Asperger's in a male partner = abuse/neglect/apathy?

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Hazelwudi
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17 Jan 2009, 11:11 am

1) Everyone in a romantic relationship has a right to expect connection, emotional support, and respect from their partner.

2) People who can't (or more to the point, won't) treat their partner as above deserve a life of loneliness and misery, and I have absolutely no sympathy for them.



Hazelwudi
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17 Jan 2009, 11:21 am

Magnus wrote:
I haven't had luck with AS guys or ones who had many AS traits. NT males treated me with much more respect and attention. I'm not sure why it's been like that. I think AS males are more narcissistic and emotionally cruel, and I suspect it is due to hatred toward their mother.


Bingo.



Zonder
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17 Jan 2009, 11:53 am

Hazelwudi wrote:
1) Everyone in a romantic relationship has a right to expect connection, emotional support, and respect from their partner.

2) People who can't (or more to the point, won't) treat their partner as above deserve a life of loneliness and misery, and I have absolutely no sympathy for them.


However, it does boil down to expectations. One person's "emotional support" is another person's "smothering". What works for you might not work for another person of the same gender. I've known (and am related to) a number of people, male and female, who were incredibly difficult to get along with and did not offer much connection, support, or respect for their partners. Self-centered blindness to the needs of others is not gender specific.

If you read much of anything by Judith Rich Harris (The Nurture Assumption; No Two Alike), you'll find that she argues people often respond to us because of how we are. If the opposite sex (AS or NT) consistently treats us badly, we need to ask ourselves what in our personalities contributes to the situation.

I can't figure relationships out, so I've never married. My few past relationships have ended amicably. I guess that I deserve a life of loneliness and misery - except that being alone does not make me lonely and miserable - I choose not to be those things.

Z



Morgana
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17 Jan 2009, 4:00 pm

Zonder wrote:

However, it does boil down to expectations. One person's "emotional support" is another person's "smothering". What works for you might not work for another person of the same gender. I've known (and am related to) a number of people, male and female, who were incredibly difficult to get along with and did not offer much connection, support, or respect for their partners. Self-centered blindness to the needs of others is not gender specific.

If you read much of anything by Judith Rich Harris (The Nurture Assumption; No Two Alike), you'll find that she argues people often respond to us because of how we are. If the opposite sex (AS or NT) consistently treats us badly, we need to ask ourselves what in our personalities contributes to the situation.

I can't figure relationships out, so I've never married. My few past relationships have ended amicably. I guess that I deserve a life of loneliness and misery - except that being alone does not make me lonely and miserable - I choose not to be those things.

Z


I agree. I tend to feel smothered pretty quickly, and I like my space. I think many of the men I was with just expected me to be more emotional and demonstrative, because that was their idea of how a woman is supposed to be.....however, they never told me this, they just thought about it and got more and more resentful when I didn´t act in the expected way; (at least, that is what I suspect is what happened. As they never really communicated well, just hinted around, I´ve had to do a lot of guesswork). On the other hand, I don´t think of myself as being in any way cold or emotionally barren. I don´t really know what the proper balance is, I think, and when I was younger I didn´t think about it because I thought I was just supposed to "be myself". Basically, I´ve gone into every relationship with good intentions. I don´t really know what went wrong. I wish there was help out there for people like me.
So I am alone too. But, as Zonder said, I choose not to be lonely....and I am definitely not miserable!


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RightGalaxy
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17 Jan 2009, 4:13 pm

Yupa wrote:
So one thing I've heard a lot of women in bad relationships say is that their partner "has or might have Asperger's syndrome" and that their partner's neglect of the relationship or their emotionally or physically abusive behaviours towards their significant other might be a manifestation of it.
What do you think of this?

That's a good question! I'd have to really soul search on that one because I used to think about my abusive past relationships being that way because "I" was an aspie. I never thought about "them" being on the spectrum. Gosh! That changes a lot of my thinking! I love /hate my aspie husband (only because he's impatient and a big baby) but I surely HATE, really HATE my past relationships to the point of wanting to vomit when I reflect on them. :x



Last edited by RightGalaxy on 17 Jan 2009, 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

poopylungstuffing
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17 Jan 2009, 5:30 pm

i guess I have been pretty lucky in my relationships. I have had some good relationships. I am friends with most of my exes and some of them are friends with each-other..(really not that many people) Most of the guys I have dated, while not necc. full-blown Aspies, were at least somehow close to being someplace on the spectrum. I have found that for some of them, I have sorta been the anti-girlfriend...as I don't have the same demands and am less prone to be angered by the things that angered their previous girlfriends. I have always been used to kinda being "one of the guys"... I am not very emotionally demanding...and maybe that is why. I have usually had pretty amiable breakups.

