Wanting to heal Cassandra

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I’m AS and I’m mixed up. The good news is that my wife is still with me: just. I should be grateful for any advice from anybody about what I may do to make things better for my relationship. While I am open to any constructive advice, I should be grateful to hear of any success stories of NT ladies living with AS men.
I’ll try to lay out the situation below. This may ramble a bit so if you understand my position and have anything to add feel free to skip the rest of the post. I am trying to be objective in the rest of this post so it is deliberately without emotion and I am attempting to write it as far as I can from a neutral point of view. (Actually, I am crushed in writing this.)

I’m undiagnosed AS. I realised this only 7 months ago when we discovered that out 10 year old daughter was AS. My wife had suspected for some time. I have been unknowingly and systematically destroying my wife for years. She has always known that I do not intend to hurt her. My biggest flaw is that I do not make her feel loved or cherished. This has been like a Chinese water torcher for her dripping consistently over the years. I was devastated when I found out about this, especially when I read reams of blogs of other women who had been in the same situation as my wife. They were all suffering from what is sometimes referred to as Cassandra Syndrome.

I was initially relieved that I had discovered that I had some difficulties and that my behaviour and reasoning were not typical. I thought that I would be able to work with my wife to try to make things better for her. No such luck. My wife has explained to me that before she admitted I was AS, she had hope that I would change. Now all hope was gone and that she knows that I will always be the same. She is with me now only for the sake of our daughters.

I have been working to try to fix myself and I have been able to notice some improvements in the behaviours that I have through my AS, e.g. I avoid becoming insistent, and hence avoid argument, if I don’t think I am getting my point across. OK! This is being, passive, backing down and allowing myself to feel walked over but I can deal with this because know I can’t always rely on my AS reasoning. I have also made many other improvements that have been quite painful for me. My wife has not helped or supported me in any way to make these changes and has stated that she has not noticed any change. (Boy that hurt.)

My wife is now distancing herself further from me. We are now sleeping in separate rooms, living separate lives and coming together only for mealtimes. I don’t see how this can help but put further strain on our relationship. I am not opposing these developments. I don’t see how I could and I understand, her need to some extent. I just don’t know how long this will last or when to intervene because my wife really needs some support from me instead of my respecting her distance.

While I think that many of my AS symptoms are not too severe, I am extremely blind to non-verbal communication: to the point of stupidity. I am therefore unable to return any empathy to my wife. I don’t know how I can fix this or even approximate to a solution without the help of my wife. While this may make me appear heartless and uncaring, this could not be further from the truth. I have the full range of emotions as anybody, and I do feel sympathetically with people when I understand the issues. My total lack of empathy explains to me why I have been unknowingly unable to respond successfully over the years to the needs of my wife. If I could fix myself with respect to this I would. I suppose I am the epiphany of the age old adage “If you really loved me, you would know what I wanted”. And, I do still love my wife deeply. She tells me that I am a good man and she loves the man that I am but that she just can’t bear to live with me.

Why am I writing this thread?

- I genuinely crave advice on how to move things forward positively. It is also an escape for me because I have no one to talk to. I’m living in Hong Kong (move here just before realising I was AS) and I have not established a network of friends yet (not a strength of AS). There is no help here for people like me. I have found a therapist in the UK who is going to try to help over the internet. Our first appointment is at the end of the month. My wife is unlikely to participate.
What would I wish to gain from any feedback?

- I really want some good advice on how I can move forward, given my current constraints, to allow my wife to recognise that I am making a sustained effort to improve things. I would love to know how I can make my wife feel loved, just a little. My deliberate efforts here continuously fail or, at best, go unnoticed. I have never knowingly succeeded in doing the right thing at the right time. My wife is very clear when I get things wrong.

I know I make things difficult for my wife, I just don’t understand how. I would like to get something right, just once for starters, and I don’t know where to start.
There must be somebody out there who has been through the same suffering as my wife and who has come out of the other side successfully: who will understand her predicament and who has the time to pass on some good advice.

Hm. Where to begin?

It's difficult to follow logic that equates not wanting to generate/go along with contrived drama and abuse/torture. I'm not sure just what, it anything, you've done wrong, specifically.

Making more money always helps. Failing that, I suppose your wife might divorce you in hopes that she'll snag a hot 18 year old guy. Then again, maybe not.

Being put in a position of responsibility for another person's unhappiness sounds awful, and if it's really that bad, maybe your wife would be doing you a favor if she did divorce you.

What have I done wrong? I don't know. That's part of the problem. There are too many examples not to know that I have done something really bad over the years. Mainly not making my wife feel loved.

I'm not rich but I'm doing very comfortably for a regular guy. I am at the top of my career and working hard to stay there.

Perhaps she would be doing us both a favour by divorcing me. It seems such a shame that, now I know that something is not right, I can do something about it. I just don't know what.

Well, I'm a aspie female maried to an NT? man .

First off I'll say that cassandra syndrome (or affective disorder) is a condition made up by a woman who may or may not have been married to an aspie man, and she copied most of the diagnostic criteria from seasonal affective disorder. They don't have a disorder or a syndrome and they didn't get from being married to an aspie man any more than they would get it being married to a blind or deaf man.. It's called depression and it has as many causes as there are people who have it. (One being unrealistic expectations of a relationship.)

I think knowing what you are dealing with can help, but only if everyone accepts it and is willing to work with it. My Nt? husband now knows there is a reason that I can't stand certain noises, or that I take things literally, and that I can't handle certain social situations, and need time to myself.where before this caused a lot of conflict. It probably helps that he is a little bit quirky. On the downside, I always thought if I tried my guts out, I would one day "get it". I am no longer so sure.

