Advice with possibly Aspie wife

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Fairly AS male married to odd, possibly AS female. I tend to test as socially odd, (90 aloof and pragmatic, 70 for rigidity - which falls into 'could be an Aspie on the BAPQ - other tests put me in the same ballpark. I also test as the opposite of highly sensitive.) but do sometimes scare therapists and diagnosed AS people, so...um...some uncertainty there. My own communication issues could be part of this - and probably are - but she had similar problems - maybe worse - with our marriage counselors.
...our marriage is complicated. From her therapist, she has a diagnosis of BPD. From our marriage counselors (many of whom have been unable to stand her), there is a strong suspicion that she is BPD, and significantly NPD or AS. From her family, there is a strong suspicion of AS, and a bad personality. Frequent depressions too. From an AS support group, she really, really resembles some of the highly sensitive AS women. From the interwebz, her parents resemble Penelope Trunk's parents. From me, there is a near-certainty of BPD, with some NPD traits. However, her NPD behaviors don't feel evil to me - more like simple incompetence. Eg., her reaction to me mentioning NPD was to read a bunch of articles, agree that they were a perfect match, and ask why that sort of behavior would be bad for a R/S. And a bunch of extra odd behaviors including::
1. Very, very, very rigid communication style: An awful lot of 'no, you need to say this next.' And, an inability to understand someone reflecting her statements unless they use exactly the same wording. Basically, strange attempts to control the conversation in a continual fashion and an inability to process anything else.
2. Inability to interact with our child - seriously - mommy time is basically TV time.
3. Inability to multitask.
4. Tendency to sleep from 4 AM-noon.
5. Inability to clean up after herself - will leave moldy dishes everywhere.
6. Tendency to leave a jacket on her head in high stimulus situations. Never seen that before.
7. A lot of difficulty connecting very closely related statements - took over 4 hours to explain the golden rule. Also took a while to understand that NPD behaviors could be damaging to a R/S.
8. A tendency to believe that everyone around her is an Aspie
9. Something resembling a panic disorder related to her husband having any Aspie traits at all - her parents have an eventful marriage - lots of bruises - and blame her mother's issues (AS?) for all their problems.
10. Low 'I'm sorry, I never would have realized that hitting you with the bat would hurt your feelings' empathy - applied to both friends and family.
11. Odd sensitivities to psychiatric medicine, alcohol, and aspartame.

Anyways, there are a couple of issues that I'd like advice/feedback on:
(a) A lot of these look similar to AS traits. Am I off-base?
(b) We try non-violent communication. (Express/show understanding.) It sort of helps except for a couple of differences. First off, the goal of NVC is to show understanding of feelings without necessarily agreeing. This would work well, as most of my wife's issues are a bit off-kilter - but the feelings are real. However, she isn't interested in feelings - just factual agreement. Second off, she tends to get confused and believe that I am answering a different question if I don't use exactly the same words she does. This wouldn't be a problem if she also didn't complain about me parroting.
(c) The sleep thing is really annoying. Any advice from people with the same issues. It is pretty impervious to pill choice and daily schedule - except when she is working. We've tried antidepressants, anti-psychotics, lithium, et cetera.
(d) The panic disorder thing...after spending 2 days with her continuously, telling her I'm feeling tired and going upstairs later without telling her can send her into meltdown. I'm kind of hoping that attending an AS support group may help her familiarize herself with things.
(e) A mixture of genuinely trying to make things better and dissipating stress through abusive tantrums. In practice, the distinction between a low empathy individual being frustrated and deliberate abuse is subtle. I favor walking out, but it is hard for her.
(f) A tendency to have gigantic meltdowns related to failings where she is far more guilty than I. (Eg, full-time housewife, full-time employed husband, with large commute - husband spends more time with child, puts to bed, bathes in morning. Therefore, wife is worried that husband is neglecting child. Similarly, husband does chores, laundry, dishes. Wife complains that husband is forcing her to be messy.)
(g) She complains about lack of synchronization. Albeit, she also sleeps until noonish most days and doesn't go to bed until 4. She also tends to make a lot of unilateral decisions. I'm willing to believe she has a real complaint. But, I'm not really sure what I can do. Calling her to plan the day sort of works - but she tends to not pick up the phone and leave her cell uncharged. Similarly, she tends to be feverishly watching movies when I get home. And refuses to sleep with the family, but complains that we're not going to be at the same time. So, I divided between this being something that I'm actually doing - with partial fixes including scheduled phone calls and weekend planning and utter BS. I've tried a default ping - where I tell her whenever I am going to do something independently from her, but - I'm not sure this is what she needs - as she doesn't do the same with me and honestly tends to not notice when I'm speaking - dunno.

