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

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I am also wondering about the lack of ER visiting pattern.
Was that before or after the breakdown?
Avoiding dealing with a situation involving one's wife or child having to go to ER is eggstreme.
That seems like purely super avoidance, not tom.

If I do a direct command, as you have put it, "I need your help now. The car is stuck, and I need to get out of the street right now." That's a guaranteed melt down right there. In his mind it's a command because there is a time part to it (now). He does not do well with transitions at all. I can be all sweetness and light, and it would still be meltdown mode.

His last big melt down at work was a direct order from a boss on a time sensitive issue. His anxiety went into over drive and he freaked.

My husband is very much like the two Aspie kids we had in after school care.

When we had some kids get out of control, we would tell the other kids to sit. The Aspie kids had no clue ( a fight between two knuckle heads, and we were trying get the others out of the way) what sit meant. We had one person who would go give the dissertation to the Aspie kids.

-I need you to sit hear and be quiet. You did nothing wrong. We are trying to break up Beavis and Butt-Head fighting. You are helping us by sitting quietly. I need you to sit right here and not get up and move around."

All the NT kids understood "Sit" or "Shush". We had to give the Aspie boys literally a 5 paragraph explanation for every request. We had 70 other kids with 4 adults, and none were teachers or special ed instructors. We did it because they would have full bore meltdowns if they didn't have a big set up for a transition. Remember non of us are teachers, so we did the best we could.

NTs do not talk in that much explicit detail usually in a non work, non formal social setting.

I'm not a speech pathologist or an English major. I don't know what you call this part of speech, like...

Sit. (sit over here)
Remote? (Can you help me find the remote?)
Lighter? (Do you have a lighter? I need a light.)
Over here! (Come over here with us)
Bedtime (off to bed, you come too)
Hungry? (It's lunch time, want to join us?)

The boys and to a certain degree my husband flat out struggle with those types of sentences. We'd yell, "Going in", and all the NT kids would run to line up to go inside, and the two Aspie boys didn't get it. They weren't ignoring us. Going in? What is going in? My boss did not understand why two supposedly intelligent boys could not understand some requests.

It is hard for me to translate from NT to Aspie.... lol..

Actually, my husband's Aspie symptoms were much worse 30 years ago. Much more rigid. Much more no social skills, but remember people are pretty forgiving in their 20s about social screw ups. That gets less and less when you hit your 30s+. Then people expect you to know.

And when you hang around married people with kids, the goofy/weird/foot in mouth gets judged more harshly than you hanging with the boys throwing back beers.

The depression and PTSD really hamper his poor executive functioning skills, and that is what is throttling him right now. Also those comorbids make it hard to deal with the human race too.

About my ER visits. That's flat out anxiety, transitions and executive functioning. He has had doctors full bore scream in his face that he is a s**t husband, and a pathetic human. I can remember him sobbing after the ER doctor asked why the hell couldn't he sack up, be a man and be present for his wife. I've been asked if he's a drug addict or a schizophrenic. (flat Aspie stare) My doctors HATE him. Flat out loathe him. Mostly because my husband will do the Aspie monolog when stressed, ask weird questions, and never seems to be "here/present/in the moment". I know he is struggling not to shut down, and that looks detached/non caring to the observer.

This makes me laugh because I have to talk the same way to my son and it's soooo tiring. Everything has to be precisely explained in great detail, not just "what" to do, but "why" and "how" as well.

It's weird to me how well I relate to the experience of being an autistic adult, and yet I also totally relate to NT parents of autistic children. I guess dealing with autistic people is difficult even if one is on the spectrum oneself. Less so sometimes, maybe, but also sometimes more so.

