How do I let my boyfriend know he is an Aspie

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Sometimes a diagnosis should be required, but sometimes self-remedies work for milder cases. This is true for both headaches and AS. If autism is a continuum that goes all the way from non-verbal/severe to not being able to tell the difference between a person with AS and an otherwise weird NT, then self-diagnosis and self-help may be all that's required for effectively dealing with it.

thank you NicoleG for the first postive comment I've received on this subject in a while.

Incidentally, I did manage to have a long chat with my boyfriend, he did read the book I gave him and he does agree that he is an Aspie too, as is his brother and father (I have known this family for 16 years so I know them all well)

As for all the rest of you self-appointed Aspergers Police, you make me feel sorry for you and the other members that you try to intimidate with your limited knowledge and absolute certainty (a dangerous combination) I only joined this site a few months ago and am gob-smacked at the negativity I have received from you guys. At a similar time, I became a member of a small group of Aspie women who meet on-line and I couldn't wish for a more supportive group. In comparison, this site sucks because of people like you Fnord, Daemonic Jackal and Longshanks.

Live long as prosper

Kx

sorry if I have got some of your names mixed up.
You know who you are.....

I return to you the same feelings, Brokenarrow. Nice knowing you.

In a round about way, I said the same thing they were saying, but I used honey instead of vinegar. I wouldn't judge them too harshly, if I were you. I've come to respect the alternative view and where it's coming from. It is a bit terse, and it may not provide as much help as you'd like, but many times it's to protect someone else that may not be able or available to protect themselves. There's a lot of gut reaction when it comes to self-diagnosis and non-professionals trying to diagnose others, and it comes from a lot of negative experiences. Your original post just happened to hit right on the nerve of both combined.

The things that bother me about your self-diagnosis are these:
1. speed - Seems like you decided this pretty quickly.
2. certainty - Your degree of certainty seems unreasonable, especially your certainty about your bf.

I am not generally opposed to self-diagnosis of adult Asperger's for a variety of reasons. It seems, though, that you MAY be looking for a "magic pill" to solve some relationship issues, and have hit upon Asperger's.

OK, so here I go justifying my self-diagnosis and that is not why I joined this site but if it helps some people realise that self-diagnosis is OK and can be a very healing discovery then it is worth it. Let me start my story with my first born, my son because that is where it all began for me.

My son started to show signs of having difficulties at age 3. I trawled the web for 2 years on autism, aspergers, child psychology sites etc, looking for answers to him but never really saw him in the descriptions of autistic children. I finally stumbled upon 'visual spatial thinkers' and there I found my 'label' for him; he ticked every box. I bought some hefty volumes on the subject from America (there wasn't very much available in the UK) and learned all I could. I was correct - he is visual-spatial, thinks entirely in 3-D pictures like Temple Grandin (hadn't heard of her though at the time) However, his problems exaccerbated when he started school and his behaviour got worse and worse, his confidence plummetted and he was a very sad little boy. I was at my wits end. In his first year of school he was seen by an educational psychologist who told me he was very likely 'query autistic spectrum disorder' but I refused an evaluation and had no time for his diagnosis - looking back I realise that I was not in a place where I could accept this information. I,knew that my son was a very intelligent boy and I just wanted him to be happy at school. I managed to convince the school to stop teaching him (that is what he kept telling me made him unhappy). In the end they only agreed to this because I threatened to take him out of school because I could not bear to see him so miserable on a daily basis. So, they stopped teaching him, let him fiddle about with lego and draw pictures in the corner etc. He was left to his own devices on the agreement that he obeyed the school rules. His behaviour improved dramatically within 2 weeks. A month later his teacher told me she had discovered that he was taking everything in despite showing no outside interest. For the first time the school could see what I saw at home - that he was very intelligent, deep-thinking boy. After a year I decided to move myself and my two kids to a tiny village where there were less than 10 kids in each class. I met the new head-teacher and another educational psychologist before he started and they happily agreed to continue what the previous school had been doing. That was 2 years ago. He is doing really well at school now.

I made a friend in the village a few months ago. She urged me to read this book Aspergirls by Rudy Simone -I couldn't really see the point in reading it because I have a 5 yr old daugher who I have no trouble with and thought that was why she had given me the book. But once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. The whole book was the story of my life, chapter after chapter I saw myself clearly and by the end of the book I just sat and wept silently for an hour or more in my kitchen. Not because I realised I had Aspergers, but for the lost, lonely child I was, the confusion I have felt over the years with social interaction, relationships, the trouble I have had with smells, sounds, violent emotional outbursts, obsessive behaviour.... My head raced non-stop for a week whilst I re-visited my past and put it into the context of my new-found diagnosis. I came out the other end full of relief and am finally reaching a stage of acceptance about myself. Moving to this tiny village has helped me too beacuse it is quiet and peaceful, beautiful, relaxing and it has removed many of the triggers that were making my life so difficult. There are other triggers that I can't get rid off but at least now I have a better clue on how I can improve things and cope.

