NT & AS-afflicted partner; when is it our turn?

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What you wrote seems more stereotypically male or stereotypically selfish than stereotypically ASD. Is it worth it to stay around as bad as you're describing it?l

Not sure what you're referring to? When you say "what you wrote", I mean. I'm not the OP, if that's what you're talking about. Much of what she's describing does seem to me stereotypically AS, though.

I'm not sure what Waterfalls is referring to either. But I do believe some of what is being described would be AS mixed with depression, problems controlling stress, or a fragile ego. I don't believe AS alone is the problem... not one bit. But mix it with some other big issue and it may be too much for others to handle. The AS person needs to handle this on their own as best as they can IMO and only ask for help when they need it.

Thank you Aspiemike. That's what I was trying to say.

I suppose every perspective is filtered by the brain that that turns optical signals into sight. I think you oversimplify and ignore the evidence of your senses in order to bolster your idea.

What I see in online communities and real world meetings of people with aspergers is people who are unique individuals with diverse personalities. They do fit the diagnostic criteria--but these are very broad. I have seen many times here on WP and a few times in real life one person with Aspergers cast doubt on the diagnosis of another because the other "isn't like me at all."

Surely it is true that the social communication issues and restricted interests that are among the defining features of ASD will have an impact on intimate relationships. In those areas, there must surely be patterns of AS/NT relationship that could be productively explored.

From what I can see, there is a broad range of degrees and qualities of empathy experienced by aspies. Some report having very little or no sympathetic feeling for other people and I see no reason to doubt their reports. Here on WP I have seen arguments about that--with diagnosed people saying, "I have lots of feeling for other people, so that's what it really means to be aspie," and other diagnosed people saying, "I have no feeling for other people at all, so that's what it really means to be aspie."

I can only imagine that the sense of reciprocity in a relationship from a person on one end of that spectrum would be very different than from someone at the other end.

My own family life is very affectionate. My ASD son hugs me and snuggles with me and tells me he loves me at least as much as my NT daughter. My NT wife and I have been together for 30 years. I won't pretend to think that is typical of aspie relationships, but I have known several other aspies in very stable relationships, so I am confident I am not some unique outlier.

I have seen many NT/NT relationships blossom, wither and die in far shorter spans. It seems to me that "You never listen," is a common NT/NT complaint. But when the troubled relationship is NT/AS, the difficulties are assigned to the diagnosis, not the person--even though they look just like the difficulties in NT/NT relationships.

Could deficits in social perception and communication make a relationship harder? Of course! Must they? You seem to be saying so, but this idea is not supported by my experience and observation.

If you are unhappy then, I know this is going to sound crazy...leave? Or do you secretly love playing the martyr, sacrificing *all* just so this poor, damaged creature that is your partner won't be all by their lonesome? Somebody call the Vatican, I think we have a candidate for sainthood.

It may sound offensive, theduckrabbit, but if he's not going to be able to manage on his own, then it's a serious thing to walk away from him and let him go into freefall, and wind up who knows how. She didn't say just how deep the deficits were, so I don't know how big a problem it is for her. It's also possible that he's been able to stay employed only because she takes care of so much of the rest of his life, and that if he had to do it all on his own, he'd shut down and the employment would fall apart, too.

I do know that it was such a relief for my ex-husband's parents when I married him that they resisted like crazy stepping in to help again when I realized just how bad the problems were, and I spent ungodly time and energy trying to set up community supports for him when we separated -- it left me bristly and ungenerous for years afterwards, I was just drained. He's still got significant problems and relied heavily on his parents for years after the divorce.

I don't live with my friend now for reasons described elsewhere on this forum, but he's being evicted now for the second time in three months, and hasn't had a good work/living arrangement in years. Without considerable help from other people the odds aren't bad that he'd have been homeless long ago. His advantage is that he knows he needs this kind of help and has a few lifelines, including a large family; the OP's husband has been taken care of for years, possibly in ways he hasn't even noticed, much less appreciated. If she's been doing most of the work of taking care of him -- she makes no mention of his family -- then other people aren't likely to step up. It's no joke to turn out someone whom you know can't manage and hasn't sufficient support elsewhere -- it's a cruel thing to do.

