My husband is a therapist and I think he has Aspergers....

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Apologies for this lengthy post. This has been building up for years....

My fifteen year old son was recently diagnosed with Aspergers. In reading and researching the condition, I have come to believe that my husband of eight years (not my son’s father) may also have Aspergers. I am struggling with whether or not to talk to him about it. The problem is that my husband is a family therapist. He is very knowledgeable about spectrum disorders, and in fact he understood my son’s condition years before I was able to see or accept it for myself. I just don’t know if he will be able or willing to see that he shares many of the same issues. Is it possible for someone with Aspergers to be an effective therapist and counselor? I would think that you need empathy and compassion in that profession, but maybe emotional detachment serves him just as well.

Regardless, I am worried about opening the gates to his anger and defensiveness, and I wonder if it is just easier and better to work on my own grief and acceptance of the fact that our marriage will never be “normal”. Of course I’m not qualified to diagnose, and it’s possible that he’s neurotypical, but here is what I see.

He is extremely intelligent, perceptive, and verbally gifted. His speech is almost formal in its structure. His vocabulary is amazing. He takes great pride in his memory and in remembering obscure dates. If we are driving somewhere in the car, he is able to tell you, to the exact minute, when we will arrive. Well, he has never forgotten a birthday or anniversary, so that part is nice. But his nostalgia for the past can also be dreary. As in “so-and-so died 15 years ago today.” or “My grandmother would have been 110 today if she hadn’t been driven to an early grave by her abusive husband...”

He is a gifted pianist. He has also memorized huge volumes of music, song lyrics and poetry and will often whistle, sing or recite at length, without regard for the social circumstances or the audience’s reaction. He gets angry and can’t understand why anybody would be annoyed by whistling or singing (granted, he whistles and sings very well).

I’m a pretty sentimental sap, but he is attached to his possessions (furniture, objects) to an extreme. He has chairs that nobody is allowed to sit in, but he won’t put in storage. He has a very hard time getting rid of things, even if they are broken. He glues pottery back together. I am actually afraid to recycle magazines or get rid of clothes that our children have outgrown, for fear of incurring his anger.

He loves plants and cats, to the point where they are taking over every surface of our home. On most days, the cats and the plants get more attention than me or the children.

He is terribly disorganized in an absent-minded-professor sort of way. Asking him to find a receipt or a bank statement causes him great anxiety. It takes him forever to get out the door when we are going somewhere, and he almost always has to go back once or twice for things that he forgot.

He is very loving and loyal toward his friends and family (and never forgets their birthdays) but also extremely hyper-critical of people. Even about his dearest friends, he has more negative than positive to say. He rarely sees his friends, but maintains several long-standing, long-distance relationships. He has three or four good friends, all of whom live far away.

He is honest to a fault. He feels he must always confront people on their bad behavior, with the result that he’s been known to alienate his friends for extended periods of time.

I have never hired anybody (carpenters, house cleaners, tax preparers) who he hasn’t complained about. If we go out to dinner, he is bound to be dissatisfied with the service or the food. If we go to a movie, he will complain about how he’s wasted two hours of his life. Maybe my expectations are just a lot lower, but it seems to me that he always makes a big deal over trivial everyday disappointments. I’ve just learned to expect and ignore his rants, and I try not to let it drag me down, but sometimes it’s a struggle to stay positive.

He enjoys sex as much as the next guy, but seems incapable of cuddling or other forms of physical intimacy. He won’t accept backrubs, is extremely ticklish, and easily embarrassed by sexual talk. He is completely oblivious to non-verbal cues in the bedroom. Also, he is completely lacking in spontaneity. He very rarely initiates sex, and when he does it is must be in the dark, in bed, after he has finished reading for the night. Pretty darn rigid if you ask me.

