Just found out my husband has Asperger's Syndrome.

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Ohooohh, trust me, you have no idea how often that happens. Many of the nurturing types of NT women are often excessively forgiving and excuse bad behavior and attribute it to something external or to something THEY'RE doing, and they do EVERYTHING they can to make it work even though it's usually a hopeless case from the get go. My mom attributed my dad's immaturity and lack of displayed empathy to the fact that his mother died of cancer when he was 14 and that he was raised in a big family by a single dad. She just assumed he never had good role models when he was growing up, even though his father is very NT and empathetic. She honestly thought she could make it work if she just put enough time and love and effort into it, and she was DEAD F**KING WRONG.
Being an aspie myself, I can empathize both with the AS perspective and the NT perspective, because I grew up being a sort of translator between my parents, and even though I resent being put in that position, it did make me learn some important things about myself.

It's been said by others in this thread but it's worth saying again: HAVING AS DOES NOT EXCUSE EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR. YOU CANNOT MAKE HIM CHANGE, HE HAS TO WANT TO CHANGE. And by change, I mean learn certain rote behaviors and communication methods to work around the AS and finding a compromise between your needs and his. If he doesn't want to change, cut your losses and try to have an amicable divorce so you both can go live your lives the way you want to instead of making each other miserable. I grew up in a house where there was constant fighting between my NT mom and my AS dad, and even though the divorce was hideously awful because he made up ridiculous clumsy lies and caused trouble for everyone, it is so much healthier living without my dad in the house and I think he's happier too.

every word you said could be said about a non alcoholic woman taking on an alcoholic man thinking that they could 'change him'.

It says far more about the woman's own issues in life than it does about the man the woman is trying to 'rescue'.

Merle

Sit down with him lay what YOU need out very, very clearly. Give him a time frame to make these changes if he can not do these things leave. The damage his behavoir is doing to your childern isn't worth it. He might have just been curzing Web MD one day and thought G this sounds like something I can use to treat others like dog poop.Sorry if the post is a little venty. But using autim or aspergers as a excuse burns my toast my father did the same thing when I was a little girl <but it was drugs not as>. Bottom line is it hurting your kids and if he's unwilling to change you should not spend your life and the kids childhood paying for it.

very well put, sadly.



Our three sons are all in college now. I can NOT imagine what I would have done if my husband's AS had come to light when they were young. I totally relate to your protective stance!! Now I am just trying to do 'damage control'.

Chizpurfle52595: in my case emotional abuse would be an overstatement. What I deal with is really crude, tasteless sexual remarks & references, really gross bathroom information... I will never understand how this man who needs to lose 40-50 pounds and shows up at work with shirts mis-buttoned and collar askew feels perfectly at ease critiquing women as though he were a highly revered Miss America judge!! ! It leaves me speechless. I have given up trying to point out the inappropriateness to him. There has been some emotional abuse, almost entirely sexual... I have been healing my own childhood issues and am stronger and wiser now. He coerced me to expose myself in public in broad daylight, a public parking lot, so he could take a picture. At the time, I felt that failure to comply would cost me more than I could pay, so I did as he asked just like a child being molested. He still has no idea why it bothered me at all.

Well, anyway, that's my vent for today

QFT and co-sign!

Unfortunately, I believe this is universal to men and not just to Aspies. It is almost as if we are on some sort of buffet table . . . I guess you have to be taught to think like this and consider it the divine right of men, or something. After all, created in God's image, and all that.

Merle

enjoy him for who he is, and try to engage him, teach him, encourage him, be assertive and not let him yell at you. change yourself, and let him change himself. don't try to change him. treat him with respect. try to help him learn. and make him feel like he is achieving something, not correcting mistakes. honestly, just reading how you talk about this guy, i would hate to hear all those accusations.

it's better when people lower their expectations and treat each other in a laid back manner
and not get too focused on things that drive them crazy
both have to be eager team players
a family is a team
The Family Crucible from the 1970s explains this very well

don't say "i feel alone" "say i want to talk to you, you make me feel happy and less lonely when we talk"

I'm with the others that say, yes, there are certain communicative and relational limits to being married to an Aspie, but he and you can't use it as a crutch to dismiss him just being outright MEAN to you. That's not necessarily and Asperger trait, that's just a jerk trait. And it's not an excuse for him to be verbally abusive to your kids, either, if it comes to that.

