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

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It's become natural. Well, mostly natural. I do need to make an effort (just a normal amount of effort, not some disproportionately huge effort, and I usually feel good for doing so, not drained) but I think that's normal in most relationships once the honeymoon phase is over.

Basically I think I've pretty much gone from mild/moderate aspergers to neurotypical with a couple of subtle traits over the years. I don't think it's merely compensating for the most part - I've become a very different person with new ways of thinking and experiencing the world. I also have a pretty good idea of how this has happened. It was a very conscious process involving many steps, lots of effort, much trial and error, various types of therapy and self-help, and quite a bit of luck in having the right people and the right circumstances in my life.

It's a weird situation I'm in now. I was actually quite shocked to discover that there's such a strong idea around that AS is lifelong and cannot change. This makes me think I must have discovered some massive clues to unravelling the autism puzzle, and therefore I would like to do something with that knowledge. Yet I only have my own experiences, and what worked for me may not work for everyone else. Online most people don't believe me, or think I must be mistaken, or I get trolled. I've tried contacting researchers but get no response. So I'm now starting to accept that I probably won't be able to do anything, and I should just be grateful that I can now enjoy the neurotypical experience of life and leave it at that.

Or perhaps this is not so unusual? After all, there are statistics to show that about 1 in 5 AS children no longer meet the diagnostic criteria by the time they read adulthood. So who knows how many NT adults there might be who had AS as children but never even knew it? But I do know that the AS Partners site is wrong when they say that AS makes a person completely incapable of change - I still had some noticable AS traits when I began my relationship with my wife. She told me they were upsetting her so I put in an effort and they got significantly less every year.

I never said that Spectrumites can't improve, or that they're "doomed" to have it for life.

I believe the opposite: Spectrumites have so much potential that I HATE it when I see so much "give up"! !! !

Many Spectrumites have used similar strategies to yours, and have managed to succeed in the "outer world" despite having the Difference known as Asperger's.

I'm gonna post that blog link again: http://www.aspiestrategy.com/2011/03/beaver-and-mole.html

I agree that needing alone time isn't just an aspie thing. In my relationship it's my wife who needs more alone time (she's not aspie). Life's challenges, or issues that come up in our relationship tend to make me want to discuss and resolve them, and also crave more closeness. For her, stress makes her want to withdraw, be alone, watch TV etc. According to the blog, that would make me the badger and her the mole, though typically it's the other way around in AS/NT relationships. It gets all the more frustrating if I try to pursue and force the connection to happen. That just makes her retreat more, need even more space, need to distance herself until she no longer feels too much pressure from me etc. In the past it has gotten so bad that even my merely asking for us to spend more time together has caused her to withdraw even more. So instead I've also had to learn to back off and give her space, sometimes for days at a time. If this can be far more of an issue for some aspies, I can most certainly understand the frustration of the NT, and even the assumption that it might be deliberate abuse.

Oh boy, your philosophies here are a big part of the reason so many children are still being subjected to torturous therapies and being treated like Pavlov's dogs. These dangerous ideas are also a big reason why so many of us adults still struggle with stigma and are considered lazy for not trying to 'do better' when we neurologically cannot do 'better' and are fine the way we are. Fortunately you are in the minority. You're going to have a very hard time trying to communicate with anybody in the neurodiversity and acceptance movements.

You know, you hit a dog enough when it barks it stops barking. It stops being 'a barking dog' even though 'almost all dogs bark'. Having 'statistics' that show we can learn how to hide our traits doesn't mean we're no longer autistic, it just means we're not stupid and can learn to behave how 'they' want us to behave, even if it depresses us and makes us miserable that we can't be ourselves.

This is why I probably shouldn't even mention this stuff, and mostly don't. Okay, first of all you make it sound like I'm in favour of mentally beating yourself with a stick and bullying yourself into changing. I'm not telling anyone else they should do anything, only speaking from my own experiences.

But also, yeah, as a teenager the first thing I tried was telling myself off all the time, cursing myself for not being able to fit in with other people and telling myself I had to do better. It didn't work. It was a very bad strategy and it only increased stress and made things worse. I say my process involved trial and error, and that was one of the errors.

In my experience, changing oneself is a delicate art that's tough to learn. It might sound a bit clichéd, but I've found that patience, self love and self-respect, and celebrating any progress, are incredibly important to it.

And yes, aspies are fine the way they are. I was fine the way I was. But I'm still happy I made the choices I did. Also I do think that usually, if you're going to make a relationship work with someone who is very different than yourself (e. g. An AS/NT relationship), then you should expect that a lot of change, compromise and personal growth will be necessary from both partners.

That's all possible without removing the autistic from the equation.

I think this is very relevant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_adaptation

Some brains will have the capability to adapt in certain ways when in certain environments.
I'm sure there are some people out there who were born aspie and never knew, but over time have
convinced themselves that they are 100% normal NT.
Obviously many brains may not have the ability to adapt permanently, or at all, and of course many will not be in an environment that would promote or allow such a thing.

I agree. The Wikipedia link made me smile, because it brought back a memory of being a student in psychophysics (Helmholtz etc) and we had to do a hearing experiment on signal detection, students using students as subjects. I had always assumed, until that day, that everyone else (except the deaf or hard of hearing) heard sounds exactly like me~ no idea that I had a much higher frequency range than normies... You just made that assumption... that you were a normie too (at least when I grew up, a long time ago).

