NT spouses with Aspergers spouses

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Well, as for us, it'll be 10 years together in September. We both definitely have our issues (AS and depression for me, and bipolar disorder for her), but we've still managed to make it work somehow. IMO, both Aspies and NTs can be a$$holes, and that has a lot more to do with the kind of upbringing and character someone has, than it does with whether they are an NT or an Aspie.

I am a female NT married to a male Aspie. Unfortunately, I think your assessment...in a very over generalized way (which is how we talk when we discuss Aspieness and NTness)...is true. When I look back on my behaviors/communication at times in our past (pre-knowing about the Aspie thing)...I sometimes want to cry at how hard I must have made things. I don't blame myself...and I don't blame him. But anyway, my point is that NT qualities can be as problematic as Aspie qualities...just as they both bring beauty and new ways too look at things.

I think this issue is a broader social issue...how we deal with "difference."

If you are positive that your husband has it, you might want to just accept that that's the way he's wired and you can't do anything to change it. The one problem I can see about AS in a relationship is if one had sensory issues that made touch feel uncomfortable or painful and the other craved touch. Or if one was asexual and the other wasn't. But I think these are "obvious" things that wouldn't allow a 10 years long relationship (may be proven wrong?). I don't see how the communication issues can cause problems once you know about them and take them into consideration while discussing (ex. avoiding to imply anything is a good idea).
I never fought with my boyfriend for AS related reasons. We have misunderstandings sometimes, but they're usually about trivial things and we don't get mad. Of course, the fact that I knew about it from day 3 and that I'm not that "normal" myself help. Or it might be that we're just amazing (yes I'm crazily in love)

While we are not married yet, we are engaged, and everyday I become more and more terrified of spending the rest of my life walking on eggshells. I'm an NT, and my fiance has many AS tendencies, but has yet to be diagnosed. I was on here last May talking about our experiences, and once again find myself back here puzzled and searching for answers.

I've been seeing a therapist for about a year and a half, and every time I tell her about the problems we face in our relationship, she suggests I might want to consider the possibility that he has AS. She said it's merely a thought and she was by no means diagnosing it, but suggested we see a couple's counselor just in case. After the session, the couple's therapist told my therapist that he believed my fiance has AS as well.

After much deliberation in my head over whether I should actually discuss this with him or not, I finally decided I should at least suggest it as a possibility and we could talk about it....

I have never seen him so angry in my entire life.

He wouldn't even consider it. He couldn't believe I would even suggest it. Needless to say, we were both very upset. He instead chose to call his friend (who's a girl who I am not too fond of) to get her opinion because she is a social worker who works with kids with Aspergers everyday and of course she said I was wrong, and that men in a scientific field are often compared to Aspies because of the way they think and fuction.

I'm still not convinced. After seeing the way his father and brother act as well, it's not just a "personality trait." It's causing serious problems in our relationship and it upsets me to no end that he won't even consider it as a possibilty because he sees it as a sign of weakness, and that it means something is wrong with him.

Whatever it is, it's keeping him from progressing to the next stage of his life, and our life together as well. His "special interests" are cars and trains, and he spends hours on end with headphones on watching video after video about how cars and trains work, and then he'll just turn off his computer and go right to sleep. I keep having to remind him that I'm in the room too, and he needs to at least acknowledge my existence. He just defends his actions by giving me a logical explanation for why he does what he does and I'm lucky if I get an apology. He can't seem to sit down and write his resume, though he needs a job desperately. The fear of finding a job consumes him, and he gets overwhelmed and just goes back to his special interests.

How can we get through this when he won't even acknowledge the possibility of AS? I actually called off our engagement on Saturday because when I was crying on the couch trying to explain to him how I felt, he just got up and took out the trash, and then went to his car to get his phone, while I sat bewildered and alone on the couch. When I asked he why he did that, he just said "It needed to be done." ....?

I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Beth, I'm really sorry about your struggle and the pain you're in. I can't tell you whether or not your guy has Asperger's - though I see good reason why friends shouldn't try to diagnose friends, so I can also see an inappropriateness to his social worker friend who works with Aspie kids trying to decide the matter. Without a proper assessment, there can be no definitive answer. Given that fact, I'd ask you to consider that some things are what they are, regardless of whether or not any particular label can be applied to their source or cause. He resists being labeled with something he knows little enough about that he's offended by what he thinks are the implications of it, so I'd suggest dropping that line of approach, at least for now.

