Aspies In A Relationship With An NT

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My wife and I had a big fight this weekend. There was a large family gathering her uncle was having that she said a month ago I *had* to go to. I have tried and tried to explain to her how difficult these types of things are for me, but I don't think she gets it. Saturday, the day of the event, I was freaking out and everything was upsetting me, all because of this social event looming on the horizon. I tried to tell her I didn't want to go but she just kept getting mad at me. We were in the car, and I asked her twice before we were even off of our street to turn around and take me home. She just ignored me. So about 15 minutes in the trip I asked her if she really wasn't going to take me home and she again ignored me. So I said that I would just stay in the car when we got there and she slammed on the breaks and sped me home, driving crazy and not breaking properly (which she knows makes me very anxious).
We fought about the incident all weekend. Last night we were arguing and I just shut down and she took that as me being angry or something and I tried to explain it to her and explain sensory overload. She shrugged it off and in so many words told me I don't have A.S. and that I'm just an a**hole and I never had any of the behaviors before (in spite of me actually pointing out all the other times I have done this in the past, prior to discovering A.S.).
I feel like she doesn't care and that she hates me. Do NT's ever understand? Am I not explaining it right?
I don't know what to do...

i go through similar stuff but my wife will just go places alone if i dont want to go (often). we have no friends together. she has a bunch of her friends. if she does not understand you or accept you i highly suggest a couples councilor , if you're super lucky one who understands AS.
ive been with the same woman for a long time 15 yrs or something i forget. if she treated me like that we would have serious problems. both sides have to make compromise and sometimes when we fight its impossible to make progress. i think a couples councilor is smart for every long term couple it helps navigate and helps p[eople stay away from whos wrong or right but rather on mutual understanding. of course my wife thinks im always wrong and i KNOW she is always wrong (kidding). i wish me and my wife could see another one now myself.

I would also recommend a couple counsellor as suggested above. It might seem like a big step but it does a lot of good, my wife and I went to a place called 'Relate' (in england). It helped us both to understand each other, and we still go every month or so when we need to get things off our chest.

The other thing is that you have to give and take, you need to do things that she likes sometimes even though you hate them.

Try getting her to read this, or explain to her in writing exactly what you were feeling. Good luck, Dean

Something like that happened to me last night. I don't want to elaborate right now, I am still recovering.

One thing I can say, NTs who accompany their spouses to Aspie support groups regularly seem to fare better. Maybe purely because it indicates commitment, maybe because they actually do learn to understand.

I have a non-Aspie friend who is married to an Aspie, and at support groups parents of Aspie kids say they wish their sons would get a wife like her someday. She works very hard at the relationship and they work out unusual coping strategies, for example, sending each other text messages when fighting instead of doing it face to face, so as to cut out confusing signals and sensory overload.

I've tried writing her notes to explain things in an argument before, back in the early stages of the relationship. She would just get upset at me, though, and tell me to just "tell her." I didn't know about A.S. back then, btw.

I have tried to get her to come here. She won't. She hasn't read anything about Asperger's since I told her I had it. She just says I'm a jerk and that's all it is.

And who is Dean?

Sorry was just signing my name at the end because the forum doesn't display it. I guess if she wants your relationship to work then things are going to come to a head in a bit and you both need to communicate with each other.

If she doesn't try to understand Asperger's at all, she might not be very committed to making the relationship work.

I've learned a lot about AS out of personal curiosity and trying to understand my bf, but occasionally I do have moments where I act like your NT, accusing my bf of not really caring about me or being committed to making the relationship work and wanting nothing more from me than a comforting routine and a surrogate mother to indulge his Peter Pan syndrome. But when I get like that, I'm not giving up on him, I'm challenging him to show a genuine commitment to change and prove me wrong. If he doesn't, then I'll accept that we have different and irreconcilable needs and let him go; if he does, then I'll work with him. I like my arguments to be constructive. Try to find out if your NT is like that. If she's not...dump her. Or at least, try counseling, perhaps with an AS specialist because an NT counselor unfamiliar with AS might, you know, accuse you of what your NT is accusing you of.. I've gone to counseling sessions with my bf several times - seeing his personal therapists, one of whom is an AS specialist. They help us create a plan to make things run smoothly again.

