Meltdowns destroyed my relationships

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Kades
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Joined: 19 May 2016
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Posts: 3

22 May 2016, 5:07 am

I've only recently (two months) been diagnosed with Aspergers, before that I've always had a hunch. And two weeks ago my boyfriend broke up with me, it was slightly unexpected and I've been dwelling on it since. At first I thought it was the stress of exams that pushed us apart. But after talking to people it seemed that he decided that it wasn't going to work out between us.

I am very frustrated by the fact that this didn't involve a mutual discussion. As the main problem that was mentioned was the fact that we had a lot of arguments, thinking back these arguments were always meltdowns and I had no idea how to tell other's what was the best for me in those meltdowns. And I guess eventually he gave up on me.

In hindsight it has has happened in my past relationship where I would have a lot of Meltdowns and it destroyed that one too. I've only recently started receiving mentoring and perhaps I will find ways to improve myself. So I guess I am wondering if this has happened to anyone and if there is a successful strategy to educate friends and partners to prevent this happening in future relationships



ASHFAdude
Butterfly
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Joined: 24 Oct 2014
Age: 1965
Gender: Male
Posts: 12
Location: Keswick Ontario Canada

25 May 2016, 7:44 pm

Hello,
I'm curious what you mean by "a strategy to educate friends and partners" that will prevent you from having meltdowns. Educating the people around you about your autism can help them understand you, but it totally up to you to manage your emotions. Has your mentor been helping you with this? Some of the things that may help are practicing mindfulness (eg. Bob Ross), DBT skills (especially the crisis intervention and emotional regulation ones) and thought restructuring (the core technique of CBT). You have only had the diagnosis for a short time; hopefully you will come to be more effective at working with your feelings once you become familiar with your diagnosis and what it means to have autism. After diagnosis, sometimes we can be more peaceful because we don't blame ourselves so much for being different.
Good luck!



Kades
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Joined: 19 May 2016
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Posts: 3

27 May 2016, 9:33 am

I think it's due to my recent diagnosis they're unaware of and still treats me like a NT who's really childish at having meltdowns due to the smallest changes/things i don't understand. So I thought giving them information would help them to realise that it's not within my control and they should understand/help when I'm having a meltdown that couldn't be prevented.

My mentor is helping me with understanding all of this at the moment and that it's ok to have meltdowns sometimes, hopefully we will move to how to manage them and such later on. But when I mentioned I was trying to open up to people about it he said it could be helpful for them too as meltdowns tend to leave them very confused.