Excuse my cynicism but I personally don't believe that she has changed much. I'll believe that when I see it and that post is still consistent with what she has written previously. If in the future she makes posts that explicitly suggest other things may be the cause and that it's not necessarily AS, then maybe I'll change my mind. However, think that the whole point of that particular post is to "warn" other members on that forum to "beware of those dangerous aspies" because they can be potentially life threatening, even though she has never linked any news article that suggests that may be the case. If she really wants to show that we're potentially dangerous then why doesn't she link to scientifically-based studies instead of news articles in the media that don't even give the slightest suggestion that the perpetrators are on the spectrum? Oh, I forgot, it's because most of the literature suggests little connection between autism and criminal violence.



The problem with that argument, in my view, is that it doesn't acknowledge that it go's both ways and ignores the NT's own contribution to the relationship. A bad relationship is rarely the result of behaviours of one partner alone, whether one of them has a neurological condition or not. If you're going to say that AS type behaviours could lead to the NT partner being abused then you also have to explore what kinds of behaviours that the NT does in that situation that cause the AS partner feeling abused and potentially making the situation worse.

I agree that ASD does not make people more likely to be abusive.
That said,
a bad relationship and an abusive relationship are two very different things. An abusive relationship IS the result of the behaviors of one partner alone. "See what you made me do" is a typical abuser's excuse that must never be validated.

This is true. Behaviors that originated from AS characteristics can easily be seen as abusive by some NTs, and behaviors that originated from NT behaviors can easily be seen as abusive by some on the AS. To me, this part seems very obvious.
What isn't so obvious is the nature and intent of the behaviors in question, or the context in which they are applied.

I have before pointed out that for the AS person the context has always been an environment full of NTs, with many engaging in behaviors that could be both aggressive and abusive, and they also see these behaviors in their NT partner, but would not be so quick to make a big issue of it, or accuse their NT partner of being abusive. Perhaps to the AS person, their NT partner is just being a typical NT for the most part.
To the NT partner the perception could be remarkably different when they observe AS behaviors.
This difference in context is purely due to the steep ratio of NT-to-NT versus NT-to-AS interactions.

As for the nature and intent of the origins of behaviors I want to reference my "GAMES people play" thread that explains some "transactional analysis" was to look at human interactions.
To me it became obvious that instead of a complementary and stable transaction, many NT/AS transactions would become crossed and unstable.
So, the expectations of the exchange would not be met for either party involved.

I also suggested that some NTs would be much more prone to succumbing to group dynamics and may, perhaps unknowingly, adopt thoughts, desires, and behaviors that are narcissistic or psychopathic in nature.
Since many AS people stubbornly resist the pressures from many forms of group dynamics, the crossed and unstable interactions become an inevitability.

Many of the expectations that the NTs cite, that aren't being met by their AS partners, show where they are failing to achieve control over their partner, and thus resulting in an unstable transaction.
Many, perhaps most of these expectations have originated from the group dynamic of "societal norms".
The NT may not feel they are being aggressive, controlling, or unreasonable at all, and just say that what they are doing is just the thing to do because everyone does it. They may not intend to come across as a possessed "borg" at all, and they may feel 100% justified in expecting their own emotional needs to be met by whatever way they have specified.
It's just a very different perspective and a big lack of understanding on the part of each side.
I just think that the AS person tolerates a LOT more of this sort of misunderstanding than the NTs do.

In my experience, which is now fairly considerable (given my age and interests), I have noticed that pathological narcissism (as opposed to the everyday kind of overblown self-centredness) occurs far more often in NTs than ASDs, and the grandiose form of Cluster B narcissism I have only every seen in NTs.

Self-absorption is often a functioning mode, with no harm meant to anyone else, (you see this in autism in some cases) and it is quite different from the self-importance and self-centredness of narcissism which is ego driven.

What is this? I'm not familiar.

I do believe the ASD can contribute to the abuse even though it's not a symptom. Eckln's posts are an example because she keeps posting about her aspie husband and his traits causing him to act abusive. I need to stop lying to myself and denying that being aspie can't make someone an abuser. That is like saying my ex wasn't one and the reason why he was one was because he had issues. He had trust issues, worried too much what people would think of him and he cared too much what people thought, he had low self esteem and issues with jealousy so he put others down and me and my parents to make himself feel better.

There is still no excuse for the aspies mistreating their partners rather and their abuse could be un AS related because it could be due to low self esteem, trust issues, etc. and some are just mean and it has nothing to do with their mental illness or neurological disorder.

http://open-site.org/Health/Conditions_ ... cissistic/

The third paragraph briefly discusses the subtypes of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The grandiose types love publicity/attention so you see them in the media fairly often.

Hope this link works, but this is total gold:

http://forums.delphiforums.com/n/main.a ... 2016442236

Grand Dragon posts a link to someone talking about a psychopathic partner being manipulative, and uses this as "proof" that autistic people are evil. She does say "[her husband's abusive nature] wasn't because he was an aspi" (sic), but then goes on to denigrate us all later and says (yes, this is a quote) "we have a right to hate them".

Somebody points out that the article is actually about psychopaths, who are nothing like autistic people. Grand Dragon's response:

So, in the space of two posts, she goes from declaring that her hatred of autism is justified to admitting it is completely unfounded