The site where they BASH Aspie husband and wives. :O

Post Reply New Topic

I only found this one:

http://forums.delphiforums.com/aspartners/messages/?msg=9798.1

It looks to me like they're initially only talking about their partner's sensory issues but I don't see many of them talking about deliberately setting them off except for one post that I had noticed.

Maybe that is the one and I didn't accurately remember it. I just remember reading it and felt angry about it. Maybe it was that one post and I somehow thought it was the rest of them doing it. :shrugs: I stand corrected. I swear I get a lot of false memories.

Yeah, this post?



That is mean but more to the point it is self-defeating because she would never, ever, ever get what she wanted by doing that.

If you love someone, enough to marry them (????) that's more important than needing to wear perfume, right?

It just kind of amazes me when people insist on wearing strong scents to begin with. It's really common for people to have scent sensitivities or allergies, not just autistic people. And it's not a hardship to be asked NOT to wear perfume or something else that is problematic.

Every time I have sang in a choir they would ask the members not to wear any perfume or cologne to rehearsals or performances. I've always thought of it as common courtesy not to wear scents if you know you are going to be in close quarters with people.

When I am around someone wearing perfume, sometimes I literally struggle to breathe. And it can be so overwhelming that it makes it hard for me to think or concentrate on anything. It's not just a matter of finding it distasteful or unpleasant, it's a physiological reaction.

I'm sure it is frustrating to live with someone who has a lot of sensory issues. And a few things mentioned in that thread do sound over the top, like the guy holding his wife's hand down while he eats. That sounds extremely odd.

But most of what they are talking about is just typical sensory issues. And the language they use is really interesting:

"Talk about ruining my happy and making me feel unattractive, undesirable, and like a big nuicance."

"feeling like doo-doo"

"it doesn't do much for my ego"

"tyrant" "despot" "doormat" "coddled" "crappy edicts"

"big, bully, baby about all of this nonsense"

"The Aspie in your house thinks he's a King and you're the lowly scullery maid."

"WHO ARE YOU TO HIM - SOME KIND OF SERVANT?"


That kind of perspective-taking is identity based (who am I and who are you because this is happening? what does this say about me/you as a person?) and it is based in automatically seeing one person as being higher/lower than the other.

See how many of those words refer to hierarchical relationships? servant, despot, doormat, tyrant, maid, king.


The shift in perspective that is needed is to see other people and especially one's partner as equals.

If a person cannot see others as equals, it's like looking at life and humanity through a distorted filter, and it makes everything look ugly.

And personalizing the behavior of other people is almost guaranteed to make anyone feel bad about themselves. It doesn't mean that the other person is actually doing something to make you feel bad.

As I said before, one needs to have a sense of self that is independent of what others think/say/do. That is really helpful in understanding that what other people like or dislike in general is not a personal statement about you or your identity as a person.

I understand it's not always easy to see things that way, especially when someone is very different from you, or is doing things you don't understand.

It's good mrsp never got a reaction from her partner. That would be giving her power if he reacted.

That's what I've been trying to say.
Many people just cannot or refuse to operate outside of these preconceived mental structures. Therefore, a large part of reality cannot even be considered consciously due to those filters.
The constant expectation of imagined emotional reciprocation is like walking around with a Monopoly game in your hands and expecting everyone to interact with you as one of the game pieces and within the context of the game.
It is even natural for kids to have an emotional reaction and get mad if someone doesn't follow the rules of the game. Through conditioning and social reinforcement adults have lost their awareness that they are playing an imaginary game.

About triggering another's sensory issues, - there's a lot of shadenfreude going on there.

There's also a ton of projection going on I think.
For example, these spouses seem to think their partners are egomaniacs while at the same time complaining about how their partners do not fuel their egos enough.
Then they talk about "mind blindness" and lack of "lack of self knowledge" in their own colorful terms of course. I have to think it's a lot of conscious projection of what is in their own subconscious.

You guys can get riled up about this if you want. I've seen plenty of nasty things about NTs on this forum - including this thread. I've seen many incorrect and bizarre (if not nasty) assumptions about NTs (hello Olympiadis!)