Areas of interest can serve multiple purposes. I can explore one and get lost in it because I enjoy it, or I can allow myself to be totally absorbed in it as a means of escape. It's still my area of interest, either way, and I'm still an Aspie, regardless. But an existing trait can have uses that intersect with other aspects of life. Having Asperger's doesn't make one immune to all other input and circumstances. If your fiance feels confronted by a label to which he objects and with which he doesn't want to feel saddled, if he finds the intensity of the feelings of someone close to him to be overwhelming, if he needs down time from attention and social interaction, if the working world seems frightening and the prospect of even just engaging in the process of entering it (to say nothing of having to function within it on an ongoing basis) seems daunting to him, if surprises and change are more than he knows how to cope with, he'll delve more deeply into his areas of interest. But neurotypicals can also have activities they use to hide from things that are hard to handle or to seek relief from life's pressures, and they can take their involvement to a level that shuts out others and interferes with other aspects of life.

I'm going to suggest a more broad approach, with less dependence on a diagnosis. A diagnosis may never be forthcoming, although anything is possible. I'm just saying you may not have to achieve that, that's all. If learning about Asperger's can help you understand some new options for how to think about and approach things, try it. There are lots of good books around. Visit my Website and check out the section on books to give you a start. (The link for the Asperger's / Autism Toolbox is in my tagline.) But don't forget that Aspies are subject to all the rest of life, and we have personalities that affect both how our traits manifest and how we deal with things beyond those traits. We're complete people, not just the sum of the parts of our diagnosis.

I also want to remind you that you don't have to walk on eggshells. You're a full person, too. I'm glad you have help to deal with all of this. Relationships are hard, and life is hard in general. It's very good that you're taking care of yourself. Whatever you do to face and manage these difficult things, don't let yourself come to feel that you have to just take whatever gets dished out to you. Whether he has Asperger's or not, your fiance still must learn to deal with the fact that he's with a person who has feelings and needs, because that's what both people must do in order for a relationship to be healthy and strong. I must say I have compassion for both of you. This situation sounds like it's tough for him, as well as for you. I hope you can find a way to work together to make things better.

Just last week I finally realized that the very difficult place our marriage of 11 years is in is mostly because of NT/AS issues. I started reading David Finch's memoir, and then read more and more about Aspie/NT marriages. I was overwhelmed at how much mirrored our difficulties in communication. Some of the comments on this thread have been so helpful. In especially emotionally charged conversations, my husband will change the topic suddenly to something he's interested in. But he is incredibly brilliant, and usually can mask his social awkwardness so well that no one else notices how hard he is working. He studied chemistry and theater, and was a great director and bench chemist. He has worked so hard to analyze relationships and people's behavior, that he thinks he understands how everyone works. But he just doesn't get the emotional side of things at all. I fell in love with him for his brilliance, his incredible sense of humor (as he says, improv is a skill that can be taught - and he has taught it successfully), his interest in me, and our conversations. When we first met, I thought, "Here is someone I can talk to (and with) forever!" But the stresses of moving long distances four times, his struggles with workplace issues (despite his brilliance with intricate data models, he is intolerant of "stupidity" and unethical behavior), my needing to support him for many years because of this, and then our having kids has made everything very difficult. We fight constantly about how clean the place is. When he was staying home with the kids, and I was working 10-14-hour days, he spent several hours each day cleaning. I would take over with kids as soon as I got home and then do dishes, walk the dog, and help out in any way I could before I fell into bed, exhausted. Now he comes home and needs to crash in order to recover from the stress of dealing with people. He doesn't help AT ALL. Reading this forum helps me understand just how much his working really DOES drain him completely. It helps me understand why I've been completely alone in dealing with the death of my mother two years ago, and why he didn't seem at all interested in or understanding of just how that affected me, except his exasperation that it made things more difficult for him. Even now, he can be so condescending and mean, even when he has no idea. He has been an as*hole, but doesn't understand it at all. I, of course, can be oversensitive and take things the wrong way. And yes, I need to be reminded every day that he loves me, especially when our communication is so bad. Our communication is terrible, and any attempt to talk is usually futile because somehow he always brings it back to my lack of understanding just how clean he NEEDS his home to be. I'm tired of the conversation because I am trying my damnedest to be cleaner than my nature, for him, but I will never be able to keep it clean enough for him. And I have no interest in spending my life doing this. I will spend time doing work I love, earning money, and taking care of our kids. I also clean, but I will never do it as much as he wants me to. And he doesn't get my emotional needs at all. I am running on fumes, here.