--Argyle

Much of what you posted resembles a young woman who's member of my extended family who is an extreme narcissist and perhaps mildly aspie.

Have you ever had any concrete experience with your wife that would lead you to believe that she desires, is capable of and is willing to work toward self improvement?

If not, accept her exactly as she is. You'll have to continue doing all the work, of course and do your best to let her accusations just roll off yourself. Don't take any part in making her the mother to any more children; she will not parent them.

Wow, that sounds like hell. Exactly why I'm scared to get married/be in a relationship.

For the sleep thing, one medicine that helped me was these herbal sleeping pills you can buy at Dollar Tree. They have Valerian root, chamomile, and melatonin. I take them 2-3 hours before bed and can fall asleep fairly quickly now. Basically I take a bunch of coffee/caffeine/other stimulating things during the day to function, and it keeps me up. So now I've managed to cut down on the coffee/etc by having this combo during the morning. 1 multivitamin, 2 ginseng pills (one dose), 1000mg Vitamin C, one B vitamin complex pill, 2000mg fish oil, 1000mg Taurine. I tried Ritalin and it didn't help me function better at all. One other thing helpful for me is oddly enough, having more saturated fat/cholesterol in the diet, improves my ability to get things done a lot. Unorthodox, but I like having, say, 4 strips of bacon and 2 eggs for breakfast. The body needs fat to metabolize vitamins correctly, also saturated fat from animals has DHA, which is an omega 3, so it's almost like taking fish oil. Obviously this will take some effort on her part, to diet/be healthy.

I've had screwy sleep schedules, I think mostly caused by my mom having an even screwier sleep schedule and similar issues (though my mother does work fairly hard, just terrible at housework.) My mother's sleep schedule has gotten horrendous in that she goes to bed at 6-7 and wakes up at 3-4. She wouldn't even go to a church service because it was "too early" at 3PM. But, I've just (I hope) broken out of the cycle of sleeping until noon, because I hated it, and those sleeping pills helped loads, also on them, the QUALITY of sleep is much better, ie, I can sleep only 6 hours, let's say, and still be ready to go in the morning, I used to require 10+ hours of sleep for the same feeling. For me, my catalyst to change was I was simply missing out on too many things, I was missing my ice skating, missing 9:30AM church, etc. BTW, sleeping until noon isn't my "default" sleep schedule, I just end up in the rut of it I guess. I might not be a "morning person" but there were times in my life where I was even out of school and not working where I'd wake up at 9 or so everyday. I'd like to ideally start waking up at 6 or so, just to get more done.

So part of it is medical, and what I suggested could help, but part of it is she simply needs desire/drive to change. This is where I think women have a disadvantage. Guys will just be told throughout life "Yeah, well, I don't give a s**t, I don't care about your issues, you wake the f**k up at 6/7/8." Imagine going to a marriage counselor and the roles are reversed? You'd get slapped silly by the counselor for waking up at noon, as a man. Whereas women I feel are sorta given more sympathy compared to men with similar issues. So for your wife, she has to have the drive and desire to make the change. Whatever the drive and desire is, I don't know, but she has to do it, and she has to be told plainly that the survival of her family depends on it.

Kind of a lot - she's pretty self-aware when not running a script. For the BPD, she's been doing DBT for over a year. She's able to control most of her meltdowns and has mostly got a grip on her abandonment issues.
For the NPD, well, there aren't a lot of known treatments - so she figures that CBT is reasonable. In the meantime, her rule is that she isn't allowed to complain or criticize. She kind of holds to it...excepting the AS-related panic attacks.
For the AS, we've been visiting a support group and looking for a MC with experience with AS.
For the child-rearing, she was pretty good at mothering before the child started talking. Afterwards, she has a lot of trouble with discipline and also with ?creative play?. So, she's put our child in a co-op preschool and watches our child there. She seems to do pretty well in a structured environment. Mind you, I'm in charge of discipline. She wouldn't be a good choice.
Generally, if she understands something is 'bad' or 'hurting someone' and isn't triggered, she'll try to do the right thing - within the limits of her fears. People scare her. They are very hard for her to understand.