There's another problem waiting for her, too, depending on how AS is perceived. To turn out an abusive, drunken, cheating, otherwise miserable husband is one thing. But to shake a disabled husband off the rug is another, especially if she doesn't work to set up supports for him and look after him a bit anyway. These kinds of things affect how a woman is viewed in the community and at work, and can have serious consequences.

It's definitely a serious thing to leave. And obviously important to consider the ramifications of leaving, to the extent possible. But choosing to stay or go is a choice, whether we admit this to ourselves or not. And if someone were to hate their partner or truly hate the life they have together to such an extent that they find nothing of value in the relationship or in being together for an extended time, I think it's a tremendous mistake to pretend that staying together is anything positive.

I was confused by your post Tarantella. I'm sure you didn't mean people should stay together because leaving the spouse with ASD would look bad to others, but I could not figure out what you did mean.

Right, that's not what I meant. But there's an unfairly gendered thing that does happen to women, regarding taking care of people -- it's expected of us in ways that it isn't expected of men. What I experienced was that as I made the problems with my ex-husband known, other women who'd had mentally-ill family members would tell me in hushed voices that they understood and that I really had to do whatever was necessary to take care of myself and my daughter. The hushed voices are because we're not supposed to just up sticks and leave people to fend for themselves -- women who do not do the societally-assigned caregiving are often stigmatized, sometimes viciously. It's not as bad as, say, giving up custody of a child, but walking away from a disabled husband is the sort of thing people will talk about behind your back for decades, and judge you upon. You're supposed to stand by your man and, yes, be saint etc., at least for some socially-mandated period of time.

Depending on the kind of workplace and community the OP lives in, it could make no stir at all (if AS isn't recognized as a disability), or leaving him high/dry could attach significant stigma to her. Probably the best thing to do, if she's going to leave and there's no one waiting to catch him, is to do the necessary work to find him whatever supports/services that may be available, get him qualified as disabled so he can receive benefits, etc. If he then walks away from those supports, it's sad, but it's on him.

I think I see, Tarantella. There are different expectations of women. And if someone leaves because they are disappointed in the spouse's AS it could result in being ostracized.

I guess it's in how it's framed to me though. If it doesn't work out, there is blame. And self blame. To me, leaving because a partner has AS seems like it would be unusual. I know I tend to be naive, I just would have expected leaving would be about feeling increasingly lonely and in pain where once there was a belief in connectedness and love. As I said, I tend to be naive. But i think you are right about the powerful impact that gender roles have a on relationships, and that impact seems to be more powerful than any other labels. Only talk of neurodiversity (I hate that term) seems to be a way of labeling the man as needing greater effort at understanding and supporting, very much in line with what you are saying.

I'm just not sure it's necessary to go there. Because unless the OPs spouse was labeled AS to the world before they married, what she or they call what doesn't work in their relationship to the world is up to them. And rather than blaming AS, they could label other incompatibilities as the cause should they choose to separate. And probably should do that. It's more honest, and more compassionate than blaming something one person cannot help and which they came into the relationship with.

I think there's a fundamental difference between how AS-ish people will go into a relationship and how more NTish people will do the same.

AS: This is me and how I am, and this is the given, and it's up to you to notice anything you don't like or can't live with before you commit, caveat emptor. I take you at face value, because why would you lie to someone you say you love? And while there are things about you that annoy me, I accept them. I will be shocked if there turn out to be other, hidden things about you that emerge later, because you are promising to be the person advertised.

NT: (informed by mostly unconscious notions of how two people in a marriage will and should change in order to be like the prototype married couple in his/her mind) You'll settle in and will more or less conform to the set of expectations in my head, because it's what married men/women do. When I stop trying so hard you'll accept it, and I just want you to keep doing [list of things] I really dig, but I'm aware that it's in the game that some of that will calm down. I'll be there for you, and you for me, in the ways mandated socially for husbands and wives, and will help you and encourage you in being that person, because I know that's what you want to be; that's my promise. I will be shocked if you turn out to be unable to do this, because you are signing on for a socially-defined role.

So, Waterfall, they go in working by different contracts. The OP went in and got surprised by the depth of her husband's deficits in functioning in the world, and did the expected thing and tried to help him get on track, so that he could "be a good husband". Now she finds out that he's unlikely ever to be that guy, and she feels she's been sold a bill of goods, and had good years stolen from her. The only thing she has to point to in explaining why he can't be that guy is the AS, because she needs that label to explain why he can't just get it together, and why, as far as she's concerned, she's been screwed.