I have an observation about descriptions of NT-AS relationships, esp. the AS partner described by NT partner.
Sometimes, when I read descriptions by NT partner, I have a feeling that their descriptions from NT perspective are super different from what I would perceive about their spouse if I had known their spouse for awhile.
This is just a feeling I have, but based on some confirmed different perceptions of autistic children.
About autistic children, both HFA and LFA, I have found that I perceive them as emotionally calm, generally happy, quite normal persons with thoughts, feelings, interests going about their day.
NTs who know them about as well as I do have quite different perceptions of the children often as opposite of what I perceive and of course don't consider them normal persons, and there is some bizarre quality about their observations about the children's thoughts, feelings, interests, behaviors, like eberrything about the children is amplified into big waves in their minds, while it is a lot smoother and gentler in mine, I think I am not describing this successfully, it is hard to say in words.
I get this feeling of an unbridgeable difference in perception when I read descriptions of autistic spouses by NT spouses and descriptions of autistic children by NT parents.
Often, I feel like their descriptions make no sense to me, but so far, with the autistic people I have met, they make sense to me.

In real life I get a feeling of calmness and normalness around autistic people or people with lots of autistic traits (has to be strong BAP), it is like I don't have to do work to be around them. If I find a male my type who gave off this vibe, I would become besotted with them.

Asking for help= "Could you please help me unstick the car?"

No, because he's clearly said "get David ready".

If I melted down bad and it would have taken everything keeping me from melting down. If I melted down I would have screamed in the doctor's face and yelled "EAT s**t, YOU f*****g as*hole!" Thankfully, I've been to rage management and I would've just ignored him, laughed to myself and thought the doc was a douchebag. I probably would've gotten my mp3 player out, listened to music and ignored him.

I've implemented a policy on people. You treat me well. I treat you better than well. You treat me like s**t, I'll just treat you doubly like s**t including the Aspartners. If I misunderstand something or do inadvertently wrong to someone, I will apologize.

Wow...that is just over the top unprofessional for a doctor to behave that way. Absolutely uncalled for. That reflects poorly on the doctors, not on your husband.

I don't understand the policy of treating someone doubly nice or doubly like s**t.
It seems like social game.

On another topic, sometimes people on wp stereotype NTs in bizarre ways, which is no better in my opinion than what goes on at AS partners, even though AS partners has more vitriol, but there is sometimes a kind of bland stereotyping of NTs as dummy lemmings without brains that is just as sh***y.

Like the others here, I thought my husband was just introverted and quirky. I'm quirky and a bit introverted. When we first met, it was like I was his special interest. It was intensely flattering. I'm also pretty independent and in many ways way too tolerant of being treated badly - so for many years I just sucked it up.

My husband functioned pretty well and treated me not so badly (tolerably anyway) until we had a child. There were many things that I missed from the relationship, such as joint socialising or a good physical relationship (sensory issues with sex, grey sexuality). These weren't just wants, but needs for me as an NT. But I carried on.

Having a kid and having a wife who had a difficult labour and recovery was just too much for him. He once told me he loved me less because of my difficult labour. Maybe that's unvarnished Aspie truth, but my god, that was painful for me. I could literally feel a big part of my love for him dying when he told me that. My pregnancy stressed him - it stressed me, too - I needed more emotional support and physical support. Instead of providing it, he became stressed by my needs and treated me worse, which just made me more emotionally needy, and so on with a negative feedback cycle. My pregnancy and my son's infancy were the worst days of my life. Because I had invested so much in my marriage relationship and we had no joint friendships, I was largely alone. I needed support and I got abuse. He had 'mini-meltdowns' frequently and was verbally and emotionally abusive. He had larger meltdowns which frightened the hell out of me. If asked for support - including just looking after my son so I could take a shower - he would flip. He might withdraw. Often he would meltdown. Looking back I was asking him for things he could not give, but they were still things that I needed.

