Help, NT wife messed up

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I mean, telling him you're always there for him and convince him that he has nothing to worry about (not by words). Maybe a pat on the shoulder every now and then? Telling him you're very proud of him and why? And highlight all the things you love and find sexy about him, including all the little things.

I'm working on your suggestion now. Thank you.

Maybe or maybe not pat him on the shoulder, some AS people are not OK with it.

Haha true.

I'm an Aspie who was actually also diagnosed with Codependency after my 1st realtionship fell apart. I was a major reason as to why it fell apart but it wasn't entirely my fault. I believe some of my codependent behavior was due to BAD anxiety & OCD along with having various disabilities that cause me to be dependent in general. I kept having bad thoughts going around in my head & started believing things were going on that weren't. I became very untrusting(maybe paranoid), controlling, demanding, & unstable as a result. I've also had some manipulative behavior like making threats to end the relationship or other stupid sh!t. Things are a lot better in my current relationship for lots of reasons including that I tried working on myself alot since then in various ways. I grew a lot from the experience & being on anxiety & OCD medication helps too. There's lots of other reasons as well but it's not worth me going into it all. I don't think I'd be diagnosed with codependency nowadays. I also noticed that I was also attracted to codependent women but they weren't interested in me. I had an offline friend who was codependent too & he was going to Codependent Anonymous. We were both members of a support group for people with depression, anxiety, &/or bipolar & he was bipolar in addition to being codependent. He talked about Codependent Anonymous a bit & it seemed like it might could be beneficial for you MrsWiggles. I would also second the recommendation by TheOther & some others in this thread that you should get your own counseling. I can understand why your Aspie doesn't wanna do the counseling thing himself thou. If the counselor isn't very knowledgeable or experienced with Aspergers, it could work against him. There have been some NT/Aspie couples who gotten couples counseling with a counselor who wasn't aware or experienced with Aspergers & the counselor took the NT's side on most things & thought the Aspie wasn't trying or just being an a$$hole. I tried counseling for a bit on my own at one point & the guy didn't believe I was on the autism spectrum & I felt like me & him were just going around in circles & he was just talking at me when we weren't. My girlfriend is also on the spectrum & has gotten counseling off & on at times with a few different counselors & she doesn't find counseling to be very helpful for her. They just don't understand how her various issues affect her & what they want her to do doesn't seem to work for her much. She does find counseling can help her sometimes but some of that is cuz it gives her an outlet/ear to complain to about whatever. She does go to counseling sometimes but it's not a high priority for her. Some of the problem is probably cuz her counselors didn't believe she was on the spectrum. I do believe counseling can potentially be very helpful for some people & couples but it can depend on finding the rite counselor & maybe what specific issues the person or couple has. Anyways there may not be much you can do to get your Aspie to go to couples counseling or to get counseling on his own. However going to counseling yourself would show him that you are indeed trying to work on yourself & it might be beneficial in other ways if you were to find the rite counselor. Psych meds might could also be potentially helpful if you have an underlying disorder like anxiety, depression, &/or OCD. It's fairly common for those things to coexist with codependency.

I forgot to say that one saying I try to remind myself of regularly is ~ "Pick Your Battles". I've been called argumentative in the past & I can see why. I think us Aspies can sometimes come off that way cuz we want things to be rite/make sense & we feel like others are not listening to us & being critical of our point of view when they disagree so we become defensive about things. Some Aspies can be real a$$holes about arguing & become absorbed in it & there's no reasoning with us when we get in that state. It's best for the other person to pull back & drop that conversation. In heated arguments it's pretty common for people in general to say things they don't mean or say them in a much more blunt way than we could. Maybe that's what happened when you threatened to leave your Aspie MrsWiggles. I find I have to keep reminding myself of that saying in relationships especially romantic 1s. I want to debate or disagree or be critical of something that isn't really important in the big scheme of things & is NOT worth upsetting my partner & us having realtionship problems. I try to let things go but I don't always succeed of corse but I'm a lot better than I used to be.

