AS/NT marriage in crisis - HELP!

Post Reply New Topic

Hi

I dont think it's anyone's fault its just a question of understanding. I think with a normal person socialisng is as natural as breathing so when an Aspie is constricted socially it may seem like they are being stubborn to the uninformed. If someone asks me what Aspergers like, sometimes I have a hard time explaining it. My partner has often said he's felt unloved and disregarded. I cant disagree with him. I'd say try to get your wife to read books about Aspergers or seek information via the net. That helped our relationship as its a removed and objective description that's easy for normal people to understand. To save your marriage perhaps acknowlege your wifes feelings. I imagine if you are depressed or stressed sometimes that this may make her feel negative. too I know the biggest complaint my partner has is about me having a lack of empathy. I think as an Aspie in a relationship with a normal person its very easy to get stuck in a bubble of isolation. It helps the relationship if you give a little, even if its fake ect. Try to make your wife feel good. Think about what makes her feel good (I know its hard to do this!). I think all real love involves some sacrifice. The lying sounds horrible yet if a highly deformed person in a new item of clothing asked you if they looked good you would most likely say yes as you realise its more important
to make a person that potentially feels rejected by society happy and secure in this instance. Stay positive. You are alive and the world is beautiful.

I recall reading, long before knowing of AS, the old Marriage Guidance Council (now Relate) reckoned that couples would get stuck in a mode in which neither party would show any interest in each other, and they recommended that they should try asking simple questions like "how was your day?" and try to put that interest back. The most common objection they heard was that their clients would say that if would feel very phoney at first, though as long as they persevered, it would become genuine in time, and they'd realise that really it had never been phoney in the first place.

For me, the idea of a horribly deformed person is a bit different, because I apparently have an unusual idea of beauty - to me that person probably wouldn't seem ugly in the first place. I used to buy into the mainstream view of appearance (to some extent) when I was younger, but it never felt quite natural for me to do that, and I was quite relieved when, on hearing me say that I feared I may be ugly, a counsellor said, "well, I've been looking at you for a few weeks and I can't see anything to be frightened of" - not only did that remark liberate me from the obligation to pander to the mainstream idea of myself having to be "handsome," but also it allowed me to become more true to what I'd always felt about other people's looks - I began to see them in terms of what they did to me visually rather than what I thought the crowd would think.

But I know what you mean - I may have a tendency towards pathological honesty but that doesn't absolve me from the responsibility to try to avoid being brutally frank when it''s likely to do more harm than good. It's hard to know what's appropriate in a particular case......some people really do want the truth however hurtful it is, others just want comfort.

My parents divorced when I was 14. But they had been having significant problems since I was at last 10. It wasn't the fact they divorced that was terrible for me, per se. I think children can understand they parents divorcing, and some of the reasons parents might feel the need or decide to divorce. What is terrible for the child, however, is when the divorce radically changes the amount of time the child is used to spending with each of the parents.

Changing it some is not so bad, but when my parents divorced, everthing turned upsidedown because they were not very adult in how they handled it. I went from seeing my father as a father out to act toward his child a couple hours every day or every couple days to seeing him only maybe a couple hours twice a week, and then, after the divorce he got into substance abuse and had no girlfriends for a couple years, so when he did come to "babysit" me while my mom was teaching evening college classes, he would spike my dinner drinks with quaaludes and seconal and sexually abuse me. I would start to have my dinner while in my clothes, and wake up early the next morning in my pajamas, not being able to account for time from moments after I began to drink my dinner beverage until I was awakened the next morning for school with one heck of a headache hangover; with periods of short coming-to in the evenings seeing my father walking around me naked with a giant erect fully-engorged hard-on. This turned my mom to drinking, so I had two parents who were far more immature than the age of their own child, and one was being a predator on my autism, and the other was not protecting me. THAT's when a divorce become a hard thing for a child.

But I have worked for attorneys in family law quite a lot and seen both good and bad divorces, and also knowing how I would have felt had my parents handled their differently, I can say that if the parents are making an effort to get along and each making a point to take enough time for their children post-divorce, it does not really affect the children so terribly. Children, as they age, start to get their own friends and interests anyway, so they have demand on their time, as well. What the divorcing/divorced parent need to do is to commit enough time to still be a mother or father to their child, do all the things they would otherwise do -- help with homework, go to sports events, help them get into college, etc. during that parent's custody/visitation time. Not cut off their child's activities -- e.g. sports activities don't end because of the divorce. And definitely, the divorced parents need to be mature adults about it, get along, not put the children in the middle of their own juvenile fights, and of all things, one of them should never be allowed to become a predator on the child.