In terms of helping out with tasks... my husband might or might not respond. If I asked him to do something "now" - he could react very badly for some of the reasons described by others. He could shout, scream, become angry - because of transitioning issues or misconstruing my tone. If I ask directly he can interpret it as an order and react badly. If I try to ask in a roundabout way, he could just miss my meaning altogether. And some of this is mood dependent on him, and so I just never know. I once asked him to help me hold up a counter so I could fit a support. This was the work of 30 seconds, but it resulted in an argument of 10 minutes. It becomes easier not to ask. And since you know that asking for normal, everyday support could result in a meltdown or withdrawal or maybe help and support, but you never know so it's better not to ask, the resentment starts to build as you just do more and more on your own.

Many, many NT spouses have had these ER stories. I had to go to a couple of months ago with chest pains. My colleagues wanted to call my husband, but even in fear and agony I didn't want the additional stress of his non-response or poor response. Eventually I texted him to say that I was in for chest pains and undergoing tests - his response by text "Good luck." When you are having a medical emergency, it's simply not on the NT spouse to have to communicate in bullet points about what's expected. You need a partner who just does what needs to be done.

****

My mother is a narcissist. So I know the difference between ASD and narcissism (and part of the reason I found that original post so patronising). On the surface there are a lot of similarities and the impact of the behaviours can be fairly similar and when I was young I think I accepted that some of this behaviour was just 'normal' because I was raised with it as normal.

Good. It's not just me seeing this. I hope more people here keep this in mind and re-read their posts before submitting.

This seems like a rather strange and unusual thought. I am rather perplexed.

I would have a hard time finding a justification for such words.

I understand meltdowns (I think) , but you have to determine where this anger is coming from and if it is directed at you and why it is directed at you. Perhaps I'm ignorant on this subject but the way I see it, abuse is abuse.

I've been asked if my husband is a drug addict too (never if he was schizophrenic though). He doesn't go to most of our kids' appointments anymore because he finds it too stressful (none anymore actually). In the last IEP meeting he ever went to (this was probably 6 years ago), he didn't say anything for about an hour. We were talking, he was just sitting there, blankly staring- the staff were already looking at him wondering why he was being so weird. At one time one teacher said something about not being able to fit a square peg in a round hole. Then about 5 minutes after that, he randomly blurted out (not even at a good break in the conversation), "A square peg would fit in a round hole if it was smaller than the hole. A big round peg wouldn't fit in a small round hole, and a square peg wouldn't fit in a square hole if it was orientated wrong". The silence in the room was deafening as they were all trying to figure out is he making some kind of deep point? or is he joking? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS GUY? They then asked what he meant by that and then he shut down and said he didn't know. Super awkward....

Sorry for shortening the quote. I don't like making a mess of the thread.

This all sounds exceptionally difficult and I certainly would not be able to be in a relationship like that. I imagine it is difficult to even write it all out but I appreciate you doing so. It helps people understand your situation better which ideally would help them understand themselves, the world, the nature of AS/NT interactions, etc a little more. As the popular adage here goes, "if you've met one aspie, you've met one aspie". While this is true, we would be kidding ourselves to think that there are not similarities and cross-over between people that let us still gain useful knowledge from understanding any NT/AS interaction.

I understand the need for a safe place to vent frustration etc at the situation as well but the way some people on AS partners level hostility, anger and hatred at strangers because of a label that certainly covers a wide spectrum of issues is quite frightening. I worry for those people and the others that are around them. While I certainly would not post on AS partners and encourage other people here to avoid going there, I hope that with time and new members the site can transform from a hate site to something more resembling a supportive environment.
Thanks.
Maz

Perhaps a poor choice of words. I wonder if you asked him what he meant by it if he would even remember saying it.

I said some pretty awful things along similar lines to my ex without even being aware that it was bad. This was before either of us knew about ASD. Because she didn't know, she just assumed i meant horrible things and gave me no benefit of the doubt. After we knew about my ASD, if I said something that was strange, mean, outside of my character etc, she would tell me how she interpreted my statement, and I would re-word / clarify until we both got the same meaning. Unfortunately, we learnt this too late.
I can give specific examples if needed but it is painful to do so.
Maz