help and advice needed my partner has asburgers

Showing affection as you've probably gathered from experience, is pretty difficult for people on the spectrum.

To start with they lacked the social connectivity growing up that enabled them to identify and differentiate what acquaintances, friends, close friends and close relationships expected. They cannot readily read good and bad reactions. So it is often safer not to respond.

What's the right way to hug - depending on your relationship with the person concerned, and whether there is a status difference that defines differences of behaviour - is really tricky. Even as a mild aspe I really cannot hug and cannot do it properly, so always come over badly. I can manage shaking hands, as long as no-one leads on unconventional technique, as I've no comprehension of what they signify, and end up following suit and wondering if I've somehow conveyed approval of some secret society.

I appreciate from an NT perspective, that you need the reassuring messages conveyed through affection, but it may be quite unrealistic to look for this in someone on the spectrum.

Hence what may seem cold and unaffectionate behaviour is in part driven by a real fear of getting it wrong.

There's a book, if you can track it down, that might prove useful, or at least interesting: "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. The ISBN, which a library or bookshop will ask for, is 1 84310 751 1

Showing affection as you've probably gathered from experience, is pretty difficult for people on the spectrum.

To start with they lacked the social connectivity growing up that enabled them to identify and differentiate what acquaintances, friends, close friends and close relationships expected. They cannot readily read good and bad reactions. So it is often safer not to respond.

What's the right way to hug - depending on your relationship with the person concerned, and whether there is a status difference that defines differences of behaviour - is really tricky. Even as a mild aspe I really cannot hug and cannot do it properly, so always come over badly. I can manage shaking hands, as long as no-one leads on unconventional technique, as I've no comprehension of what they signify, and end up following suit and wondering if I've somehow conveyed approval of some secret society.

I appreciate from an NT perspective, that you need the reassuring messages conveyed through affection, but it may be quite unrealistic to look for this in someone on the spectrum.

Hence what may seem cold and unaffectionate behaviour is in part driven by a real fear of getting it wrong.

There's a book, if you can track it down, that might prove useful, or at least interesting: "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. The ISBN, which a library or bookshop will ask for, is 1 84310 751 1