I now see Aspergers quite clearly in my son, and the fact that the original suspicions of the first educational psychologist were correct. But I'm glad I did not have him diagnosed - my son has found his own ways of coping by being given the time and space to do things at his own speed. I have since learned that this is called 'self advocacy' He has only one friend, is not interested in being friends with any other kids, but he has learned the joy of interacting with them and now pretty much behaves like most of the other children in the classroom. He has only had 2 meltdowns since arriving here. Reading 'Aspergirls' (and subsequent books on Aspergers Syndrome) has helped me realise the difference between the way girls and boys cope with it. I spent my life mimicking social behaviour and have got pretty good at it whereas my son just does his own thing and doesn't seem to give a damn whether he acts 'normally' or not. I teach him about social behaviour, the way people work, how to get along with people etc. He listens and tries things out and reports back to me with his successes. He does want to 'fit in' but without compromising himself and that has been respected. He's finding a way to do this and it makes my heart swell with pride that he copes with a classroom at all.

So, once I was over all that, I of course started to think about the only true friends I have made and kept in my life. M ex, my boyfriend and a woman from school whom I have known for over 30 years. I reckon they are all Aspies. I have no need or desire to tell my friend of 30 years - she is doing fine by herself. I have no real need to tell my ex either because I no longer live with him, but it has helped me understand his emotional distance which was what caused me leave him. We have a great relationship now which is good for the kids to see. My boyfriend is another story. I have known him for 16 years we have been together for 3. We love each other, have no financial difficultues, no worries really but we struggle to cope with each others behaviour. I started to look at his behaviour more objectively when we were together and could see the Aspie in him and started to work out what 'triggered' him into anger meltdowns. He is also full of pain and confusion about his social experiences in life like I am and we have discussed this at length over the years.

It took quite a few bottles of beer but we finally got round to talking about it recently. I'm glad we had the conversation - I couldn't see how we could move on with only me knowing. All I asked him to do was read a book and he's done it. It is obvious to me that he doesn't want in-depth discussions about Aspergers and I'm cool with that, but he mentions it in oblique ways now and says we are 'special'. It has brought us that few steps closer. He's a thinker, and although he doesn't talk about stuff much, I know that he does think about all this and it shows.

I'm 46. I've managed to stomp about life in my own way, have been fortunate with my career and have 'made it' by NT standards but the emotional price I have paid to do this has been high. I so wish I had known about my Aspergers when I was young because I could have made more sensible choices about life decisions and not put myself through the mill unnecessarily.

Now, when I came into this site, looking for like-minded people, support etc I did not feel the need to write an essay on why I am where I am. I thought I could just say "Hi, my name is blah blah blah and I have Aspergers and this problem - any advice?' but I see I am wrong . I apologise for the negative comments I made earlier. I was angry at the time and upset by what I read but I realise that although we are all autisitc, we are not all in the same place and have the same life experiences.

If you have managed to get through this missive, thank you very much for doing so. I realise there is no 'magic pill' and I'm not looking for one, but it is core to my being that I am always moving on in life, looking to improve things for myself and the people I care about. I couldn't possibliy have made this discovery and not shared it with my boyfriend who I felt could benefit from the knowledge.

As for the speed of my 'self-diagnosis'? Well, it took the length of time it took to read a book - 2 hours ? For me though, the journey has only started and I'm pleased to be on it.

K

What a wonderful read - thank you for sharing.

On self diagnosis, two years ago I had a lump below my ear, which was diagnosed as a throat infection, then a cyst, then a bigger cyst.
If I hadn't spent about 10 days searching on the internet for the true cause (a very rare type of salivary gland tumour) then phoned secretaries of surgeons to find out who had the right experience to treat me, then made a private appointment because the NHS had already made its diagnosis and didn't want to know, well if I hadn't done all that and just took the experts word for it then I could have been be dead by now.

The specialist who operated (the only one in the country) was full of praise for the internet and how it empowers people with knowledge previously only accessable to a few.

I'm probably commenting beside the point, as he now agrees that he has AS, but I feel that it's not necessary that a partner accepts they're an Aspie.

I simply told my partner that I think she's quite likely to be an Aspie. She hasn't either accepted or rejected it, and that's fine with me. I occasionally raise the matter but I feel no urgency for her to accept my belief. I've known people in relationships find out and accept they have AS, but it doesn't seem to do much good.....I think there's often a vain hope that they'll suddenly realise the source of all their annoying and hurtful behaviour and see themselves as a patient who needs treatment.