His emotional misunderstandings have come to a head lately, because any time our kids cry he calls it a "tantrum" and calmly explains to them why they need to stop. When our youngest hid from him because our youngest son had made a mistake and he feared his dad's reaction, I told my husband he was scaring our son, and he needed to go reassure him. My husband later was furious that I'd "undermined" him in front of the kids. He didn't get it at all that his overreactions are hurting our kids, and I need to stand up for them, and he needs to listen to me about that. He is normally VERY good and patient with the kids, which is why I'm still with him. He is creative and plays imaginatively, and he loves the kids more than life itself. He is in many ways a wonderful father, very engaged. They are now his special interest (besides one other, life-long one). I can accept that they are first in his heart. But he doesn't understand the effect his overreactions to small infractions have on the kids. (let alone me)

I wonder how much therapy could help. He doesn't respect therapists, and thinks he knows more than they do. But I am at wits end, here. I mentioned early in our relationship that he had a few Asperger's like traits (before I really understood how deep they were), and he got angry and blew it off. But now I'm completely convinced.

For those couples who have done therapy, has it helped at all? If the AS spouse wouldn't consider a diagnosis, how did you handle it?

What I find frustrating is that when someone with AS does something nasty or unfriendly, everybody assumes it's because they have AS... In reality, that's only about as true as saying that a typical person is doing something because they're neurotypical.

The basic cognitive style is AS; what you do with it is who you are. AS doesn't influence your behavior either toward good or bad; it just colors your actions with an AS-style tint, like writing the same thing in a different language. A person with AS who intends to hurt someone may slap and scream at them; if they were NT, they might have chosen to humiliate them, psychologically torture them, and ruin their reputation. It's equally cruel; it's just a different style. Most of the time we don't choose to be antisocial; the AS person intending to be nice might give you a favorite object or help you solve a problem, while the NT might be more disposed to comfort you or chatter away in friendly small talk. The intent is the same.

Statistically, AS doesn't make you more likely to commit crimes than neurotypicals (and classic autism actually lowers the risk quite a bit). So if your AS spouse is abusive, they're not abusive because they have AS. Similarly, if your AS spouse is a wonderful, caring person, AS didn't make them that way either. It's about choices. When you want to hurt someone, do you do it? When you have to go out of your way to help someone, do you do it anyway? All those choices add up, one by one, until you have anything from a saint to a villain. Most of us, of course, are somewhere in between.

At first I might have been inclined to think that would be stereotyping the approach of both AS and NT, but in general you'd be right.
It's just that those of us with Aspergers, including myself, are not good at "getting inside other people's heads". It just doesn't come naturally to us. Nor do we generally have an interest in figuring out other people's weaknesses so we can abuse them based on those findings. So we don't have the platform for such mind-torture abuse, where we pick up on somebody's weakness or fears and manipulate them because of it. I'd say that we have a similar capacity to be passive-aggressive, but the motive might be different.

Example: at one time or another, people have probably waited for someone to finish speaking to them and said "Oh, I'm sorry were you talking to me?!" OR "I'm sorry, I didn't understand anything you just told me." I've done this a couple of times, but been more on the receiving end of it; once I had a co-worker who was hypersensitive to my inherent differences, so on numerous occasions when I was explaining something to her, she looked at me attentively (w/o a confused look) and said at the end "I'm sorry, I didn't understanding any of that". I KNEW she was just BS'ing me and trying to pick a sore spot i.e. the fact that I didn't always communicate succinctly due to executive dysfunction and didn't always get non-verbal to the same extent as others, so she preyed on that shortcoming through her passive-aggression. Like I said, the abuse may be the same in some cases, but the motive can differ. Even though I called her on it saying "oh, you didn't look confused when I was explaining it" and one time even said "I don't get this reaction from other people" she still deflected it by making some patronizing remark "well you do know that people won't always tell you they don't get something, but you have to be able to tell when they don't, and clearly you're not". I absolutely despise the deny-and-deflect response...

