How do you tell someone about being Aspie?

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How do you tell people that you have Asperger's? When is a good time? I've noticed over the past year that i've had a rather difficult time doing things socially that I'm supposed to be doing. My husband is in the Army... i'm supposed to socialize with the other "wives". At times I wonder if things would run alot smoother if everyone just knew that I'm an Aspie... or would it really make no differance?

Does anyone have any experiance with this? I guess what i'm trying to say is how has being more or less open about your Asperger's made a differance in your life?

I'm sort of starting to tell a few people, and it's been pretty positive. Some people have said "oh, that explains everything" and have been brilliant, but the majority have listened, *appeared* to take what I say on board...and then instantly forgotten, and reverted straight back to doing things that I asked politely if they could stop because I find them difficult. I guess most people have so much of their own stuff to deal with, it goes in one ear and out the other. In answer to your question of "how" I tell people, it's usually been rather blurted

xx

In my experience, if you aren't in a wheelchair, don't have a hump, a limp, a club foot, or drool on yourself constantly, they don't genuinely believe you have a disability, so whatever you tell them, they pretty much ignore, as though you were just making it up for attention and sympathy. Visible disfigurement or obvious extreme cognitive impairment are the only handicaps that really exist - if you can't spot it from fifty feet away, it's not real.

People who don't know you well won't know or care what you're talking about when you try to tell them you have autism, and won't remember it five minutes later (they really don't have a clear idea what autism is, and HFA/AS is a totally alien concept). Only people who've known me all my life, the ones I most expected to say "Ah, c'mon, there's nothing wrong with you, you're as normal as the next guy", were the ones who instead reacted with "Oh...well...that explains a lot, doesn't it?"

Everybody else continues to discriminate against me for my differences just as they have all my life. To them, I'm not disabled, just uncooperative and irritating.

It is difficult to tell people. I was diagnosed at 25 and am 29 now, and I'm just now getting to the point where I have told 10-15 people. I guess I feel like I want to know if people actually like me and I can actually trust them before I let them know something that's really pretty personal. Maybe I end up being afraid that I will become a gossip point...although I probably already am just for saying/acting/being weird on occasion.

Sidebar: I've always hated it when I'm expected to socialize with the other "wives/girlfriends". Some of them are rather...silly. They talk about expensive purses and I want to talk about evolution. Le sigh.

The best way I have found to tell people is to chose a person to focus on getting to know. Then, if I find that I actually enjoy the company of that person, and s/he seems to enjoy me and my quirks, at some point in time I will let on to the Asperger's, generally after I've done something particularly inexplicable. This friend laughs in a good way at my observance/plunging arms into birdseed/inability to stop touching a certain texture, and then I admit the reason behind what's going on.

I know I treat my ASD diagnosis differently from a lot of posters here. Asperger's is more of my own private explanation rather than something I present to everyone. Knowing that there actually is something wrong with me helps me to try harder and also be more forgiving of myself. I'm still not sure what it does for those outside of my closest circle though.