I've determined that some of his problems are a combination of psychological and neurological issues: e.g., the panic he gets when people are angry at him (which may have been enhanced by early difficulties understanding people) seems to make it harder for him to understand or pay attention to non-verbal (and especially non-auditory) communication, creating a double whammy of trouble when someone's mad at him. I tend to get around that by verbally telling him why I'm mad and what I want him to do to appease me.

wow.... I'm an NT who is dating an Aspie... I think you've answered some of my questions on here. I'm really really trying to understand.... to say that I do well.. NO. There are times when I really think he's an a**hole too... What Im trying to figure out is what is a behavior (if that's the right word) that is because of Aspergers and what isn't. If they can be seperated.

We had the opposite problem this weekend... he was busy with his family... and I wasn't invited. My feelings are very hurt and I don't know how to tell him because I don't want to fight. He knew I was home alone with no plans but yet he didn't feel comfortable taking me to meet his family... and I don't get that. If I'm his girlfriend and if he feels for me like he says he does... really I can't go have a burger were his family is. I felt very unwanted.

Back to you... has she done any reading on here??? Or on Aspergers. It helps me to read post on here. If I had to guess her friends and family don't understand and therefore are putting alot of pressure on her. They are telling her that if you care for her that you will leave your comfort zone and do things... blah blah.... I hear it all the time if he was into you he would do this or that. But it's not that easy is it??? She is going to have to decide to not care what others think. She will need to learn to encourage you with out pushing or forcing you. Ease you into situations etc.

Holidays are hard. I look forward to them with high expectation and sit myself up for failure. Don't take her words in anger to heart. Ask her if you guys can talk ask her to hear you out. Have your words prepared... even write them in a letter and have her read them... and see if you can come to sometype of compromise in these situations.

Maybe my advice will help... Can't fix my own relationship so Best of luck. Sorry.

my girlfriend who i am stable with is autistic. i am only with her because she loves me and i do not know how i deserve it, but i got it for free from her and i can never throw it away for anything. i want to protect her from bad times. she needs that.

i have a few other girls (3) who are not autistic (ie "NT" if we are going to use that label) who want me to be their boyfriend, but i do not think they love me unconditionally.

there is sonia and melinda and caroline.

they each have different reasons for wanting to be my girlfriend.

sonia has bi-polar disorder and also a borderline personality disorder.
she thinks in black and white. sometimes i am a saint and sometimes i am a demon in her mind. both are equally valid at the times she believes them.
she has a current boyfriend who is an NT and a masculine sports loving slob who gets drunk every night by 9pm watching football on the TV.

she kind of hates him, but it requires no effort on her behalf for him to screw her because he has those urges every day.

so she gets her sex from him, but sex is only a for a few minutes, and mental bonding is for hours and hours.
she has decided she very much likes my undesigned way of being and whe always angles toward romance in my presence.
i am cold to the notion of romance.

i do not want to make love to someone and have their face so close to mine if i do not understand what they are thinking about it all. and i never can understand what they are thinking, so i am always unable to be romantic.

so sonia likes my fractal animations, and melinda likes my money and immaturity, and caroline likes my musical character when i play the piano.

they all like aspects of me which do exist, but the logical extension in their minds is copulation, and i can not join the dots between good musical compositions (etc) and going to bed with someone because of it.

people with neurotypicosis (coinage) can not infect me with their pleasant and useful disease. much is their pity.

i am content to not try to think how to constantly impress someone to be my friend.
let them slide off my back i think.

i can not have an NT girlfriend because she will see me as drastically inadequate to slake the thirst of her soul.

