Anyone Married To A Non-Aspie?

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Seven years of living together and five years of marriage.

I think in many respects our relationship got stronger because of my AS (no pun intended!). We had to talk about things other people don't seem to share, we analyzed and explored each other more, we balance each other in a great way.

(Sometimes little things help a lot - my husband collects Warhammer miniatures and I love to paint them; one of my special interests is cooking and he loves that...)

He's also helping me in social situations - he knows I can't handle aggression and steps in if someone gets too nasty.

It was more complicated in the beginning of the relationship, when I had to explain my little quirks, but being so much in love smoothed things up. He's the only person I've ever met that fully accepted me for who I am.

He never pushed me or tried to change me and I am ever so grateful for that. Finding out about AS was a great breakthrough for both of us - it brought us even closer together and helped him understand much better what I'm going through and how my mind works.

I realize how lucky I am, especially since my previous relationships seemed to follow the same disappointing pattern and failed miserably.

Yes, three decades of it. I think I was less obviously "different" when we married, but I also think that was what attracted him to me. In the last decades my aspieness has become more obvious, but by now I think he has kind of adapted. I'm sure he wishes I shared more of his interests, of course, but he seems to enjoy the degree of passion with which I embrace my own interests. Actually we support each others' interests, and participate to some degree. It helps that he is a naturally laid-back and tolerant personality, although he has his own problems and has had mini "nervous breakdowns", as they quaintly called them, a few times in the past, mostly due to his inability to micromanage his flaky relatives. Every time he seems to bounce back, till he forgets what he learned.

Generally I would say we see ourselves as a team. I think my less emotional approach to life has rubbed off on him. Hearing that I have probable Aspergers from a psychologist sent him off on a quest for more information and he is the one who first taped Big Bang for me (takes place where I used to work) and made me watch it (I bought the first season DVD). I don't think I do fulfill all his emotional needs and I encourage him to get that from others. On the other hand, I make a big effort to try to understand what I can do for him to lend emotional support. Sometimes this means relentless questions on my part, and I tell him to tell me when this gets annoying. I call this channeling my inner Sheldon. I call my husband my "social relationship counselor" and describe various situations, asking for advice. I think the best part of our relationship (for me anyway) is that we can be completely honest with each other. I don't know anybody else like that. We are highly aware that each of us is flawed and we (so far) accept the flaws. I think of myself as very, very lucky.

I am a non-Aspie who was married to an Aspie, and I never felt so alone in my life as when I was married. After the wedding, courting behavior disappeared within hours, and it got worse and worse as time went along. He didn't even try. I can tell you what some of the problems were so you can see if that helps you to avoid them. For one thing, keep up the courting behavior forever! I am serious!
He didn't talk to me unless it was on one of 2 subjects, and I was forbidden to speak to him about anything else.
He often walked out of the room while I was talking to him. Treated what I said as unimportant.
He never bought me a birthday or Christmas gift. He was "too busy."
Sex was 4 or 5 times a year for a minute or 2. Affection was nonexistent, and he hit me if I tried to touch or hug him.
He "assigned" emotions and told me I had no right to feel any other way. Whatever I felt was wrong if he didn't think it was how I should feel. He was brutally insulting and told me I was "too sensitive."
He "lived" in his office at work and came home to eat and sleep and bathe, then retreated to the solitude of his work 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
He left me in labor in the middle of the night to retreat to his office, then dumped me at the hospital and ran. No support.
Marriage is communication and sharing and affection and letting somebody tell you how they feel, not telling them how to feel.
I didn't mind helping him organize and cope and make lists and cleaning up his messes. I did mind being treated like a machine.

He might have been a bit of an arse hole to you, but don't let that make you bitter. We're not all like that

Well actually....i am a lot like that. everything i do revolved around me and what i want to do. i am perhaps not as severe as your husband as i have been open to learning and doing some therapy (CBT ) along the way. but, i can hit and flinch if i get touched and it is a reflex action and hard to contain , I do not listen to people when they are face to face although i have learned to feign it but when in a relationship it seemed that was the place where i could just be me and so he would cop the silence.

THereare some things your ex has done that are not issues for me, but quite frankly. i actually understand a lot of what he seems to have done.

i think it would be very difficult if you are on the receving end of someone whose AS is quite severe and has that kind of presentation. I am tokd it is hell living withe me.

I have learned to do the birthday and xmas ting for my son. all other birthdays and xmases mean nothing to me. i find it a strange ritual and do not beleive it has anything to do with how one feels about another human being.

I am thinking you are bitter?

yo see, if you post on an AS site, what you might have to understand is that the identification is not necessariy going to be with your position.