My suggestion is asking your wife exactly what she wants/needs - and telling her the same. Just as a blind person can adapt in certain ways to their condition, so can we - but a blind person isn't going to spontaneously stop being blind , and it's unreasonable to expect you to stop being aspie, esp if you are putting effort into your behaviour and responses. I t sounds like you both have expectations that arn't being met.

Your change of location may be adding stress to the situation. Is there any way you can both (individually or together) join some clubs, gyms, ex-pat friends, etc for friendship and/or support?

I hope I've been alittle bit of help. Good luck.

Opal, thank you for your kind words of support.

Your advice follows things exactly how I see the situation. Unfortunately I do not have the cooperation from my wife to make things work. It is really good to hear of your situation where your SO has been able to accept you as you are and work with you to recognise and accept your differences. There are so few stories like this out there.

I do think the Cassandra thing is very real. Yes it is a form of depression but there are so many similar cases that stem from a relationship with an AS partner. From my perspective, my wife has remained quiet and bottled up her resentment over the years to bursting point. The bubble has now burst. She would argue that she has been giving me messages all this time that I have ignored. I just didn’t get it or understand what she wanted/needed. Neither of us knew about AS until recently and didn’t appreciate that we had different understanding s of each others situation. Before we realised that I was AS, my wife was able to cope with the situation because she had hope that I could change. She now realises that this is how I am built and that I will never change. She has now closed off any form of communication or cooperation with me.

In better times, I have tried to ask her what she wants/needs. This is the crux of the problem. “If I really loved her I would know what she wants.” This is not going to happen spontaneously, I don’t have the abilities to do this. As you say, it’s like asking the blind man to see. Perhaps her expectations are too great and I have no chance of meeting them. Perhaps my expectations are too great, I’m not sure how, or even if I have any expectations at all now. If I could just raise a smile from my wife it would mean so much to me.

Yes our move has been stressful. This is our second move in the last three years. Our first move was a joint decision. I was headhunted with promises of great wealth for a two year contract. I always knew that the job was going to be tough and we planned only to be away from the UK for two years. Then the financial crisis struck. I did try to get work in the UK at the end of my contract but I have very specialist skills and my prospects in the UK at the moment are very limited. I don’t know if the UK is faring less well than everywhere else at the moment because there appears to be no shortage of jobs for me anywhere else in the world. I am pestered by head hunters trying to get me to move elsewhere in Asia, Australia, the Middle East and even the United States, which I from the news clips is in a worse condition than the UK. We did have long hard debates on what we should do, Take up a very good and secure post in Hong Kong or return to the UK and the benefit system. The choice was self evident but we made the decision to come here jointly. The stress of the move was nowhere near as great as our initial decision to leave the UK, our friends and family in the first place.

We made a commitment when we came here to get a life as soon as we arrived. We did take some time to settle in at the last place. Unfortunately our current problems started and we realised I was AS within a few weeks of arriving here. This has changed the situation somewhat. My wife does have very different interests to me. I have always encouraged her to follow her interests. She has become more shut-in in recent years. This may be related to my AS. Oddly, my interests tend to involve more social interaction. Yes it is me that is AS and my wife is very strongly NT.

On the positive side, I have found an expert therapist who is willing to help us through Skype. Unfortunately, perhaps because I have initiated this, my wife is reluctant to participate. She has, in response sought help from a regular relationship councillor (not trained in AS matters); I have not been invited to join in. Two sets of therapists is not the most cost effective solution to our issue but I’m willing to let things progress. There has to be an end to our current situation one way or another. The therapist that I found, through reading her book does seem to know her stuff. I wish that my wife would join us. While my AS is the source of our problems, I suspect that the therapist would have more direct benefit for my wife than for me.

If the cassandra thing is very real, then they should make up names for abused children, spouses who get abused by none aspies or emotionally abused, or people who cheat on their spouses. That's why I think the cassandra thing is all made up.

And you did say you have changed a little and is working on it.

And if you really loved her, you would know what she wants, that is BS because that is something that tons of women do to men and even NT men don't always know either. I have a book called "Seven Dumbest relationships Mistakes Smart people make" and one of the mistakes is expecting your partner to read your mind. That is a no no there so your wife is wrong.

League_Girl: I do love a straight talking woman. If only life were so simple back at home. It would be great to have no mind reading, knowing where boundaries are and also some positive feedback when things go right.

In our household. There are plenty of metaphorical sticks waved in my direction, especially when good intentions go wrong and I have mind read incorrectly (again) or I should have known that the unwritten rules dont apply the same way when the sun shines on a Monday. There are no carrots when I get things right though.

I wish I were half as as strong as you appear from your thread.

I've never been married, so the rest of this post may be complete nonsense.

You say that your wife said:
“If you really loved me, you would know what I wanted”.
This being understanding what she wants without her telling you exactly what it is that she wants.

My understanding is that relationships go both ways?

So you could say this:
“If you really loved me, you would know what I wanted”.
This being that you want her to tell you exactly what it is that she wants.

Then the compromise would be you doing something that she would like you to, while she would tell you exactly what she'd like you to do.

Replying like this might start a fight though. I can't read people, nor predict actions, so..

What about the male version, where it's the NT christian male vs the AS or schizotypal female? What do we call him? I guess he should just man up. Victimhood is predicated on being female in such arrangements.

It's common enough that I've heard it from people I know, that a man will encounter a situation where his wife will say "NOTHING!" when he asks her what's wrong and then she faults him for not knowing. Maybe the woman thinks the man is an idiot for not knowing. Or maybe the woman feels embarrassed about possibly having to reveal that even she doesn't know, so this is a diversionary tactic to put the blame for the the lack of understanding onto the man.