Yes. Some proportion of people on that forum will have misdiagnosed their partners. Yes, some proportion of the people on that forum aren't actually nice people or have some significant relationship deficits themselves. Yes, some people make sweeping and incorrect generalisations about autistic spectrum conditions. Yes, some people overblame AS and I personally have called people on it.

But if you really cared about the success of NT/AS relationships, maybe you'd pay more attention to what NTs find so painful. It shouldn't JUST be the NT having to tolerate AS symptoms or making all the compromise in the area of relationships. Just because AS sensitivity issues are different doesn't mean that NTs don't have sensitivity issues, too. (Not in the same way.) We too feel rejection and the sting of critcism. It hurts when we're put second place to special interests. Meltdowns are f*****g scary. I don't care about the intent - the effect is abusive when your partner is screaming and slamming things and you fear for your physical safety. The lack of good quality sex and shared socialisation is a lingering wound.

It's more than just mismatched communication. WrongPlanet is FULL of people having relationship difficulties because this is, among other things, a social and communication disability. And it isn't just because the NT partner hasn't been educated well enough...though yes, that can help. And it isn't always because the NT partner isn't considerate enough or loving enough. My observation is that another characteristic of AS is the inability to take responsibility for one's behaviour - (again it's a spectrum) and for a lot of the communication difficulties.

I wouldn't have another intimate relationship with a person with AS and I would advise a friend, if asked, not to do it either. And you better believe I'm gonna warn my son on a whole host of relationship red flags that I overlooked. (Not that kids listen to that kind of thing I reckon. The best thing I can do for him is show him that I'm better than the way I'm being treated in this marriage and I feel guilt and shame for every day that I stay.) Life is too hard already.

This is not to say that NT people are perfect or just because they're NT they don't have something else wrong with them which would preclude them from having a successful relationship. (Including some of the people on that forum and in my dark days I include myself in that.) This is also not to say that AS people can't have successful relationship - there appear to be a number of examples on this forum. But they aren't the majority.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The people on that forum are in pain and have a right to vent and to try to understand why a relationship they had such high hopes for and put so much into has brought them mostly misery and loneliness.

Hello.

Your words confirm a great deal of what I have suggested here.
It also appears that you are completely unaware of this.

That sort of disconnect suggests that your decision to avoid relationships with people who do not engage reality the same way as you do, is probably a good decision on your part.

Truth is not nasty. Deceptive information with the intent to harm is nasty.
Truth is the best tool that can be used for successfully engaging reality. Deception is the best tool for engaging illusion.

FYI, aspies make a monumental amount of compromises just to exist in an NT dominated world, and even more so when they enter into a relationship. Your failure to recognize this does not amount to valid justification of your expectations for more compromise.
From my viewpoint it looks as though compromise is being "scored" completely by NT standards and context. Do you believe that is fair?

"Sting of criticism" - Refer back to "truth is not nasty".
Blaming another for how you assign meaning to reality is not valid.
Why assume that every criticism is meant to cause emotional pain? Really, why?

"second place" - demanding the servitude of hierarchies.
These things are in arbitrarily assigned categories and disregard constants such as loyalty.

"don't care about the intent" - Perhaps you don't care about your partners intent, but you sure do seem to care about yours. When you disregard intent, you are left with misconceptions.

"quality sex and socialization" - If you're alone setting the standards here, then I would think you would also accept the responsibility as well. This seems like a very selfish outlook from my perspective. It's also another area of arbitrarily assigned value scales. In case you don't realize, arbitrarily assigned value scales require either mind-reading or extremely effective communication in order for them to even be considered by others, let alone shared.

"inability to take responsibility" - what more can I say if you aren't making the connection here?

"show him that I'm better than" - hierarchal thinking could not be more clear here. Speaking of "second place", you seem to have no problem putting consideration of your partner into lower places.