However, some behaviors have been very persistent. She shows no ability to multitask, sleeps all day, and has a very rigid communication style. The AS-related panic attacks are weakening a bit (as she's fundamentally aware that she shows a lot of these behaviors) - but are pretty strongly rooted. Your point about children is well-taken. On some level, the relative stability of some traits compared to the mutability of the more BPD-like traits made me suspect AS. That, and, some of this feels much more like a hardware than a software issue. One oddity is that BPD and NPD are both things that she freely acknowledges and owns without emotion. AS, on the other hand, is something where she recognizes that her behavior isn't normal and can acknowledge that she has issues, but is highly triggering.

I guess I'm mostly looking for advice about sleep issues, absurdly rigid communication with a highly sensitive person, and dealing with the AS-related panic attacks.

Sleep issues...erm...will probably be solved with a job - they always were before. No other ideas really. Doesn't seem sufficiently motivated for volunteer work, but could happen. To be fair, I've had out-of-work acquaintances with similar issues.
Rigid communication...erm...my plan is a mixture of nonviolent communication, text-based communication, and a few confrontations regarding her rigidity of speech - she sort of believes the rigidity is normal...I'm reasonably confident that it is not. I'm not sure though.
AS-related panic attacks...support group should help - MC may also. I worry a bit about pushing her - as I suspect that there are some things she just can't do - like housecleaning. She comes from a not terribly accepting asian background - there seems to be a tendency to train people to conform pretty harshly - which is fine, unless you're not able to conform.

--Argyle

@1000 Y'know, the part I leave out is that, excepting the meltdowns and depression, we agree on an awful lot - and that she never stops trying.** I could think of this as horrid or be grateful for my blessings. From my perspective, an emotionally needy wife would probably be a bigger issue. I'm not exactly Mr. Cuddles. I prefer occasional meltdowns from a woman who sometimes resembles a nervous version of Data. We've mostly reached 'workable' accommodations - and there's plenty of NTs who don't.* Albeit, I come from a background that does not favor divorce in most instances.

I'll look into the herbal sleeping pills and other vitamins. She takes fish oil, but avoids fat - which may be part of the issue. I've been trying to convince her that carbohydrates are more problematic than fats. Part of the issue is that she's terrified of waking up alone - so she stays up with me in the house and sleeps in. Her mother may be visiting soonish - so that could help. She may also find a job. That'd help too.

--Argyle
*Y'know, in my darker moments, I believe that many marital problems could be solved if, instead of diagnosing introverted people with AS when they have R/S issues, therapists started with a default diagnosis of RPD (rigid personality disorder) for their partners and opted to treat that issue first. The reality is that there's a pretty broad range of 'non-clinical' humanity and that adaptation is generally required to sustain a R/S. That adaptation is most easily sustained by the motivated person...so, since the AS person is usually not the unhappy one... It would also get the point across that inability to accept differences is a personality issue. I may be a bit sensitized because it took a bit of 'communication' before my wife started working on her issues, so, y'know, please take this with a grain of salt.
**Mothering does not come naturally to her - but she researched the sort of things babies need, like hugs - and provided them - even though it was quite difficult for her. I've seen quite narcissistic couples who opted for sticking their children in cut-rate daycares and never hugging them. Kid is 6 inches shorter, uncommunicative, and looks like Gollum - doesn't seem AS, just neglected. Poor little tyke.

I feel for her. She seems so lost and afraid sometimes. And her coping strategies aren't particularly effective either. But she keeps trying. I know she needs to change some things and fail and learn, but, where practical and advisable, I'd like to be there for her in an effective way. This is a bit hard for me sometimes, because my family's approach to personal issues is 'broken bone...walk it off'. That sucked, btw.

I used to feel like her, excepting the fear. But I was lucky. My mother is a lot like me and she gave me realistic expectations and training for dealing with ?NTs? (people who aren't family) I was probably also lucky because I'm fairly emotionally muted. Dunno.

Well, sleep issues, right, I think cause executive dysfunction, basically because how are you supposed to get things done during the day if you're not up for half of it? You know? So if she wants to be a housewife, she's gotta get the sleep in check. As far as the fat, you need specifically, and this seems unorthodox, saturated fat and cholesterol. Vegetable fats don't really help much with anything, as we've only began using them relatively recently and our bodies haven't adapted to use them, before 1900 or so, everything was fried in or cooked with fat, not oil. Your body uses fat and cholesterol to make hormones. Without the fat, it can't make hormones. Doesn't mean going full Atkins/Paleo/whatever sort of extreme dieting, just don't be afraid of whole milk, bacon, egg yolks, etc.

