So I posted in the infamous AS partners forum for NT's...

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That is wonderful and I hope you two have an excellent relationship together. I think Bill and Ted said it best. "Be Excellent to Each Other" and "Party On Dudes!"

Did your husband change a lot from what he was like when you were dating, tawaki?
He seemed verry merry berry high functioning then.
Faking nt well takes quite a lot of social ability, many autistic people can't do it.
Plus he had school and job.
Plus he could date you and have long relationship before marriage.
Was he different or is your description different?

I hate requoting, but I don't want to mess up the original post, mobile phones bite sometimes...

In NT land, not noticing someone crying is unusual. As an NT, you have to be pretty drugged/drunk/psychotic (?) not to notice. I've been higher than a kite, and really hammered, and still take notice of someone crying. And I'd probably ask what was wrong. That's just my personality.

Even when rip roaring manic, I'd probably not notice anger, but I would notice crying. It isn't that I am such a good person, my brain is hard wired to pick up that stuff.

My husband notices crying, but not all the subtle stuff leading up to it, and he is in the camp of do nothing until asked. Mostly because his brain gets locked.

That isn't because he is a bad person. He literally doesn't see it. If he does picks it up, it is because he has dissection that situation and put it in his memory bank. I have never done that, and the effort has to be mind blowing. Me getting upset at him would be me screaming at a blind person how do they not know the cloud coverage today.

So I totally get how you couldn't tell. My husband is like that too.

I gave the snow and example because in NT Land this would mostly likely happen.

I come in, "The car is stuck, and the maintenance guys say it has to be moved."

NT huband, "Ugh or expletive, I'll be out. Let me get my coat and boots. Are both shovels outside?" Some variation of that. It could be more nasty or not.

Seriously that is it.

In NT Land. The husband remembers there is 20 inches of snow, and the crew has done a s**t job plowing the street. We own a small car, and it will get stuck. The maintenance guys are as*hole and probably screamed at the wife to get that tin can out of the way NOW. Husbands and wives are supposed to be a team, and help each other out. Even if I think she deserves to shovel out the car herself, because she got it stuck, I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to lose face with the other dudes that I am a s**t husband.

I would never in million years have that conversation with my husband and expect that reaction. Conversations like..

Dog is sick.
Kid puked.
Your mom called.
We are out of...
I'm going to the ER..
The car died..

My husband just shuts down. I couldn't expect an NT response, because in his head there aren't any back stories to draw upon. In some of those situations, I don't have time to give him a 40 minute back story of who, what, where, why, how and so what. So I don't ask him. I can't even get angry because it would be pointless. He has situational amnesia. I've been to the ER more times than I care to remember. My husband acts like what is this place called the ER? What could it possibly be? Where is this ER?

With my NT friends, the conversation is

Me: Off to the ER.
Them: asthma or low potassium?
Me:.asthma
Them: local ER?
Me: yep
Them: see you there. Give us 20 mins.

I chalk it up to the differences between a NT/ASD brain.

I wasn't looking for pity or to rag on my husband. The bulk of the gripes on the AS/NT forums is all variations of situations like the crying, or the stuck car or an ER visit. The ASD person has no clue and the NT is expecting an NT response from ASD person.

If you have trouble getting non verbal social cues, problems with statement sentences with no follow up, and pour a good heap of anxiety on top of it, I'm the moron to expect something else. And I need to find another way to get the information to you, or just not do it.

How did he fake NT so well if he doesn't notice non-verbal cues?
Literally not seeing them doesn't seem to match with faking NT well.

Autism is a spectrum. When my husband was diagnosed he had HUGE scatter on his testing. Some areas where beyond excellent, others where total, sad rubbish.

His high IQ and other strengths covered up many issues. He's introverted. He worked in the tech industry. He's a dude! Lol... There are many NT introverted, techy men who are not social butterflies. He had issues with his family growing up, so my husband is a little emotionally stunted.

When work went to hell, he just couldn't boot strap any more. He had no energy reserves to deal with me, the kid, being an adult and work. My husband started having full bore over the top meltdowns, and I thought he was psychotic. He did have meltdowns in the past, but it was more *angry guy*, than what the hell is?