Finally, he seems incapable of compassion, especially when I am angry, hurt, depressed, crying, overwhelmed, etc., The irony is that when I most need his emotional support, that is when I am least likely to get it. His response to what he calls my “emotionality” is typically one of impatience (get over it), problem solving (here is what you need to do), blaming (here is what you are doing wrong), or else he will just ignore me. This is the part that drives me crazy and causes such despair in my marriage. I’m a pretty emotionally resilient person, and I’ve had my share of love relationships, but I have never felt so invisible, misunderstood, as if he just doesn’t, can’t “get me.” I have tried talking to him about my feelings, but he is a master at controlling conversations, and he just blames me for the problems in communication. He can parrot back what I say to him, but he can’t actually understand or validate my emotions. He is very smart and verbally adept, and has all the therapy tricks, and after a while I just give up.

I didn’t mean for this post to get so long. I love my husband tremendously, but I have come to understand and accept that I will always have to go outside the relationship to meet a lot of my emotional needs. My question is whether or not there is any point in telling him that I think he has Aspergers. Telling him won’t change the dynamic, or the way I must learn to respond to him, but it IS almost guaranteed to make him angry, hostile, and defensive. What do you think? Does this sound like Aspergers or is this just normal marital strife? If it sounds like Aspergers, should I tell him so?

Well, you know the man, so I won't second guess, but I will tell you that for a lot of adults who post here, the revelation that we have AS not only didn't make us angry, it was a sort of cathartic relief to realize that difficulties we've struggled with for years are the result of a neurological dysfunction and not character flaws.

Some of the characteristics you describe could be interpreted as indicative of AS, others not so much. Ultimately, he'd have to be tested by a psychologist for an official DX. Who knows, he might be intrigued by the possibility. If he works in the field, perhaps he knows someone who could give him a professional eval.

Points for possible Aspergers may include:

Honesty and critical thinking- Is his honesty coming from his mind, or from his emotions? Chances are he is more than likely alienating his friends from not being understanding in the emotional sense.

Lack of understanding- The annoying part comes into play. Funny that people don't often understand what could possibly annoy others, but if he is quicker to frustration when he is annoyed, that might be Aspergers. People with Aspergers have a lower tolerance to frustration for the most part.

The obsessive patterns don't sound too different from a typical Aspergers trait. The music, the chair and possible routines play a role.

Focuses more on negativity- The critical thinking likely plays a role. My father is what I would like to call an armchair critic. Sounds like your man might be too. Instead of focusing on enjoying time out, he is focusing too much on other things and pointing out other people's flaws and bad behaviour instead of focusing on what people are feeling.

It sounds like you have done more than meet him halfway emotionally. He isn't doing it for you. I advise googling the term "Cassandra Syndrome" as it sounds like you may be suffering from it. If it sounds to you that he has Aspergers and that you might want to get him diagnosed, I would find a way to get him to a counsellor or therapist and go with him.

He might need a therapist.

Christ, if you haven't been having constant affairs - to keep sane - or taken off for long periods of time, it sounds as though you deserve a medal.

He sounds a nasty, intolerant shite, to be honest. Takes one to know one, or at least that's what Boo may say.

It's actually weird that I've never ever heard of such thing yet as "a psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist with autism/aspergers" in this world.

Wow, what a tremendous and rapid outpouring of support. Thank you to everyone who has responded.

In listing all of my husband’s problems, it’s easy to lose sight or minimize his good points, of which he has many. He’s brilliant, funny, caring, loving, loyal, reliable, funny, etc. He can be very charming. All of which makes it especially ironic and hard to accept that underneath it all, he is rather a cold fish, weirdly lacking in compassion. Not that he doesn’t understand logically what people suffer, just that he can’t relate to it emotionally. I’d describe him as distant and detached, but an excellent sounding board if you happen to be in a problem-solving mode.

I really think he is on the spectrum, on the low end (or is that the high end?) but has developed remarkable coping skills and is very good at masking the problems, even from himself. So maybe it is true what they say about therapists, that they go into the profession to fix themselves...

We have been to marriage counseling on and off through the years. He’s definitely pro-therapy (as he ought to be, being in the business) and willing, at least in theory, to work on himself. Things get better for a little while, then lapse into old patterns. In the context of a therapist’s office and with a therapist’s help, I can sometimes get him to hear me. I don’t think I could broach the subject of AS without the help of a neutral third party. His standard routine, when I try to express my unhappiness with our relationship, it to accuse me of blaming him for my feelings. “Your feelings are only feelings,” he will say, “not facts.”

