New and on honeymoon and miserable....

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You did post before, when you first joined this site - about the problems you were having then and your fears for your married life together. You received advise and replies, but don't seem to have read them.

Sorry, but I really don't see anything changing anytime soon, and as there seem to be long-standing problems and incompatibilities I'm not sure why you married him.

Here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp4273432 ... t=#4273432

Frankly, I'm more concerned about his reaction to locking the door than the sex... you two just can't seem to communicate well. "You don't need to know" is an extremely odd response to, "did you lock the door?" which leads me to believe there are much larger problems behind all this.

I suspect there's some deep resentment or other feelings building up in both of you and it's coming out in the way you both attempt to communicate.

Plus, you both seem to want different things. He wants lots of kissing, you hate it. He want sightseeing, you want sex. Compromise helps, but so does being on the same wavelength in the first place...

When you guys get back, I would highly suggest some sort of marriage counseling (which should've been done BEFORE getting married!) Your pastor might be able to do this or suggest a good one. (I've had good and bad counselors before... they're only human. You may need to try different ones before you find an effective one.)

It appears you each are still caught up in what you each want, not what your partner wants... but that's just what little I can observe from a single post. Take that with salt.

Good luck, you two!

What Marcia said.

You felt miserable before you got married, and so you thought marrying would do what? Fix everything? That'd he'd change.

Honestly you treat yourself like a doormat, so it should be no surprise when your hubby does the same. You have expressed little regard for yourself, and how much you love him, but he sure doesn't seem interested in reciprocating. It's a load of bull that he didn't know what his sex drive was until he started having sex. It's called masturbation. Some only do it once a week. Some once a day. Some more than once.

You said it yourself, that sex is about making your partner happy. And that is precisely what your partner is NOT doing. You are correct that you and I see sex differently. I see it a as a mutual act between two people who want to give each other something special. While you think it is all about the other person. You treat yourself like a slave to him, while having no respect for yourself. Why should he respect you if you don't?

My advice was just that. As I said, I didnt' think an open marriage was for you, but it's an option.

But honestly, you saw this coming, your relationship was having problems BEFORE you got married, and now you're married. So again, it comes down to

1) having a frank discussion with him and working this out, even if it means a counselor
2) Divorce his ass now
3) Keep on living like a doormat like you've been doing, and get ready to enjoy the next forty to sixty years of life wit him.

Hello Butterflywings80,

I started to watch the videos posted by Arman Khodaei in his blog and on the second one, I thought of what you posted here, how miserable you feel - and probably the two of you.

On the second video posted on that page "Arman's blog", Arman explains quite well the obsession and the almost impossibility to let go when one has made a mistake and how difficult it is to go on with it.

Nevermind (if I may say so) if the mistake(s) was/were yours or his - or both! -, the result is that now, the honeymoon is a failure for both of you.

I hope that that particular video can cheer you up a bit and help to go further and better.
You said your husband is brilliant so maybe it's even more difficult for him to get over what he thinks, hoped and what is going on right now?

And, as a result, for you too.

And, even more, it could also be none of your "fault" (for the couple) but something that happened during the travel or at the resort or whatever that refrained him to be happy with you and do all the things he wanted to do with you during those first days of your marriage.

And for now, it's still too early for him to talk about it with you. If he's upset or something and doesn't want to talk about it right now, it's not going to be easy for you, to be stuck in that hotel room with him doing nothing.


(Excuse the poor english: it's not my native language. I hope you can understand what I mean to say nonetheless.)

Hi, first of all, I should introduce myself.

I joined sometime last year but don't think I've posted til now.

I'm married (now) to a man diagnosed with aspergers, and have a daughter diagnosed with aspergers (from my first marriage - first husband is a long story I won't get into for now). And even though I'm not diagnosed, I have lots of aspergers traits.

Except for being painfully sensitive to the actions and reactions of others, I'd probably be diagnosed with aspergers. If I was 20 years younger, I'd probably be diagnosed like my daughter - except when I was a kid, aspergers wasn't really diagnosed - kids were just written off as "different". And I was very lucky to have teachers in primary school who taught me how to manage most of the ways I was different from other kids my age - except for social skills. To this day, I do not understand people at all. I'm also losing friends because I misread the signals and end up making an idiot out of myself.

But even that's not why I'm posting.

I knew this day was coming - I've been trying to understand aspie relationships - it doesn't matter really if I have aspergers or not or borderline in between - my new husband does have aspergers and things are so difficult right now.

I've been trying to prepare since we got engaged - speaking to male friends who are aspies (although none are married) about relationships, looking up forums for advice, reading book after book on the topic. The only thing I have really been able to learn is that in relationships, supposedly female aspies act more like female NTs than male aspies.

