Neurotypical married to a man with aspergers syndrome

#45

Postby Candid » Mon Nov 15, 2021 9:14 am

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:Again, I ask if you believe that 100% of people born with autism are incapable of ever having a healthy intimate relationship?


quietvoice wrote:"I pretend to care about you so that I can get my needs met. Once I get you hooked, I can let go and not care about you, until I fear that I'll lose you, then I'll pretend again."


While I agree that there are degrees on the autism spectrum, what quietvoice wrote here is my experience in marriage. H appears to be ineducable. He's distraught when I shut him out after some atrocity, makes repeated conciliatory attempts, then when I cave he'll usually try a watered-down version of whatever it was caused the rift in the first place.

I'm literally sick of it, which is impossible to explain to someone who's never lived with it.
It's his way or the highway, and I've made my decision.
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#46

Postby Candid » Mon Nov 15, 2021 9:44 am

Algorithm wrote:Those particular events of the past had nothing to do with romance, however.

They don't need to. Some aspies give offence wherever they go. The issue for me, since I'm married to one, is whether they do it intentionally.

I have no respect for their profession, but ...

Do you have respect for any authority? Or do you not acknowledge that anyone may be better qualified than you are in some areas?

I have admitted in public that I have AS, which prompted the other students to laugh, thinking I was joking. I didn't bother to let them know that I wasn't. I was accepted. Why fix something that isn't broken?

Indeed, and it sounds like you're a mild case, going under the radar most of the time.
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#47

Postby Candid » Mon Nov 15, 2021 10:01 am

Algorithm wrote:...even though her body language indicated to me that she was lying.

Are you quite certain you can interpret body language correctly? What about facial cues?

My H is mostly clueless on these things.
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#48

Postby Candid » Mon Nov 15, 2021 11:40 am

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:I see plenty of evidence of parents having loving, caring, healthy relationships with the autistic child and the child responding in healthy, loving ways in return.

Interesting. I've met just one self-declared female aspie, an adult, and I wouldn't have known if she hadn't told me. I thought maybe it was a gender thing, that she'd be considerate and thoughtful.

Now it occurs to me that parenting may determine whether an aspie grows up to be capable of healthy relationship or not. One or both parents could be modelling good relational choices, or they could lack empathy themselves, be dismissive or infuriated and even punitive.

What troubles me in my marriage is that *I* have disappeared. It freaked me out when a woman friend told me "that's not you talking, it's him". I immediately knew she was right. Because it's his way or the highway, I'm not the woman I was before we started cohabiting. Quietvoice's posts here, and her signature, describe my situation very well. I'm not someone who screams and yells and blanks people. I do all those things around him rather than smack my head against the nearest wall or tear my own eyeballs out.

I've just looked at my very first post on this forum viewtopic.php?t=60580&p=603221#p603221 and more than ten years later I see what I didn't see at the time. It was when I started down the pharmaceutical road, when I started being perceived as "difficult" by my friends, when my career and finances were in tatters. What I didn't see, or at least didn't acknowledge in that thread, was Who Else was involved in my downfall.

this idea that all people with autism are some monolith, incapable from birth of any semblance of a healthy relationship I think is wrong on many levels.

I'm thinking just one, the word "all" in that sentence. You'd have to cohabit in an intimate relationship with a top-of-the-range adult aspie to know that, and if you got isolated with one of them you'd be fighting for psychic survival as I am now. They have a way of getting rid of your friends—or worse, they change you so much that you get rid of your friends yourself.

His self defeatist attitude is pretty well ingrained at this point. He has constructed elaborate defense mechanisms to shield him from rejection. Still, twenty years is sufficient time for potential change. Twenty years is time for advancements in our understanding of autism.

It would be nice to think so—but unlike Sheldon Cooper, who changed almost beyond recognition with the love of a good woman, I doubt a 30-year-old worst-case aspie is capable of change, much less the older one he'll be if/when these advancements take place. I agree he shields himself from rejection; I see H doing the same. Naturally that makes matters worse for all concerned.

I'm not buying that Algorithm is so helpless, a victim of neurological wiring that he cannot help.

I think he probably is, but he's much more likely to victimise those around him than to acknowledge he's a victim himself. Whether he's educable, or happy, is a different question.
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