The meltdowns at work and at home forced his diagnosis. Originally they told me he was *angry middle age white guy with rage issues dodging assault charges*. I didn't really believe it. Nobody would have guessed Autism.

Until I saw the test results.

And my heart broke.

And I realized how hard he worked to keep all the plates spinning.

Because he so wanted to fit in.

My husband was the equivalent of a third grader getting diagnosed. Little kids on the spectrum can bounce along until the social skills get too much.

He is now dealing with depression and PTSD because of work, and that makes it hard too.

Hope this answered your question.

That is a bittersweet, but happy ending, story. I wish you and your family luck. Your husband is lucky to have you.

A similar thing happened to me this past year in my last job, as a flight attendant for a major airline. I was also learning how to fly planes. I loved both but something felt like it "snapped," and the love turned sour.

I recently read an article in Scientific American Mind about the difference in how depression manifests in men and women. Men get angry and loud, women get sad and quiet. This was true from your husband's story, a friend of mine who is male and just got his AS diagnosis, and me.

Many people noticed. It's like the color left my world. I couldn't make anyone happy, either. Just an ace at my job and being sad. But even keeping to myself seemed to piss people off. Then, with the help of my mom, I got diagnosed at 30. It took her by surprise but I knew it made sense and welcomed it openly.

I felt like a lot of it was still my fault but now I could explain why. It's still a struggle but it'll be easier.

Anyone who is on the outside won't understand, but I don't expect them too. I just want to be treated as I treat others: with respect, dignity, and honor.

Noooo she told her husband to tell someone a car is stuck in the snow. "Tell him the car is stuck in the snow."

I would be like "what?" and ask "who's him and what car?"


But this isn't telling him what to do so if my husband were to tell me "Beth, get David ready, we are going to the mall with you." He isn't telling me to do it and this is a statement?

That's what you told him? I thought you told him to tell someone the car is stuck in the snow. I knew I was missing something based on the responses.

I don;t know why you couldn't say "I need your help" and then tell him what you need him to do but I guess it would take 40 minutes of explaining as you say so it's not worth the hassle asking him for help and telling him to do things.

I wonder what happened, it seems like he used to be higher functioning and then he got worse, he had a job and everything and now he is unemployed. I have read about autistic people getting worse as they get older, NTs get worse too as they get older, everyone does but not to the same degree as autistic people. For one people don't have the same amount of energy as younger people do and they don't have as much patience for little kids as they did when they were young, this is example here of an NT getting worse when they are older. They are also more exhausted chasing after little ones than younger folks are when they are in their twenties and thirties. So caring for a small child would take more energy from them than it would for a person in their twenties.

No one could possibly know for sure what you thought. That's exactly why you should state your intentions clearly in communication.
Dropping "hints" and other uncertainties introduced into communication is deceptive and manipulative.

BINGO!
I'm glad someone finally said it.

A tad harsh, but then, those who live by the hatchet job.......

Seriously, I do often marvel at the apparent perfectionism of some NT expectations. If I want something from my partner, and don't ask, I tend to blame myself if I don't receive it. Should I expect more?

This could be the very key to why/how his ASD symptoms got worse.
I think it may have to do with psychological dissociation.
I may not describe it so well but I think of it as a mental split between the inside world of thoughts and the outside real-time world, caused by a significant increase in filtering between the two, or what I call inhibitions.

A strong inhibition could cause something like the blocking of as assumption that you needed help with something.

Overall I think it's a type of defense mechanism from real-time emotional pain.

This seems like mental breakdown due to stress, which is why I asked about why he was so different from before and what had changed from then. Most of his eggstreme withdrawal/avoidance/eggscape traits like the snow and moving situations and the other patterns of behavior you mentioned could be consequences of this breakdown. In my view, he is not failing to help in those situations and showing the other kinds of neglecting behaviors only because of tom issues in autism. It seems more likely that he just can't deal with the situation of taking action and making effort due to continuing major psychological and emotional issues from the breakdown. Is he getting some help for those issues? This seems like really mentally unhealthy situation for anyone to be in, so I think that it is important that he get regular therapy for those issues. Attributing the issues primarily to lack of tom and autism, then understanding and accepting them as part of autism, doesn't seem like the best approach to me. Also, I have always thought that you talk about him here like he is a child.

