Aspartners: Questions

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I do not think it is intended to be educational in the sense that a regular person would use the word. They intend to "warn" people about relationships with aspies and tell them to leave their aspie partner if they currently have one. I suppose there are also "hints" on how to deal with aspies but they are of that same spirit, from what I can see, at least most of them.

I agree with EmileMulder that reporting or outing them would just give them attention they would probably use to spread their hate further. The have a first amendment right to post what they are posting, as far as I know nothing illegal has been posted. So all you would do is give them a wider forum. The worst stuff I have seen is that they wish we would not breed more of our kind. They can wish whatever they want.

I understand what you are saying. I was reading the post made by BSTN on post number 12 out of 34. How are these women empathetic and kind? How do they help and be nice to everyone? I have read many of their posts and some were pretty good but most are so vague and ambiguous. What is educational about their posts? What are we supposed to learn from them? What exactly is their message they're trying to get across to us aspies? I don't get it.

Look at post number 34. Is she admitting that my argument is sound and I have some points?

In their minds, they are empathetic and kind. I have not seen evidence that this is true. They are unreliable narrators and I do not think they are even capable of ascertaining the truth in their actions or relationships. Based on what they type I think they believe that they showed empathy and kindness to their relationship partners for the bulk of their relationships. I see no evidence that this is so. What I see is bitterness and vitriol. I think also they are trying to make themselves feel superior to their partners/exes. They stress the traits they think they have (empathy and kindness) that they say their partners lack.

They say they have helped their partners fit in etc. but they probably did so for their motivations not necessarily to help. They probably felt it would help their partners career/job prospects and bring more money into the household or would keep them from being embarrassed by their aspie spouse in public. This is not selfless help, it is selfishly motivated at least to some extent.

Re: Post 12--She thinks she was being nice to you for not cursing you out for being there and not following the forum's instructions. She thinks she is nice and kind for helping her spouse and kid with their aspie-ness. Again, not a selfless act---You are supposed to help your children regardless of neurology. It is part of the job, and if you go above and beyond that, that is what you are supposed to do for a life you create. She is viewing herself as being a martyr for this, and we have no idea how much extra work this was. Helping her husband would be helping herself, too. (See the other explanation I made before)

Re: Post 34: I can't make sense of it at all. She does not have a coherent, logical mind. She admitted to not reading all of your post, I Googled that cat/pigeon idiom as I did not know it and found the following in Wikipedia:

Throwing (also putting and setting) the cat among the pigeons is a British idiom used to describe a disturbance caused by an undesirable person from the perspective of a group.

So, she accused you of causing a ruckus in their little group, is what that apparently means. Then she was being sarcastic about your post when she said it would make one weep. She meant she did not give a rats *** about your post and it evoked no empathy. (You know the empathy they think they are so full of, over there on that site--)

Then she made her main point (I guess) which is how she can't ever win an argument or get an apology from an aspie. She is not exactly debate club material, but I doubt that it is her point. I think the point is that the aspie/s she knows don't admit to losing an argument and that bothers her and somehow you posting created a mind association thing with that issue.

Then she made a nasty remark about your user name b/c she just doesn't like aspies and by extension you, and then riffed off 2 other posts, relating aspies to parasites and something about some other site's multiple user policy, which I did not even understand, why that was important.

Edited to add: They are not attempting to be educational. When they say to read their site to learn about them they do not mean they really want aspies there so they can learn. (She thought that was a "kind" way to say what she meant, which was that it is an NT site. They also mean that if you do go there--just read--do not type. To the extent they feel it is educational, it is that you should learn how "horrible" aspies make the lives of the NTs around them and that you should endeavor to be as nice to NTs as your "horrible" aspie nature will allow you.

It is not educational. It is trash.

I really think the majority of them don't / didn't even have Aspie partners. They just got really pissed off at someone and decided to label them and complain. Some of them talk about being married to someone with an ASD for years and not knowing it. In my experience it's not something someone hides easily, especially from an intimate partner. If they are capable of doing that, I would think that it's inappropriate to label them as being on the spectrum (since ASD is defined by significant social deficits). The only cases where I think it is even possible for someone with ASD to pass as NT with an NT partner for years is when there is a language barrier (both speak different native languages, and at least one is communicating in a second language), so the social issues are understood as language/cultural differences.

Instead this feels more like weak, post-hoc explanations for why a relationship fell apart being repackaged as hate-speech against people with a social deficit. It's the same to me as a husband who explains away his wife's anger with him because "she's on her period" or "she's bipolar" or "women are so emotional". It's a weak excuse for taking no personal responsibility for their own relationships. If I were more judgmental and less careful, I may label people who do that as having a personality disorder, like borderline personality, or narcissistic personality, or obsessive compulsive personality disorder (not to be confused with OCD)...then I could start up my own website and complain;).

The problem is, when you go on there and defend people with ASDs, they perceive it as you defending their ex-husband. You can't win that argument, the only thing you can do is walk away.

I agree with this, as well. I think they just have partners/exs who may or may not have emotional connection issues and just made up their minds that it is AS and that they are going to blame that so they do not have to do the work of analyzing their relationships and so they can avoid all blame in their minds.

AS wasn't known then until the last twenty years and they may not have known still until years later, especially their partners. I just wonder how they even stayed married to them that long. Did they think they could change them or that they would change?

I think they think as*hole=AS.

Yes someone can have AS and be an as*hole and someone can be an as*hole and not have AS.

