NT Husband with suspected aspie wife

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What you have to do is rip apart her logic. Try this and say this to her.

You state she expresses her affection by acts of service and that I should appreciate that. After that I would say, "now let's look at your logic and your rationale." I would then say "if you truthfully believe that I should appreciate your acts of service as affection then is it not contradictory and inconsistent on your part to not appreciate my desire for you to state how useful I am and my need for physical affection?" After that say "do you not desire truth, rationality and logic? If yes, I ask how are you being consistent with your logic?"

The thing is you can't sell her with emotion, compromise and social repriocity. She will not go for that. What you have to do is appeal to her logic and her rationality. One thing you can do is buy books about critical thinking and logic. Learn how to make arguments and dissect arguments as well as learning to look for fallacies. You have to show her where her logic and her reasoning is fallacious. If she truthfully is a logic aspie and she values logic and rationality a lot I believe you will win her hook, line and sinker. I believe she will respect you even more.

Please take what I say with a grain of salt and come to your own conclusions and do your own research. Do not take what I say at face value.

By the way, I read a book called what men know about women. It is an in depth study of what men truthfully know. Well my friend, the pages were blank.

I read through the first couple of things on this thread, and hope you're still around. I know exactly how you feel. After years of going through occaisional hell with my wife, we finally figured out what the issue was. I have a lot of stories also about this, but I'll spare the details for now.

Basically the same as what you say. She never initiated affection except in the way a cat would if you aren't paying attention. She also says the same thing about asking for it. In our first year of marriage, this fact dawned on me and I actually marked a calender to see how long it would be before she initiated sex. I finally cracked after 22 days, she was absolutely none the wiser and didn't even notice. When I brought it up, she was in complete denial though. We struggled heavily with the "libido" issue for our entire marriage. At times it was depression, PMS, post-partum, childhood issues, anxiety disorders - none of which made sense or responded to treatment. Off and on, I took a lot of her behavior as complete lack of any kind of respect for me, or men, or she had daddy issues, or something. I had no idea what to pin it on.

A few years ago I just said f**k it, because we had kids (one of whom is recently diagnosed as spectrum, though he seems just to have a few traits without any delays), I would just be the one to initiate affection. 3 months ago, for the first time in 7 years of relationship, she turned to me and told me "I love you." - without and prompting or pretext. I would have been floored if I wasn't already half asleep.

I know the Aspies don't understand this, but yes, it does devalue something when the other party doesn't take the initiative to give affection. It is basically "if you like something, you do it without being asked to do it" just like any activity you enjoy. If you enjoy being affectionate with someone, an NT person will get it in mind at times to randomly initiate affection with that person. The other party picks up on this fact, and reciprocates. This is normal in NT land. We love to be loved by someone. Logic doesn't come into play here, and my wife is more anxiolytic than logical anyways. The only thing she responded to were my blackmail threats to leave her, and that didn't work for more than 5 minutes - something I hated myself for doing but it was literally the ONLY thing that shook her enough to "act normal" for those 5 minutes.

The problem is, you first have to understand generally, that is it wanted to question for something that is not asked. For example if I worked in the sun and it is hot, and come into the house, I do that for a meaning. So something let me decide to go into the house and I want to do that. While doing and focusing on that topic, there comes an disturbing "WOULD YOU LIKE A GLASS OF WATER!! !! !????!, that forces me to stop my thoughts, go into NT-communication modus, focus on my face impressions and spelling to give the expectated: "No my dear, but thanks for you being so wonderful and asking me." while I stumble my toes at something and hurt myself because of me doing unexpectedly three things at the same time. Then I am changing back to think modus, thinking and planning about what I was going to do, before I got disturbed. The same it is with family eatings. While you try to concentrate on handling the dishes, NT rules force you to pretend to be listening to someone talking something with you, while a third person goes between asking if you woudl want xyz. Such things normally end with me two times biting myself by accident in tongue or flesh and myself questioning, why they are asking me if I want something, when there is a simple and clear way to know if I want something of not: Me opening my mouth and asking if I can have xyz... If I am not doing this, I am not interested, because if I was interested, why should I decide not to ask? O_o So you really have to know first, that there are really people feeling comforted by this behaviour. ^^

The thing that really helped both my partner and me, were books about mediation and violencefree communication. The thing is that these books teach you in a technical way how to understand people foreign oppinions, that are based on completely different impressions, feelings and logic. And you really understand, that there is no such thing as normal. We always see ourself as normal, everyone does. And think we have a right to force our normality on other people, because of it being normal.

The posts before, that are about enhancing conflicts, are an good example of this "forcing the own normality on others". So its still about someone oppinions being right, and someone others oppinion being wrong, and winning and loosing the conflict for the right oppinion.