You see, for me, you would be the partner from hell who is trying to change me, or make me something i am not......with all the expectations thrown in.


It is hard for some of us with AS - because we would truly like to relate in normal ways, but cannot. it is a very lonely place to live at times. i speak to my sisters on the phone, or to others, and i try to connect and i really want to. i want to get a sense of relating wtih them and empathising without having tot work at it cognitively. And I get off the phone feeling nothing.

You see, i want the connection but i cannot have it. It can be a bit like living in a cruel joke.
i have learned cognitively to develop some social skills and i am much bettr than i used to be.
As for being treated like a functional machine, that is pretty much how i treated my partner.

THe prospect of keeping up the courtship forever is so much effort that it sounds hellish. That advice sounds like a complete over-estimation of my capabilities. i can relate to getting the partner and then once that structured phase of the relationship is over - you get the me who is MOI.

NOw i do care about people. Deeply. It is just that my expression of that in the social realm is locked away. i can actually write it a lot better.

anyway, it is good you have left the relationship if machine living isn't your thing.

at this stage in my life, robots and rubber dolls are looking rather appealing......

Last edited by millie on 01 Feb 2009, 2:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I was married to an NT for a year, many years ago. He was a horrendously cruel person. But the good thing was that for the time the relationship lasted, I had a seeing dog. He'd interpret for me the subtext of social interactions because so many times he was there with me when I was interacting with someone so he could give relevant input. Besides, we would spend enough time together that I could explain interactions to him and he could give me his input.

I was lucky to escape alive.

10 years together, 8 married. I'm beginning to think it may have been a mistake. I see a lot of her complaints here.

I act like a child. I get angry (I get the impression I should never get angry. That's pretty hard to
do, for one thing. Everyone gets angry sometimes.

I am very un-affectionate. We haven't kissed in a long time, hugs on rare occasion. That's all my fault, and I realize it. When we first got together, we were different. But there's a lot of things (financial, let's leave it at that).

I don't get presents for her, because she controls the money. Every once in awhile, I'll ask if I can have some of my money, to buy her something.

We're basically stone broke, and have much different ideas about just about everything. I think the terms will be 'irreconcileable differences' when the divorce comes. Nothing definite on that, but I think it's coming.

ok, enough pity party...back to the threads...

"Don´t live together, but close enough to visit..." I think someone told me these were the words of Catherine Hepburn? (Was she an Aspie? Not sure if these were her exact words). Anyway, that sounds perfect for me. I´ve known for awhile that conventional relationships don´t really work for me. The problem is trying to explain that to someone, and having them take it personally....

I´ve been reading this thread because I´ve long been wondering what "regular people" actually want. I´ve been trying to learn, and it´s hard....there don´t seem to be books out there geared for Aspies. I guess none of us really know, but at least we seem to have many common experiences, so we know we are not alone. I have never been married- never got that far. I seem to have trouble "connecting" with people romantically, there´s too much pressure; or the man gets fed up with me. Relationships have ended up being so drastically different than what I expected originally. Most of them have been far more unpleasant than I would have thought- I think that´s why I´ve been avoiding them lately. On the other hand, I also still seem to have this odd urge of wanting to connect that way with somebody, as if I can´t let go of my original dream. It´s an odd duality and "mixed feelings" that I can´t resolve.

Married to an NT for going on 52 years. What I did was learn to do "by the numbers" what NTs do intuitively. It took many years but in most situations I pass for human. Every so often my literal-mindedness shows forth, but not enough to cause any trouble. In a way I have achieve a better understanding than most NTs because I had to work on it so hard.

ruveyn

Even though I´m pretty sure I have AS (still undiagnosed), this sounds like hell to me. It doesn´t sound like someone I´d want to be married to....How can someone tell you how you´re supposed to feel? Actually, come to think of it, many people told me all my life how I "should think" and "should feel"- (probably an experience of many on the spectrum), and I don´t like it! Although I sometimes have trouble showing emotion, or get very involved in my "own thing" that I may temporarily not notice what someone else is going through, this is not intentional. It sounds like your husband was not respecting you, but trying to regulate you. Which is one of the things that scares me about relationships. I want to have the freedom to be myself, not "tiptoe around" anybody. I felt like I had to "tiptoe around" many of my NT partners, so this can be a problem on both sides.

