Having aspergers/ ADD, and dealing with parents break up

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Hi, I'm new here but I have a specific question that needs answering.

I'm a young male, 20 going on 21, with aspergers and or ADD. I've been diagnosed with both, ADD at about 5, aspergers at about 8. I've had learning difficulties since that time, a long with attention difficulties, and stuff like that. I've had ongoing depressive periods, particularly when I got to highschool, which are still happening now, and I've had repeated panic attacks, which particularly started happening last semester, around may-june, which I responded to by seeing a psychologist. He believes that I have avoidant personality disorder, and that most of my problems revolve around avoidance. I'm starting to think that I'm completely loopy, especially when I start trying to write something like this and it comes out like an incoherent mess. Uggh!!

Now before I continue ranting about myself, I'll get into my family.


Now my family situation is odd, or at least our psychologists that we all see seem to think so. My dad definitely has Aspergers, and my mum has apparently been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, though my dad thinks that she may have had ADD type symptoms, or some sort of learning difficulty growing up.

ANYWAY, about 3 years ago, in 2009 When I'd just started going to university (its a local university, a half an hour drive from my families house growing up (dad's now), my younger sister, who doesn't have any asperghers/add traits started fighting pretty seriously with my mum. My sister was young and at a moody age, which is what I took her angry spells/vigilance against mum as, but, apparently mum was actually really harsh on her all the time, really critical of her weight, stuff like that, and had been ever since childhood. Constantly critical, constantly putting her down. The whole thing seemed to start because my mum wouldn't stay out of my sisters room. My sister put signs all over the door telling her to keep out, mum prevailed, and my sister hated her more.

Now, my sister ended up seeing a psychologists, and told them a bunch of stuff, and they said to her apparently (a lot of this apparently, 've tried to get the facts but I don't know what to believe, to my dissmay) that my mum was abusive, that my mum had constantly picked on my sister growing up, constantly ruined her self esteem and infact put her in danger at times (such as driving a car crazily and saying 'DO YOU WANT ME TO CRASH THIS INTO A TREE', I was there for this, I think, it was when we were younger, I thought it wasn't that crazy, though my mum actually would get into this viciously angry/crazy persona).

Anyway, I kept out of it, and my family basically disintegrated. My dad had had a sour relationship with my mum for years (I've found out recently that according to him, it was bad even after they basically got first married, I'll elaborate on this later). My sister ended up engaging with dad more, ignoring mum, and going heavily into her school enviroment. She's a pretty mean flute player, she's very bright, and she had a close relationship with her flute teacher, a kind of defacto mother for her, apparently.

Anyway, I was always on mum's side, well not completely, but I seemed to understand her perspective, I was really close to her growing up and she constantly looked after me/gave me affection and catered to quite a few of my whims. I've learnt now that my mum apparently has dissociative identity disorder, severely and that she was basically crazy and acted in a crazy way due to traumatic experiences in her childhood (she lived on a farm with an alcoholic, abusive father, and 6 siblings, the father raped the mother regularly, apparently, and the children had to help her out, get him off etc, my dad actually thinks my mum was possibly raped).

For my dad, he's told me now, in hindsight, that mum basically refused to have sex with him after they got married, that she experienced a panic attack whenever they did it, and she basically, in some weird sense, didn't think of dad as a man. Dad's perspective is that he was meant to beat her/demean her to make her affectionate to him/turned on, and because he didn't do that, she didn't think he was a man, was never affectionate etc. I wonder if its more because he had aspgergers he wasn't able to sense delicate emotions, and he's a bit of a nerd too, I've found out that he's had two partners prior, both of which he got married to for extended periods of time (the first one ended up being severely mentally ill, the second one was 'neurotic' apparently, and my dad says he always wondered why he attracted crazy people). I've read a lot of forums that talk about pick up artistry stuff and how there are certain ways women generally think/what they are attracted too, so maybe its the case that he just wasn't socially sensitive enough. Then again, my dad believes that mum married him under false pretenses, as he calls it, and that she either did it for social status among her friends, for money. I used to think that mum definitely loved all of us, in some way, though now I don't know what to think.

