please help. young wife of an aspie.

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Being an aspie is no excuse for emotional abuse. I'm an aspie woman in my 30's who still hasn't been able to keep a job (be prepared for the possibly that he won't, a lot of people on the spectrum can't) but I can spare my husband and children the brunt of my meltdowns and if he won't do that you shouldn't put up with it. Sometimes he might need time alone, but if that isn't enough - if he is attacking you verbally when you attempt to give him space - Asperger's doesn't make that okay. If you have tried speaking to him (when he's calm) about the effect his meltdowns have on you, and he won't make an effort to protect you from them you might need to create some distance yourself.

Needing to vent is also not an excuse. Many if not most aspies have no one they can freely scream at. An AS neurology doesn't include the need for a human punch-bag.

True. The best place I've found to vent is in my journal. When I was younger and couldn't control my stress I sometimes got into my car drove out somewhere away from houses, and screamed at the top of my lungs inside the closed car. No one had to hear it, but I got it out of my system. Fortunately I don't feel that need so much these days and the journal is enough. I do scream in my journal sometimes - on paper, not vocally. But that's for my eyes only. I don't share it.

If someone is willing to listen to someone yell, maybe it can help the other, provided the listener can detach themselves from a feeling of responsibility. If you're not dealing with too much of your own garbage, such as low self-esteem or self-blame, someone can yell at you as though everything is your fault, and you can let that slide off you as "their stuff" not yours. But that has to be, I think, a conscious effort, not helplessly putting up with abuse, and not forgiving without putting any responsibility on them. Listening to someone yell isn't really in our nature to accept. It's to some degree traumatic and hurtful. Still, provided you don't feel any need to carry what they're laying on you, it can work. Sometimes it helps to get to the bottom of the problem. When I worked in customer service quite often I'd get someone on the phone who had to vent their frustration for a bit before they could get to the reason for their call. If I listened and made the problem they called about my focus rather than their yelling, a lot of times they were grateful for that and apologetic. (But I got paid for that, it was my job.)

If it's simply a display of power - "I'm bigger and stronger than you and I can yell if I want to because you're scared to do anything about it," that's not a healthy situation.

Therapists get paid a lot of money to listen to others' crap, why should you do it for free? At the very least, if it's someone you live with, it should result in the problem improving in some way. If not, why do you have to put up with it? Love isn't enough of an answer if the problem doesn't improve. Loving someone and taking their crap with no improvement ever happening, no effort on their part to get better, is not healthy.

I prefer to remove myself from the situation and let the person doing the yelling know that isn't acceptable. When they're ready to talk at a normal volume, and not be abusive, I'm there to listen. Otherwise one of us is going out the door.

But the OP hasn't returned to this thread and has only made the one post, ever, so maybe we're just wasting our time answering.

Very well said, Spiritblooms.

The OP is likely not ready for all this yet, but may read the thread one more suitable day, and there's no telling how many spouses in a similar situation will benefit from, or be saved by, this thread, in years to come. It never matters if the OP is reading or not, as long as the topic subject is relevant. If someone googles asperger's, wife, help, they'll get here. I often find my own threads on google.

Therapists are known as therapists, but families have to deal with the trauma of shame (from neighbors) on top of the aggression. I remember how hard it was, till I left at 22, to go out of the house after such an episode from my father. The effects of the co-dependent relationship between my parents (my mother was afraid to be independent so she put up with it and became his mother) are the same as an alcoholic family. Walking on eggshells knowing that father needs only one last straw when he gets back from work, needing to be totally quiet as little kids because noise is a last straw, mother policing us so we won't awaken dad's rage, having a father one doesn't talk about and whom one cannot count on for anything because he doesn't take responsibility for anything he says or does - my siblings and I have EXACTLY the same personalities as the children of alcoholics, when not a drop of alcohol was consumed by our parents. We know only dysfunction as a way of relating. And my parents met a tragic end.

It's up to an adult whether they accept that or not, but I think when children enter the picture all bets are off. They shouldn't have to live with that, and I'm very sorry you did, Moondust.

Thank you, SpiritBlooms. Indeed, I think often spouses forget to take into consideration that the atmosphere is all the more traumatizing for a child than it is for the spouse who chose to live that way (the child feels horrible seeing the parent act as a punch-bag, my stomach aches just from remembering; I remember also my carefully-prepared homework and school appliances flying all over because dad had an (unrelated) meltdown and swiped our desk in anger.), and that children require energies that an already emotionally and physically exhausted mothering spouse doesn't have.

I apologize for healing some of my pain through this thread.

I just wanted to clarify that I don't abuse my OH, just talk his ear off, and tend to go around in circles trying to make decisions\resolve issues.

Perhaps OP could offer to sit down and discuss your OH's issues, maybe he feels like he isn't being heard?

Does he actually want a solution to his problems, or does he just want to let you know how he feels ?

Perhaps he would benefit by talking to a counselor ?

Do you have a cat\dog etc? Animals are great listeners and patting them is quite soothing.