Hi. Have you actually told him you would have liked to have been invited? One thing us aspies have trouble with is reading between the lines, you sometimes have to spell it out clearly for us to cotton on.

Even if you can't find a couple's counselor, get a shrink who understands the issues, and once he's established some sort of understanding have her tag along. If she doesn't tag along to the therapy, and continually refuses to address the AS issues, then I would visit her family to ask for advice.

First go over what you plan to say with your therapist. Describe the anxiety and how that impacts AS. Figure out how you're going to explain to them that you have troubles with social situations, and that the hostility is really bothering you. If divorce is a possibility in your mind, let them know. Just make sure they understand what you're saying, which is why I would have a shrink go over it with you. Just make sure you're asking them what you should do about it, if you should file for divorce or give it another shot.

In the end, if things went well with her family, they'll have a heart-to-heart talk with her. At this point, they are at least partially on your side, especially given that they're the ones you turned to. Hopefully she will know better than to pull off her previous hostility as a reaction. If not, divorce is inevitable to begin with, and you'll have a few more people on your side this way.

Okay, I'm NT with an Aspie husband. We don't know your wife's side of the story of this weekend, and I can relate to her "disappointment" that you wouldn't want to go to her family's gathering.

That said, she treated you like sh*t.

I was wondering if she even knew you had Asperger's, based on what she did. But you say she does know of it. Sounds like she's in a sort of denial. I don't feel Asperger's can just give a waiver to excuse all unwanted behaviors, but not feeling comfortable in social situations is a very typical AS trait. Your wife would do well to accept that and find social outlets for herself rather than taking out her frustration on you.

You say she's resistant to going to counseling with you, but I think that specific AS counseling would be a real help to HER. Maybe she's thinking that counseling would only be geared toward justifying the behaviors in you that she's already upset about, so doesn't want to go. I hope she opens up to it.

OK, I agree with the others, she definitely needs counseling. People have different ways of dealing with a partner's diagnosis, and one of them is denial. She is possibly just too frightened by the prospect that her husband may really "have something" that she cannot face it. Some people actually go through a grieving process when they realise the person they thought they married is never going to be able to fulfill certain expectations. I think your wife isn't ready to go there yet, and she's afraid of going there.

just a question... How long have you two been together??? How do you guys normally handle the holidays or family gatherings???

That is what, IMO, the problem sort of is. I get the impression that prior to me finding out I have A.S., she held onto this hope that I would eventually grow into a "normal" person. She is always comparing me to the husbands of her friends, pointing out skills they have that I don't. Commenting how great one of the 80-hour-a-week construction jobs are so much better than my job sitting a desk all day (making the same amount of money in half the time...), etc. And when she cheated on me in the past, it was always with people that were the antithesis of an Aspie. It was always a guy with a big entourage of friends and they all hung out with her. And this time she was saying how all the other husbands show up, and our social and that it makes her feel like she's single.
I understand her being hurt and upset about that, but it's not like I don't try. And the day before, I even tried to compromise by taking the family out to lunch at CiCi's Pizza. That was hard for me but it was something I felt I could manage and I did. But that didn't seem to matter to her.
I also pointed out that in the past, prior to finding out about A.S., she would always get upset at me if we went out together because I wouldn't have a good time and I would ruin it. The last time I tried to go to a bar with her (this was quite awihle back, several months, almost a year), she made a big fuss about it and said she didn't want me to come because I would just freak out and ruin her night. Her friend convinced her to go ahead and let me come. We went to a bar and I freaked out because we were at a table with people I didn't know, there were loud people everywhere, and finally some lady I never met just snuck up behind me and grabbed and shouted "Wake up!". I left at that point and she got mad. I reminded her of this incident and asked why I am wanted in one situation and not the other, and that they are equally stressful for me for the same reasons, and she just said that I was comparing two completely unrelated things and that I am just a jerk.
So... I dunno. I think she just doesn't like me, but I'm stable, and the types of guys she really likes and "has a connection" with, as she puts it, aren't very stable.