I know from experience particularly with my daughter, but also a little from my husband, that whoever said aspies don't feel much is very wrong. I have seen in those close to me, aspies can feel just as deeply emotionally, just they can't always make sense of their emotions. I feel bad that I've learnt more about understanding what emotion my husband is displaying from his mum telling me what his actions mean he is feeling than him telling me himself.

Our wedding day a week ago was magical. He was so attentive and genuine and loving - the only problem on the day is the photographer asking us for lots of shots of us looking into each other's eyes - something neither of is comfortable with. I actually think I'm even more uncomfortable looking into people's eyes than he is.

But it's been a mess ever since. Both of us have strong religious values so we didn't have sex before we got married. And the sex isn't bad - it's actually quite good, or at least I think so. Which is why I don't understand this - he never initiates it. We've gone to a resort for our honeymoon, have nothing specific to do for two whole weeks. I thought we'd be like most newlyweds and having sex constantly. Before we left, he talked about booking activities to do and I said why would we do that, he'd never had sex and I hadn't had sex for 6 years since my first husband left my life, I thought he was joking. Turns out he wasn't.

I can barely get him to have sex once a day. To give you an indication - on my first honeymoon, my first husband and I were doing it 4-6 times every day - and that was with the jerk inviting his sister and her husband and kids to join us so we didn't get much alone time. We’d have done it even more then, but with me being a virgin then it was painful for the first few weeks and that was all I could physically manage until I got used to it.
Hubby and I have all the time in the world and no interruptions and we can barely manage it once a day? It's not a physical problem for him. He just doesn't feel like it. He says he enjoys it but he keeps rejecting me. He says he is tired but we're not doing anything to get tired. He just sits around all day reading and playing computer games.

I don't understand. I will add - I suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis and enthesitis (similar to arthritis but attacks ligaments rather than cartilage). So I need 10-12 hours of sleep a day and get exhausted easily and suffer pain constantly. Yet that doesn't stop me from wanting sex. In a week, he has only initiated sex and only because it was shortly after us having a conversation where I told him I feel undesirable because he never starts anything. He hasn't initiated anything since.

I realise even saying to him "if i put on sexy lingerie, it means I want sex" isn't enough. I have to outright tell him I want sex. But I don't understand why he never wants it - never starts anything. And what I understand even less is why he says no when I want it. He'll say "if you really want to do it, I'll do it, but I don't feel like it myself". Which hurts just as much. Being told he'll force himself to have sex with me if I demand it hurts just as much, if not more so, than him just saying he doesn't want to.

It's our honeymoon!! !! I don't understand why our sex life is made up of him forcing himself once a day for my sake. Physically he’s healthy. Before we were married, even though we didn’t have sex, we did touch each other (outside of clothes) and he had no problem with doing that. Every day he wanted to touch– even at times when I didn’t want to due to pain or “girl stuff”. He’d even want to touch that way several times a day. And it’s not that he’s not interested in girls or anything in general – he has told me how he has in the past looked at naked girls online but tries not to because he believes porn is wrong.

So I’m left wondering if the problem is me. I’m (very) overweight. I’m 125kg due to a reaction to one of the medications I take – every time I changed exactly what medication I was on, I gained 5-15kg in the first 1-2 weeks and even though I push my body hard and exercise past the point doctors have told me to stop, I can’t lose weight while I’m on meds. Before I started meds, I had an athletic perfectly shaped body. I’m double the weight I should be now. I have managed to lose 15kg and around three sizes since meeting my husband – actually it’s been in the last year because I started on another medication that treats a thyroid condition that doctors missed for years and with that treated, my hard work with exercise and diet is slowly paying off.

I accept that he will never notice how hard I’ve worked to lose that weight, and that he will never even notice the weight loss even though even though other people in my life who don’t notice these things have noticed and paid me compliments. It’s sad – even my first husband’s mistress who broke up our marriage (he had a lot of mistresses but the specific one who deliberately tried to break us up) has been complimentary about my weight loss (not to my face, but to others).

For male aspies…. Could it be that he hates what I look like naked? He keeps telling me what I look doesn’t matter and to not feel like I have to hide my body from him. But that’s not the same as wanting to see me naked and wanting my body. Being told constantly he doesn’t care what I look like, that he doesn’t hate it, is very different from being attracted to my body and wanting to see it. He and I are both very blunt – if he liked my body and liked seeing it, he would say so.

He doesn’t say anything unless I ask him directly, and even then he just says he doesn’t care. When I say “do you want me to take my clothes off for you, do you like me being naked” etc, even when I say to him I want a totally honest answer with a definite yes or a definite no, all he will answer is “I don’t care what you look like”.

I had a good friend who I opened up to (who doesn’t know he has aspergers) tell me it might be a confidence thing, so I’ve gone out of my way to tell him how good looking he is (which is true), and that he’s a good lover (which is also true) and that I like sex with him and want to do it more, and the things he is doing are good, and as many things I can tell him are good about what he does and how he does it. And after asking him, he seems to believe me when I tell him he’s good at things, so it’s not a sexual confidence thing either.