The relationship I was in where the most abuse happened was my one relationship where the guy was very much an NT. I was just a teenager, and emotionally i was a child and i had really bad communication problems..and lousy defense skills...and he just did not know what to do with me...and that is how the abuse happened.

Come to think of it, I was in another relationship with an NT (I assume)..and that relationship deteriorated almost to the point of domestic violence...partially due to his intolerance of my ASish tendancies....but he was also emotionally unstable in other ways...as was I..

I think that my current main partner was considered to be neglectful and emotionally abusive in his previous NT relationships. He has a knack for causing women to beat him up...and apparently the same things that anger these other women don't seem to bother me....Granted he has upset me, but seldom to the point of violence.
A lot of what he might have done to anger them was not intended out of meanness or deliberate carelessness...he is just kinda different, and very impulsive and childlike...He also has a lot of rare and good qualities jumbled up in there. There are lots of things about me that he puts up with that regular guys probably could not handle.

I have reached a point in my life where I don't do conventional relationships anymore.
I am not intending to marry or have children.
For our reasons, Flakey and I are better off in an open relationship, and i have another boyfriend besides Flakey.
He is even more ASish than Flakey is and has only been in a very few relationships...started dating late...has been celibate for years at a time...He is a really awesome person and I care a ton about him, but I can see how he would have trouble in most normal relationship scenarios. He is very moody and childlike and rigid with his routines, and one must know to let a lot of what he says and does roll off one's back.
I think that he deserves whatever he could want in a relationship, just because I think he is a rare and special person.
I intend to be around for as long as he would want me to be but if he gets sick of having a part-time-girlfriend.. I hope he finds a really cool and patient and open-minded partner who understands him and whatnot someday.



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17 Jan 2009, 10:31 pm

I stumbled upon the following article today. I don't know much about the authors, but I found their description of NT/AS relationship dynamics informative and I could identify with some of their descriptions in my own marriage to an aspie and in my relationship with my aspie parent as well as my parents' marriage.

I particularly liked the following statements,

Quote:
People with AS can be good partners, and the women’s choice to marry someone with AS is not intrinsically a bad one. As with many relationships, difficulties arise when both partners don’t have enough mutual and self-knowledge to go into the relationship with their eyes wide open. AS + non-AS couples have the most difficulty in their relationship because of the mismatch of needs and expectations.


http://www.naswma.org/associations/8381 ... rriage.pdf



Morgana
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18 Jan 2009, 12:23 pm

Jezabel_Starfox wrote:
I stumbled upon the following article today. I don't know much about the authors, but I found their description of NT/AS relationship dynamics informative and I could identify with some of their descriptions in my own marriage to an aspie and in my relationship with my aspie parent as well as my parents' marriage.

I particularly liked the following statements,
Quote:
People with AS can be good partners, and the women’s choice to marry someone with AS is not intrinsically a bad one. As with many relationships, difficulties arise when both partners don’t have enough mutual and self-knowledge to go into the relationship with their eyes wide open. AS + non-AS couples have the most difficulty in their relationship because of the mismatch of needs and expectations.


http://www.naswma.org/associations/8381 ... rriage.pdf


I just wish there was some information somewhere about AS women/NT men and relationships. I have found NOTHING, ZILCH, ZERO! It´s pretty frustrating. This article states that the special dynamics of those relationships won´t be mentioned. The only relationship books I´ve read that even mention AS women only talk about AS women with AS men.

I guess as I know about and have experienced many problems with that, this should be a book that I end up writing....trouble is, I don´t have the answers yet....


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Jezabel_Starfox
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18 Jan 2009, 12:47 pm

Morgana, I was researching a little bit more about the article I linked previously and came across this book list regarding women's issues.

http://www.aane.org/asperger_resources/ ... women.html

Even though most titles are not described as relationship books, there are a couple of them that include AS/NT relationship information that may be of help to you.



Morgana
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18 Jan 2009, 1:46 pm

Jezabel_Starfox wrote:
Morgana, I was researching a little bit more about the article I linked previously and came across this book list regarding women's issues.

http://www.aane.org/asperger_resources/ ... women.html

Even though most titles are not described as relationship books, there are a couple of them that include AS/NT relationship information that may be of help to you.


Thanks for the list!