Now I've always been really close with my mum. She constantly organised my things growing up, she went well out of her way to organise all my things for me when I wouldn't organise them, to help me in primary school, etc etc. She basically overmothered me, in some senses. However, I always thought she was just a normal mum. I blame her now, in a lot of ways, for problems I now have, everyone I know seems to think she isn't normal, so I don't know. My father and sister think that she actually is mentally ill, so I should stay away from her. I'm pretty impressionistic I think, having the rest of my family that I wasn't as close with telling me she's crazy and trying to kill us (dad has been very exagerative of all this, saying that she's going to divorce him and take his money), I'm kind of torn between parents. Really though, I probably just need to get out of it, like my sister is. She got mum out of her life and now she's hardly home because she can't deal with dad, she's told me. Hmm.

Growing up I wasn't that close to dad. I used to despise him from probably 10 or so onwards, when it became clear to me that he was really tight with money, didn't ever seem to be around, and would get angry at my while retreating to his office. He seemed to always be angry with me, and he's come back at times trying to be nice and friendly in this odd kinda charming way he has but it didn't make it better.

I really didn't like my dad through my teens. I'm not sure when it started but I think it had to do with the fact that he never seemed to spend money on us, never took us away etc. He seemed to just recluse into his office, we hardly ever saw him, it was basically him as a seperate unit to me, my mum and my sister. I think I used to think he wasn't a man growing up because he didn't seem to do anything that my 'cool' friends dad's did. I don't know. I didn't like him a lot because he seemed to yell at me easily. He wouldn't buy me video games, his christmas/birthday presents seemed really small/insignificant compared to what my friends seemed to get, and he often wouldn't give us anything. I'm starting to wonder now if my mum constantly getting down because he wouldn't spend money on us is part of this.

Now to cut things short, this is how things are with my mum. Apparently she was always really really really nice to me, which she pretty much always was, but was a complete b***h to my sister and dad, in different ways. I was especially close to her, and I've tried to cut down seeing her, even though I know its hurting her, because I'm worried I won't be able to learn how to figure out how to look after myself, PLUS I'm concerned that my dad is 'right' (he's been constantly ranting to me lately, ever since he got whiff of that fact that i was interested/willing to listen, about how crazy mum is, how she wants to steal our money, how she's trying to sucker me out of helping out the rest of my family, my sister and dad, and I'm getting taken away by it, and have been trying to figure out who's right for a long time.

Now I'm not that bright, I'm starting to realise lately. I have had periods where I've thought I was super smart because I had good ideas, wrote good essays, stuff like that, though in a real sense, I'm a real slacker, and I've avoided the world in a lot of ways. Learning difficulties, avoidance, fear of new experiences, slacking off as well as a kind of inherent weakness in my personaliy (I can't seem to stand up for myself, and I tend to try and find a single best friend to become friends with, which i've done ever since childhood. I'm usually really nice/understanding to them. My shrink thinks its got to do with trying to get affection from my dad. With my aspie mind, this s**t really worries/overhwhelmes).

Now I've currently moved out of my mums house, who I moved in with midway through last year. I moved out at the end of this year, and have slowly stopped going, and eventually told her that I didn't want to come see her anymore that I felt like she had held me back in some ways. Now I live with my dad. Its hard to ask him for anything, he's really snappy, especially since he got retrenched by his work (Oh, did I mention, this all reached a peak in maybe mid 2008 when my dad got fired from his job. He's been trying to sue them ever since for causing him a poor medical condition, as he basically had some sort of heart attack thing immediately after it happened, and has been super stressed/crazy/ aspergers ADD, tight arse with money, (all his traits to the extreme) ever since then. The relationship between my sister and mum seemed to head down hill majorly just at this point, I guess there really was a peak when the family collapsed. It was through 2009, toward the end, when my mum moved out.


It took me about an hour to write this out, it was written all over the place, and I had to stop myself from ranting incoherently and going off topic. This seems to be a common theme with me lately, but it could be the case its just an aspergers trait that is coming out after a long period of not speaking so much. I don't know. My brain has been abbohrently bad lately, most likely due to not using it for anything, which is probably the main thing.