He wasn’t like this before – he was always cheeky, always touching me, always wanting to do more (even though we both agreed to not have sex before marriage because we both believe that to be important due to religious reasons). He even saw me topless and always liked looking at me topless. And other than my weight, I’m not hideous. I have a big nose, but other than my nose and weight, lots of guys tell me I’m good looking. I’m not sure I’d agree, but it’s what other people think, not what I think that is relevant.

I love him so much, but getting married seems to have made his bad aspie traits worse and he’s lost his playfulness and interest in anything sensual or sexual.

It’s not even the stress of the wedding – he moved interstate some time ago and came back only a week before the wedding. He did very little for the wedding at all. While he was off at his bucks day partying and then home sleeping, my maid of honour and I stayed up literally the entire night before the wedding doing all the things that he could have helped with but didn’t. The week before the wedding I averaged 4 hours sleep a night, and none the night before. The whole day is just a blur. Keep in mind my physical health problems and needing 10-12 hours sleep a night to function properly. The wedding was 7 days ago and this is the first day I’ve been able to walk without too much pain from the lack of sleep.

But it’s not just the sex. We’ve gone overseas to somewhere beautiful. I had wanted to just go somewhere local because it would be a lot cheaper and easier. But he insisted on going overseas so that we could do fun stuff together. I had said to him I don’t think we’ll have time to do all the fancy activities he’d planned because we’d be too busy having sex to do much. When he said to me we won’t be doing it THAT much I thought he was joking. But anyway, he was the one who was all keen to do lots of things so I very surprised to get here and have him not planned anything at all, and just wanting to sit around reading and playing computer games all day.

Don’t get me wrong – I would be more than ok with that if we’d gone somewhere local where there was stuff I could do. If we were back home, I could take a car out and feel safe t explore the sights myself, or I could watch tv (he told me not to pack my hard drive with lots of tv and movies on it because we wouldn’t have time with all the stuff we’d be doing so I feel lied to. Even here, if he’d said he was just planning to read and play computer games all day, I’d have taken books myself and tv shows and movies to watch).

He’s tried to make it about not understanding each other views on holidays, that he treats holidays as a time to relax and do nothing, but it’s not a misunderstanding. I was VERY happy to go somewhere local and just sit around doing nothing all day. But he wanted to travel many thousands of kilometres to another country to do things together, to see a new country and explore and we get here and I find out that he’s not interested in doing what he told me were doing. We’ve been here five days and he’s not left our tiny resort once. He doesn’t even come down to meals most days, and gets grouchy with me if I stay in the dining room (the only place we can access internet) so I have something to do. I have no books with me (and his are boring), I am not a big gamer – the only two computer games I play require internet access and the internet speeds are too slow to play even down here at the dining room. So I am going out of my mind with boredom. And it’s not safe as a woman, to go out by myself here.

So I am trapped. I have told him I desperately want to go out and do things. Every day I keep telling him I really want to go out and do things. Not nagging (because that makes him angry and he deliberately does the opposite, even to the point of hurting himself, if people nag him) but when we wake up I ask him what he has planned for us to go out and do today. At lunchtime I ask him if he wants to go out for one of the afternoon tours, and at dinner I ask him if he’s had a chance to look through the tourist brochures to decide what we’ll do tomorrow.

I am just so down that I cry whenever I’m alone because I feel like he doesn’t want to do anything at all with me. I may as well not even be here. I miss my friends and I miss my daughter who I have only been able to talk to once for two minutes because he wanted me to go back to our villa – no idea why because he didn’t want to spend time with me, just wanted to sit there playing computer games. He likes having me in the room, but he doesn’t even like me doing anything. I make friendship bracelets for fun (just knotting strings) but then he comes over to watch the one tv show we do have with us, and he starts pouting, acting like I’m being rude to him and neglecting him because I am tying knots instead of just lying there doing absolutely nothing. He doesn’t want me to hold him, or cuddle him or touch – he just wants me to lie there doing nothing at all.

Watching tv, reading, playing computer games. He wants me there in the room, but doesn’t want me doing anything else at all. I have mild ADD and I’d rather shoot myself in the head than sit around doing nothing. I physically can’t do it. It makes me physically ill to try and sit and do nothing.

I wouldn’t have a problem with him just sitting around reading and playing computer games all day if 1. He’d just been honest with me about his intentions instead of leading me to believe that we were going to do all these wonderful activities and exploring because if he’d been honest, I’d have packed stuff to do instead of all the romantic lingerie I packed which he couldn’t care less about and 2. Even if I had packed stuff to do, he gets pouty when I do anything at all around him, so even having stuff wouldn’t have made much difference and 3. If he’d been honest about his intentions, we could have gone somewhere local where I’d have stuff to do instead of being cooped up in a tiny room all day everywhere.