Yes, I read "Pretending to be Normal" and "Women from Another Planet" already. Both great books, but not so much on relationships (a little). I need something that explains a bit about NT men, where they´re coming from, and how to be in a relationship with one. I have no "theory of mind" in regards to straight men. Conventional literature doesn´t help much, because they write about NT female dynamics.

However, there are some books on that list that sound really interesting! (Even without possible relationship stuff). I´d like to read them.


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poopylungstuffing
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18 Jan 2009, 2:42 pm

I was in a relationship with an NT for 6 years, and am still clueless in that regard.
Granted, it was not a very healthy relationship.

I spent a lot of time around NT men and their NT girlfriends when I was in my band.
I found a lot of their behavior to be pretty rotten.
I saw rampant racism, homophobia, a lot of infidelity..likesay...whenever they could possibly get away with it...
A lot of stuff went way over my head the vast majority of the time.
While dating the NT guy (who was in my band), I spent most of my time completely absorbed in my own little world. We really did not connect very well, but got settled into a lot of routines. I did certain things without questioning because I thought it was what I was supposed to do. I blamed myself for my cluelessness....There was a lot of stuff I was afraid to talk about.. I took it for granted that he would be right because he was bigger and older and smarter..It took several years before I learned to put my foot down.

A lot of this had to do with the fact that I was just a kid at the time...and most likely lacked certain resources that an NT kid would have had in my situation...

Anywhooo.... i guess...not a very good example of an AS female/ NT male relationship..
As a fly on the wall...privy to their boy talk..it seems that they want whatever they can get away with.

I like being in my bubble where so many of the people around me are neuro-atypical..it seems as though there is less of a divide between the males and females...



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19 Jan 2009, 4:02 pm

poopylungstuffing wrote:
I was in a relationship with an NT for 6 years, and am still clueless in that regard.
Granted, it was not a very healthy relationship.

I spent a lot of time around NT men and their NT girlfriends when I was in my band.
I found a lot of their behavior to be pretty rotten.
I saw rampant racism, homophobia, a lot of infidelity..likesay...whenever they could possibly get away with it...
A lot of stuff went way over my head the vast majority of the time.
While dating the NT guy (who was in my band), I spent most of my time completely absorbed in my own little world. We really did not connect very well, but got settled into a lot of routines. I did certain things without questioning because I thought it was what I was supposed to do. I blamed myself for my cluelessness....There was a lot of stuff I was afraid to talk about.. I took it for granted that he would be right because he was bigger and older and smarter..It took several years before I learned to put my foot down.

A lot of this had to do with the fact that I was just a kid at the time...and most likely lacked certain resources that an NT kid would have had in my situation...

Anywhooo.... i guess...not a very good example of an AS female/ NT male relationship..
As a fly on the wall...privy to their boy talk..it seems that they want whatever they can get away with.

I like being in my bubble where so many of the people around me are neuro-atypical..it seems as though there is less of a divide between the males and females...


Yeah, my relationships with NT men were similarly bad; although, I did have one good one once...but that guy was a little bit atypical, too. In my relationships with NT men, I, also, did things that I assumed I was "supposed to do". That´s what happens when you have to try to learn while doing, I guess, and pretend that you know what´s going on when you don´t- (I was scared that someone would "find me out"). Anyway, I can relate!


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19 Jan 2009, 6:35 pm

I don't mean to be a butthead but from my perspective AS/NT aside it is almost impossible to have any type of relationship with anybody unless there is a 'what you see is what you get' experience at the first introduction between two people.
After I got his far in the post I realized that I can't really explain what I am trying to express so I'll just bow out.


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poopylungstuffing
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19 Jan 2009, 7:09 pm

I agree.

I may be naive, but in what I witnessed of Flakey and his previous relationship with an NT woman, it seems that a whole lot of anger came out of her inability to change him and her perception of him as being thoughtless and careless and not displaying the appropriate amount of caring and concern at the right times...When really he couldn't help the way he did stuff..that was just him.

Which I interpreted as basic incompatibility...

...but there was a lot of stuff going on that i wasn't prvy to..so it wasn't just her fault for misinterpreting him...but I seemed to see a lot of that.



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19 Jan 2009, 7:22 pm

You really hit the mail on the head with that one.
Normal people have a tendency to imagine that we can be 'changed' and/or 'improved' with respect to our lifestyle and our lives anf they, as in mates, thrive on rescuing us from a dreary life as they see it.


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19 Jan 2009, 7:31 pm

..Or have this sort of confidence that their prospective partner is somehow capable of being shaped and molded into a more ideal match through a system of scoldings and punishments etc...