ToughDiamond wrote:
Jono wrote:
By the way, I've recently found out something............I suppose this means that that bunch will be more careful about what they post about AS people in the future but I won't count on it.
Let's hope so. It's starting to look like we can make a positive difference.
This question of whether abuse is still abuse if it's not deliberate is interesting. I've always been inclined to think that if somebody is harming me repeatedly, it doesn't matter a damn what's going on between their ears, but I guess the definition of abuse is what it is. If you know that the one who harms you really means to harm you, it does give the situation a bigger emotional charge, so I guess "abuse" must be a moral term, as morality seems to have the same emotional dimension.
Asking whether abuse is intentional or not may be the wrong way to look at it actually since most domestic violence support groups seem to define it in terms of one person using a pattern of behaviours to have power and control over the other person:
Quote:
Abuse is a repetitive pattern of behaviors to maintain power and control over an intimate partner.
http://www.thehotline.org/is-this-abuse/abuse-defined/So then, according to that definition, it would seem that abuse is always intentional since if one person is trying to control the the other as well as preventing them from leaving. I don't think that some of the complaints that the ASPartners people have, like the AS partner not wanting to socialise with them as a couple or not wanting to sleep in the same bed as the partner, fall under this definition though because neither of those things are an attempt to control. In the case of not wanting to socialise as a couple, it's simply because they dislike a lot of socialisation and they aren't stopping them from socialising without them. In the case of the AS partner not wanting to sleep in the same bed as their spouse, it's probably simply because they are hypersensitive to touch and want to have a good night's sleep rather than to be forced to be uncomfortable the whole night but certainly not trying to "withhold affection" as some of them like to claim.
In other news, actual research into marital satisfaction of AS/NT couples in peer-reviewed journals, unlike Aston's research who has never published a single article in a peer-reviewed journal, is beginning to be done. Here's an abstract of one such article that I've found:
Quote:
Asperger syndrome (AS) is a disorder resembling autism in its problems with social interaction and cognitive flexibility. Today, a number of adults with AS marry and rear children. Yet there has been little research into the quality of their marital and parental relationships. This study explored romantic attachment style, marital satisfaction and parenthood satisfaction in 157 Australian men and women. There was a focal group 22 married adults with a clinically-confirmed AS diagnosis whose child also had AS and three neuro-typical adult control groups: (a) those whose spouse and child had AS, (b) those whose child had AS but spouse did not, and (c) those with no AS family members. Marital satisfaction was high in all four groups. Respondents who had AS themselves were predominantly insecurely avoidant in romantic attachment, in contrast to predominantly securely attachment in all other groups. Having a child with AS reduced parental (though not marital) satisfaction but there was no additional independent contribution of own or spouse's AS. Methodological and practical implications of the findings were considered.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946710000887The bold part is my emphasis. Oh well, if someone is in a relationship with someone who has let them know that they have an AS diagnosis and they are worried that the AS will make them abusive, I guess this means that they can stop worrying. If this is correct then this proves that not only does ASD not make people abusive partners but if they've already been diagnosed and have acknowledged and accepted the diagnosis already, then they are not even in the subgroup of AS/NT relationships that experience low satisfaction. The ones that do are probably only when they are undiagnosed and when the underlying issues that AS causes are unknown.
28 Feb 2015, 9:35 am
