hoping to gain some insight from others more knowledgeable about autism. I have been in a relationship with a man who is kind, affectionate and loving but some of the issues that we have had and the way in which he has handled them have let me off the rails frustrated, bitter and led me to start believing he could be a sociopath!

In recent times, a few of his friends who have known him for many years have approached me, asking if he was autistic and suddenly, so many things started to fit together. I could never make sense of how a man who was otherwise so loving sometimes had such little empathetic understanding of the issues we have faced.

1. He has a lifelong issue with food, sticking to very specific food groups and never venturing outside of them without feeling extremely anxious if it is even suggested or offerred to him. Every evening, I make him literally the same meal, detail for detail.

2. He is very technically-minded and methodical, excelling in things that involve some degree of engineering and seems to have just a natural knack for anything that falls under that bracket. He will spend hours and hours and hours obsessing over new projects and not realise that he is sometimes ignoring me.

3. Conversation can be limited with him - he only really speaks of a handful of subjects and at length, without any awareness of how much he is going on and on about them and when others are struggling to maintain attention. He will even divert conversations back to the topic if any digression is made. Certain subjects will cause him great anxiety and discomfort, particularly if they are opinionated or emotional in nature.

4. He faces great difficulty in the workplace and does not seem to get along with his work colleagues. His reports always describe him as technically excellent at his job, but not a great, 'team player'. Most days, he comes home and is very upset at how the day has gone and is currently on two different types of anxiety medication to manage at work.

5. The issues we have fought over have been what are considered common sense, standard relationship nuances that he did not seem to grasp, at all. I have reached out to friends to explain the issues, all of whom were baffled that he did not seem to understand. The behaviour continued for a period of time, even after he had seen me visibly upset and distressed over the problem, until I apparently finally explained it, "in a way [he] understands". The lack of empathy and inability to read how upset I was, was both confusing, infuriating and worrying to myself and others. I genuinely started to believe I was in a relationship with some kind of sociopath, yet I was utterly confused as he has never otherwise behaved in any way that suggested he would not care about or enjoy hurting me - if anything quite the opposite.

6. He likes routine, to the point that he finds it uncomfortable if I do not also stick to one. Earlier on in the relationship, he would actually write me up lists of things he thought I should do throughout the day, with allocated time slots. This was something I had to broach to him was not exactly, 'normal' and it eventually stopped.

7. He is hypersensitive, easily frustrated and made anxious about small things. If something minor goes wrong, the way in which he, 'loses his cool' is almost child-like and as though he cannot process what he's feeling, at all! Unusual things can cause him stress which are too specific to go into, but believe me when I say they are unusual.

8. He sometimes comes out with things that are so utterly inappropriate and disrespectful, seemingly without any awareness of what he's said.

Does this sound like he could be on the spectrum? He has friends who sometimes find him difficult, and he is generally thought of as someone who is, 'quirky' and 'different'. I didn't want this to turn into a mega long post, but I really need to get this out and get him the right help! He has seen his GP and been referred to the surgery's, 'Wellbeing team' - can they help refer him for an assessment, at least?

  • Thanks for this great response! It’s helping me process some things with my partner. 

  • I'm currently undiagnosed and can definitely relate to some of this.

    The part about food seems like a resistance to trying something new. It's liking what is familiar, rather than trying the unfamlair.

    routines again are the familiar. You know what to expect when you've done it hundreds of times before.

    Regards social skills and saying inappropriate things, this is my area of greatest difficulties. It's not intentional. We just lack a social understanding. This to me is the biggest problem as it's the one that has the greatest impact on my life.

    My local chippy know exactly what my order is before I order. This is because it hasn't changed for years. Whilst this is probably covered by love of the familiar, it doesn't do me any major harm. Having no friends however due to lack of ability to make friends creates a sense of  isolation.

  • There are some books that might help.

    "Loving Mr Spock - Asperger's Syndrome and how to make your relationship work" by Barbara Jacobs, 2003. This book is accessible as it is out on Penguin It has some gaps and stereotypes and journalese, and the partner reads as fairly mild, so not altogether representative, but it is easy to get hold of.