I’m at my wits end, I don’t even know what to ask for advice about.

As well as not being interested in sex, and not wanting to go out and do anything with me, and not wanting me to do anything when I’m with him, just sit there in silence with him, he also doesn’t listen to me. I’ve asked him to do a few tiny things for my health. Because I’m a nurse and have so many problems with my health including a low immune system, if people don’t wash their hands around me, I get very sick very fast. I know people with aspergers need reason and logic so I’ve been totally reasonable and logical about it with. I have shown him the research from my university degrees (I have three) and from my work including professional journal articles on handwashing and about how extremely important it is.

I’ve explained with my weak immune system, it can literally kill someone with immune problems. He has sisters with health problems, so he understands my condition, and he knows low immune system is part of it, and that people with my health problems catch germs extremely easily.

He has a background in science – he’s a genius and understands the concept totally. But yet his attitude is just “I don’t get sick, they’re my hands not yours, so I don’t need to wash them”. Despite all the research journals I’ve shown him and the fact he KNOWS what he is saying is illogical and makes no sense, he does it anyway.

What worries me is today I ended up telling him exactly how I feel – that when he touches me with unwashed hands, the stress of knowing how sick he will make me if he keeps doing it actually makes me physically ill from anxiety when touching me, he responded with “well you make me extremely ill when you tell me to wash my hands”.

I ask him to explain what he meant (because it makes zero sense) saying “what does that mean” and because I’ve always been told that if an aspie makes no sense, ask for clarification. But like he usually does, he just responded with “whatever”, I said “please tell me” and he gave me the silent treatment, not even acknowledging I had even spoken.

And this happened quite a number of times. Like when I asked “did you lock the room door” as we headed out the room, and he refuses to answer. If I ask again, he just says to me rudely “if you needed to know, I’d tell you” which makes me extremely angry because I wouldn’t ask something if I didn’t need to know. I have no idea if he’s the type of person who is happy to leave a hotel room door unlocked because he has no valuables in there – I’ve met many people who are more than happy to leave hotel rooms unlocked, we’ve never discussed it, and I have my passport, my laptop (a lot more valuable than his) and my new phone (worth about 20 times what his is worth) all in the room and I sure don’t want them stolen and I have no idea if he’s a person who locks up or doesn’t.

If I try to explain why I need to know, then I’m “nagging” and he refuses to tell me even if by his own admission he understands why I need to know.

I don’t understand him – his aspergers isn’t mild, so why does he play games so much? Why does he hate it when I be direct? And why does he blame me when I give instructors so clear a two year old with aspergers could understand it and he does the opposite of what I’ve asked?

And what is it with him deliberately ignored a really simple request (washing hands after toilet) when it has next to no impact on him but it could make me very ill and potentially kill me if I get sick enough (and it’s a real possibility, only slim but still very possible).

I just don’t understand. I have a surprising number of aspies in my life, I know how the typical aspie acts but why is my husband so different? My first marriage was extremely abusive with my first husband ignoring me at best, hurling abuse regularly, snapping at me every time I didn’t do things exactly his way, and towards the end, becoming extremely violent. There are little things like the ignoring and being snappy that are extremely triggering for me and I’m struggling with depression really badly right now. I know my new husband is not the same, he would never deliberately hurt me, and he would never hit me no matter how angry he was, but the moodiness and snappiness cuts me to the core.

And if it’s like this on our honeymoon, what does that say about our future when there are other people around, when we’re both working (or me trying to find work anyway), with my daughter around who isn’t always easy to cope with, with the pressures of every day life. If he can’t cope now when it’s just the two of us with no responsibilities and just supposed to be relaxing and having fun, I’m worried about what the future holds.

Please give me some advice on what to do? Why doesn’t he ever want to have sex? Why doesn’t he want to spend ANY time with me at all? Why does he snap at me and then ignore me and refuse to speak every time I ask him to repeat what he said or ask what he meant when he says things that make no sense or are mean?

I don’t understand and with the history of my first husband and having depression and PTSD and having Asperger traits myself, I can’t work it out, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong or have the first clue how to make things at all better.

Honeymoons are supposed to be happy and exciting not crying all the time (when he can’t see me) and going nuts from boredom

Holy smokes - what a mess! From the way he's acting, I would wonder if he even likes you at all - and why on earth he wanted to marry you???

This has nothing to do with you - you're not the deficiency here... he just seems mean, controlling and doesn't like anything other than what pleases him. This is NOT necessarily an apergers' thing - it's a "spoiled little brat" thing! He's the one who has to come to terms with the fact he has to share his life and time with someone, not just his own favorite interests.

Please bear in mind this is only my observation from a few short posts... I'm not advising anything. I just suspect it's more his problem than yours.