My father did divorce my mom because I was "defective" with my autism, but that whole scenario started long before the divorce, since I can remember as young as 5 or 6, my father refusing to sleep with my Mom much and refusing to have anymore "defective" children with her. That hurt, but I don't think anyone can protect a child with autism from the realization they are growing up and *different* from others.

As for perceiving the divorce as meaning the child is growing up without a "real dad," that was not something I ever really articulated as a child. That whole line of thinking/rationalizing you gave above, that is the PARENT's mental deal -- but even at 14, speaking as a child, I did not perceive it that way. I wasn't against the divorce per se. I wasn't against my parents living apart, or changes in their schedules. What really got to me, beyond the predator thing, was my living standard went way down after the divorce, it threatened my horse activities, I stopped having a father that spent healthy time with me being a father and doing the kinds of things fathers do with their children -- sometimes it would go for months btw the predatory "babysitting" visits, and I would not get one call or anything from him. He made me feel like I lost my father, but it was not the divoce that made me lose my father. It was him and his awful behavior and sorry role as a father, and I wonder if my parents had not divorced, if he still would have sexually abuse me anyway -- and my conclusions is yes. His behavior would have been the same, with or without the divorce.

corr: " out to act toward his child " = ought to act toward his child

I would really have to disagree with you there. Love is always enough -- if it is love. But if the two people do not have that, a lot of things can go wrong. If you love someone (who loves you, too), you will do whatever it takes to make the relationship work and to actively work at it being a great relationship -- why: because that's what love means and because you love the other person.

I have been married to two husbands, the first ex, and the current and second. Both have had TBI. The first one was a lost soul, acquired a major substance abuse problem as a jockey on the racetracks, which is very frequent among jockeys. Even his dear mother, whom I loved as if my own mother, gave up on him for many years. I really did not have a choice in divorcing him, because as his substance abuse problems escalated, it came down to a safety and well-being issue for our then infant daughter. I did what my mom did not do for me, I protected my child. Many years later, my first ex did get his act together and straightened out his life, and our daughter has spent significant time with him in the past few years to the benefit of them both, but it took him 30 years to come around.

My second current husband is a whole different thing. We talked 3000 mile apart via Internet for over a year. He promised he would help me as a person with autism get my bar license if I moved to his state, which I did. What a broken promise. He has spent more time and effort trying to help his convicted felon nephew who cycles in and out of the jails get his bar license, than doing anything to help me. That, for starters, is highly damaging to a marriage. But without writing a *real long rant,* it is a lot more than that.

I have extreme oversensitivities with my autism, numerous issues -- loud noises, bright lights, aversive food smells, TLE syndromes, and the real biggie for having an intimate relationship with someone: oversensitivities to being handled to roughly.

It is not like my second husband doesn't know about all of this, since we have been married six years. But there is only so much TBI frontal lobe "I forgots" a person can take, and only so many hard pinches and stinging slaps a person can take out of the clear blue as he walks by, before there is no environment conducive to feeling "love." In the firstplace, I have a difficult time understanding how someone can believe that type of rough play is *liked* by the recipient, but when someone has the autism issues I do, it just really destroys trust. Moreover, not as much lately, but quite a lot earlier on, he can/did go into rages when he lost his frontal lobe impulse control, and more than once, I have been on the receiving end of that, and there is only so much of being physically attacked, having your hair pulled, and having to fend off his trying to box or shake someone's head by the hair a person can take. All the afterward "I'm sorrys" don't do a whole lot to restore feelings of "love" rather than constantly being hypervigilant for another event. I had even been attacked while sleeping before, and for awhile I had to sleep separately with my dressage whip in my bed (which I never used) to send the message this behavior on his part had to stop. I still sleep separately, because I just don't really feel safe if I move the wrong way that I might inadvertently set him off while sleeping and unaware, and it is a real b***h feeling like you can't even do the simplest thing of falling asleep while cuddling someone. Also, when he goes into his epileptic ictal phases, he sort of somewhat Tourettes out, which I really can't excuse for the demoralizing effect it has on me to constantly hear the stream of verbal barrage of being called things like: ret*d, moron, idiot, etc. -- that is very hard for someone with autism to take.