Anyway, my question is, how do I manage this? On top of all this, I'm a nearly 21 year old male, with shocking self esteem, a pretty bad working brain, now I think about it, and a quitting attitude. I've had problems my whole life relating to people, have spent a good portion of my life since I was 15 on computers, just screwing around, either playing video games or browsing forums (particularly a place called totse, that used to be around). I'm in my third year of an arts course, I feel like I don't know who to trust. I have no money, and I need to rely on dad for it, but he's really hard to deal with, though he seems to try when he thinks its important. I am actually still scared of him, in hindsight. Everyone in our family has been scared of each other in different points.

God I don't even remember why I started this thread. Oh yeah. So basically, how do I deal with both my parents while trying to fix my own life up? Fact of the matter is that I'm a pretty screwed up lad and I don't want to deal with my problems but having my dad constantly rant at me about them, and not really knowing how to look after myself (I've let myself go this semester as well, I've got shocking organization skills, and I tend to give things up quickly. Last semester I was motivated and working really hard but things changed because this 'relationship' that I had with a girl from sydney who I'd never met, who I tried to get close with, ended, or at least declined heaps, once I kept falling off the ball and losing my s**t.

How do I deal with my parents, keeping in mind that my relationship with my dad doesn't seem to be healthy, nor does the one with my mum. How do i escape this?

ARGH

I think you are actually doing ok in what was (and is) obviously a difficult home environment, with two parents with disorders.

As you are still financially dependent on your parents, you obviously need to take that factor into consideration. However, my thought for what it is worth is that you should not completely cut off your mom as you seem to have done. She did seem to care for you and do a lot for you when growing up. You can't rely too much on eg your dad's judgment in a marriage breakup situation like this.

You do not need to rely or stay with your mother, but I think you should keep up contact with her, albeit on your own terms. I don't think doing so in any way downplays the views of your dad and sister. Each person is entitled to their opinion. In your shoes I would be inclined not to talk about your mother when with your father and vice versa.

I guess the rest of it is just a question of hanging in there until you are able to finish your degree and hopefully become financially self-sufficient.

No marriage breakup is easy even at your age, but you seem to be doing ok. Good luck.

Got to agree with ~hoegaandit, your mother seems to have worked hard to make you happy and so seems to care about you. I don't think you can really punish her for it because you think it ruined certain things for you. If you think certain things she does is making things difficult for you, then tell her don't avoid her.

Your parents and sister have forced you into the middle of the divorce and that is not fair. There is no rule that says you cannot love both flawed parents despite everything. You've been forced to rapidly learn all the bad and the ugly about these people because of agendas that have nothing to do with you, but it does not actually have to change anything. And yet it seems to have changed everything.

It sounds to me that, despite her issues, your mom was able to develop a relationship with you that filled in some gaps for you, like organization skills, and was positive. Just because she couldn't do the same for your father or sister does not mean it wasn't as you saw it. They had no right to take that away from you. I know your father and sister think they are protecting you, but they are also angry, and in that anger it sounds like they have sought to destroy what was working for you.

Remember this when you think about your mother, after all this new information you have been given: deeply flawed and ill people can still sometimes get something in life right. They can still do good things. And they can still give love and be worth loving.

So you sort out for all these family members what YOU, not anyone else, believe they get right for you, and with you, and you put those aspects into the front of your mind. You make note of the bad things they can do and you put up a little wall against those aspects. You write rules of engagement for yourself, how you will handle interactions, that help you deal safely with the swinging pendulums of who they are. Your psychologist can probably help you with the sorting process, and with creating scripts for handling common situations.

And then you remember that you have every right to love people even when they are crazy, if that is what you want to do, and you tell each and every one of your family members that they cannot tell you who to love, who to have a relationship with, or what to do in that relationship. And they certainly have no right to put you in the middle or make you try to choose sides in a situation that has nothing to do with you.

There are no perfect or even fully normal people in this world. Every last one of us is a bundle of flaws and gifts, mistakes and success, good and bad. Yet somehow most of us love and are loved anyway. Love does not need to judge.

Best of luck to you. You are not in an easy situation.