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A struggling parent of an Aspie son, who has lost his Family

NAS81255

I hate myself. As of last week, I was in a family of four, where one of our teenage sons who has Asperger's. There has been a strain on my relationship with him, exacerbated by my parenting expectations inevitably fuelled his lack of love towards me.  The family was already fractured and strained, my wife and I would not agree my approach to parenting him, but online texting with another woman has sealed our fate and am now facing Divorce.  i am broken, moved out of the family home and trying to keep a relationship with my youngest son during this holiday week.  They are off on a pre-planned holiday, next week, for 3 weeks.  I wish I could have figured-out how to have a relationship with him. Life may have been so different.  I live with regret, shame and now loss. 

Parents

  • You speak of your son's lack of love for you, it is possible that you are expecting neurotypical expressions of love from him, and that you misinterpret his feelings for you. I am autistic and it has been said that I appear rather wooden and uncaring when confronted by emotional pain in others. This is not that I do not react internally to distress in others; I feel empathy so strongly that it overwhelms me.  I do not react in a neurotypical 'there, there, and hug' way, I dissect the problem that is causing the distress and suggest practical remedies. My reaction is not coming from a place of no fellow feeling, but from a place of too much feeling.

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  • You speak of your son's lack of love for you, it is possible that you are expecting neurotypical expressions of love from him, and that you misinterpret his feelings for you. I am autistic and it has been said that I appear rather wooden and uncaring when confronted by emotional pain in others. This is not that I do not react internally to distress in others; I feel empathy so strongly that it overwhelms me.  I do not react in a neurotypical 'there, there, and hug' way, I dissect the problem that is causing the distress and suggest practical remedies. My reaction is not coming from a place of no fellow feeling, but from a place of too much feeling.

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