Heh. Y'know, as far as I can tell, 'low-fat' diets are responsible for some fraction of the obesity epidemic. I wonder if they might be responsible for some fraction of increasing mental health issues. (brains need fats)

Here's how it works...
(a) high sugar/carbohydrate diets are known to promote obesity and diabetes. Diabetes messes up blood chemistry, which causes heart failure, kidney failure, and a bunch of other problems.
(b) If you cut fats, people switch to carbohydrate high foods.

Sadly, the experimental evidence that fats promote heart failure is quite limited. For example, Eskimos (blubber diet) have very low heart disease incidences. So do American communities nourished on pork fat. The original findings were based on a strong association between cardiovascular events and heart failure arrived at by plotting slightly over half of the points from a world-wide study. Plotting all the points showed no association. Interestingly, a similar plot of carbohydrate consumption versus cardiovascular events showed a strong association, even then.

The moral of that story: When asked about the most pressing health issue of the time (obesity), the American medical establishment gave exactly the wrong answer for about 50 years. Sigh. Skepticism is good sometimes. It probably wasn't even a conspiracy. I'd have preferred that.

Now, please don't take this as an excuse to eat tons of calories - that probably isn't a good idea.

Personally, I'm inclining towards a friend's attitude.

'Okay, now you want to be a housewife??'
'Too late. You're fired. If you want, we can review your performance. You were a terrible housewife, stay at your soul-destroying job.'
'Man, you had a cushy spot. If I'd have been in your shoes, the place would have been spotless. 2 hours to clean, 1 hour workout, 5 hours vegging out. Great life. Too bad you blew it.'

Of course, I'll probably put it as...
'Y'know dear, you're much happier when you work. And our child is old enough that it'll be lonely at home. I really think it'd be best if you find something to do outside the house.'

--Argyle

Your posts are fascinating. But before I respond; please tell me what R/S is. Acronym dictionary doesn't seem to have anything applicable.

Ah, R/S==relationship - sorry about that.

An example of non-clinical humanity would be a family member with an absolute fascination for farm equipment. His marriage seems happy enough, although their property is littered with tractors and parts - and his wife's fingers whiten visibly whenever his hobby is mentioned. He's also _a lot_ more country than she is or ever would like to be. Significant differences really can exist and be survived without resorting to diagnosis. There's no reason to insist that your partner either change or show that they're somehow unable to change - that's just foolishness - unless a S/O is abusive, unwilling to be a sex partner, or unable to contribute meaningfully to a R/S.

I'm also looking for an Aspie-aware MC, as some of my wife's current beliefs would benefit from an expert saying, 'That's complete BS.' I'm reasonably confident that dementia is not caused by not watching enough TV and that AS is not particularly infectious. These appear to be a mixture of her trying to put names to stuff she's really experiencing*, misunderstanding articles she reads, and a strong confirmation bias towards interpretations that diffuse responsibility.

--Argyle
*Like, for instance, dissipating stress through a special interest and losing social skills while being socially withdrawn.

Ha. My absolutely favorite (unfortunately, late) uncle had a fascination with and collection of farm equipment. And I do not have a TV. (I deny all rumors of my dementia.) Thanks for the acronym clarification.

My reference to whether or not you have reason to believe that you wife may change is based on my young lady relative who is so destructive to her self and her relationships that I fear she may not survive another 5 years. She has never shown any inclination to change.

I have been in relationships with folks with BPD and NPD and I, personally, would never choose to live with any of them. Their tantrums, irresponsibility, destructiveness and lack of basic human respect is beyond my ability to endure willingly. I am especially concerned for my niece who will likely end up homeless in a cold climate, so pronounced is her destructiveness to self and others. Some tragedies just are.

In your initial post, many of your wife's mechanisms sounded like my niece. Sorry I projected the parallel. You seem to get along with her lovingly and brilliantly, with a gift for practical creativity in the relationship. Rarely have I heard of acceptance of the reality of a difficult mate combined with the will for enduring relationship as illustrated in your posts.

I am accustomed to hearing from partners of sexy narcissists, trying to find the magic words that will change their tornado mates into sexy yet responsible, rational girls. They are in denial as to the real nature of the women to whom they have joined. Clearly this is not the case with you and your wife.

