NT Husband/AS Wife

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New here, glad to have finally found a place where there's empathy and understanding instead of ignorance and denial. I'm 61, wife 48. We've been together for 23 years and it's been one step forward and ten steps back pretty much the whole time. I initially noticed my wife's repetitive/obsessive behaviors the first few months we were together. Then I saw a TV special with Mark Summers(the game-show host)where he described his OCD and it really hit me. When it aired the second time, I had my wife watch it and her response was, 'Oh my god-that's ME!' So that was a start. Besides the repetitive behavior, her complete and total avoidance of any form of confrontation has been a major issue.

In the last 6 or 7 years, having noticed no change in her behaviors, I became aware that Asperger's/ASD was much more likely. Living in Northern Wisconsin, as one may imagine, our provider options are limited, to say the least. We've tried a number of therapists/doctors and they've all agreed on at least one thing-that the United States is decades behind Europe in the mental health field. So, on we go. The book 'Aspergirls' was a big help. One of my great frustrations is that I have done nearly all of the research/legwork in finding professionals that have any knowledge/experience at all with Asperger's/ASD. Compounding the issue is the fact that my wife is a daily marijuana user. At this point it is surely an addiction and, most definitely, an obsession/ritual. We finally saw an MD/Psych who actually embraced ASD. As part of my wife's treatment, he felt confident that an adjustment of her meds could be of benefit, but he would not treat her as long as she was using. That was February 8th. She finally made an appointment to see him in September(soonest available). On the 18th, she's flying to Colorado to visit her weed friends who 'have plenty of pot' and 'you should try mushrooms while you're out here', I saw the texts. Pretty clear this 'trip' is why she hasn't stopped using and made her appt for later.


We have a 20 year-old daughter, who has lived on her own since January. She has been in therapy since she was 15. There was a date/rape incident a year before that which led her to therapy. As her therapy progressed, it was less about that incident and more about the inability of her mother to connect with her or be truthful about things. When she was first hospitalized for suicidal ideation, my wife went to see her the first night but couldn't stay long because she had a garden meeting. A few years before that, I had both my hips replaced. After the first surgery, she was so antsy to leave and get back to work, she couldn't sit still. For the second one, I told her she didn't have to come-and she didn't. I was dropped off at the Holiday Inn the night before, woke up at 5 and took the shuttle-alone-to the hospital. Her father picked me up the next day. Over the years, it became more and more apparent to my daughter that she could rely on her mother less and less. Four years ago, my daughter was suspended from school for pot paraphernalia and we enrolled her in a three-week day treatment program. They relied heavily on Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which was good as her later diagnosis was Borderline Personality Disorder. My wife and I would take turns driving our daughter(70 miles one way). I later found out that they would smoke pot on the return trip. My wife smoked pot with her daughter when she picked her up from a day treatment facility. Of course, my wife's weed friend smoked pot with her daughter at that age, so it's all good-right? For the better part of 6-7 years, my wife's daily stop after work was her friend's house-before coming home to see her family. On Monday nights, she claimed she worked until 8:30 when, in reality, she worked until 6:30-7 and partied at her friend's house. How does that play on a young girl's mind? My wife was oblivious to any effect it may have and continued to lie about it. Is it even an addiction? Or, is it pure ASD?

Last summer, my daughter noticed a garbage bag under my wife's bed(we haven't shared a bedroom in years). The bag had urine in it. We confronted her and my wife explained that she 'couldn't hold it'. A month or two later, I noticed an old bathrobe wadded up in a corner and it was saturated with urine. Again, 'I couldn't hold it.'


All of it-the lack of empathy, rigidity of routine, indifference to hygiene, very limited diet, the constant distance and obliviousness of life around her, has made our life together an empty shell. My daughter is doing well on her own. I'm sure being on her own and away from this environment has helped. She says she notices weekly changes in her mother in regards to speech, mannerisms, driving, etc. I've spoken to her parents repeatedly, but they seem to be comfortable in denial. This is something that I have 'diagnosed', according to them. No kidding. Not too hard when you're living with it 24/7 for over 20 years.


I've been sober for over 7 1/2 years and it can be a daily struggle, still. Going through recovery, one of the tenets is 'progress, not perfection.' There can be no progress without action and, so far, there is no action unless prompted by me. My wife is oddly content to keep within the framework of her tasks, rituals and routines. It's not her fault, I know that. But it's not our fault, either.