My husband is Aspie, I'm NT. He needs things to be really spelled out for him, literally, as he does not speak body language! Even when I spell things out, he sometimes turns my words around to his own translation, so I have to clarify and re-clarify sometimes.

Good luck to you. I am the AS husband in my marriage, and my wife is the NT. We just had a fight over some misunderstanding, and I feel really bad about it. The problem is, that after over 18 years of marriage, I still do not know how to show her how sorry I feel. She said that it was the last discussion we would ever have. I know she did not mean it, but I still took it literally and felt terribly offended. Phew... sorry I might not be good company right now, I'll try to calm down.

Oddfinn flowers are always a good place to start or just a little something you know she likes. Even doing a little chore that you'd normaly not do is a nice way to show your sorry and care about her feelings.

I have been with my fiance for two years. I grow more sure each day that he has Asperger's Syndrome. I have been a special education teacher for many years and cannot ignore the signs. I strongly believe his 13 year old son has it too. I don't have a problem dealing with the quirkiness, OCD, etc.. What is difficult is that he doesn't realize. Behavior therapy or counseling would be so helpful. His son was seen many years ago and he said the neurologist told him then that his son didn't have it. I think with the advancements, a doctor would diagnose it now. His ex-wife does not like to deal with these types of issues with their children
Any advice out there? I would really appreciate it.

Wow! My mind is spinning because I, too, after 25 years of being married, have realized that my husband has AS. Things were fine when we were dating-we were part of a group of friends and we were living and working in a busy city: lots to do and loads of friends. The first night after our wedding, I realized all was not quite right.

My husband was diagnosed with depression after about six years of marriage and I then attributed everything to that. I now see it was not helpful because I was dealing with the wrong problems.

I realize now that he has always been willing to do anything for me but I have to specifically ask him to do things or he will not do anything to help me.

We have three children, two in college and one in his senior year at high school. I am quite concerned about how my children are: do they have AS? Will they be ok?

I am dreading the empty nest because I also feel like I am married to a child. I was thankful to read about other people's experience with sex. I feel like he is about 12 years old when he decides now is the time to have sex.

I realize no one chooses to have AS and people can't help it. I know that my husband is a good man and means well, in his way. I just want to know how I will be able to survive the next forty years...

I am so incredibly grateful to you for this, Chizpurfle

After a short but extremely head-fucking marriage to somebody I later realised was an undiagnosed Aspie, I still struggled to understand just why the experience left me so traumatised. I'm not exaggerating, I was diagnosed with PTSD
It wasn't just the Asperger's of course. The guy was also a pretty neat fit for Antisocial Personality Disorder (see Wikipedia, can't post the link).

To the person who sneered that your depiction was just like an 'enabler' marrying an addict - no, it's not the same. Aspies often present with a somewhat endearing social gawkiness, not a reliably damaging behaviour. As Chizpurfle says, a person with Asperger's can learn better social & communication skills - my ex asked me to teach him this stuff. He learned. This is not the same as an addict promising to "change".

My misfortune to have married an Aspie nutcase, but there you go.

Hello everyone,

I am completely new to this community and I have to admit I'm pretty scared and confused. I have been married 20 years and, long story short, I've been working with a therapist because of many problems in my marriage and she feels very strongly that my husband probably has Asperger's. He is hopefully going to be tested for it in the next week or two, but honestly when I read something posted by people who married aspies I feel like I could have written the articles myself. I will be shocked if he is not diagnosed with it. We have three boys and although there have been problems for many years, I feel like the last three or four in particular have been the worst. There have been so many upsetting situations that I didn't understand, but recently it's like working on an enormous puzzle where you add just one more piece and the whole image begins to come into focus.