Well, my feelings are my feelings, and in fact, his lack of compassion affects me. Which isn’t to say that I’m perfect or that I don’t have stuff I need to work on. That’s the trap. He is so well defended. If I point out that he’s got problems, then he uses it as evidence that I’m the one with a problem. He’s the mental health professional, after all... A philosopher’s egg if there ever was one. It’s a veritable casserole of ironies. Cassandra syndrome sounds spot on.

I do wonder how many psychologists/therapists are Aspies. There are probably more than we realize, and I can see how it would actually be an asset.

Well, I will try to broach the subject with the help of a marriage counselor, as much as I dread the fall out. Thank you all again for your insight and support.

It sounds like you might need to go to counseling again and perhaps bring along these posts for the therapist to read, or something substantially similar that you've written out.

Also, if things are temporarily better after going to counseling you may want to consider going pretty regularly if you can afford it, at least for a while until the changes stick. But it does appear that you need to be prepared for the possibility that they never will and that your husband will always be that way.

You also might want to go to a therapist by yourself, explain your situation (again, possibly with these very posts), and ask for coping strategies and ways for you to get emotional validation from him or get your needs met by others, if he won't change and you are committed to sticking it out with him. Also, even if he doesn't have AS it might be useful to read some of the books on relationships with people with Asperger's, since it might help you assert your emotional needs better.

Kind of boggles me that a therapist would not see that you are dragging yourself through an emotional desert, but it just goes to show how much energy we invest in propping up our own issues and not helping others (regardless of whether or not we are autistic!)

To be honest, I restate my original point:

If he's that completely unwilling to take your repeatedly-stated sincere concerns on board, then you have to think to yourself how much longer you wish to remain in that relationship.

I'm a therapist 1:1 to kids on the spectrum and I probably have AS or some form of HFA and possibly ADHD but I haven't sought an official dx yet. We do exist and I have met others who I suspect are on the spectrum before. But it's still very NT dominated so if and when I rarely try to explain what might be going on in a kid from an AS point of view I get weird looks or ignored so I agree but digress that NT therapists mostly don't know anything.

But back on topic: it has taken me a whole long time to admit to myself that I have HFA and it only occurred to me from working with kids and because I always have felt like from another planet and like I don't fit. Plus how my mom describes things from when I was very little and that she desperately tried to get pediatrician to tell her what was wrong with me and was just told I would grow out of it led me to suspect I might have traits. So I went from the idea that I seemed to have a gift for reaching and connecting to kids on the spectrum to thinking I might have traits to after realizing that I have huge difficulty maintaining friendships and relationships and maybe I am on the autism spectrum to being pretty sure I am and now am deciding if I should find out for sure ie take all my online evals to a therapist who specializes in adult dx. My rambling point is that discovering as an adult that one could be on the spectrum can be a process and maybe this could be how it is with your husband. Have you talked to him about it? That might be good if you think he would be receptive to it.

You seem to think he lacks empathy or compassion.
He probably sees and feels empathy and compassion very differently to you, but that does not mean that it is not there. Those of us who go into psychology rarely do it unless we have a lot of empathy and compassion. We may feel it differently, more intensely, or express it differently than you do, but it will certainly be there. The fact that you believe the stereotype so completely is more worrying to me than anything else in your post.

I highly doubt he will take well to being told he has AS. Probably would take it about as well as if somebody said to you that the reason you can't empathize with your husband and your son is because you are neurotypical (that sentence probably won't go over well with you despite that it is true - NT's lack empathy for us as much as we do for them usually). It won't solve the underlying issue, even if he makes an attempt to be more self aware - there are things about ourselves that are not changeable.

In light of your post - if you are so intent on seeing only the negative, telling you husband that he has AS will solve nothing. It will not change who he is. It will not change how he acts towards you, in all probability. There are very few people, either NT or AS who have the self awareness and motivation to attempt to work on themselves to that extent.

So in essence - what do you hope to get out of telling him that he has AS? What is the ideal outcome that will result from it, in your mind?