Help living with an ASD partner

Luke Beardon's books on adult autism, I would recommend. The best single volume is probably Tony Attwood's 'Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome', despite the title, it covers what is now 'ASD level 1 support needs' type autism.

I haven't read the Attwood book, so was immediately keen to check it out for my own partner's potential benefit.

However, this review comment on Amazon has stopped me in my tracks - and may not be what BrokenBiscuits is hoping for, either:

"The other comment I found deeply hurtful to Aspies everywhere was in Chapter 13 about long-term relationships. Ironically, in the section about 'Strategies to strengthen the relationship', Dr Attwood cites a comment by an NT partner: 'When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.' Dr Attwood's preceding sentence here is telling and shows exactly what I mean about NTs invariably resorting to treating us as inferior beings. He says, 'A positive attitude is also of paramount importance.' Can Dr Attwood please inform me as to how, exactly, viewing your life partner as 'a lemon' (i.e. a dud) is in any way positive or healthy?" 

I haven't read the Attwood book, so was immediately keen to check it out for my own partner's potential benefit.

However, this review comment on Amazon has stopped me in my tracks - and may not be what BrokenBiscuits is hoping for, either:

"The other comment I found deeply hurtful to Aspies everywhere was in Chapter 13 about long-term relationships. Ironically, in the section about 'Strategies to strengthen the relationship', Dr Attwood cites a comment by an NT partner: 'When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.' Dr Attwood's preceding sentence here is telling and shows exactly what I mean about NTs invariably resorting to treating us as inferior beings. He says, 'A positive attitude is also of paramount importance.' Can Dr Attwood please inform me as to how, exactly, viewing your life partner as 'a lemon' (i.e. a dud) is in any way positive or healthy?" 

So far, you're correct, not quite what I was after, but I'm finding it useful all the same.

Have you read any of Tony Atwood's books?  Yesterday was the first time I've heard his name, reading his background he appears to be an individual with a lot of care and concern for Autists, I'd like to think this lemon remark was light-hearted and not disrespectful.

I don't currently have a personality or identity (which I recognise), so I can't take offence at something I don't think applies to me, so perhaps I am not the best person to comment.  But I hope the remarks didn't cause you too many negative thoughts.

Well, I think it is fair to say that you and Martin have managed to squeeze all the juice from this matter.....i do so love the autistic thoroughness....it makes me very proud of our tribe.  Thank you both.

Martin stated, "Page 311. "

In the first edition without the additional introduction on DSM-5 diagnostic criteria ~ the lemonade comment is as you state on page 311, whereas in the second edition with the diagnostic criteria ~ it's on page 323.

Martin stated, "The 'lemonade comment' is a quotation from the neurotypical partner of an autistic person, not an authorial comment."

In terms of the lemonade comment being a quotation from a neurotypical partner rather than Tony Attwood as the author, I think the main bone of contention for those upset by it is that he chose to include it ~ regardless of the positive connotation involved.

Personally though, on account of having had lemonade fabulously made with actual lemons involving a traditional family recipe, the idea of being compared to that as being a refreshing change ~ I am not adverse to it all.

From another perspective, as being myself gender divergent, i.e., much more female in my inclinations than male, I have often stated and it has often been agreed with that I am a lesbian trapped in a male body, and lesbians are sometimes referred to as being 'lemons', so I am not at all adverse to that one either.

As far as being considered a social 'lemon' in the faulty sense, I do rather have a trail of social plane, train and automobile wrecks behind me, but not all of them granted have been at combined oil refinery and nuclear, biological and chemical ammunition dumps. >)Jokey Smily Emoji(<

Martin stated, "Its context is that a neurotypical person, whose partner is autistic, may lose their social confidence through mostly interacting with an autistic person whose responses may be atypical. It is in a small section where Attwood is primarily concerned with the wellbeing of the partners of autistic people, certainly an important topic."

Most certainly. 

Martin stated, "I get the impression that the 'lemon' in question is not the autistic partner, but the deficit in day-to-day neurotypical social interaction that results from having an autistic partner."

My impression was that the 'lemon' was being used to symbolically represent the partner in perhaps the same way as women are said to make a "MAN" of their partner, and men are said to make a "WOMAN" of theirs ~ more generally ~ by way of inspiring and vitalising them to serve genetically and protect existentially and all that which applies as such atypically or divergently otherwise.

Martin stated, "If the partner of the person being quoted were indeed a lemon, they would surely trade them in for a satsuma, grapefruit, or possibly a clockwork cumquat."

I would of thought that with the lemon tree itself being both male and female; the fruiting seed bodies of which would also as such be androgynous and therefore free from the existential and philosophical complications of same and interspecies relationships, and free also from any possibility of their being any mechanistically enforced Burgessian or Kubrickian dystopic equivalents.

Ah well ~ pop goes my fantasy bubble for the day! >)Jokey Smily Emoji(<

Bunny said:

in the section about 'Strategies to strengthen the relationship', Dr Attwood cites a comment by an NT partner: 'When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.' Dr Attwood's preceding sentence here is telling and shows exactly what I mean about NTs invariably resorting to treating us as inferior beings.

I think you have missed the point completely.

The reference to lemons is about the fruit. A lemon is not the sort of fruit you eat like other sweet fruits, but it is indeed a worthy fruit and most enjoyable when you know how to prepare it.

In many ways autists are like lemons. We are quite different to others (fruit) but are actually really good when you know how to deal with us. Think of lemon merangue pie, lemonchello liquer, leomon sorbet etc.

The author is explaining that knowing how to work with NDs you can get a really good relationship.

You are picking up on a use of the term lemon to define an inherently faulty good which is not the application here.

Page 311. The 'lemonade comment' is a quotation from the neurotypical partner of an autistic person, not an authorial comment. Its context is that a neurotypical person, whose partner is autistic, may lose their social confidence through mostly interacting with an autistic person whose responses may be atypical. It is in a small section where Attwood is primarily concerned with the wellbeing of the partners of autistic people, certainly an important topic. I get the impression that the 'lemon' in question is not the autistic partner, but the deficit in day-to-day neurotypical social interaction that results from having an autistic partner. If the partner of the person being quoted were indeed a lemon, they would surely trade them in for a satsuma, grapefruit, or possibly a clockwork cumquat.

Correction ~ I have now found the, "As one partner said, ‘When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.’" statement ~ by way of rediscovering how to use the word search option on my e-reader, along with checking my physical copy as well, and in terms of the reviewer having reacted to the negative connotation of people calling something faulty a 'lemon', the partner used it to serve as a positive refreshing connotation, which is very much required in terms of Autism no longer being viewed negatively.

Obviously the more red-raw sore people are in terms of having been abusively facilitated, identified and affirmed in regard to their individual development ~ the more likely they are to perceive things with abusive connotations, rather than perceiving any healthy values being as such incorporated.

The lemonade comment is nowhere to be found in Chapter 13 on 'long term relationships', let alone in the section on 'strategies to strengthen the relationship'' ~ which is curious.

I found the book very useful, but then again I am a biomedical scientist, an academic doctor myself, as well as an autist. I appreciate a biomedical view of autism. If you wanted an 'everything in the garden is rosy', autistic advocate's view of autism, it might disappoint. Your, and presumably the reviewer's, excerpts, seem to be rather selective, from what is a book with an overwhelmingly positive view of autism (you say you haven't read it - I have).  Attwood has commented that autism, "Might be the next step in human evolution".  As a Darwinist, I profoundly disagree with this hypothesis, but it is certainly a very autism-friendly idea. The 'lemonade' comment is surely quite obviously a comical comment?