does this sound like AS?

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My husband seems to have many traits of AS and I would like him to look into it and try and get a diagnosis. I have mentioned AS briefly to him a couple of months ago and he didn't seem to understand why I was mentioning it. I have since done some research and spoken to a couple of people, one who has AS herself, and have been reading this forum (which is proving a huge help!)

But I wanted to ask whether you agree with me that it sounds like he has AS and ask whether approaching him with this list he might see the logic in me wanting to pursue it as a possibility. Is that a good way to approach it and introduce him to the idea?

This is the list:
- you are often saying that you don't know what I want/think unless I say it.
- you are uncomfortable in social situations, and use your iphone/ipod/computer as a coping mechanism to deal with this so that you don't have to deal with other people as much and to "fill the silences"
- you struggle with talking to people, don't know how to make small talk, and you've said yourself that you don't know what to say or how to say things.
- You have lots of trouble context shifting (stopping one thing to do another, whatever those two things are).
- you hyperfocus on one thing and don't realise the time or anything else that needs done until you have finished what you are doing.
- You struggle to turn your brain off to go to sleep or to do anything else while you are working on/thinking about a particular work task or hobby.
- you make outbursts which are not socially acceptable - examples include talking loudly about people's bad parking as you walk past them (which chances you getting beaten up), and shouting at people selling homeopathic/alternative things and calling them snake oil pedlars, and you don't understand why that isn't a socially acceptable form of behaviour.
- you've said on many occasions that social interactions confuse you.
- your responses to my being upset about things are 'so stop being upset then' rather than being able to understand that there is an underlying cause for me being upset, it is something I should just be able to turn off and not do.
- you have said you struggle to remember faces from one meeting to the next, even when you have been conversing with the person.
- you think very logically and literally (to the point of being a self-confessed pedant), your initial reaction to a sentence is always the way it is worded logically rather than necessarily the way it was meant, even if you then make a joke to that effect.

I am undiagnosed but from things I've read it sounds like a possibility. Is it possible to see if he was like that as a child?

What's your point? To prove that someone has a 'mental illness' because you find aspects of their personality annoying?

And what if he does have AS - what then? Is he so hobbled by it that he qualifies for Disability? There's no medication for it, no therapy recognized as effective and no cure.

How will your proving he has a congenital neurological condition help? Other than allowing you to say "I told you you weren't normal."

If he seeks answers and validation for a lifetime of abuse and alienation in an AS diagnosis, it might be revelatory and comforting for him.

For you to thrust it on him only makes it an accusation that he's somehow defective.

Hmm...you've made some very interesting observations and, in my opinion, yes there's a good chance that he is living his life somewhere on the Autism Spectrum.

As far as being diagnosed, what would you hope to achieve by having it officially confirmed?

I'm not asking because I don't think diagnosis is a good idea, I just think this is a question you should ask yourself. Then if you still think a diagnosis is definitely required, you could start the struggle of convincing him that it needs to be done. Ultimately, I imagine that would be entirely his decision to make however.

Wrong Planet has been a big help for you and it might, very well, do the same for your husband. This is, possibly, a good place to start.

Why don't you ask him to sit in on one of your sessions? He'll probably find that he identifies with other members and be curious enough to start taking AS quizzes. Not to self diagnose, but to try and figure out whether or not the possibility is real.

Even if he doesn't ever want a diagnosis, he will most likely be relieved to start understanding why he feels so different to most people.

Hope this helped, good luck

If he doesn't want to get a diagnosis then that is fine with me, I will support him whatever he wants to do. I just want to explore the possibility having had several people independently ask me whether he has AS and having now done enough reading/listening to feel that he could well have. However if he doesn't want to look into it then I will respect his decision and leave it at that.

The reason I am wanting to look into it is not because I consider it to be anything wrong (certainly not a mental illness as suggested!), more that i want us both to be able to learn how best to interact with eachother. Our marriage is not in the best state at the moment and I feel that if he does have AS, although it isn't going to solve any problems, that we will be able to better understand the way eachother are thinking, or at least know that we are both thinking differently, and find a way of communicating that we both find it less confusing/difficult. We have three small children, and I don't want them to grow up feeling that their dad is rude or uninterested, i want them to know that his behaviour is perfectly normal and understandable and just comes from him thinking in a different way, not because he cares any less about them. I am pursuing this because I want to be able to understand him, and because (as luvmyaspie says) he might find it a relief to understand that there is a reason he feels different to most other people. I don't expect (or want) his behaviour to change, and we don't want/need benefits. I just want to see if I can help make things a bit less stressful and confusing for us both.

I guess the main reason that a diagnosis would be useful is because his mother in particular is unlikely to understand or to even acknowledge anything at all unless he has been formally diagnosed with it. Without a diagnosis, if it is mentioned by me then she will say that I am trying to find fault with him, and if it is mentioned by him, she will say that he is being a hyperchondriac (sp?) or trying to find an excuse for behaving the way he does and that there's nothing wrong that a good kick up his backside wouldn't solve. So it is likely that unless she is told by a doctor/other respected professional that she will continue complaining at him and berating him for various things, which obviously, we would both like to stop happening.

I hope that has explained my motives a bit better.

You don't have to push him straight into a diagnosis. Give him time to consider and get used to the idea. Have him visit this forum a few times, see if he identifies.

Yes indeed.

Before my son was diagnosed, people, in particular school staff, believed that he was enabled in his negative behaviours by my bad mothering. Sheer and utter ignorance!!

We agonised over needing an official diagnosis for quite some time. As he was almost 13 at the time, we weighed out the pro's & con's with him.

Our conclusion was that, yes, we needed to have it on paper from a professional. He still had five long years of school ahead and with the "label" we gained a hell of a lot of tolerance and a little understanding.

For myself, no diagnosis needed at this point thank you. I have learned to blend in, pretend and refrain in public and exhale greatly when I arrive back home...the best place in the whole world... where I can be me.

Apart from letting it be confidentially known to his school, my son & I have only shared with our dearest & nearest.

That seems to be sufficient... for now.