I don't really have any specific questions right now. I'm just scared for what the future holds, and maybe looking for a few friends who understand this better than I do who may be able to offer some support and/or advice in the future.

Thank you.

http://asdrelationships.freeforums.org/

Hi!!

NT to an UnDX'd Aspie. In reading all the posts I feel at home. I love my husband more than anything. But once the high of the relationship faded there I sat Stunned and confused and still in love. It happened in the relationship at the point where you get comfortable, you are spending pretty much all your time together, and you start picking up on things you either didn't notice because you were blinded by the love bug.

Things got hairy when I moved in with my husband for about 50% of the time, I realized things were off...I thought maybe it was the distance, or he was loosing interest but he assured me and my NT ways that he loved me more than ever. I thought every day he was going to dump me! I would drive 6 hours to visit him and I would arrive to my boyfriend at the time, who basically went about his routines and life as If I was a spectator with a backstage pass. It was akward and there were lots of tears and while he went through the motions of understanding the tears...he never socialy got it. We as a couple at that point were very volitile. As NT we tend to not take things as face value, if somone is not giving you the attention you expect it must be somthing, someone, else...So for me it must have been the new appartment, long distance relationship, it would get better when things changed.

We bought a house, things were better once again the high of this accomplisment clouded the issues temorarily! We got married during the planning I lost focus and we experience lots of breakdowns again...At one point I remember crying on the couch after my father called to day he would not walk me down the Aisle along with my stepfather (one on each arm) I was devestated...i bawledon the couch...ladies this was teh ugly cry!! i could not breath, function....My husband came in and from my understanding at the time, he was cold, scripted and unsymptathtetic. It was as if he knew it was the right thing to do to comfort me, but didn't know how, and then after about 5 mins he just got up and left and stayed in his room for hours. I was hurt and didn't udnerstand I almost didn't marry him at this point....If I had known then what I know now, I would have seen things from his viewpoint.

I still to this day love my husband and despite the challenges and misunderstanding i think we will succeed. We have a greater understanding of how we both work. i could never until the last month or so understand why he would invite his family over whom i do not care for, and then when the got there he would just up and walk away leaving me to entertain (somtimes in mid conversation) or would shut down and sleep (which i attribute to overstimulation of sorts) I mean they were HIS family... Now I get it? It wasn't really until some close friends pointed out that they could not read him and thought he was akward...then i saw traits in my sons and stumbled across aspie dx...just reading how he works has healed many emotional wounds.

now i look back and I can see the traits and signs from the moment we met that Monday Night in a bar We will make it, we just have to work on it. My biggest drawback is learning to be more assertive. When we met I had just graduated from L.E. school and was assertive Then I fell in love and relaxed I relied so much on social rules to get what I needed instead of asking for it...that was where we started to have problems I see that now.

Disclaimer: i do not mean to offend any Aspies or otherwise, so If I have improperly labeled an Aspie trait or offend I will be glad to appologize I tend to speak from a heart full of pain, not my brain. I am hear to learn and understand

I just found out that my hubby of two and a half years has AS. His brother has full blown medium functioning, and all of the males in their family on the dads side have it to some degree. I'm not sure why I didn't think hubby did. I saw some traits, but I didn't know enough about it. In a recent sexual issue, where he basically said he does not want sex, and would rather snuggle, I was pretty desperate and one of my counselors asked me if I had considered that he was possibly Aspie. Suddenly everything fell into place. It was not an excuse. It was an explanation. From there I have set boundaries on things I will and won't allow. Like...I will allow something to bother him because he can't help it. But I will not allow it to bother him to the point where I am abused because of it. He told me I couldn't change my hair color, for instance, and when I was overseas, he made it quite clear that he almost rather would not have me come back. I changed hair color while I was out there, which scared him. But out of that he hurt me, and I won't let that happen again. But he is free to be bothered by something, and to explain it and process it for sure.

It is relieving isn't it? In some strange way! Now at least there's answers and explanations...