Sorry to rant, but no one listens, or even wants to.

First of all, wlecome to the WP!
Second, you know that no one is capable of diagnosing your wife via forum posts, right?

I have no idea what's in your wife's mind. I have no idea if she's autistic or not. The only typically autistic trait I see in your description is when you told her that she didn't have to come and she didn't - literal understanding of what is said. Otherwise... It might be enormous anxiety and poor executive functioning but may as well be very serious addiction. Or both.
Sometimes I can relate to an autistic person and explain a bit of odd behaviors in terms of experiences leading to them. In case of the story of your wife, I can't - maybe because I have never smoked pot.

Some of us indeed end up abusing substances. Or having eating disorders. Or personality disorders. Or other secondary mental health problems. They are not directly caused by ASD, rather by hard experiences that too often come with being on the spectrum.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

No, I didn't come here for a diagnosis. Her last therapist and MD/Psych have identified that. I can't get her to commit to any kind of treatment plan so we can move forward as a family. The hurdle is finding experienced, qualified personnel to help us define our part in things. I'm also aware that her current behavior may very well be 'as good as it gets.' I'm hoping that adjusting her meds can help her cope with her treatable symptoms. The self-medicating and AS behaviors are separate issues. I'm of the mind that her every day use has done further damage to her. Her behaviors go all the way back to childhood-reading at an early age, being sent home from kindergarten for a year because she wasn't ready socially, hand-wringing, little eye contact, she never calls me by my name, etc. Naturally, her parents never asked any questions or pursued any information.

No, it's not "pure ASD," although autistic people are indeed relatively prone to addiction.

The kind of lying you've described is, alas, common among addicts. It seems to me that addiction, not ASD, is the primary problem you're dealing with right now, although having an ASD-aware psychiatrist is good.

I don't know how much you've looked into the question of how best to confront an addicted spouse. Have you considered or tried approaches like the ones described on the following pages?

- Married to a Drug Addict: How To Deal With a Spouse with Addictio
- Addiction Guide for Spouses and Partners
- 3 Guidelines for Spouses Affected by Their Partner’s Addiction


Does she in general have difficulty getting household chores done in a timely fashion, especially unexpected ones (such as, in this case, washing the urine-soaked clothes)? That's a common problem among autistic people.

^^ I second this. The primary problem seems to be the addiction, ASD likely makes managing it worse.
The lying is very un-aspie, it's a drug addict characteristic.

There is no medication for ASD, only for comorbids that often make ASD symptoms worse.

I'm sorry that you have to go through this. It must be really tough for you. Please, try to avoid the trap of codependency!

The hardest but most useful thing to do would be telling apart: which of your wife's issues are about her mental health (addiction, likely anxiety/depression underlying it) and which are about who she is (like poor eye contact, literal thinking, hyperfocus). What can be treated and what needs to be accepted. It's sometimes very tricky, even for professionals. That's one of the main topics of my therapy.

Another thing is your wife's apparent unwilling to take part. I can see two possible reasons:
1. The addiction. Simple as this.
2. Some Aspies, as their environment constantly tries to "correct" them and make them fake "normal" behaviors, feelings, etc and as they are never met with acceptance of their true selves, develop defensive attitude towards other people. Anyone trying to "correct" them is seen as a threat to their own fragile sense of self.
May be both.

I wish you the best but I admit, it's not easy at all right now.

As a recovering alcoholic and being the son of an alcoholic, I've got a good handle on what addictive behavior is-I've seen it all my life. The mind-blindness, lack of empathy, social uncertainty, strange/very limited diet, inflexibility to change, strict adherence to routines, hand-wringing and 'scrunching', lack of intimacy and affection are unmistakable. She was initially diagnosed with OCD(1997), then depression and much later ADD. As far as the OCD, she's an awful housekeeper, with emphasis on order and arranging, without actually cleaning. Amongst the 'spectrum' of terms, my wife appears to be a high-functioning autistic. Her father is much the same-slave to detail and ritual, lack of expression, socially awkward, doesn't respond to inference and subtlety.

My biggest concern is the distance and inability to connect, especially with her daughter. A typical mechanism for female 'aspies' is the fake it 'til you make it approach. There appears to be only rote participation where my wife is concerned, with little context. One thing we talk about all the time is the fact that many things don't 'occur' to her, that she constantly needs prompting. That's not addiction.

