Being ourselves, Aspartners, and Jack McClellan

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Not even close. My ex was never abusive. He was just a jerk. He never called me names either or spat at me. It was more of wanting me to be his mother and a meal ticket and not wanting to do anything to help himself and he always had excuses and would shoot down every advice I would give him and didn't want to work and he never wanted me to have my own opinion. Plus he would always joke around and wouldn't care if it upset me and then he would get mad when I would take it seriously. I told him I take things literal and he didn't listen and still continued with that he was doing and would get mad at me for taking it literal. he also wanted me to be his limo driver because "it was cheaper" than paying for his own gas in his own car and he wouldn't try and get a driver's license. I am not even sure if he twisted my words or if he was really that dense. I am sure you remember all the stories I have told on here about him about what exact things he did.

He saw this all as being himself and it was either accept him or you don't and then it was ironic when he said I gave up on him when he had no intention to change. Now that made no sense when he said that to me. You can't change someone nor can you help someone if they don't want it.

I am thinking he may have had OCD because he would get thoughts in his head and not be able to let it go or drop it and he would dwell on it and worry and reassurance did not help. I also think he had aspie traits and he did score between NT and AS on the RDOS test. He had problems and one of them was ADHD and he also had anxiety. Sometimes I do wonder if some of the things he did was a genuine issue than an excuse but I will never know. We weren't right for each other and it was affecting my mental health and making me depressed and staying with him would have destroyed me my mom says. He just didn't want to help himself and I tried helping him and so did my parents and they quit helping so I was on my own and it increased my stress level and then I was done too.

Cluelessly speaking bluntly in ways that may be experienced as mildly hurtful or even infuriating is how I see AS.


I would have thought of that as comorbidity with other things. Maybe it doesn't matter as often AS is comorbid with other things, but is that really how you see the AS?

I think this is often part of the problem -- the cluelessly blunt person thinks it's not that big a deal, and meanwhile whatever's been said has gone very deep, in fact been very hurtful. The AS person then protests that it shouldn't be that hurtful, and anyway shouldn't be perceived that way because it wasn't meant that way, which only makes things worse.



Every instance of it I've seen irl.

Again, there's trouble here when the person with AS doesn't experience these things as being that "loud" or that big a problem. To the other people around, though, it can be a huge problem. Meltdowns, for instance. I've been in conversations here where someone's insisted his meltdowns aren't abusive and aren't a big deal for his partner because he'd never hurt anyone in the midst of them. To people watching a meltdown, though, they can be incredibly scary, and, yes, violent. My ex gets thrown out of places repeatedly because he begins to look really crazy-dangerous, though he'd find that characterisation very hurtful.

The refusal/inability to pick up...yeah, this is a serious problem. It means whoever else is in your life winds up doing some of that work. I've often been through cycles where someone's doing for me, picking up some slack I don't even know exists, and only when I've frustrated the hell out of them in some way and left them feeling unappreciated do I hear about it. When I was much younger, I'd be very surprised, and wonder why I was being yelled at about it -- if the person didn't want to do it, then why do it? Not like I'd asked them to.

And neglecting relationships -- yes, sure. The "schedule it" strategy doesn't work so well, unfortunately, if it's obvious that you don't want to be engaging in the interaction, would rather be elsewhere, etc.

Tarantella, to me a screaming enraged tantrum that is violent by an adult with Aspergers isn't the Aspergers, it's something else. I've had outbursts related to flashbacks, I think my mother had AS and she used to have terrible outbursts, I think that might have been depression, and depressed neurotypical men seem prone to tantrums so I've assumed the same would be the case for men with AS. That when people get depressed, they stop caring about others. Doesn't make it any easier, though. They are just labels, and don't fix the problem.

I am sorry your experience has been so negative.

League_Girl, Gotcha! Do you know what? I am glad you found someone that makes you happy. I'm going to go with what DW and Inthistogether said about being oneself. I do feel better about it though. I think you are right though that it is BS especially when one takes it to absolutely.

I'm going to put the Socratic method to it and ask what if being oneself infringes on others? This means one can't be himself. If one can't be himself then is there a true, set in stone, and absolute self at all or is the self malleable like metal? If the self is malleable then can one develop many possible selves within his nature and nurture? If it is possible to develop many possible selves then out of them what are the noble selves and what are the ignoble selves? Out of all the noble selves we all could be what is the best possible self we all could be?

What if this is what we all should strive to be and how do we do this? I think we have to examine our beliefs and values, choose the values that benefit ourselves and others and disregard the things that harm ourselves and others. In addition, we need to be consistent with what we choose to be but be flexible about it. We may have to stretch the consistency a bit.

Maybe instead of being ourselves we can be someone better and accept we will make mistakes. In addition, I believe each person will have their critics and not everyone will like me no matter what I do. What do you and everyone think?

I am understanding this a lot better because we all have different experiences and perceptions of things.





I have been to rage management and it has helped me quite a lot. I recommend it for aspies to go to.



You know, until recently I did not know you were on the spectrum yourself and it took me quite a bit to realize you were intending your words to mean one thing and I and others took it as another way. When you said a while back that your ex was AS and clueless I completely misread your intent. I thought at first that you were an NT who was prejudiced similar to those on ASpartners. It was like being on the opposite side of the looking glass.