"I feel guilt and shame" - These are tools of emotional blackmail when used externally, - as you expressing them in the context of a relationship. The expected assumption here is that your partner is causing you to feel these painful things due to his behavior, and as such should feel the pressure to adjust his/her behavior so that you can feel the way you want to feel, - which is actually a satisfaction of having achieved some type of control, and thus confirming a place in a hierarchy. You are applying negative descriptions to yourself based directly on how you view yourself inside the relationship with your partner. This is self victimization.

"Life is too hard" - It is hard. Why the need to blame part of this on your partner?
Did you enter into a relationship with the expectation that your partner make life easier for you?
Do you assume that they had the same expectation of you?

"has brought them mostly misery and loneliness"
Within the context of NT constructed reality, this is probably true.
If someone isn't fully engaged in supplying the NT with emotional validation, then it results in extreme uncomfort for the NT.

This mechanism is what is behind the popular meme of:
"What doesn't serve me, weakens me"

The logic of this statement holds true only in an imagined context, and not in true reality.
I try to stay clear of people who have this outlook on life and their engagements with other people. It is both self-serving and illusory in nature.

Some NTs have discovered that since emotional validation is an imaginary thing, that one can provide it to oneself internally.
This forgoes the need for the social expectations.
Those social expectations are what result in social controls and operate within hierarchies.

However, most NTs (and others) operate completely embedded within the social structures, and so continue to apply/enforce expectations of emotional validation to those around them, to especially include their relationship partners.

If I could successfully impart one useful bit of information to you about this situation it would be this:
Aspies generally do NOT operate within the embedded context of social structures.

This generally means that all those assumptions you made about your partner concerning your relationship were technically NOT applicable to your partner. It was never proper for you to be applying them in that way.

This difference in context would perhaps be more obvious if your partner were blind, but it is not so obvious with autism.

What do you think we can do to help the success of NT/AS relationships? I mean not only what can we do in general, but what can we do in a discussion like this one?



I don't think anyone here has suggested that it should be that way. I believe what some of us are responding to is the implication that it actually IS that way. Because like olympiadis said, we already make compromises just by living in a society that is oriented for NTs. We make compromises that other people may not even recognize, because they don't look at it as taking any extra effort for us to do those things. And vice versa, an AS partner may not recognize all of the compromises you are making either.



It's clear that they are in pain. I think people have a right to vent about anything if they feel like it. But putting it on a public forum means that people may read and comment and call them out for what they are saying. Surely you do not begrudge us that right.

I certainly wouldn't go over there and intrude on their space, even if they welcomed us, because I don't want to interact with people in that type of environment.

They do not allow autistic people to post there. In contrast, NTs are welcome to post here. What was that you said, about NTs making all the compromises?

"What puzzles me is why we autists are the ones with empathy problems. But allists have the privilege of being the "normal" ones who get to make the judgment call. In our case, lack of empathy is a pathology. In their case it's a perfectly understandable reaction because it's ok to treat freaks without compassion".

The above quote is from one of the articles on LunaLindsey's blog. You can find a link to it in another recent post entitled "Double Standards". She's a terrific writer about the oppression of ASD people.

Good quote B19. Here's the link to that article:
http://www.lunalindsey.com/2014/10/doub ... y-and.html

Please watch at least the first minute or two of this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYNRzTUWQ_U

It's made by a very open minded and understanding NT who really values their relationship parter as an individual living being.

It is great that there are people who can understand at least some of the processes involved, and more importantly are willing to try.

I have seen this video before. I can agree with most of what she says, but it is more complicated than she makes it out to be.

With my friend, I have actually assumed at times that he wasn't 'implying' emotion into what he had said, and later found out that he meant for it to be implied. It's difficult to gauge when you should and should not read emotion in to something so I tend to guess based on patterns or expression, using two examples he has typed:

. 'You are my closest friend, but even if you disappeared tomorrow I would not notice.' - I assumed he was feeling nothing (and won't lie I resented that at first), but turns out he was sad about it.
. 'You won't understand. - I assume that he is frustrated if he says something like this, but usually he is neutral.

I struggle with this not just with people that have ASD though, because you can never be sure if a person is lying to you, and you simply have to make a best guess. My whole system involves guessing, and I just go along with what I have experienced in the past. Everything is far more complicated than made out to be.

