Can anyone help?

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AS can lead to lack of maturity and pent up anger. It can all easily be explained by AS so there's probably no need to "layman diagnose" him with mental illness. As for ADHD, there is a tremendous amount of cross-over between that and AS. I have a friend that has ADHD and when we compared symptoms, we had all the same stuff except I also have more stuff because of the AS and dyspraxia.



Exactly. Someone has to want to change. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.



Don't allow him to be verbally abusive to you. Just because he has a different neurology and may be dealing with life stress is no excuse to use you for an emotional punching bag.

Sparrow, it's interesting that you say that AS could be the root to his problem so that leads me to ask you, is it possible that he isn't Bipolar at all? I have friends that try to tell me they think he is, but I keep saying no. What about his hyper mood over the weekend, the decision to do things last night that were totally out of character for him or the fact that he goes through the shutting down episodes and then the hyper back talking to me thing? It seems to become a pattern. What do you make of this, if anything? Again though, the nicer I am the meaner he gets so I have decided like I said to let go. It hurts me to do this, but I dont think I have a choice.

OP, I never thought you had any kind of nefarious motivation behind your post. You clearly care for this man, and I never thought you had evil intentions. (And don't take @Willard's comments to heart. He is capable of insightful observations, but I think he missed the mark on your post.)

But I do want to challenge your assertion that you don't want to change this man. I think his disappearing from the relationship, his refusal to communicate in any way except via text, the nastier tone of his texts....they're all examples of behavior you'd like to see change. I don't blame you for wanting those behaviors to change - I'd want them to change too. I'm pointing that out not to criticize you, but to perhaps help you see that wanting to see these changes in a partner is not unreasonable. It's not your job to sacrifice your needs in order to meet his. What is needed to make an Aspie/NT relationship work is compromise - from both partners.

But all of his behaviors define who he is...that includes the mean, nasty behaviors as well as the good and kind. He's shown you who he is. If change is necessary, and you're willing to give him a chance to make some changes, then you need to communicate very clearly what you will and won't tolerate. Don't be subtle; don't hint; don't expect him to extrapolate your thoughts and feelings the way an NT might. Lay it out for him....regardless of the result, at least you'll know you did everything you could. Good luck.

It's possible. My parents were casting about for a diagnosis for me when I was a kid but the proper diagnosis didn't exist yet. At one point they thought I MUST be bipolar but the doctors said no.



People with AS can be very excitable. Also, is he of high intelligence? Dombrowski's research found that people of high intelligence often have multiple "over-excitabilities."



Out of character for him or part of a pattern of character that you hadn't seen before?



anxiety. Par for the course in AS



Frustration, meltdown, inability to communicate in a more subtle manner.



That he''s struggling to cope, using the "tools" he currently has at his disposal.

Sparrow, this left me not knowing what to say.

I'm sorry.

I could be wrong, but it does appear to me to be the most likely.

I think the point is that he is trying - though he's having a hard time of it. The tools in his tool chest are lacking and he lacks the experience to understand how to use them.

"When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"

This is where many NT's have an advantage. They can pick up different techniques for dealing with problems, people and internal stress whereas AS folks are limited. It doesn't mean they can't use the other techniques, just that it's foreign to them and awkward (like driving on the left v. right hand side of the road). Eventually though, you get the hang for it - but it's not easy nor does it come as second nature.

So how do you teach someone to write with the left hand? Drive on the alternate side of the road? Shoot with an off hand? Practice and patience.

And you have to be in a "place" where you can work on those skills. If your internal "resources" are already being tapped to the full just trying to get by, there's no "overhead" left for practice and patience.

As an example, I'm in school and trying to:
a. show up to every class session
b. show up on time
c. engage fully in classroom discussions
d. visit my advisor and the professors who write the comp exams so I can stay in touch with what I need to study
e. complete all my assigned projects

But . . . I don't have enough overhead to work on all of those goals at once. So I run "triage" as to what is most important right now and work on that. As a result, I've been late to class a lot and missed some class sessions. And I KNOW I need to work on those skills, too, because I'm aiming for being a professor and I will have no choice but to show up for every session, on time or early, if I want to keep my position. I may need to hone those skills before I graduate if I want good recommendations from professors.

But knowing I need to work on my time management skills is one thing. Finding the energy and mental/emotional/physical resources to follow through is another thing. (In addition to going to school, I'm the sole caretaker of a very disabled person so my resources are highly taxed.)

To put this back into the actual topic being discussed in this thread, the gentleman in question has some kind of family issue that is very draining to him. Then there are the demands of everyday life, job, etc. He may even realize what skills/tools he is lacking, want to work on developing them, even have an idea of what he needs to do to start out, but just not have any overhead left over after dealing with everything else to tackle that project right now. Or he may have no idea what to do next.

I'm just pointing out that there are more factors to needing/wanting/hoping to change than just knowing what to do, practicing it and having patience. Something non-autistic people often don't realize about the autistic is that, for many of us, the everyday things that non-autistic take for granted or even do automatically without thinking about them often require a great deal of effort and energy.

So, something "simple" like "time management" (to go back to my personal example) can take so much effort that I have to shift energy from something else like doing homework or feeding the disabled person I take care of or engaging in classroom discussions in order to work on it. Similarly, before the gentleman in question can work on not being rude or dismissive to a woman who cares for him and who he seems to care for as well, he has to have "something left over" from dealing with family members, job, neighbors, etc.

Not offering solutions (I don't have any), just trying to add some perspective from my autistic mind. Apologies to anyone who feels I have misrepresented them or autism in general.