For the longest time, I've said that all that seems to come from me is anger and resentment. A lot of that stems from the weeks/months/years it takes to find adequate help. That's not helping my wife and it certainly isn't helping our family. My daughter, at 20, is noticing all of this and piecing her life together, and I'm afraid the next 'distance' will be from her. She and I are very close, but I understand her need to have a 'normal' life.

Contexts are extremely tricky to the autistics. It's not just housekeeping or interaction with her daughter, it's how autistic mind sees the reality: endless details but rarely any big picture. That's also why "obviuos" things don't "occur". The forest is hardly visible for the trees.

I wouldn't worry that much for your daughter - she's adult, she's gone through her therapy, she seems quite motivated to get her life together. She needs to process a lot of her life and emotions now and go through several stages and most likely you can't do anything about it, just accept.

Back to an autistic brain - try to imagine it: the world full of painful noise, distracting details are everywhere and people want from you things that you can't understand, no matter how intelligent you are otherwise. One of the ways to cope with the pain, fear and confusion is rehearsing a role and replaying it, in hope it will be "right". Another is, well, fly away - special interest in the more healthy cases, drunk or high in less healthy.

I'm actually happy for my daughter and have supported her move all along. She entertained college, but didn't feel ready. Instead, she's on her own, working and paying bills and getting those invaluable life lessons a lot of her peers won't get until they move out of their parents' house when they turn 30. In my estimation, she made a very logical healthy choice.

I have taken part in my wife's therapy and treatment from the start-exactly the same as I did when she had breast cancer 9 years ago. My job was/is to be involved, be educated and be her advocate. The 'forest for the trees' analogy is very appropriate. I think it comes from the inability to prioritize even simple things. I've always made the comparison that, instead of being able to prioritize 'one through ten' in order of importance, everything is a 'one' and is therefore automatically overwhelming. I'm sure that's why even small changes in routine are greatly upsetting. Along with that, there's no intimacy, small talk, cuddling, kissing or physical closeness that couples should have. I can't force that anymore. If it's not of a spontaneous or reciprocal nature, it's meaningless. Another prompt.


There are some great sites out there. The Neurotypical Site, and FAAAS to name a couple. My wife's behaviors have worsened, especially over the last few years. I'm hoping that a change in meds for her treatable conditions(yes, I realize there are 'no meds for AS')can help get her anxiety/compulsions under control to the point that there's at least a little relief from the 'tunnel vision' her mind experiences.


There's no doubt that she lives in a prison. What happens if she can't get any relief? What happens to any of us?

No. My daughter discovered the garbage bag and I discovered the bathrobe. Not only had it had been there a while, she didn't even blink when I confronted her about it. I called her former therapist and she seemed genuinely stunned, that it was completely dissociative behavior.

However, dealing with these other issues will require a great deal of mutual trust and honest communication between the two of you, which is probably not possible as long as she is still addicted and hence motivated to lie to you and to try to manipulate you in the ways that addicts commonly do. I could be wrong about this, but that's why it seems to me that the addiction -- even if it's not your primary concern -- needs to be dealt with first, before much if anything else can be dealt with.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 13 Jun 2019, 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Is it really a question of prioritizing, or more a question of having to deal NOT ONLY with the tasks themselves but also with mental gear-shifting between different tasks? I tend to be overwhelmed by long lists of miscellaneous tasks, even if prioritized, due to what I think of as mental gear-shifting overhead between tasks. Shifting one's attention from one task to the next task tends to be a much bigger deal for autistic people than for NT's. So, it might be a good idea to divide up the household chores so that you take care of most of the miscellaneous little odds and ends, whereas she handles fewer, more time-consuming but relatively simple, predictable, and/or systematic chores, to minimize the number of times she has to change mental focus from one task to the next.


Strict and predictable routines are a way to minimize mental gear-shifting overhead and cope with executive functioning impairments generally. Keeping things organized serves the same purpose. So she will always have a strong need for strict routines and organization, and she needs you to accept this. You and she just need to find creative ways to divide up the household chores so as to make this less of a source of friction.