You make interesting points, Tarantella. And I am shocked by both sides that you describe. So here is what I think.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't get to point to AS as a cause because I have to meet whatever challenge comes my way and find some way to adapt even when every part of me wants to resist. Maybe because I am conforming to gender stereotypes that are part of my makeup, though there seem to me to be men who adapt as well. Beyond that, I feel I have to try to adapt because I see that resisting reality only goes so far. It's not like I like having the way I see the world constantly turned upside down. It doesn't mean I communicate clearly and efficiently, I don't. Doesn't mean I know what's socially going to be effective unless I have learned a script, but I try to follow them. Doesn't mean the world stops being too loud too bright too confusing, it often is.

So I don't get to blame some external force when things don't work out, it's me.

AS is part of it, but I still think people can choose to give to one another. Or we can be angry and choose to blame. Blaming AS and not the person is too much contradiction for my brain to adapt to without more reason. Blame is blame, it seems prettier to blame the wiring than the person. I'm not sure it is, though, really.

Anyway, thank you Tarantella, for trying to explain this point of view. If it didn't exclude me from existing, I'd be able to make sense of it. It's just, it seems like it does really exclude me. And I am so tired of not fitting into this world.

I don't think it need exclude you, Waterfalls; multiple views can exist simultaneously, no?

thank you, Tarantella, for understanding I am sad.

This seems like a really good reason to talk about these expectations before getting married or entering a committed relationship.

I find it hard to imagine not having those conversations--that's what makes the relationship,deeper, in my limited experience.

I did not know why I am the way I am and now I have a name for it, but I did know who I was and I certainly did not try to conceal anything.

"I take you at face value" sounds like a healthier approach to a relationship than "I love you for the person you are going to be when I have finished altering you."

The other side of that is some commitment to loving the unknown future person the one you love might become as they grow in ways you cannot imagine or control. When you commit to being there, you commit to making an attempt to go with them to the emotional, intellectual and experiential places life may take them.

The other approach sounds quite dark and delusional. It sound like a sort of gender reversed Stepford program.

>>>>> Edited to add:

While this is my intellectual response, and is involved with my own feelings about my relationships and my self, I can see that this must have been a miserable realization for her and that it must be terrible for her to face these options. I think she should get out because to stay as some kind of caretaker rather than partner will only build resentment and anger. This is no foundation for any kind of relationship.

@Waterfalls - I think there is a tendency for many if not most people to take a look at categories when they're written down, take them very seriously, and try to fit themselves to one or the other -- and if it's not possible, to become despondent and think "I don't fit anywhere; I don't coun't; it's like I'm not." This gives altogether too much power to whoever's written that list, usually in some unserious or semi-thoughtless or speculative mood.

@Adamantium - the problem, maybe, with trying to have that conversation early on is that neither person might understand the other. The NT sort probably wouldn't think to spell out the expectations he or she had because most people don't bother articulating these things; for most people they're like air, just a sense of how everything goes. And enough other people are in accord that it works. What I find is that many people really like having these socially-defined roles to live by; those roles tell them who they are, and their main job in life is to inhabit them well. There's a great sense of belongingness and wellbeing that can come that way, and pleasure in seeing everyone else live out their roles well, too, and do well by them. When people talk to me about these things, they tell me that it's a relief not to have to be trying to figure out, all the time, who they are, and by midlife they've mostly come to the conclusion that they're not much, as people -- no great talent, force, original anything, real desire for anything -- but that they can be good fathers, husbands, etc. The idea of just being, on your own...it's a terrifying thought for a lot of people. Not because they're pods, but because it just isn't how they do and they wouldn't know where to start, and it seems like an awful lot of lonely work. And on the other side of that, I can't imagine the AS person comprehending what the NT type has in mind when it comes to settling down, doing the dance that married people do, subsuming themselves in that -- or why it would be nice and not horrifying.

My mother (who can't stand being by herself for long) grew up in a very social, very two-by-two community in which people were very much their roles. Themselves, yes, but never in a way that would endanger a local definition of husband or wife or mother or father. And my severely AS father never understood why it was important to her to go on vacations with other couples, have dinner parties, be part of the life of a community of similar families -- or for him to behave like anyone but the student he was when they met. They really made each others' lives hell. I doubt very much it would've occurred to her to articulate any of her expectations until they were deeply disappointed.