I have no ideas for you except this; you mentioned your wife's oriental background. A friend of mine recently threw out a curious statement. (There was some conversational context I don't remember.) He is a high school teacher in the Bronx NYC and has worked with kids from many cultures for decades. He said this; "Chinese seem to not be able to recognize mental illness; they seem to have a culturally rooted selective blindness to it." (Sorry; I don't know whether your wife is Chinese.)

I looked online and found that mental illness in China is severely stigmatized. That combined with a culture of strict conformity is probably a potent psychological brew. I grew up in a Polish ghetto wherein everyone was much more concerned with what the neighbors might think than the American norm. (The historical American norm being based on individualism as opposed to conformity.) The result of worry as to how the community views one's family was; secrecy and ultimately a lot of personal denial as opposed to personal examination.

The opposite is currently postulated as one explanation of geographical clusters of statistically high occurrence of autism. In a region where one's neighbor children are diagnosed with Aspergers, the community sees & hears Aspergers traits and thus can recognize it more readily in their own family members and seek diagnosis; all with little stigma attached.

If a certain type of illness is deemed to be so shameful that it's hidden and denied by almost all families within a culture; that illness may very well become unrecognizable to members of that culture. I'm suggesting that it might be useful to talk to to your wife comparing physical illness to mental illness. Just as there's here's no shame in being Type 1 diabetic; there's no shame in being on the autistic spectrum. Just an idea. Culturally rooted attitudes are slow to change but sometimes when immigrants are exposed to potentially freeing attitudes of the new home culture, they can adopt some of them and thrive better.

@Mountain Strangely apropos...as I'm half Chinese and spent quite a few years in denial, trying to shield my wife from being thought of as crazy. However, my wife's family is fairly western in their views towards mental illness - and spent a lot of time with psychologists - so she tends to be the person diagnosing herself.

@PK212 I'm definitely enabling, but I also tend to hesitate and fiddle a lot - it may be an illness of engineers.

I'm trying to balance:
(a) being open to my own issues (I can be pretty solitary and am not a great communicator...I also, by nature, would tend to tell my wife to 'deal with' a broken bone on her own. She'd help me get to the hospital. I probably would help her - I'd just resent it a bit.)
(b) being open to real cultural issues (On one hand, co-dependency is an issue. On the other hand, my wife's culture is fairly co-dependent. Her brother described it like this:
Well, see, people are different. Basically, you Americans are soulless monsters who leave your brothers to die in the street. I've seen the news. I can't imagine how you call yourself a Christian country. Stuff like that would never happen where I'm from. Of course, this tends to encourage the crazy people because they aren't suffering consequences, so there are real disadvantages. Did I tell you about this one lady in my company?? In the US, BAM!!, she'd be out on the street. Here, she's a 10 year veteran.)
(c) Being tolerant of her communication issues (When she's completely open, and really trying, explaining, eg, the Golden Rule will take 4 hours, including a fair bit of web-surfing and a lot of diagrams.)

Now, there are a lot of levels on which I'm enabling:
(a) Anyone was a PITA and performing at her current level, I'd tend to fire any subordinate - and probably blacklist them as thoroughly as possible - wouldn't really matter where the issues were coming from or whether or not they were willing to change. That'd be real feedback. OTOH, our child loves her - as do I. There's the argument that that level of feedback would be good for her. I'm not sure. Somewhere between really good for her and significant suicide risk in my book. If I go this way, I'll probably wait until she's found a job. I'm musing over setting up another timeline with milestones - she pretty much met the last one.
(b) Hearing her out. On one hand, our R/S conversations are very long and involve a lot of her trying to evade responsibility. On the other hand, I'm still trying to optimize communication efficiency and - she really is fundamentally incoherent and talks for ages - this doesn't seem to be a matter of choice - there are just some skills she lacks - I'm inclining to enforcing email/text only conversations at the moment.
(c) Helping her process. There's this strange rigidity of speech - where she can't seem to process certain concepts. Eg., she'll moderately consistently start out talking about how my lifestyle forces her to be fat. After articulating that for a bit, she'll start brainstorming how to start up her own exercise routine. If I interrupt that with 'y'know, that it complete BS', she tends to get stuck.
I really don't understand this bit - it is like there's this fairly crazy dialog in her head that she can't process without articulating it, but she sort of converges to sanity after she spits it out.
(d) Tolerating excuses. Currently, for her more off-kilter excuses, I'm switching (depending on mood) between:
(i) Y'know, I've heard this before and won't listen to it again.
(ii) Okay, you're evading responsibility again. Let's look at reality... You're fat because you sleep all day and eat at night. You'll be better off working on stuff inside your control. Let's discuss some changes you can make.
(iii) Um. So, I can see that you'd probably be thinner if your husband worked out on the weekends and ate really healthy food. What was your point again? That you need to exercise more? Go ahead.
These responses might be a bit less open than ideal, but, in my defense, eh, our MCs tended to lose patience too...
(e) Waffling on stuff that confuses me
Y'know, this dementia thing strikes me as utter BS. So does the social withdrawal because her husband is AS. But, there is a grain of truth in the mountain of BS - she is depressed and stuck in a rut watching TV - and forgetting how to be human. Her fault? Sure. Leaving a depressed, mildly autistic person rotting in bed until they need a lot of dental help? Not an ideal husband or support network. Still, overall, people need to live their own lives.