Not that I would ever ignore her traits. The traits are real, regardless of any diagnosis. If she does something that reveals and Aspie trait, then her behaviour cannot be denied. If the behaviour upsets me, I tackle it as behaviour.....I might mention that I'm tolerating it better because I think it's AS rather than malice, narcissism, or evidence of her not really loving me, but I have no need to hammer home the point that it's AS. The important thing is that I myself "know" she has AS, which helps me to understand her and to respond to her needs more appropriately. The worst that can happen while she's in ignorance is that she won't know why I seem to know so much about how she feels and why she behaves the way she does, and why I'm so forgiving compared to other people she's known. I can live with that.

I would suggest telling him in the same manner that you tell your other patients of their diagnosis.

Unless you aren't a licensed professional. In that case I wouldn't attempt to diagnose anyone. I especially wouldn't attempt to diagnose a bf, chid, and all of my past friends as well.

I'm 47 and was dx'd a few years ago. By a professional. I had never heard of AS and someone with AS (dx'd by a professional) who knew me thought I had it and thought I knew I had it and mentioned it to me. I did some research and it looked likely, so I went to a professional. I did have it, and I was dx'd That means the guy who mentioned it to me made a correct guess. It means I made a correct guess. I was not dx'd until I went to see someone who was an expert.

Just because his guess was right, and my guess was right, as confirmed by an expert, does not give me the ability or the right to diagnose others. I could say "I think you may have AS" but I cannot with any certainty say "You have AS". Icould say "I'm pretty sure you have AS" or "I'd bet the farm that you have AS" but that doesn't make me correct nor does it dx someone.

If I am sick and believe I have the flu, go to the drugstore and get the approriate meds for it, stay home and take them and get better that still doesn't mean that it was for sure the flu. It could have been a bad cold. It could have been another type of viral infection. It could have been a sinus infection. That certainly wouldn't qualify me to walk around telling each person I ran into who sneezed or blew their nose that they had the flu, what to do about it, and expect them to take my advice as if I were an authority on the flu.

You may have AS. Your bf may have AS. Your son may have AS. All your past friends in life may have AS. You could be right. Or you could be seeing AS everywhee because you found something online/in books that you think you identify with. I'd get it checked out and get a professional dx if you want to be sure. If you aren't having any problems in life from it, and don't want some type of support or government disability check for it, there's not much of a reason to except to simply know for sure. It doesn't change anything, except maybe it helps you handle certain symptoms and thought processes differently. That's all it did for me.

^^ This!^^
I've been through the wanting to see ASD in everyone I'm close to but the reality is they didn't have the problems I did. We were all similar because we were friends/partners/parents/children - its obvious we'd all have similar traits or we wouldn't be close, that didn't mean these traits were a neurodevelopmental disorder. Out of curiosity I've asked a few people to do the ASD tests and they all came out completely NT because their perception of their life and their behaviour is completely different from where they stand to where I see them.

I'm not a huge fan of self dx and I never claimed to have autism prior to dx, I said I thought I had it but I was in no way qualified to definitively say. I've met so many label chasers over the years that I will admit to ignoring their claims.

I like your attitude.

Thanks, Jim. It's just that I've heard of so many cases where people are saying "oh dear, my partner is in denial about his autism, whatever shall I do now?" - it's probably more convenient when the partner is open to such a diagnosis, but I think it's a desperate mistake to expect any kind of renaissance from it......it's not as if knowing can re-wire the Aspie brain. Labour the point to an Aspie who is in denial, and they'll probably just come to see the very idea as a threat, and they'll dig themselves deeper into the same hole of ignorance.

There's also the issue of the risk to self-esteem.......accepting you have AS means that you're admitting that you're something of a social failure, and I'm afraid some people will refuse to see that, even when their track record of making and keeping friends is well below average, even when the person telling them freely admits that they too have AS and can accept themselves as socially impaired. The DX may be correct, but if their pride can't cope with the message, you could bang on about it for years and do nothing but harm, because they won't see it for what it is, they'll see it as nothing more than a threat to their ego, so it would be inviting contempt. So even though it can be heartbreaking to see a loved one stewing in their own juice because of their own pride, you can't make them see what you can see, not directly anyway.

I've seen the same denial and outrage when partners have assertiveness problems and anger management problems. It's tougher to deal with denial in those cases, because unaddressed non-assertiveness makes them vulnerable to the will of ousiders (which is a threat to my security as well as theirs), and because unmanaged anger in a relationship is very humiliating and hurtful to experience, so for both those problems there's a sense of urgency about fixing them, and it's obviously very hard on a person if their partner refuses to accept there's a problem. Nonetheless, if they force you to avoid the spooky "psychobabble" terminology, you might make some headway by just facing the person down in a human, non-psychologist kind of way. When their behaviour hurts or alarms you enough for it to look like a dealbreaker for the relationship, tell them so, stand up to them, and stop tolerating it.