Friend of mine

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I'm somebody who was diagnosed with Asperger's half a lifetime ago, I often surround myself with people with a variety of difficulties ranging from aspergers to having a blind from birth friend, etc. I try to be understanding, patient, tolerant, etc and often people, for better or worst, that I am far more so then most people would be dealing with sometimes difficult or very awkward people.

I have had one friend for the last five years who is pretty far on the scale, I have many friends who have aspergers ranging from mild to significant. However this specific friend, lets call him Ted (obviously not his real name).

Ted is a fairly intelligent person who I went to college with, he graduated not too long ago and I graduated a couple of years ago. We have been involved in many of the same activities and share alot of interests, we actually have a considerable amount of friends, they aren't exactly close friends but fairly good friends all the same. Many of them have everything from aspergers to bipolar to all sorts of depression, anxiety, etc. Ted is far more severe on the scale, after a number of months he finally started saying he had aspergers because we kept trying to politely find out "what was up with him" but its extremely apparent, less educated pepole would throw out the usual politically incorrect words and would see from a football field away.

Now he has plenty of typical aspergers issues similar to problems I and other friends have had, alot of difficulty relating to people, social situations, anxiety, depression, etc. However there are a number of differences of issues he has, and ones that others share he has it in greater severity.

First off are his physical mannerisms, they are a lesser extent of the stereotypical autistic actions including some hand flapping, being very stiff in his movements and always wiggling around (for example his knee could be going up and down a mile a minute). He can't act relaxed to save his life, and always looks and acts incredibly nervous, incredibly sad or at times, incredibly angry. His fine motor skills seem to be off, his hands are almost always shaking but he can write, type, etc without any real problems. However fine motor control such as trying to use pliers, a screwdriver, etc has some difficulty and the more he tries the more trouble he has making it a danger for him, at least in my opinion, to hold sharp objects because he tries to compensate with gross motor control and physical force. In short people who see him assume "the worst", usually the terms "ret*d", "autistic" or occasionally "celeral palsy" float around. Once they start to talk to him they assume one of the first two. One of the problems with this is it makes him very unattractive to women, basically reducing his chances of ever getting to date to near zero. It sounds harsh but I think most people know the reality of being judged on first appearances.

Now when talking to him, he stutters, has great difficulty in socially in general. He often will do things that aren't apprioprate in polite situations such as picking his nose, rubbing his crotch, etc and obviously this makes people uncomfortable. He is constantly doing tics, movements, etc sometimes making grunts, groans, etc that one might expect more from someone who was stereotypically autistic. He can hold a decent conversation at times but he has great difficulty in controlling the tone and volume of his voice and the more excited or aggitated he gets the louder he gets with little regard for the situation.

Now our circle of friends are basically all big geeks so he can fit into most of the topics of conversation and most of the people we know will talk to him some, a few of them have been very mean, etc and I don't neccesarily consider them friends but we simply have to tolerate, friends of friends kinda deal.

He has issues with personal care, I have seen him go the better part of a week before bathing no matter how dirty he gets. I really have no idea what makes him decide to bathe/shower and since I didn't live with him while he was in college I'm not sure if he decided to bathe on his own, his parents told him or what. He lived in a single dorm room his entire college career, because the dorm basically figured out from the gecko that they wouldn't want to put him with a roommate. He doesn't wash his clothes, basically anything that comes to cleaning his clothes is a matter of his mother doing it for him. When his friends, including me, have tried to bring up the fact he needs to bathe or wash his clothes he often refuses to do it, gets irritated that we are bringing it up, etc. I know that during college he would simply wear all the clothes he has and if it was several weeks until his mother could come up to the college he'd simply pick out "new" clothes each day from a pile of discarded dirty clothes. His appearance was never too bad but you could tell when it was getting on two weeks or more since his mother made an appearance because his clothes would start to smell. Since he graduated he has stayed overnight with me several times and I have stayed with him and he never cleaned himself or anything for that matter during any of those times.

He gets very obsessed with things, usually certain topics or subjects. In fact the running joke for his first year in college was he would only talk about the same specific three or four things over and over again, thankfully he started to expand his circle of topics. He becomes very obsessed with certain things though and will get very angry after a while of discussing and will outright tell people he doesn't care if he offends them, because they have offended him already. He has an obsession with women, often showing downright hatred of them and will heavily criticize our female friends either to their face or behind their back. He doesn't understand and actively refuses to understand alternative sexuality and when presented with lesbians or even bisexual women he will get visibly upset and uncomfortable and will go on rants about "how bad they are", they are just doing it for attention and to mock the fact that he's never had a date, is a virgin, etc, etc. Now our circle of friends are a very liberal crowd so people are constantly talking about sex and everything, however something as simple as two people holding hands (sometimes even a hetereosexual couple) and will say that it offends him with the same reaction as if they hit him square in the face. He also has issues with people who identify with religion, race, etc so for example someone who identifies and belonged to an organization for being black, jewish and a lesbian would be a bad person on three accounts.