So these are bad examples. Its about telling someone, that his oppinion is wrong, about doing warplans to win this oppinion war against your enemy. This is absolutely sad. Try to imagine someone of you wins your war. Do you think that you would change the way, your partner feels? If your partner or I were able to smash your arguments and extinguish your logic with logical facts, that your deed for affection is wrong, would this change anything about you having these deeds and being sad about it? So in the opposite, would it change something for her? And do you think that thinking how to beat your partner in theoretical wargames, should be anything happening in a partnership?

The thing is, as soons as you come away from wrong or right, you come away from winner or looser. Because if you are talking to someone about your oppinions, and are thinking and telling of your oppinions as being right, the person you are talking too would be forced, when having another oppinion, to be him-/herself wrong, to agree you. So you are forcing a fight. Instead when you stop talking about right or wrong oppinions, but instead simply of your own oppinion, you give your opposite the opportunity of agreeing to your personal feelings and deeds, without having that oppinion on their own.



I dont care for "we" or all the other NT. I am not in a partnership with "we", "an NT", "normality" or anyone else. I am with my partner. So his opponion is important for me, anyway how normal or unnormal it is for me or anyone else. And this I expect from my partner too. I can tell you, its much easier to simply accept the way the other feels, instead of trying to tell him with logic arguments that he would be wrong - or that majority stands behind my oppinion so I am right.

I myself often feel disturbed from my partner. Things like the examples in the start like disturbing me to ask if I want this or that, or having small talk from now and then and so on, while I am reading a book and so on. These things ARE really annoying me. The thing is: I know that in the way he feels the world this means caring. I dont feel it that way. But I accept that HIS actions, are based on the way HE feels them, instead of arguing with him about being right or wrong. And on the other side this goes for me the same way: So he accepts MY actions the way I feel. And this appreciations gives us both the freedom of gifting each other with things, because we know that our partner is happy about them, instead of doing work that has to be done because of majority, society, being normal, right or wrong or other s**t.

So when it comes to your wanted affection, it will never work for me, because I just dont feel it that way. I rarely ever have spontanous ideas like "Oh, this thing I met without purpose, would be a great gift for my darling." I never go somewhere without purpose so I rarely meet something without purpose. When I am shopping I have a list, and I go straight after the shopping list. I dont see the other items without purpose so I cant get the idea of gifting it. To see the other items I would have to decide, that I want to look at every item in the market, which would cost me hours. So I cant do that the way NT do it, and I never will be able. But I am able to mark me some random dates at the beginning of the year on my calendar, and on these marked random days I try to do something special, because I know him to be happy when having something without him asking me before. As long as I focus on that "In an normal and right relationship a partner has to have the deed to gift his partner spontanous." this is still wrong. But when I loose that focus, and try instead to accept our both oppinions and focus on finding on a solution between our both deeds and oppinions, everything is ok.

The thing is, I am happy to do so, to see my partner being happy. But I never would even had the idea to do so because of my partner "demanding on his rights according to NT-rules, we, society, .... that he has proofen to me as being right according to logical arguments he used to smash my "wrong personal oppinions"" to let me see how wrong I am and the way I feel. Would you be interested to sit yourself down, and think about what you could do, so that this person was more happy?

So if you want to go on on warcraft, noone can change. If you are interested in learning to understand your opposite [u]AND[/quote] learning how to make yourself being understood by your opposite, i can really recommend you this book with best regards. http://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Commun ... munication

Hi,

I am aspie, husband NT and I am may not be the best person to give advice right now given my state of affairs, but maybe I have something of retrospective value to offer so you have a chance to do something positive now:

1) Are you still in Alberta? Look up psychologists who specialize in AS. I am pointing at Calgary. If you have insurance, is your wife willing to get an assessment? It will cost as bit, but you can also claim the assessment on income tax. I strongly suggest that this is a necessary move for your whole family - you will reap a ton of benefits at this stage and it is worth the investment.

2) Go yourself to the psychologist that specializes in AS because you will need help with "translation" - you are living in two different paradigms and you will need to learn the differences in how each other thinks.

3) Initiate marriage counseling with the above Dr. as soon as possible.

4) I am not a yeller - my hubby and I have avoidance tactics, so at least yelling is some sort of communication. I suggest you ask her to write down her beefs - and if she does so, I would not argue them with her because, if she is like me, she will shut down. If you ask me for the truth about how I feel or see things and start telling me I am wrong, then I have no reason to tell you anything and I will feel very upset with you for asking me for the facts as I see them and then invalidating that I see things that way . It doesn't mean you have to agree with her, this is simply a way of understanding how she sees things so the two of you can start problem solving. Bite your tongue. You can work things out later - just start by listening without countering.