Callista, of course you're right. AS is a cognitive style, not what one chooses to do with it. But it also means at least for some AS folks, I think, that they may have no way of judging (without training) what their impact is. So they may have no intention of being cruel and think they are being "consistent" or "honest" without understanding the emotional impact those words or actions carry. I think the weight of fighting an uphill battle for decades, and bushwacking a path through the mysterious jungle of human interactions can make people defensive of their hard-won path and angry when someone else finds fault with it.

Yes, that is so; NTs who often interact with Aspies often need to learn AS as a sort of "second language" so that they can understand that if the Aspie says something bluntly, they are probably not meaning to hurt anyone. Similarly, the Aspie will be building a mental database of things that are likely to hurt NTs' feelings, and eliminating them one by one.

This is an ongoing process. The NT often has to learn to be more straightforward, and learn not to assume that the Aspie can read their signals and understand when something is upsetting them. The best approach in those cases is not to try to change anyone, but for each person to understand the other, and to agree to be open about it when the other person is hurting or annoying them, and to find mutually comfortable solutions to those things.

It can be really devastating for an Aspie to learn that for weeks or months they have been doing something that annoys or even hurts the people they love, without knowing it, without being told, because they were afraid of offending and kept quiet about it. It is much better to have the sort of openness where you can say, "Hey, your rocking is moving the table and I can't write!" or, "I really, really hate it when you make me go to parties with you; can't we stay home tonight?" And then to compromise... to use separate desks, or to go to the party for only an hour and then go home... To work together, to cross the "culture gap".

I don't think it is the AS or NT in itself.

I think the personality of both matters.

I also think it makes a major difference if:

The AS spouse was diagnosed very late in life or doesn't agree with the diagnosis or doesn't intend to change anything (that would also cause problems in an NT-NT marriage if one spouse refused to change at all) in order to try to meet the spouse halfway.

The NT spouse has no support system but instead becomes isolated and/or depressed. Especially since other NTs will not have a CLUE what they are talking about if they try to tell them (that's what Ashton called Cassandra syndrome.)

Information and support can make all the difference.

I agree. That's a good scenario. However some have a spouse who is possibly co morbid OCD personality and simply will not change. Or, they have a mini meltdown at any perceived 'criticism' and run from the room, disappear for hours, anything but deal with it in the simplest or most logical way. (I.E. stopping shaking the table or whatever has been requested.)

There are some things I'm still waiting for and it's been years. There are some things I've said repeatedly and not been heard. That's very very hard for me, because I hate to criticize a loved one and hate to be blunt. When I finally did, and then more than once and it still didn't matter...that's when the Cassandra can kick in. Stress can cause illness. It isn't as linear as all that. (To those who question the Cassandra effect) I can only say 'imagine a highly stressful situation that never dissipates and no one believes you when you try to tell them about it.' Imagine how that could affect your morale and health. That's Cassandra. (Someone said Cassandra is a pile of bunk and I hate to see that.)

When an NT who knows nothing about AS or even its existence is trying to deal with all of that plus someone who won't get 'help' or learn about or compromise on anything, it's a big thing to deal with. And it usually comes after years and hitting rock bottom and wondering "why don't they care, can't they see I'm sad" or whatever. Because the spouse can't read their face or vocal tones or whatever, damage has been done to the person and relationship thinking "they don't care." If the spouse doesn't even know about their own AS or OCD or whatever, the NT spouse can't be expected to know, or to know what to do. Also, experiencing a loved one's 'meltdown' with no warning or preparation or frame of reference, is scary. Ashton started her support groups because no one else 'got it' and there was no support system for most. NTs won't get it - they think it's a figure of speech 'meltdown' like his football team lost and he's a little pouty. Not a full-blown screaming fit in public or something like that.