What I've learned by talking to you is that language and communication has nuances that lead to many complications and misunderstandings even when taken very literally because there are many different levels of literal. So, I'm going to say welcome to the club, pull up a chair and pour yourself some wine.

how did you know? I just sat down with one.

I actually have a different take on the whole "be true to yourself" thing. I don't think it means "thoughtlessly follow your every impulse and inclination". I think it has to do with the principles that guide your life, and paying attention to the things that are most important to who you are.

For instance: I work in a university now, right? And I know quite well that, to a considerable degree, universities are scams. I mean it was one thing to tell a kid, "yeah, college, it's great" when you could earn a year's tuition by working over the summer, and when you could get a reasonable job without a degree. That world's gone, okay. But now we have it set up so the kids can't survive without the BA, and often they need to come back and buy an MA (or MS), and by the time they're done they're in the hole for $30-70K and they're still just kids, really. Except it's real money, collecting real interest, and they have a hell of a time finding real jobs.

So if I were being true to myself there, I'd quit in a heartbeat. However, I've also got a lovely girl to support and bring up nicely. Abandoning her needs, bad for her, not true to myself. So what do I do? I don't quit; instead I try to help wise up the kids who come through my office. Their profs say they're great grad student material, they should come be a grad student in their lab? Well, of course they do -- the profs want cheap labor! But can they get a job afterwards? And is that really what they want? etc.

Likewise: I just got caught in the middle of horrible university politics, and it schooled me up right quick. So I see now that even though there are some decent people there, they have no power to stop their colleagues from abusing staff, just because of how universities are arranged. Right away I knew: I do not want to help these people, don't want to be involved in this sort of society. So I will do a well-defined professional job for them, sure. But I've withdrawn from all else, and in the meantime I'm looking for other ways of supporting us.

It's sensible too to think about why these things are said, be true to yourself, other nostrums. At this point in life I know quite a few people who haven't been true to themselves, who've been frightened or timid about it, or not known who they are. They've paid heavy prices.

Wait, tarantella is an aspie? I always believed she was NT because I never once saw her say she was on the spectrum and her profile says family member with aspergers.

Tarantella you're so blunt I suspected you were an Aspie, but the post about being tired and fed up by cruelty at work seemed really Spectrumy. Don't be so black and while, we are all different. And not every socially clueless or blunt comment someone chooses to be hurt by is a deep injury. If we hurt or anger someone, they have the right to how they feel, but we have the option to apologize or calmly explain, to clarify misunderstandings. Some people don't want that, they like their drama. That isn't a reason to give up on acting civilized, nor is it a reason to believe we can't be be. And someone accusing us of intentional or idiotic deep injury, yes it's hurtful and infuriating, but we only need to fall apart over it if we let ourselves believe it's literally true.

Tarantella, the original purpose of college and university was not for one to obtain a job. The purpose of them was to gain a wider perspective of the world and to broaden their thinking.

I am one of those people with a trainwreck marriage to a jerk Aspie. I got sucked in at the beginning because he made me his special interest. It was fantastic. He was also a lot of things that my ex hadn't been and vice versa. Perhaps I put blinders on. And I didn't even know about Aspergers then. But even if I did make a terrible mistake, it doesn't excuse his behaviour.

When I was his special interest and before we had a child, he treated me fairly well. After I got pregnant and faced a few life crises was when things became really awful. So I can absolutely say that a lot of the experience on AS Partners rings very true to me.

My husband says very, very hurtful things...if I bring those things up he becomes defensive, denies he said it, says I don't understand the context in which they were said, etc. etc. So we can't move forward because he never apologises. He just expects things to be ok because his intent wasn't bad (I'm not so sure about that...when he says things in the moment, he lashes out, it's awful - his face looks so full of anger and intent to hurt - maybe he doesn't remember feeling like that later)

I have also seen people on this forum say they don't think their meltdowns are abusive, but believe me being on the receiving end of one is very frightening, very distressing.

As to the narcissism. My mother is NPD. My husband is NOT a narcissist, not the way she is. But in a lot of ways their behaviour and the impact of their behaviour is the same.

I do think that a lot of people on AS Partners may have lost some perspective and ascribe everything bad that happens in their marriage to ASD. But living with an AS partner is hard, very hard. And when I need emotional support, it isn't there. Believe me, I've seen horrible things on this forum said about NTs.

ElkClan, would you be willing to share what you get from coming to WrongPlanet? I am just wondering as it would seem your experience with people with ASD has been so negative.

I am not denying your experience, but I do want to point out that my husband does the same and he is NT. I think sometimes NT people want to blame all negative aspects of someone's behavior on their Aspergers, and people with Aspergers want to blame all of their negative behavior on Aspergers, when the reality is that being an asshat knows no neurological boundaries.

^^ +1000000000000000000000000000000000000000

just because someone may not fit the criteria for an NPD diagnosis, does not mean they can't still have a selfish and mean personality; just not pathologically mean and selfish. i've encountered probably hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-clinical a**holes in my life. most of those people did not have AS, they were just a**holes. any group of people anywhere is going to contain it's share of a**holes, including both AS and NT populations. such, unfortunately, is human nature.

Taken literally, it does mean those things if "yourself" is the sort of person who wants to do those things. The problem with the advice "be yourself" is that it is given with the implicit understanding that it only applies to positive or relatively neutral personal characteristics, or in certain circumstances. It is not meant to be applied universally.

Best description ever.