5) There is more to learn than I can itemize this morning. One beef I have in my marriage is that when you are told "it is this way for an Aspie" and your particular Aspie is verifying that this is so, believe it - it is what you have to work with - we make so many concessions to fit into an NT world, it is such a "gift" when someone believes me and accepts me "as is" ... then I feel more giving.

6) Little kids alone can interfere with a sex life, but my marriage is past that and pretty extreme. It didn't get to this point over night and the sooner you get on some external help, the better. I do not want to be touched, let alone have sex. The schism is large.

7) There is far less about AS wives out there, but go to Jessica Kingsley, look up some books - and I advise you get reading. There are success stories on this site, but if the divorce rate figure is correct ... you guys have some work to do and the sooner the better. I know when my heels are in, when things become entrenched, I am not easily moved.

8. If your wife is on the spectrum, then she will probably appreciate you asking her what sorts of sensory issues she might have and you can start helping her feel better - and more loving toward you - in a relatively short period of time. Can you spell her off for an hour a day for her alone time? Is the t.v. too loud ... you have no idea how angry a loud t.v. makes me feel toward my hubby. This is not a light complaint, the sensory difficulties cause pain just as you would feel if constantly bumped your elbow on a desk corner that you couldn't avoid - it gets very wearing. Her yelling is a sign of overload ... be a detective ... a very non-judgmental detective. Give her time to trust you - she will still be snapping if she is still feeling overloaded. You might feel like you are asked to do so much, but if she has AS - trust me, she is working very, very hard.

Hope this is helpful.

...now, it isn't like my probably-Aspie wife and I have a good marriage...but...stuff that has kind of worked...
1. Ask about sensory overload and take steps to reduce it. (It probably took longer than it should have to twig to the fact that she often wrapped an extra jacket around her head when she was in crowded places...) Anyways, good headphones and a music player _really, really_ help her destress at night - just having me taking care of our child in the same room is very stressful to her. Similarly, arranging for babysitting and periodic breaks helped a lot.

2. Nonviolent communication and emotional awareness. Nonviolent communication helped a tiny bit. OTOH, asking what she's actually upset about instead of responding to the first few things she brings up - really helped. There's a book on life skills for autistics that recommends using colored flashcards - we plan to try that soon. Basically, my wife rarely knows what she's feeling or why...so assuming that she's upset about what she's talking about is unwise. You may expect rather more bluntness than anyone with feelings might hope for - it probably isn't deliberate.

3. Spontaneous affection...requires empathy and theory of mind. YMMV, but likely a hopeless quest. Most NTs won't mind-read reliably. Aspies, OTOH...while a good-natured soul, it took a lot of explaining to get my wife to grasp the notion that hitting me with a bat hurt my feelings. Um. Expecting her to notice that I'm tired and fetch water is just not going to work. Heck...expecting her to notice that I've collapsed on the floor moaning doesn't work. What has worked (sorta) is scheduling communication, writing it down in advance to keep it simple, ideally writing down the whole conversation, and relying on logic. Scheduled time together can be arranged. If you only feel loved from spontaneous acts of affection, you might try a 'spontaneous' jar and request that she do 1-3 per week. If there's a particular response action that really matters to you, you might try asking her to make it a rule that, if she notices X, she does Y. Eg, we've agreed that if I fall to the the floor and don't get up, she'll stop talking and ask if I'm ok. So far, I've had to remind her - but - to be fair - it doesn't come up often.

4. Sex. Dunno. My wife is higher drive than I am. You might try talking. Some options are:
(1) I'm unhappy/hate you.
(2) Sensory overload!! ! Scary.
(3) Oh. You like sex? Um. Sure.
(4) I am too stressed.

...it might help a bit to try to accept her love language. It would also be good to mention that, since the idea is for the _other_ person to feel loved, the best way is for her to make a point of using your love language and vice versa. That conversation may be much more frustrating than you'd expect. Maybe a star chart would help? Where y'each check off every time, eg, you do an act of service and she checks off every time she shows affection?

--Argyle

1979 was the year they closed the nuclear power plant in Shoreham, NY which was an hour from where i lived.