The way to avoid a lot of that is information, honesty, support, and willingness to change and compromise as necessary. And the sooner into the relationship the better. The worst thing to do would be to put on one's best face only to remove it later. What works in the workplace is devastating to the home life.

Cassandra Affective Disorder IS a pile of bunk, though. There's nothing about Asperger's specifically that causes this kind of problem. The lady who made up CAD is unqualified, has no peer-reviewed research, and has a lot of personal baggage clouding her view (i.e., a messy divorce she blames on Asperger's). She has no doctorate, only a counseling certificate, and that not from a particularly reputable institution. I've read some of her articles, and they are not quality research. They're a bundle of speculation and case studies with no proof.

That said: People in a relationship with communication problems do suffer. This is not specific to Asperger's or any other kind of autism. It can happen because one spouse is too focused on their career. It can happen because they came from different backgrounds, or have different faiths. It can happen because one is an introvert and the other is an extrovert. It can happen because one is dealing with a mental illness.

It would take a very strange set of skills indeed to have such poor communication with one's spouse as to cause actual distress, and simultaneously manipulate everyone else in such a sophisticated way that your (more socially skilled) NT spouse cannot make anyone believe that the relationship is in trouble. If that actually happened, that sort of social sophistication would be proof that you probably weren't an Aspie to begin with. There's no evidence for this "Cassandra" aspect (i.e., being under stress but not being believed) of the CAD claim.

And it isn't always the AS spouse who has trouble communicating. Often times, it's the NT who is so stuck in NT-style socialization that they are not capable of the flexibility required to understand people with minds unlike their own. People with AS, and life-long practice, usually don't have that problem; they know the NT is different and they don't try to read them as though they're another Aspie. Such communication problems are not unique to AS/NT couples and, even when AS/NT is involved, it may be the NT partner who needs to learn more, and the AS partner who has to be patient with them while they learn.

Frankly, the Cassandra syndrome is slander and little else. It started as justification for people who want to divorce their spouses, who believe their spouse is unacceptable the way he is (usually he, by the way; almost never women), who couldn't change him into who they wanted and who are angry about it. And then it implies to people with AS spouses that this problem is unfixable, their spouse is unqualified, and the only way they can ever be happy, unless he learns how to bow to your every whim and become exactly who you want him to be, is to divorce him. It's vicious, and not fair, and nobody should have to listen to that kind of thing about the person they love. It's about as nasty as going to a couples counseling place, picking out all the interracial couples, and telling them, "Yeah, it'll never work. Obviously, you're having marital problems because one of you is a different race from the other. Divorce them and marry somebody of your own kind. Problem solved."

People with AS do have relationship problems, and they do have communication problems, but these are not unique to AS, and they are different from others' relationship problems only because the people involved are different. If a couple has problems, they're often solvable, and solving them doesn't mean erasing the AS. It means learning to communicate. Sometimes, it doesn't work out; but again, that can happen to anyone. When a marriage doesn't work out and one partner has AS, people like Aston fixate on and blame the AS, even though there's no proof that AS is the critical factor; NT/NT marriages break up, too. The follow-up of Asperger's original patients shows that they married at about the same rate as NTs do. If they were truly such horrible spouses, they should have had an increased rate of divorce or separation; they did not:

About 51% of US adults are married
"More than half" of Asperger's patients are married

The article does say that these AS men are "more likely to be unemployed or living alone", so it's not like their lives are exactly like those of NTs. However... I do not think there is evidence for anything like "Cassandra Affective Disorder". I think it is just a reflection of the fact that people with relationship problems become stressed. If you want to make yourself a diagnosis of "relationship stress disorder" or something like that, then that would make sense. But AS, specifically, doesn't cause it.

When I first read about Cassandra syndrome it made a lot of sense to me. But of course, it doesn't make complete sense as I never really complained about my husband much. But now that I have begun doing so, it's true that people don't really seem to understand the problems we have. But they do see that he is a jerk and they are mystified by his behaviour.

