Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm married to a man with High Functioning Autism, relatively recently diagnosed, and we've been together for about 10 years.
I'm trying to read up more about the subject, recently started with 22 things a woman needs to know if she loves a man with Aspergers, which was useful and allowed us to have some quite productive conversations about the situation.
I still find it terribly difficult to deal with his outbursts and temper, and he can be very hurtful to me (only verbally, he is not physically abusive), e.g. saying that I've made a "stupid suggestion" or inferrring that something is my fault. Although I'm overall quite a strong person with a good career, I'm generally quite sensitive to critism in any situtaion, so this part is very hard for me. I hate it when anyone loses their temper or shouts.
So I'm going to read more on this website and maybe another book or two. Hopefully he will get some help soon, e.g. counselling or anger management, but although he says he hopes to get help when he starts a new course at University (mature student), I'm not particularly hopeful that this will be relationship type help, rather than help he needs for his studies.
Maybe see you around on the forums...
Best Regards,
CauliCheese
No worries, life in an autistic household is liable to be chaotic and a bit unpredictable! 2 months on I'm also realising how much there is still to learn about my condition, I keep realising that more and more situations, present and past, are influenced by my hard coded instincts that aren't as normal as I thought they were. :-)
Apologies for not replying sooner, recombinantsocks. I really did appreciate your responses and and very grateful for your time taken to write. We've had a lot of ups & downs since I last posted, but I think we are making some headway. Life has been very busy so I haven't had time to post more, or (as I'd hoped to do) reply to others' posts. I hope to engage more fully when things are quieter so I'm not all take and no give.
The attitude that the world has to accept us, exactly as we are, with no attempt to fit in with the world is, unfortunately a common approach. It is utterly wrong and destructive in my opinion. This approach leads to incessant conflict and argument. It is unnecessary and it makes the sufferers life much worse.
Equally, if the world made no attempt to accomodate our difficulties then we would end up in the same place. A purely NT world is utterly hostile and impossible thing for us to deal with.
The best path for me has been to do a bit on both sides of the equation. I have striven to understand the condition and to understand what i can change and where the world has to accomodate me. This is working really well although, after 3 months of postdiagnosis living i am still stubbing my toes on things which i haven't worked out yet. One of the reasons i come on this forum is that it helps me look at things and try and work out which side (or both) should move in any particular situation.
one thing that i've understood is that i don't like to be continually reminded about things that don't matter to me. This seems like nagging and it just irritates. Having said that i am also learning to be more accomodating and i do more things without argument because i understand that my partner wants something to be done and that can be reason enough. That might sound so obvious that it shouldn't need saying but it means that i end up doing things that make no sense to me and that is a difficult thing for an aspie to do.
on the matter of the car, if it is your car, rather than his, then simply don't let him drive it. Just say that you want it treated the way that you want it treated and if he can't do that then he can't have the keys. If it's a shared car then you may have to wait for the penny to drop about learning to make compromises.
He really likes academic research so has read up on the 'condition' but, as far as I'm aware, hasn't yet taken any steps toward 'self improvement'. I hesitate to use this term as he clearly sees it as a 'difference' that is as much for me to learn to deal with as it is for him to do anything about. I can't yet get clear in my mind what I think about that. On one hand, you wouldn't ask someone that's lost a limb and is in a wheelchair to deal with that on their own or expect them to be up-beat and unaffected by what they're going through, and you'd expect there to be an impact on others due to how that person is feeling as a result of what they're going through. On the other hand, I think with Aspergers he could make himself happier (not just me) by learning coping / avoidance strategies for the anxiety and anger he so often feels, regardless of what we look to learn and change as a couple, and I'm a bit surprised that he didn't do that after the diagnosis and that, now I've started learning more, I'm coming up with suggestions that he's not previously found out anything about.
I'm also struggling with what is & isn't due to Aspergers. I mean... many women moan about their man's unwillingness to help around the house or about other aspects of their relationship. I don't know what to put down to Aspergers and what not to. For example, does he leave a half loaf of bread that's going mouldy *beside* the food recycling bin for our cleaner to deal with on Friday because, logically, that makes best sense to him, or is he just being lazy and ignoring the fact that I have a lovely kitchen and don't want to look at a going-mouldy loaf of bread in it for almost a week! Does he scrape the bottom of the car by driving onto the drive too fast and then fail to apologise (I've asked him loads of times before not to do it and I told him to slow down before he drove on, but he still did it) because of Aspergers or because he doesn't give a stuff that I don't want my car scraped, even if hasn't (yet) damanged the car.
Lastly, I'm often thinking that he won't change, because he seems so adamant that this is a 'disability' and I think he thinks the world should accept him as he is, and he shouldn't have to change, so I'm not sure I see his motivation.
Sorry, that turned into a really long essay-type reply! I'm just finding it tough at the moment.
Best Regards.
Hi
it sounds as though you are feeling the strain. is your husband doing things to understand his condition?
Hi recombinantsocks,
Thanks for your reply and I wish you well in your relationship.
I hope that I will, some time in the future, be able to write something as positive-sounding as you. Currently it feels like a long journey ahead and I am exhausted from the road that is behind us. But I don't want to quit my marriage so I guess this is the start of the next steps....
Hi,
i was diagnosed at 56 after being married for nearly 30 years. The diagnosis has lead to us being able to understand each other better. We understand how we differ and are learning to do more "give and take".
I read a book, "Living well on the spectrum" by Valerie Gaus. This has some useful stuff about how i think differently. It has strategies that can help someone work better with the NT world.
to me, anger can arise out of frustration when someone does something that doesn't make sense to me. I then struggle to communicate why i don't agree and this goes rapidly downhill. I would then say something that offends, as i did not really get how someone would feel if i said they were silly etc. Communication is at the root of the ASD. understanding my limitations and working to improve my skills has been my approach since the diagnosis.
the statistics of relationships surviving without a diagnosis are horrendous! You have made the first step to improving the odds of a successful and happy relationship.
:-)