    "Asperger's Syndrome and adults... Is Anyone Listening? Essays and poems by partners, parents and family members of Adults with Asperger's Syndrome" collected by Karen E Rodman - Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2003

    "Look me in the eye - my life with Asperger's Syndrome" by Jon Elder Robison  (in a US setting but very informative)

    If you stop to think about it there are good points and some of the problems you identify you can surmount, in order to help him cope.

    So he eats the same thing every day.... is that inconvenient?

    The issues you have fought over being common sense...... common sense refers to socially shared conventions. With autism you cannot read social situations properly, so cannot share in social referencing. Common sense, as you call it, isn't readily accessible. He will need things you think are common sense explained. He will have difficulty handling emotion and non-verbal communication - cos that's what autism is about.

  • If that was an ASD friend of mine, I'd say 'typical'. So yes, he sounds very ASD.

    It takes a special person to love and be loved by an ASD person, so well done to you for sticking with it. Tough, isn't it? And then other times....

    He would do well to get assessed, based on what you say. I don't know how your relationship is and how well you talk, but if he wants to go into exacting detail about things, it's most likely because you see a problem where he can't, not won't. ASD people have no concept of 'grey' areas, because to us, if it isn't right, it's wrong, it's all black and white.

    If he is open to the idea, it might help him a little to come on here and discuss it. There's nothing to lose, but quite a lot to gain, from a positive assessment, but I guess that for some people, a negative asessment could be equally comforting.

    We are not people with a condition, we are ASD people, we aren't 'mad' or 'loony' or 'odd' or 'eccentric', we're just different. He might find that he thinks like us, and that 'stuff' that goes on for him that he can't talk about with 'normal' people he can be perfectly comfortable with on here.

    Your matches:-

    1. Food. Taste, colour and texture are all issues, as is the seemingly OCD way we eat. We are often 'slow' eaters, and I eat my mixed plates in an order that I decide from the outset, as do others. See last entry below.

    2. Technical minds. We are brilliant at technical stuff. Maths is another particular common skill. See last entry below.

    3.Conversation. Well, yes, it's very difficult. We don't do 'chit-chat' as such. You ask us a question and it might take days to think of our answer, but you can rest assured that we've thought about things that can affect our answer in very deep and intense ways. We suffer from very noisy, busy heads sometimes.See last entry below.

    4.We are not sociable in the way that you understand, partly due to those 'communication' problems we have. See last entry below.

    5.Size of a problem. Well, this is difficult to explain, because this happens due to the way we think. See last entry below.

    6.Routine. Very important! We are comfortable with the 'known' just as we are discomfited by the 'unknown'. See last entry below.

    7.Hypersensitive. Yes. See last entry below.

    8.Appropriateness. In our terms, this never happens. We are honest and truthful, and we say what we see. We get this accusation thrown at us constantly, we can have it explained, and we'll probably understand why you feel that way, but wee won't understand why, or why you're bothering too. It's true, isn't it? Well then, what's wrong with saying it? See last entry below.

    Last entry. We're different, and all you've done is list those differences that you think are a problem. We have to accept that they are a problem, but we can never truly know why because we're just as incapable of having your kind of mind, as you are ours.

    We have the same emotions as you, but hugely magnified. If you think about his emotional outbursts, do you see an intensity that's way beyond what you would consider a 'normal' reasonable emotional response?

    So we come to the important one, hypersensistivity. All of our senses are acute. We hear sounds that you do not, we see detail that you do not, and we don't like too much light, we smell smells that you cannot detect, and we can feel a speck of dust in a sock. If people touch us, especially unexpectedly, we recoil sharply. It hurts, physically.

    If all of our hypersensitivities are being provoked, and we get a head full of stuff that won't leave us alone, we go into 'meltdown'. If you think it's awful to see, trust me, you wouldn't want to be inside one. It's terrifying, I cannot describe it to you. I hope your partner understands this - it isn't our fault, it isn't what we want, we hate it, and we can't stop it or keep it from happening. We're developing strategies even now to help each other.

    Whoever you both are and whatever the outcome, on his behalf I'd like to thank you for loving him enough to come and find us. We're not easy to love, just very rewarding. I guess you get out what you put in.

    Please please get him to read this and talk to us. We are all anonymous, we don't shy away from any subject, he is welcome to ask or talk about anything at all, there is no pressure whatsoever, and he might just find out at last who he really is Smile