How about to apology and just being nice again towards each other? Sometimes it's only idiotic behaviour that separates the people.

Thank you for sharing your story. I could relate to what you wrote and seeing how you’re doing better is reassuring. Because of this thread I’m trying to find a good therapist for myself because I don’t know if my current therapist is the best one to help with codependency.

A good saying I will do best to keep in mind, especially during heated talks. Actually it’s good in general. Thank you.

Last edited by MrsWiggles on 16 Jul 2019, 1:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I tried, a few times, with apologies which he understands I didn’t mean my words but it still hurt him terribly. Wish he could feel how remorseful I was, words just seem too flimsy for my regret.

That is where the contract plays its role. It accomplishes what your apology fails to do. DO NOT make it emotional. Leave out the pronouns we/us/our, unless you are discussing real estate or shared possessions. Keep the contract dry and lawyer-like, enough to wow a corporate legal department. Format it like a formal letter. Outline the behaviors you intend to change, what your consequences will be if you fail to do so, and the time frame for those consequences. They include but are not limited to an immediate and permanent no-contact breakup. Have a public notary stamp it, although this is optional.

If you know someone who works in a legal field, like a paralegal or something, have that person write it for you. I know it'll sound weird or stupid to NTs, but a contract will win over an aspie man far better than anything "heartfelt". "Right" emotions are pretty easy to fake, and we aspies know it. We've been doing that since childhood, as part of "masking". A letter outlining your husband's recourse and giving him back the power that you essentially took from him, will show him that you're serious about making amends.

I'll give your husband credit here. His patience is much stronger than my own. Cherish what you have (or had). If my wife made the same threat, she'd be standing in front of a divorce court judge before she could even finish saying it.

You may wish to contact the Austin Society of Texas to see if they can refer you to an ASD-aware couples counselor.

That's very unfortunate. Maybe you should see the counselor yourself for a while. Perhaps your husband might be willing to come along later if he sees that the counselor seems to be helping you?

I don't blame him! Marriage counselors automatically take the wife's side, and he's smart enough to know that. Since his wife so kindly threatened to divorce him, he doesn't want yet another person getting on his case. Also, counselors in general seem to dislike aspies as a demographic, because aspie are bad at answering emotion-related questions, and "emotions" are what counselors are all about. I, personally, want nothing to do with therapy for as long as I live. The few horrible experiences I had a teen are more than enough.

"How bad?" I cried myself to sleep after at least half the sessions, and took up drinking at age 12 because of the therapist's callousness toward me. By high school, I got good at keeping the therapist blissfully busy, by fabricating nonexistent problems, like test anxiety.

I think the contract idea is good but my husband is against cutting off communication with me and he doesn’t care about dividing assets. We’re best friends despite this and I don’t think he wants to lose his friend, too. Clearly it’s complicated but there’s still a lot of love.

It wouldn't surprise me if some marriage counselors automatically take the wife's side, but what is your basis for believing that all of them (or the vast majority) do?

I've noticed that the anti-Aspie hate sites make the opposite complaint -- that the all-too-few ASD-aware couples counselors automatically take the side of the (usually male) Aspie partner. I suspect that that may be an overgeneralization, too.

It seems to me that a bad couples counselor would be overly quick to side with one partner or the other, but I would hope that there are at least some better couples counselors who would manage to stay neutral.


It seems to me that a good couples counselor wouldn't "get on his case," but instead would aim to help both partners communicate with each other better, with the aim of helping them arriving at win-win solutions if at all possible.


There are different schools of thought in psychotherapy, so I wouldn't assume that all counselors are "all about" the exact same thing. Be that as it may, the only kind of counselor MrsWiggles should consider seeing would be an ASD-aware one.


I'm very sorry to hear that you had such a horrible therapist! And it's certainly you personal right to refuse to see a therapist ever again. However, if all therapists were as horrible as yours, none of them would be in business anymore.

Did you ever try asking your parents to get you a different and hopefully better therapist? If so, why did they refuse, and/or why were they unable to get you a different therapist? Or did it simply never occur to you that better therapists might possibly exist?