In terms of changes, it might be best to default to (i) whenever she repeats something. And go to (ii) whenever she evades responsibility at all. And refuse R/S communications that aren't by email or text.

It might even be better to stop enabling (a). If I divorced her, I'd be better off. Her therapist feels that our child would be hurt pretty badly. (mom would leave country). Mom? Well, my guess is that she'd be dead within 2 years - but I could be wrong. (her family situation is not too good.) I feel responsible enough to spend a while longer prodding her to get a job. If her career picks up a bit, she'll have more options. Although, when she's working and has structure, she's a lot less problematic, so, eh...decision to be left for a later time for now. Still, there's a lot of merit to the 'things change a bit, not a lot, so don't bother trying if they suck' approach.

For me, at least, it is hard to come up with a nice consistent response to something that's a mix of distorted thinking, oddly rigid thoughts and articulation, and a genuine desire to improve. When things are clearly BS, it is pretty easy. Abusive meltdowns are easy too. Inarticulate stuff that sounds like complete nonsense isn't easy for me to shrug aside - because sometimes it isn't nonsense.* OTOH, there's a reasonable argument that a reasonable consequence for being inarticulate involves being ignored until you take some measures to be clearer. For now, I'm thinking of just enforcing the email/text-only thing.

--Argyle
*OTOH, I can't help noticing that the abusive meltdowns and the pure BS stuff decreased a lot after I stopped tolerating them. It is entirely possible that if I stop wasting my time on incoherence, she'll start being coherent. Or, this may be too much to expect.

Heh. True. Thing is - with me - if you want to have a long conversation without me rambling a bit - that'll take advance planning and a written agenda. (y'might already be suspecting this from reading my posts.) Sure, maybe I can improve with time - but it'll be years. (And has been...) For whatever reason, I'm just wired that way. Similarly, my wife seems to have a very limited amount of flexibility regarding speech.*

Now, with my wife, there have been problems that were essentially low empathy/understanding issues - and those responded well to really, really long and patient explanations.

There were also issues that were or are boundary issues on my end - and those respond really well to limits.

But, there are some pretty persistent issues that feel like wiring issues - like being unable to make really simple connections - or having enough difficulty parsing complex speech to cause meltdowns. (Nonviolent communication books have been somewhat useful - but the recommended communication style tends to confuse her a lot. 'Aaigh. Too many sentences!! ! I can't f*king understand.') She can kind of do this stuff when she focuses - but it really doesn't come naturally.

What I'm kind of pondering is...we've both spent a bunch of time trying to learn new communication skills. There's been some improvement, but not enough to qualify as non-dysfunctional. It may be time to accept that whatever changes we make with verbal communication will take a while and quite possibly not get to a reasonably efficient solution. We both have significant weaknesses regarding verbal communication - and those haven't changed appreciably with effort.

On the other hand, we're both pretty good readers. And throwing tantrums by email is harder... So, it may be time for me to just give up on verbal communication and insist on all R/S talks being by text.

But, I tend to ponder a bit and check for alternative solutions...any suggestions?

--Argyle
*I am cynical enough to understand that part of the reason my wife is pretty resistant to change is that a large portion of her R/S communication is seeking either comfort or drama/connection - and email/text doesn't meet that need. Still, as far as I can tell, at least 50% of our dysfunction is related to genuine communication issues. One thing I'm still pondering is a good way to meet the whole comforting/reassurance need (probably a legitimate need for a wife). Maybe I could just ask 'you feeling anxious?' and let her vent for a while if yes. The connection one is pretty simple - find better ways to connect.