I sometimes inaccurately read in to emotion on this forum (your posts are apparently a good example), and I have a difficult time believing I am wrong when it aligns with past experience here. The only basis I can really have to judge emotion is the typing style of the individual or their use of expressive adjectives, and any underlying pattern that I observe.

You've every right to feel hurt by what you're going through and I hope you find a way out. Being scary and abusive isn't part of the criterion for AS, though, and there are many on the spectrum who don't intimidate others, just as there are many not on the spectrum who do. So I don't understand, what is it that people see as a connection between AS and intimidating and abusive behavior?

I agree, there are many assumptions regarding NTs that I perceive to be incorrect throughout this forum. I don't support it, but I will never support what is written on the other forum either. I can understand the need to rant but I believe it can be done in a controlled manner, hence my previous use of the statement 'be the bigger man' - not a hivemind function but to refer to my personal belief here (I am NT).



I can relate to this, in a lighter way. My friend is autistic and I know that he doesn't need me in his life due to having his own world. This is a burden that I carry, but I will persevere with the friendship nevertheless, not out of guilt, but because the friendship is more than just my own selfish fulfillment. It's true, that I find it mentally challenging to maintain the relationship in comparison to my NT friends. If I were to partner a person similar to him (I'm gay), it would make me feel down at times, but I'm not incapable of loving an autistic individual (just as the woman states in the video). It is actually awakening to remember just how much effort that person puts in to be your friend/partner.

I find that there are also a great many positives in having a friend/partner with AS, that you would likely not get with a typical person, if you are willing to look past your primary need of emotional validation.



I have no problem accepting that an AS/NT relationship is incompatible in many circumstances, but I don't understand the need to portray all autistic individuals as a terror that should not be embraced. The views of the other website aren't necessarily ableist, but the hatred is equivalent to that displayed with racism and homosexism. I don't support similar views (against NTs) here either.

Wow this is really refreshing to hear.

I hope people will listen to the whole thing, but in case they don't, here are a couple of the main points:





I think what she's getting at there is that other people's attitudes about autism are putting more pressure on the relationship than the autism and the differences that they have with each other.

That's why I really dislike seeing the responses people get when they introduce themselves at AS Partners asking for advice. Maybe some of them haven't seen what that forum is really about yet, and they post there thinking they are going to get some helpful advice or support that might help the relationship. But instead they are pressured to end the relationship.

I think people misunderstand what the forum is about. I have seen a few autistic members join there because they have an autistic partner but they get shood out pretty quick. Then there are some people who join the forum asking for advice but instead get told to leave their partner.

My impression of the place is it's a place to vent and rant and not get any advice or be educated about the condition and it is not to improve your marriage/relationship with your partner.

My comment about the video: I found it confusing when she said she needed routine and gets anxious without it and her partner doesn't understand it if there is no logical reason. I thought autistic people liked routines so wouldn't they understand the reason why someone has one? What happens when our routine changes? We get anxious, we get upset, it gives us chaos inside and anxiety. I thought it was an autistic trait she has and who says NTs can't have any? Then there are overlaps so someone can have a condition such as OCD where they have routines but the difference is they don't like having routines but feel compelled to do it to get rid of the anxiety while for us we have them because it keeps us calm.

I don't mind sarcasm and I would be insulted if someone didn't use it with me because of my AS (it feels like they are dumbing it down for me like I am incompetent and not capable of handling it and treating me like a label instead of as a person) but that is just me. Her partner may be different than me. But my ex boyfriend used it all the time and it drove me crazy and it was very hard because I didn't know when he was serious and he refused to understand. He expected me to just get it and accept it because it was "who he is." I don't mind some sarcasm and I do use it myself. I don't know how sarcastic she is and how often she uses it and what kind she uses. I liked how she used a cue for it to let her boyfriend know when she was being sarcastic and then realized how wrong it is because it's like expecting someone who speaks french to listen to you speak English and they won't understand it like he won't understand her sarcasm. I guess it's better to not use it than trying to explain it every time. My husband has expressed to me how he finds it frustrating sometimes how he can't make a joke without me not getting it.