Tell Your Ex-Boyfriend About His AS -Ethics Dilemma

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My ex-boyfriend is a really newly diagnosed AS.

We had a lot of problems because he was not diagnosed. Now, he's with someone new who also doesn't know about the AS.

I'm 90% certain he will make the same mistakes with her that he did with me unless someone gently says, "You might want to consider the fact that your being spectrum has a much more negative impact on your relationships than you realize."

But, if he tells her he is an Aspie, she might dump him immediately, as well.

Do I have any obligation to "help"?

I'm mainly worried that he'll come back to me (we still talk a lot) after they've broken up (he breaks up a lot) and say, "Why didn't you say anything?"

[quote]Do I have any obligation to "help"?

I'm mainly worried that he'll come back to me (we still talk a lot) after they've broken up (he breaks up a lot) and say, "Why didn't you say anything?"[/quote]

Poppyx, I mean no disrespect to you but I am going to reply as honestly as I can.

No, you do not have an obligation to sabotage a relationship that has nothing to do with you.

I'm guessing here, but you sound as if you think that if only you had known about his AS, you two would have had a chance. Now that you do know, it's too late.

It's not fair, but that's how it works sometimes. Hindsight is 50:50 and in life you often don't get second chances. It's not my place to say who's to blame; I don't know, but it's irrelevant at this stage. He's moved on. You need to do so too.

It sucks that it's been on and off for so long, because it will be harder to believe that this time it really is the end, but for your own sake, and for his, you need to let it drop.

So what if his next relationship fails? That's not your problem. You are not his mother. Don't give him the chance to blame you or come running back to you; stop all lines of communication and leave each other alone. Whilst part of you may want to warn the other partner, she needs to make her own mistakes and her own judgements.

Is this the same guy your other post is about?

In your last post, it seemed like yo might have genuine concern... But this sheds a whole new light on the situation.

If he's moved on... you should leave him alone.

I'm not sure it would be sabotage--

In fact I'm pretty sure his knowing about it is his only hope.

I'm just really sure that if he doesn't know how much his AS affects his romantic relationships, then this one will fail too. (His failure rate before one year is 70% so far. 100% at 2 1/2 years.)

But, as you've said, not my problem. Good enough.

If his new girlfriend were to dump him just because he's AS, she'd be a pretty rubbish girlfriend.

I really think he should just tell her....I've seen stuff like this witth people I know - relationships don't work well with secrets.

It's up to him to tell her (or not)...don't worry yourself about it!

In response to all of the posts;

"moved on" is relative for him. They've been dating twenty days. He recycles girlfriends, and he's still calling me regularly. I waver between true concern, and petty schaudenfreud, I'll admit.

It seems parasitic to sit, in my house around the corner from him, with all of our mutual friends, waiting for their relationship to end, taking bets on how much time they have before he does something she won't understand and will find dreadful--and he won't understand what happened.

(NT's are sometimes awful.)

I can just picture the grief he will go through because he didn't know, and I didn't tell him. That was what motivated the question.

As long as you're saying that's not my responsibility to warn him, I'll go with that. (I never had any plans to warn her--it wouldn't help. This is not something an NT would even begin to understand, or possibly believe, until they live through it.)

Yes, he should tell her. Thing is, he doesn't know how badly things go because of the Aspie things he does that he's not aware of.

(How could you not know???)

Thanks for the replies.

Yeah, but if I tell her, he'll never speak to me again.

And, she's shallow. She kept him around to occasionally do her housework, while leading him on for years. One of the only memories I have of her is her flirting with him in front of me.

Every time I've tried to rationalize helping him stay with her by saying, "She's a nice person", one of my friends says, "She's nice?! ! She kept him as a hanger-on for years."

If she knows, she'll drop-kick him to the curb. His only chance is if he can modify his behavior enough that she doesn't really get what it means to be an Aspie, and then maybe he can sort-of trap her into a longer relationship. (Which is incredibly sad.)

If I tell her, or he does, in any substantive way, he'll lose the relationship. I think I owe him hands-off on this one.

"Every time I've tried to rationalize helping him stay with her by saying, "She's a nice person", one of my friends says, "She's nice?! ! She kept him as a hanger-on for years." If she knows, she'll drop-kick him to the curb. His only chance is if he can modify his behavior enough that she doesn't really get what it means to be an Aspie"
Judging by her behavior towards him thus far, she could find some reason to kick him to the curb whether she finds out he has AS or not, and honestly, it wouldn't be much of a loss for him.

I think you're making the right decision to let it be. You're too close to this situation to be objective and to behave in a way that would really help him, rather than satisfy your own motivations. Plus, as other people have said, it's not really your responsibility to help him realize things about himself and grow as a person, although I completely understand the temptation to try to make this happen for him. He'll figure it out for himself, or he won't, and IMO people don't really understand their own self-destructive patterns of behavior, no matter how much you tell them, until they figure it out for themselves. People can go to a therapist and be told the same thing for years and then after 10 years of hearing the same thing suddenly the light bulb goes on...and when the therapist says "yes, this is what I've been saying all along," they'll be like "WTF, I've never heard this before."

"he'll come back to me (we still talk a lot) after they've broken up (he breaks up a lot) and say, "Why didn't you say anything?""
This is your greatest worry? On the scale of badness, this doesn't rate very high, ESPECIALLY compared to the consequences of meddling. Plus, from what you've said about him, he doesn't sound like the sort of guy who would react that way.

Thanks for all the replies.

To Mosaic:

I think you're absolutely right that I can't sort out my own (bad) motives at this point.

The only thing is, "Yes, he will blame me."

He was kind of doing this thing that felt like a midlife crisis male blaming his wife for everything---to me--for a month or two before he started dating her. It was like I was responsible for everything he was unhappy with in his life.

Right now, he's mad at me because I "kept him from her" because I didn't reject him immediately as soon as he started obsessing about her. (He obsesses about oriental rugs,too. I didn't see that it was all that different. )

Although in his defense, having an Asperger's diagnosis dropped on your head at 42 is more than a lot of people can handle.

Any idea why he's blaming me for everything, since we're on the topic?

As someone that suspects her boyfriend might be AS --
I personally would have loved to have known about Asperger's when I first met my boyfriend.
I love him and respect him for his quirks, but his communication style was completely alien and hurtful to me and I lashed out in ways I really should not have, which really hurt our relationship.
Would it be possible to talk to the new girlfriend casually about Asperger's (without linking it to your ex) so that at least she knows its existence? It could at least give her a different framework to interpret him.

But if she's with him for the wrong reasons like you seem to suggest, they'll end up breaking up anyway - in which case the disruption you'll cause by wanting to help will not be worth it.