Also, most of my boyfriends I dated other than my two husbands, were neurotypicals, and I always had great relationships with them. Not like what I got into with my two husbands. I came from a very sexually dysfunctional family on my father's side, and a person does not get to choose the family they are born into, and also while I am not excusing what happened to me because it should not have happened, is not something a child of my age when it happened, much less a child with autism, could really see as right or wrong or articulate anything like that. Two of my cousins in my father's side of the family, sexually molested me when I was 4 1/2, they were brothers, one six months older than I and the other six months younger. They brought on this incredible orgasm -- when I was 4 1/2, which was an incredible high, and I liked it. Peopel aren't supposed to admit they liked something like this, but the fact is ... I LIKED it. And, after the first time, my cousins sought out doing this on numerous other occasions, which I looked forward to because I really liked it, but they would also make me deeply connect with them during these events by touching, hugging, etc, in a way that I strongly suspect worked on the plasticity of my young autistic brain social-emotional pathways in that one area -- because that is the one area where I can feel a full range of emotions and connect on a deeper level with other neurotypicals. I have spent a lifetime reflecting on this, and why this happened to me at an age where I was so young.

Of course, thereafter, all my friends pretty much, and this is true basically of my entire life, were male, because they were the only ones I could relate to at all on a social or emotional level. I don't really relate very well to women, and other than children and men, I definitely have significant impairments in my ability to relate to an emotional or social level with other women. So, many years later, when I began dating boyfriends, most were neurotypicals. And most liked the same things I seek out for comfort, lots of cuddling, and hugging, and I like lots of kissing, and foreplay -- but I have autism and I'm not supposed to like those things ! I had deep relationships with a couple of my neurotypical boyfriends, and one in particular I was very deeply in love with who also ride horses, but he came from a wealthier family and while they accepted me as an artist and a horse rider, they refused to accept me as someone for their son to marry. This hurt me incredibly, because we were very deeply in love, and just had this incredible romantic relationship, and were best friends, so in my hurt and pain, I did a really dumb thing and married, instead, my first ex-husband. My boyfriend waited for me for awhile, but before my fiest marriage failed and I got divorced, he married on the rebound from me, and had two children. And it could never be for us. And that was the heartbreak of my life.

But I have had other neurotypical boyfriends who also were gentle with me and very sensual and romantic, deeply connected with me on an emotional level, and liked all the same things I enjoy -- I am one who can just cuddle and socially be with someone I love for hours just to be with them, and I also liked the sexual parts of these relationships because they were very deep on an emotional and romantic level and with boyfriends who knew how to do all the right things of an experienced sexual partner. If I had that kind of relationship now, I would drop whatever I was doing, no matter how involved on some one of my autistic preoccupations, for the relationship. But my second husband just is not like that. Not much of a kisser, not that much of a cuddler, too rough with me, and there's definitely no foreplay, and the idea of raw sex just sort of destroys the whole idea of growing a deeper emotional romantic connection -- for me. For me, the partner matters.

So, it ultimately comes back down to the essential question, again of 'is love always enough.' See, I believe love is always enough, because someone who loves you will do the things that matter for the relationship, because they love you and this means inherently two people wanting to please each other and just delighting and enjoying being with each other/the things they do together. If the other person doesn't really love you or worse, maybe doesn't even love themselves or know what love is or how to express it in the way that matters to the other person, then you don't really have love because it is missing part of the reciprocity for the love to be on that deep emotional connection between two people. A lot of people, even people who are married, think what they have is love and go about pretending this or that, but on a deeper level what they have in their relationship really is not in its essence love at all, and an element is ultimately missing. The status quo of familiarity can have a comfort of its own, but yet what is missing is love. Love never loses its excitement, exhiliaration, and the incredible highs -- if it is love. I know enough about being really taken with someone a person has met, as well as longer- term relationships, to know the ones that really have romantic love do not ever lose these incredible highs that come about just by thoroughly enjoying being with the other person and the things you do together. And that's why it is so very rare -- real love transcends all time and space and boundaries. It just is ... love in and of itself and *just because* -- with its incredible power to make two person laugh and sing and dance, and even want to spread their wings and fly.

You know it when you find it.