While you may have found these sites very cathartic to read, the advice they give is not very constructive, and some of what they say about Asperger's syndrome is not accurate. These are sites by very embittered women who, as far as I can tell, were not able to make their relationships with their husbands work. It is better to take advice from sites by people who were able to make their relationships work than to take advice from sites by people who were not able to make their relationships work.

I'm rather scared by this word in this context.
There may be something in it, though: small talk is a minefield for an Aspie (unless related to the special interest - but that carries a risk of turning into a lecture, not small talk), cuddling and kissing are extremely uncomfortable for some. She may have been forcing herself to do it for the sake of her marriage but ran out of power to do it any more.
Dealing with these delicate topics without honest communication is simply impossible and it looks a like you both are right now quite far away from this ability.

This isn't new to us. We've been together since 1996 and I have adapted and adjusted as it became apparent that my wife wasn't able to handle many everyday concerns and challenges. I have always done all of the shopping and all of the cooking. Activities with nuance and texture seem to confound my wife. I also handle all of the finances and pay all the bills. I do most of the laundry. As far as household chores, my wife mows the lawn and takes out the garbage. She doesn't need a 'long list' of priorities to create chaos and confusion. She's overwhelmed by less and less as time goes on.


We have tried drug counseling a few times. Drug counselors are not typically versed in spectrum behavior. It's also a 'chicken/egg' scenario. Is my wife an addict who happens to be on the spectrum or, is she someone on the spectrum self-medicating her comorbid disorders? My experience with her clearly points to the latter. She even had a 'doctor' tell her, 'What a relief it must be' for her to get high. Never mind the incredible potency of modern-day weed and how it affects, not only the efficacy of her meds, but the function of her mind. I'm convinced that we need an effective therapist to help my wife identify who she really is and what she's trying to medicate on her own-identify the 'match' instead of fighting the fire. As they say in the program, 'any fool can put the cork back in the bottle'.


As far as the 'sites' are concerned, I try to get as diverse a mix of information as I can. Certainly there's a good chunk of 'bitter wives'(if we're even allowed to say such a thing in 2019). One of the reasons I search places like that is to find input/feedback from male spouse/partners. Let me tell ya, there ain't much. My wife had a PhD therapist that would become visibly upset at even the slightest inference of Asperger's in regards to any behavior, as that was ONLY a condition inherent in males(more 'settled science'). Clearly, the same malady exists in females. It presents differently because of the difference in emotional makeup and they're much better at masking, hence the broader 'autistic spectrum' classification. And, yes, I'm well aware of who Hans Asperger was. It's incomprehensible to me that this wasn't even imagined in females for so long. Trust me-it's real.


The time factor has been as big an obstacle as anything. My wife has chronic bronchitis and had a pretty severe attack a few weeks ago. My job is to take care of her. Went to ER, got some meds and she got better. Now I'm not so naïve as to think there's some 'miracle' drug or treatment for her-give me a little credit. But imagine if I had taken her to the ER and they prescribed bedrest and I had to wait weeks, months and years while I researched, called, studied, asked questions and drove hundreds/thousands of miles only to be stuck at a standstill. Couple that with total indifference and denial by her family and it creates a level of frustration and desperation that's hard to describe.

Again, I guess I came here mostly to vent. It's demoralizing not to be listened to, understood or believed-my daughter is finding that out. I have to wonder how much easier things may be, ESPECIALLY for my wife, if there were less stigma and more support. What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?


".....I know this world is killing you. Alison, my aim is true."- E. Costello

And, no, no one was ever 'forced.' Not everything is a trigger.

First, a lot of us come here to vent. That's mostly okay as long as we all keep within the rules.
Second, I think you wrote something very important:

I have just nothing to add, you nailed it.

Of course I didn't mean using force to get intimacy. What I meant is something I used to do a lot - bending myself to perceived expectations. Until I broke. That might or might not have happend to your wife.

There is the whole issue with female Asperger's. It's relatively new knowledge and many specialists are not up to date with it. Girls often behave well enough at school age, meet all milestones and later, in adult life, in their thirties, fourties, fifties - can't perform any more and burn out. Some boys may also go with this scenario.

Another issue seems to be her parents. My parents are also consistent deniers, esp. my mother. That made me full of self-doubt and identity confusion. Only now, with my therapist, I learn to recognize my feelings and trust my intuition. How could one have learned to deal with difficult emotions if the very existence of any unwanted emotion was consistently denied?