They do it with pregnancy too.

Right, they may not have had a label for it. But if it really was ASD, they would have noticed something was different about the person, but they may have just labeled them as "weird" or a "nerd". The bottom line is; if somehow the ASD makes the person intolerable to someone else, that should have been obvious from the beginning. They should have walked away from the relationship early saying, "wow that guy's weird..." or "I really don't like nerds." The symptoms of ASD are not the sort of thing someone can hide and then spring on their partner once they're married with kids and a mortgage. Hence my supposition - either the partner didn't really have an ASD, or the person complaining has terrible judgment (to stay in a relationship that makes them miserable from the start)- probably a mix of both.



absolutely

I don't get it either. How would we be able to have enough social sense to do that. By the very definition of autism the effect is socially based. There is no logic to these women at all and it seems like they're making armchair diagnoses. Isn't it illegal to practice psychology without a license?

Conjecture is not illegal. They seem to claim that somehow people with AS are able to lure them in, somehow fooling them into thinking they are "normal" and then drop the pretense once they get married. I have seen where they talk on other threads (I don't have the link offhand) about how it should be illegal not to disclose; so they seem to think their partners have hidden their diagnoses from them, possibly. (Yeah, it depends on the age, that obviously would not be true of folks before diagnoses where readily available, but who knows if they even know that.) It makes no sense.

I think League_Girl is right about her ***hole theory. I do think they equate AS with ***hole, for who knows what reason. The way they talk you would think the % of AU/AS is super high b/c they seem to run into them everywhere.

Yeah, I understand.



I never did anything like that. This is what I worry about myself. Am I inadvertently messing up my wife? I worry about destroying her inadvertently each and everyday.

Here is the thing, if you are basing relationship worries solely on what these people say, then that is the most illogical basis you could have chosen. Do you communicate pretty well with her? That is probably the main thing b/c if you communicate well, (even if it takes a little longer to explain what you mean or to clarify) she will tell you things. Then you will know. Hopefully she knows you can't read her mind, and so if she has issues she wants to talk to you about, she will bring them up. Just being AS married to an NT does not mean you have marital problems.

We have had major problems in the past similar to the ones these women complain about. Actually, she is pretty blunt about things and she will tell me if she doesn't like something I do especially if it hurts her feelings. She told me in the past she felt lonely around me because I didn't engage her to much when we were home. I would be on my computer for the most part. Now, I do spend more time with her. For example, we watch hulu together and I do sometimes go out to social events with her.

I think the fact that she tells you when things need to be addressed is a good thing. IF those concerns were in the pass, and you resolved things so that both of you are happy with how things are now, then I do not think you need to worry.

I understand some of your questions, better now. You were trying to learn about NT/AS relationships from that site to make your own better. You are not going to get that kind of knowledge there. That site is not designed to fix relationships, it is meant to ruminate on how bad they are. I think you are better off asking your own spouse how she is feeling, if you have concerns. NT people vary in what they like, and do not all have the same preferences.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 23 Jan 2014, 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Reality is that EVERY relationship has challenges. My guess is that these people could leave and go find an NT partner, then probably find something wrong with them too, and have to find yet another forum to complain on.

They will probably think they are an aspie too

cubedemon - the fact that you are so concerned about these things says a lot (positively) about you as a partner. The things we care about are the things we worry about, and (hopefully) the things we work on and improve. It is understandable - knowing how AS can affect your life that you would be concerned about it negatively affecting your partner's life too. And apparently at times it has, and you have both worked on that.

Ultimately, we all make choices, and it's up to your partner to protect herself from negative things and to tell you when you are contributing negatively to her life. Based on your descriptions, she already does that, so the fact that she stays with you tells me that she has chosen to stay with you, probably because; on balance you add more positives to her life than negatives. Additionally, I assume that you work on the negatives, so she has hope that you will continue to become a better husband.

The choice issue is so very crucial in relationships. Despite the fact that two people come together and come to depend on one another; in the end we are all individuals and we are each responsible for our own happiness. If my partner does not contribute positively to my life, then it is my responsibility to make her aware of it, or get out of the relationship. It's also nice when the partner is attentive and caring, and I don't have to put that effort in...but if she stopped being that, then it would be my responsibility to take care of myself, make her aware that I am not satisfied and do something about it. I'm saying all this so that you can understand that if you are in a solid relationship, then either you are a worthy partner, or your wife is a fool. If you respect your wife's judgment, then you have to conclude that you are a worthy partner (at least some of the time), and trust her to tell you if you are not.

Incidentally, this is one reason I don't really respect the people on that aspartners forum - they speak as if they had no choice in the matter. As if someone with AS had cruelly imprisoned them in a relationship. It just doesn't work like that (except in extreme cases involving physical abuse and intimidation): people always have choices. When people choose to stay in a bad relationship, that's as much their own fault as their partner's. When people come away from a bad relationship feeling completely blameless (even after the anger has had time to subside), it tells me that they probably didn't work on themselves during the relationship, which probably contributed to it falling apart.

edit: one more thing - notice I said it's my responsibility to make my partner aware of problems. It's not my responsibility to change or fix my partner (like those aspartners who did so much to "help" their aspie mates). Only she can make those choices. Depending on what she chooses, we can move closer together or farther apart. So each of us can: work on ourselves, communicate our needs, try to listen and understand the other's needs and leave if we need to protect ourselves..