Maybe some people didn't notice how AS their husbands were until after they were married because the husband changed? My husband changed. He had sort of like a mental breakdown 2 years ago ("burn out"?) where he just stopped functioning. He stopped driving, stopped cooking, stopped even leaving the house for a month or so. He was NOT like that when I met him- and I was with him for 20 years before this happened. He always passed as NT because he's so shy- people (including me until quite recently) just thought he was shy and introverted. I was pretty shocked when it dawned on me that it could be autism because it never really crossed my mind even though we have two autistic kids. But it does make sense when I think about it. And I think the reason (or part of the reason) that he had this breakdown thing was because he was dealing with more stress than most people doing normal daily things.

When I first met him, I was a new immigrant and in a bit of culture shock. I explained any oddness away by him being Canadian and me not understanding Canadians. By the time I realised that he was just a weirdo, I had gotten to know him already and didn't really care because I liked him anyway. I was used to it. He does need me to be very direct if I want him to do something. One of our first fights was when I asked him to "take out the garbage". The garbage and recycling go together so I meant "take out garbage and recycling" but assumed the second part was a given. He just took out the garbage and when I asked why, he said "you didn't tell me to take out the recycling…". Then I thought he was just being a smartass and I wasn't a big fan of that. Later I realised that it actually hadn't occurred to him to take out the recycling because that's not what I said. The easy fix is to be more specific, however sometimes I forget and then I get frustrated. I think nowadays it's a duel effort- I try to be more specific and he tries to imagine what else I could be meaning, and usually things are fine.

With a situation like telling him my car is stuck though, he would have difficulty with that. (a) Probably wouldn't understand that I needed his help, (b) if he did/ I specifically asked, would have anxiety about abruptly stopping what he was doing, and have anxiety about pushing it in front of other people on the street, etc.. Lately, it probably wouldn’t even be worth it to enlist his help because he would have so much anxiety that it would be more time-consuming than it would be without him. On the other hand, if he were in the car with me, he'd be mentally preparing himself to do it the whole time (he's always thinking about what could go wrong and what would need to be done if that happened) and thus would be able to help right away. It's about the mental preparation time, not about not wanting to help or anything like that. It is annoying sometimes (I'm working on being less annoyed by it), but it seems to be directly related to anxiety. When he's less anxious, he needs less time to mentally prepare to do something.

I'm sticking it out too, despite friends thinking I'm a crazy woman who has very low standards too (hey maybe it's true LOL)… relate a lot to what Tawaki says.

What would happen if NT wife said to AS husband, "Come help me with XYZ! We have to get XYZ done now, or else X'Y'Z' bad things will happen!"?

Would husband help, freeze, refuse, melt down, argue, other?

When my mother talks like this to me, I usually go help her right away, because I don't want the bad things to happen. If there are no bad things, I would probably say later, when I'm done with what I'm doing. I also told her that I only go places with her during "craptime", which is after 4 to 5 pm, after I have done a lot of what I had planned for me to do that day. It is not absolute, of course, I can still go somewhere with her at 8 am or 12 pm or whatever, and I don't have to go with her each time she asks me to go somewhere during craptime.

I think it's valuable stuff from both of you. In both cases the guy's condition deteriorated rather suddenly and late in the day, in one case due to work pressure - yes the workplace can do awful things to autistic people.

Hopefully it means the autism isn't any worse, from a brain-wiring point of view, more likely that the comorbids have flared up and manifested as what looks like a worsening in the autism. I'm usually more Aspie when I'm anxious, mentally exhausted, or just plain unhappy.

I think I'm starting to understand better now. I see how you both ended up with partners who are now showing Aspie symptoms so strongly.