So I posted in the infamous AS partners forum for NT's...

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When you've been derided and attacked for committing faux pas when you don't know what you did wrong then I wouldn't blame you for doing that.

Also, will you please write your replies outside of the quote tags. Otherwise, it makes it look like I wrote it and I didn't.

Why is that? Are you from ASPartners?

I wonder how many of the members of that site actually have or had spouses who were actually diagnosed with AS or an ASD? They seem to confuse AS traits with sociopathic traits and they are entirely different. So, I wonder if many of the members of that site are just people who read some sloppy poorly written and uninformed articles about AS and thought to themselves, "Oh that sounds just like my husband."

Even Simon Baron-Cohen who is probably the single most prolific writer about an empathy deficit with people with Autism makes it clear that this deficit is not from lack of caring or because of heartlessness and contrast it completely with the empathy deficit in a sociopath:




http://autismblogsdirectory.blogspot.co ... achel.html

That AS partners forum gives me the feeling that these people only hate aspies because their partners world doesn't revolve around them. They should rename that forum to Narcissists (or attention freaks) against AS. That is why I am very picky about partners. If they one talk about themselves, then it is an immediate "goodbye". I will not be used by someone who is so damn emotional and self-loving that they get angry when they cannot manipulate their partner with their emotions.

Yes, infamous for mass circulation of misinformation and ignorance. In fact after months of lurking, I have been lead to believe that some, (and I put emphaisis on some because it is not all) individuals on that forum have merely taken it upon themselves to diagnose their lazy and inconsiderate husbands, despite not having have the professional ability do so.

I can just imagine how it goes down:

/husband is verbally abusive, rude and inconsiderate and doesn't seem to want to lift a single finger in the household/

Wife then proceeds to Google husband's behaviours and BAM! Sociopathy arrives in the search results and so does ASD. - which is where the misconceptions arise, and it described as the same thing.

Of course this is not the case for all on AS partners and I am aware that there are individuals on that forum who have spouses who are actually on the spectrum, and being treated like a non entity is painful and I sympathise with them. And it definitely not outside the realm of possibility for an aspie to be abusive towards another person , just like NT's, aspies come in all flavours.

Whether your partner has special needs or is NT, it still stands that an abusive relationship is never worth pursuing. Unfortunately abusive people are never willing to change for the better.

Please don't feed Franklee the ASPartners troll.

ASDMommy was right then. There is no reasoning with them at all.

"Franklee" has been banned.

Thank You XFilesGeek for doing that.

I am actually staring to wonder if some ASPartners users are trolling. Because some of the posts honestly remind me of the posts on that Landover Baptist Church forum, that had people saying disabled children are going to hell for being disabled. Some of the opinions are far too extreme and they absurdly outrageous and inflammatory.

I believe you. I once seriously considered doing a similar thing to you when I first noticed another website that demonised autistic people. I didn't see a forum there, I saw a bitter essay that was pretty clearly confusing AS with NPD, and I wanted to email the author to challenge her opinion. It's hard to sit by and let people spread defamatory nonsense about your own kind. That's a given if it's about a particular race. In the end I didn't email her, I somehow got the feeling that I'd just be stonewalled as soon as she realised I was highlighting serious flaws in her reasoning. Although I've known for years that there are situations in which reasonable, respectful challenging is useless, something inside me never ceases to be amazed by the way some people / groups just don't want objectivity. I always seem to think that good sense might prevail. Trolling is different, trolling is when a person makes controversial suggestions purely to wind people up, with no desire to improve anything.

What you posted there looks polite and reasonable to me. I've already said that I think your mission was futile from the start, but I should have added that I also admire you for at least trying to challenge their bigotry, and for being brave enough to risk the backlash they gave you for your trouble.

There is something that does not makes sense to me about that AS partners forum, because AS is highly heritable and when they have been married to the AS spouse for a long time chances are that they have children together and some of those will have AS as well.
So if in this forum the reason for the hate against the spouse is the symptoms of having AS and in extention they generalize people with AS and hate them as well, then how do they feel towards heir own AS children?
In a way they should embrace the proposal of the OP to consider other non-heritable reasons for their spouses behaviour, as their own children may have AS and then to me it does not make sense to be in a forum which revolves around hate against AS when the own children may have it.

This is from Henry Ford and pop psychology BS. The problem with this maxim is that it is not falsifiable. By it's very nature, there is no way to put forth counter-evidence to this and it would be accepted.

I just wish all of this positivity pop psychology would just go away.

Last edited by cubedemon6073 on 06 Feb 2015, 10:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

I honestly think I succumbed to my great naivety. I naively assumed that because I was conversing with adult women and men, I would get a rational response from them, and be offered an explanation for their hateful posts towards the autistic community. I was met with great hostility for being autistic, their posts reflect more badly on them, than they do on autistic people. So the joke is on them.

Some asked why my husband's obliviousness to certain things wasn't a deal breaker.

There is a HUGE difference between...

A date..(No real emotional connection yet, just want to have fun)

A room mate (You'll tolerate stuff because the other person is paying half the rent. We were never roommates)

And a spouse. (An emotional connection on a whole other level, and you expect that person to share in that commitment to the relationship. This is different from a friend, buddy, coworker, BFF. I don't know how else to explain it.)

I dated him for 5 years before marriage. I could go three weeks without seeing him in person, and we called each (before internet). We were both I  school. Had jobs. My husband could have a good week to recover from a two day weekend of people, crowds, fun and running around.

Most Aspies can hold things together for a few days. My husband fakes it well, extremely well. He passes for NT most of the time if it is just average social stuff.

My husband didn't know he had Aspergers. I am extremely used to doing things on my own. I made literally no demands. The fact that another human was around just unnerved him. He wanted me there, but had no social skills how to hand the mundane stuff that drives some Aspies up a wall. Cooking smells. Vacuuming. Food.  He had a new wife and a very stressful job. He wanted to do the right thing, but he had no clue he was missing out on a good 50% of the communication. (body language, pragmatic speech, TOM, social skills)

When he got diagnosed, he apologized for the first 20 years of our marriage. I told him that wasn't necessary.

We were married in 1988. There was no Aspergers back then. He didn't have a diagnosis until 2009. And sometimes s**t behavior is just from the person. There are plenty of NT husbands that do s**t things to their families and don't have a diagnosis. Sometimes I'm a jerk, and I can't blame it on the manic depression. Sometimes my husband is off the hook, and it's not the Aspergers. We are humans that have our own personalities, with likes and dislikes. Neither of us use our diagnosis as a excuse for deliberate crud behavior.

Marriage isn't alway a ledger of who's right or wrong. My husband's issues aren't enough to shove all the good stuff aside, and say screw it, I'm out. It got pretty close before he was diagnosed, but both he and I are working hard on the relationship. All married couples work on their married relationships. Marriage is always changing a little here or there. That's just life. As long as my husband is willing to learn and bend a little, I am too. Notice I didn't say totally change him.

My husband said he learned grey from me. Life was always black and white, a or b, yes or no for him. Always the absolute. Well, it isn't that way most of the time. Humans are messy smudges of emotional grey, and fluidity. I'm trying to be less smudgey, and him less absolute.

So far it's working....