Now in private conversation when its just me and him, I can tolerate alot more on his ranting but this sometimes happens in public or around other people. Alot of people have gotten fed up with this and really don't want to deal with him because they really don't want to hear how he thinks so badly of them and doesn't care if they are offended. However he goes too far and often I can't take it any more and explode at him, this happened the other day while he was at my place and I refused to deal with him any longer.

Now when he's approached with criticism, even critical and sensitive criticism, he gets incredibly defensive, sad or angry much in the way that a child would. He often refuses to accept responibility for his remarks or refuses to recognize them as wrong even when I do my best to explain why, one excuse he often uses is that other people offend him so he's entitled to speak his mind and offend them. His reaction often can be breaking down completely into tears, and this can be for even the slightest criticism or request for him to apologize to someone, take responibility for his remarks, etc. Other things he'll get extremely angry and scream, for example taking the most recent situation I take him to tone it down and he got in my face and screamed at me that I should be the one to calm down.

He seems to show a pecuilar hatred at times for women, so if a female friend admits to having sex, a boyfriend, etc thats enough to make him uncomfortable and if he knows they smoke, do any kind of drugs (we got alot of 420 friendly friends), have alternative sexuality, etc he can literally explode just at the thought of it (at other times he can keep his cool). Now I know that in his home life his father goes on tirade rants and almost got fired for comments about a lesbian co-worker so I know that some of this is a learned behavior.

He's very lonely and depressed that he's never had a date and gets extremely angry that others have had what he hasn't, at his angriest he's even said they should be harmed, die, etc. I have tried to give him some advice, I'm hardly a ladies man but have had a number of girlfriends, etc but his general advice is he shouldn't have to work on himself that people should unconditionally accept him and every aspect of him. However he has no real interest in putting time into a date or a girlfriend, and will often talk in length about dating, love, relationships, etc being stupid and turning men into idiots, etc.

Lastly he has virtually no compassion or sensitivity towards other people except for his parents and sisters which is often amplified. For example we have had really bad things happen to friends of ours including domestic abuse, rape, etc and in his "normal" mood he has no sympathy and in his more angry moods he might even say they deserved it, often coming back to some criticism of them. A year ago I almost died on the operating table and his reaction was to be angry at me because we had to cancel a get together because I needed recovery time. On the other hand if say his sister was dumped by a boyfriend who happened to be puerto rican then he suddenly hates puerto ricans, and might for months or even years.

He won't tell me details on his diagnosis and I have no say or ability to speak to his parents, in fact I am pretty sure they wouldn't have a problem with his attitudes because they might agree. Unforunately this puts me at a crossroads because I'm at my wits' end with him, I want to continue to be his friend but I'm so tired of his cruelty and his angry tirades which have gotten quite a bit worse in the last year or so. Now that he's graduated he's isolated in his home town, he's quite a bit of drive away from him so I wouldn't be able to visit him regularly even if I wanted to. He has no friends where he lives, and people aren't really inclined to make the trip to visit him for the obvious reasons. I want to help him out but I have no idea what I can do or say but I don't want to abandon him because I know what it feels like to have people abandon you because of your difficulties and issues.

I can't believe this is just aspergers, I suspect he's actually been diagnosed with autism but has been told to tell people its aspergers. But as I said I can't get information from him directly, just what he leaks out by accident.

He does have a therapist and takes zoloft I believe for depression, however as far as I know nothing else is being currently addressed such as anxiety, his social issues, etc. He's been told not to discuss these things with people who aren't his parents so I'm in the dark.

Any thoughts, suggestions, etc?

Unfortunately it doesn't seem as though there's much you can do. It could be AS, he's intelligent from what you say, has average verbal skills etc, so it doesn't sound like full autism, just really bad AS.
I don't know what you could do to help him, other than try to talk to his parents or therapist and see if they can offer him more help or support with caring for himself etc. It doesn't sound like he wants your interference though, or as if it would be wanted by his parents either.
You could try to help him by teaching him more appropriate behaviours or specific social skills, or why things he's doing are inappropriate, but people really have to WANT to change, and it doesn't sound as if he does. It also sounds like of the inappropriate things he's saying are learned, maybe if he is away from his parents he will mellow a little over time and he will pick up more appropriate behaviours from other people, but to be honest it just sounds like it's making him more frustrated.
In short, I don't think there's really anything you can do other than what you're already doing; trying to be a good friend to him even though it's very difficult.
Sorry I can't be of more help.

Oh I have tried.. I have no access to talk to his parents about such things and definitely none with his therapist.

It is possible he also had developmental delays as a child, but again its something I'm not privy to.