My husband is not diagnosed. But I think he does have AS. We used to have a not-perfect but fairly good marriage. There were things that were really missing for me. Sex. And hanging out with other people. And feeling like I was more important that D&D. Since I got pregnant (by miracle!) our relationship has gone steadily downhill. Since our son was born, it's been absolutely awful. I cannot tell if he's being deliberately cruel. He says he is not. I don't know.

He is also - I think - a selfish jerk. But his AS tendencies and whatever related tendencies don't help him to see how his behaviour is damaging my health. He thinks he is a brilliant father, but cannot see how his behaviour is affecting our son negatively.

Telling 'the truth' relentlessly and endlessly in a critical fashion is abusive. Certainly if I spoke to him the way he speaks to me there would be rages and meltdowns, which I find very frightening. If I were as dismissive of him as he is of me, he would be very hurt. I am by no means perfect and I will hold up my hand and admit that because directly asking him to alter some behaviours which are painful, hurtful, non-productive or just plain old abusive have resulted in scary screaming I've resorted to some passive-aggressive behaviour. However, I've tried...and as far as I can see..he hasn't. Or his efforts are ridiculous...

For example, we recently had a fight when he asked me what my intentions are long term. I could not bring myself to say to divorce because I am afraid of his reactions. But I told him that I couldn't see that he'd tried to better the relationship. He said he'd tried to reach out and I asked how. When I was at the lowest point of my life, so many things going wrong, and I was having trouble getting out of bed and crying constantly and I desperately needed support he said "I feel so supported right now." He felt supported because I was still trying to make nice food and do nice things and function well around my son. I was so hurt that he'd said that to me in complete obliviousness of how I was doing. But 18 months later he said that this was his reaching out to me and that I had rebuffed him. (Actually, I went to my bed and started crying) And because I'd rebuffed him he said he hadn't tried anymore.

I'll be married to my AS husband for three years this October.
We met in 2011 and we've been pretty much tied to the hip ever since.
He was officially diagnosed in July of 2017, and the entire year and a half
surrounding that event has been a maelstrom of both hell and heaven.
I wont go into details about the details between me and my husband, but I will say
there was a lot of emotional and physical abuse on both ends.
It took him years, but he's finally seeing a regular therapist who he both likes
and says is extremely helpful.
He truly is a sensitive, conscientious, deep minded human being who
only wants to improve himself as time goes on, and I am truly thankful for that.
He is also selfish, condescending, rude to strangers and my parents,
and is still learning how not to live like a trash hoarding bum in Calcutta.
I am also seeing a therapist and attending support groups twice a month.
Things really started clicking between us again when we started working together
really, really hard on a new budget since our money problems were causing us to hemmorage
money. We kept track of every single expense using everydollar.com and this month we ended up
saving hundreds of dollars. Not only has our stress lessened, but we've been more loving
with one another, have been cooking meals for one another, and really have been working
hard to change the way we speak to each other about everything all together.
It took forever but we're almost back to that place in the relationship where we broach subjects
with consideration rather than mode of criticism, and a year ago I wouldn't have believed things
would have gotten as better as they have.

Sigh, it's a LOT of work. lol

I'm the AS partner in my marriage. Those websites are horrible, because as the OP drew attention to (in 2011, they assume that any bad behaviours are because of the AS and also assume that the NT partner is a walk in the park. I struggle in all the ways that anyone with autism struggles, but there's what you do with that. I know I struggle with 'automatic empathy'. e.g. a few months ago, my husband injured his back. He cried out to me and was writhing on the floor in pain, and I burst out laughing because I just didn't register that he'd injured himself, and I guess it looked funny. As soon as he told me what happened, and explained in facts that a) he was in pain and b) needed my help, I was able to help him. I think, to be honest, on a lot of those websites there is a lot of unresolved grief from the NT partner that their spouse isn't fulfilling their expectations (a problem in potentially any relationship, not just AS-NT), and there is a lot of really horrible behaviour from the NT partners. Just the way they talk about their partners as though their disability is all there is to them. I mean, there had to be something about them that they fell in love with to start with? There are things that we can change about ourselves, and things we can't, but there is never an excuse to be a jerk from either side.

I know I can be hard to deal with. But so can my NT husband, to be perfectly frank. Sure, if he's going to be a pain he'll do it in a very NT way, but that's just as hard for people with AS as the other way!