Last edited by Morgana on 03 Feb 2009, 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Never again topic

I am just glad I had my three kids!

well, it might sound like hell, morgana, but the sad reality is that this is just how it is for some of us. and i have done all the frigging work in the world with CBT and all sorts of programs and inputs and i am still this way. there are a few divergences between me and the above ex-husband, but on the whole the scenarios are failry similar.

it seems as if you are judging him from a pretty typically normal vantage point. He cannot help how he is. He does not mean to control in that way. neither do I. That is not an excuse for his behaviour . i am simply alluding to what is - the reality as it definitely stands, for some of us - particularly if we have severe sensory issues. I tell people to stop talking around me and i flap my hands and i rock and i scream for them to stop because it hurts my ears and so i HAVE to control the situation by minimising the source of pain. People with AS DO try to regulate others - to the extreme sometimes.. Regulate regulate and regulate. I will ask people to take off items of clothing because they hurt my eyes. not every AS person is going to , but many of us with severe sensory issues will do so. I make no apologies for that actually. I've spent a lifetime apologising. i also understand i am hard to live with. I have to get people to sop talking, to turn down the tv because it is hurting....to shut the door because an odour is coming from a room at the other end of the house. they may want the breeze coming through, but i might just start gagging if the door is not shut.

i think it depends on what kind of traits you present with and how they manifest. and i can tell you, that guy probably sometimes feels as lousy as i do about how he is. Deep inside, i feel like a complete and utter failure most of the time. i hide it mostly. and i bet he does too but he may not be able to express it

I hope he did not read your post.

Well, this stuff I can understand, about the sensory issues. In this case, you are not telling people that they have no right to have certain feelings, you are just telling them to close doors or turn down the TV...this is perfectly acceptable. These are YOUR feelings, and you have a right to them. You are not disrespecting the people by telling them to talk more quietly, for instance. I guess what resonated with me was that the man told her what was acceptable for her to FEEL, which I thought was not right. People have tried to do this to me too. It would be like if someone told you that you had no RIGHT to feel the way you do when the smell is bad, or the sound is too loud. (Maybe people have told you that? I know they have me!! !) Anyway, trying to control a situation is different from trying to control someone´s integrity. I hope you didn´t think I was attacking you when I wrote those things. Each case is different, and I was only commenting on what she wrote. Based on what you´ve written in this post here, it seems like you are talking about other things than what I understood to be the problems she wrote about. Maybe I´m wrong....

I commented on her post because I´ve also had the situation that people have tried to change me, or control me to be someone different, and I felt that my integrity and authenticity were being challenged. That is not a nice feeling.

P.S.- Why do you feel like a failure? From what I´ve read, it sounds like you´re a pretty awesome mother....

I've never been married. Romantic relationships don't work for me. I don't seem to feel the right things. The idea of a relationship sounds very appealing but the reality is altogether different. Visiting is best for me but not too long a visit. I start to get the feeling of pretending to be someone else when visiting or having someone visit me. I can keep it up for a short time but I would never be able to do it continuously. I'm glad to have done it but equally glad when it is over. It is indeed a strange duality of mixed feelings.

Sorry to steer this thread in a different direction but I'm very curious what your wife saw in Alex's video that caused her to take it hard? I watched his first video and nothing struck me as strange. If I didn't know Alex had AS and that's what his talk was about, I would have thought it was simply a talk about his college experiences and those things he had difficulty with. What am I missing?

I have been married twice, both times to NTs with huge egos, they were both (one outwardly and one covertly) controlling, demanding, deserving, spoiled... all of the things that aspies get labeled with, I don't think that any of the relationship problems we experience are unique to us, maybe exaggerated, but not limited, in my opinion the reason we get labeled as the dysfunctional one is because we don't know how to hide what we are doing (or how we are) behind game playing, projection, social posturing etc. I think what is maybe unique to us is sensory issues that are extreme and cause us to act like big babies when we are in pain, and since that can take very little, we end up taking too much and then overreacting, instead of allowing ourselves to be as ridiculous as our biology makes us when we need things to be a certain way, I have been trying to give myself the same consideration I allowed my children when they were growing up in regard to sensitivities, but I tend to judge myself by different standards than I do my children, like it is okay for them to be sensitive, but not me, strange that that is exactly what my Mother did, allowed my NT sister to be sensitive, but not me, probably because I am so introverted that my melt downs are almost entirely internally focused, causing me pain, but not effecting anyone in any way except maybe my inability to function.

I personally have no desire to get into any sort of traditional relationship again, its always the same, they are intrigued by your difference and then they get serious and want you to change and be 'Normal' now.. I don't have that option and no longer wish that I did, now that I know what makes me the way I am, I have no desire to be "normal", not that that was even possible, I have just stopped trying to figure out how to fix myself and instead i focus on finding a way to function in this world just the way I am.