Teaching Hubby About Asperger's?

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Hey guys

Quick bit of history: our son was diagnosed with Asperger's a few years ago, and our daughter and myself are both in the early stages of being diagnosed with the same.

Going through two severe bouts of post-natal depression, a (probably wrong) diagnosis of bipolar disorder, panic disorder, GAD and whatever else you want to add to the list, I had major issues with my husband. For a long time he just flat out refused to believe there was anything wrong with me. He thought I was either faking it or exaggerating things to get out of going to work and doing housework and blah blah blah. After a few years, though, he finally came around and admitted I was sick. That was a victory for me, obviously.

The next problem has been that he has done nothing to learn about the problems. The only way he knows anything about any of it is because I've told him, usually while crying. His usual excuse is that he can't sit there and read things because his eyes are buggered and reading more than a few lines gives him massive headaches - which is true, but that doesn't stop him texting, emailing, Facebooking, and reading a shedload of stuff for work, you know?

Anyway (sorry, this is turning out much longer than I'd intended!) since our son was diagnosed with Asperger's, my husband has again failed to make any effort to learn about it (and then gets mad at me when I tell him he's handling things wrong *sigh*). With our daughter and myself facing the same diagnosis, I don't think it's unreasonable of me to expect him to get to know a little about the subject.

Getting him to read anything will be an uphill battle, so I was hoping you guys could direct me to some audio-visual resources that would be useful. I don't care if it's videos or podcasts or audiobooks or whatever, but it has to be quality information that's easy to understand.

Thank you in advance <3

Tony Attwood videos on YouTube and he has books too.

Your husband needs to know that he has to learn about Asperger's otherwise he will have a very hard time communicating with your son and if you have it then it could end up in divorce. Aspie is a whole different language - I'm NT. In my opinion I think a relationship between an NT male and Aspie female probably works just a little better than the opposite because NT women need small talk and closeness a lot.

If anything, your husband needs to inform himself about Asperger's for your son's sake.

I hope that you can work it out.

I'm currently preparing for formal diagnosis. My husband is NT. He has seemed genuinely understanding but hasn't done much research of his own. However, I think the important thing is his willingness to accept and understand - he doesn't know the traits and 'symptoms', but he accepts whenever I explain to him that something is hard. My concern with your husband is that unless he wants to learn, you can put all of the information at his feet and it won't mean a thing.

My husband is learning more as we go. When I told him that I believed I had autism, he responded with a very accepting statement that changed nothing for us. It's the process since that has started to explain to him what it means to me.

I used to just tell him "I struggled with the housework today, I was overwhelmed" and no doubt there was frustration on my part even if he didn't often show it and he picked up the slack. Now that I'm open about the fact that I think I'm autistic, I've tried explaining in more terms 'in the moment' - not listing things at random points but explaining in detail when I'm overwhelmed...so that he sees the emotion and the feeling of panic that I get at the exact time it's happening, which shows him more than a piece of paper, or even a video, ever could:

For example: "I'm struggling here because there's so much mess, and I can't work out where to start, and it's just like I'm seeing every bit of mess at once and it's crashing in on me, and I know there isn't really that much mess, but to me it feels like there is. I don't know where to begin - I should probably do the washing up, but there's food still on that plate and the table's got food on it and if I use the sponge for the plates first...or do I use it to wipe down the table first? And then there's the mess around the hob from where we were making the food, and something on the floor, and...I can see objectively what needs doing, but I see every single little task in minute detail and I just can't function to make an order of it and get started."

When I went into that detail he was able to understand and help me to find a way around the issue a bit better. It's a start. No miracles, but he understands more now have every single thing in every room seems to rush at me at once. I think you explaining to your husband will do more than any audiovisual tool from elsewhere, since he needs to know how it affects you and that's a personal thing, but he has to be willing to listen.

And in parts, too. Not too much at once. I've explained my thought process with the housework so far, as above, but I haven't yet explained the impact on me - that when I get overwhelmed I have two choices:

- I turn around, walk out and nothing gets done.
or
- I try to fight through it and work things out. And it soon becomes too much. And in my case rather than having a meltdown I have a shutdown - I suddenly become unbelieveably tired and exhausted, I feel so heavy, I get dazed and disorientated to the point where it even feels like too much effort just to speak. And it takes me many hours to recover.

So I usually take option one, for my sanity. To an outsider that looks like laziness - "Oh, I got overwhelmed so I left it". But now that my husband knows me thought process, the first bit, I'm slowly easing into explaining to him the impact of that thought process.

I think the best thing you can do - as a family, perhaps, if you all have things to say - is to just talk your husband through the 'moments' as they happen. If you know you're being affected at a certain time, stop and say "Ok, this is how things are affecting me right now". That way, you don't overwhelm him with loads of information that isn't immediately relevant (in his eyes).

If he doesn't listen to 'in the moment' explanations directly from the people that he loves, then I think the message is that he simply doesn't care and is making excuses.

To begin with, men are not as relational as women would like them to be. That's our nature. They have to want to bring themselves into it. I would say before any of you read up on the autism that you check out "Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars". This is an invaluable tool on relationships in general and how men and women look at things and interact. Until you get the basics of your own relationships down - and I don't see that to be the case - it will be the blind leading the blind.

I first realized I may be an Aspie when watching "Mozart and the Whale", which is a movie about a couple where both man and woman have Asperger's. Now, many years later, I have an official diagnosis.

Pick up a copy, watch the movie together and discuss afterwards how much of either the male or the female lead he sees in you, your son & your daughter.

Trailer for "Mozart and the Whale" :


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If you can't get him to watch a romantic comedy about Aspies, consider the less obvious approach of watching "Bones" together. The character Dr. Temperance Brennan (played by Zooey Deschanel's sister Emily) is your typical Aspie. Because it's really a crime comedy / drama that doesn't explicitly address the Asperger's of the character, it's a less direct approach that he may therefore find less confrontational.

Downsides to this approach are that (1) you'll probably have to watch quite a few episodes until he's been exposed to enough of her Aspie traits to address them and that (2) it shows a more narrow range of Aspie traits than "Mozart and the Whale".

Trailer for "Bones" :


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As a third approach, here's some YouTube videos on (and by) Aspies, that may help him see the bigger picture :

Holy cow, thank you for all of that! I'll make good use of it