I get what both of the views on this question are. OP would feel more loved or cared for if his wife would act without his asking but it is not in her nature to be spontaneously affectionate or make assumptions about his needs and logically waits for an obvious need or to be asked. OP feels that asking for affection isn't as good as a spontaneous action. Plants don't ask to be watered but need it to thrive so we do it. Maybe they can resolve it by having his need for spontaneous affection on her "to do " list. If there are dishes in the sink put them in the dishwasher, if hubby is on the couch watching TV give him a peck on the forehead as you pass by (if it's in the wife's comfort zone)? I don't know, would OP feel ok if he knew she had this as a chore?

i should probably mention that all my plants die off from lack of watering

I know this thread was started awhile ago however, if you're still around and having issues then here's my 2 cents:

You can't force other people to change. However, approach determines response. If you would like your wife to be more perceptive of your needs or more spontaneously affectionate then lead by example. If you want her to compliment you or tell you that you're needed/useful then lead by example, compliment her on the things she does. If she expresses affection by taking care of the home and children then try offering her compliments in regards to that. With any luck she'll catch on to that behavior eventually and respond by telling you how much she appreciates things about you or things that you do.

Also, negative reinforcement rarely works in the long term. Ie, telling her what she's doing wrong (particularly in an aggressive or accusatory manner) will probably not work. For example, telling her "You're not affectionate enough!" is not going to make her more affectionate. When she does do something right you need to reward her for it, even just verbally. Notice the small things she may already do either consciously or unconsciously that respond to your wants or needs without you having to ask and let her know that you enjoy that. For example- "Thank you for making ____ for dinner tonight. It's my favorite, I really appreciate it!"

Reward the behaviors that you want to see more of.

Either way, in any situation, approach determines response. At the end of the day how you approach any situation is the only thing you actually have control over. So if you take nothing else away from this remember- approach determines response.

As my name suggests, I AM running out of steam. I'm an NT husband to an recently diagnosed aspie wife. Though the diagnosis was recent our marital problems certainly haven't been - especially after the birth of the two children who were born in quick succession (15 months apart).

I can identify with almost all the things you seem to suffer from in your relationship. I can also certainly understand that asking for affection eats away into how genuine the affection given eventually feels (if at all given). Unfortunately, I don't have much in terms of advice that I can share with you. In fact I think I would be totally the wrong person to give advice to you as in my mind you seem to be extremely patient and understanding ... certainly to for a year without sex is something very few would be able to cope with i think.

But what I have for you (if you're still around) or for any NT husband for that matter is a question: how do you keep your emotional cup full? Where do you all successful NT husbands are getting your energy from? How can you see hope when the message out there is basically is that nothing is that your aspie wives aren't going to change and that you basically have to deal with it?

thanks

My partner and I had some real issues about it, and we even quitted our partnerships for 4 months. (We are now together 14 years.) But we realized, that we were discussing about bread crumbs. Tiny little breadcrumbs, that were simply the difference between an real existing partnership and that "perfect partner" stuff hollywood dream tell you. So we are no perfect couple, never having problems, never discussing anything. But we are a couple that realized, that about 95% of the time of the year we are a good couple, living in harmony, and as long as the remaining 5% of the time that are not so nice, dont focus on topics as "How could you have sex without condom with a teenage prostitute, you idiot!" or "Oh my God, you sold our house for Internetpoker!", all will be well. ^^

So we sometimes have our issues, but the thing is we both accepted the knowlege that the opposite partner truly loves us. That does not mean we can mindread, that does not mean we understand each other without words, it simply means that if we sometimes hurts each other, it is not meant on purpose. So sometimes one of us does something on accident that hurts the other one, and the other one is pissed during the situation because of this. But as long as you realize, maybe after you calm down, that your partner does not act on purpose, you can talk about it and trust each other to mean it true. So I focused so much on these 5%, that I couldnt see the wonderful 95%. And by accepting that, I think the 5% went into a 2%. ^^

Thanks for asking some great questions. I don't know what has happened in the interim with you guys, but it's nice to find that you went to the trouble F&F and we are mixed on the devaluing question. My feeling is that it would be GREAT if people would give us what we want without us asking, but mindreading is a tough gig. I'm not sure how much this actually has to do with autism though, because tons of NT women constantly ask for what seems to be mindreading behavior of their NT male partners. Don't know how often it happens among same-sex NT couples. It might help to know where she is in terms of Myers-Briggs typology. I find that this helps explain a lot about interpersonal differences and how to communicate with tose of other types.

If possible, I would focus on equity issues. i.e., it is not fair to expect me to do something I am not aware of a need for, or to do something your do not do (in kind, not necessarily the same exact thing).

Regarding physical affection, this may be difficult for many on the spectrum, but I notice you guys have kids, so presumably there was a time durng which it was not an issue. If so, what has changed? It is really important to decide if this is something you can live with. It's hard for many people to have a healthy relationship without healthy sex. If you have not already, communicate to her how important, relatively, these things are to you, and what consequences there might be if she is not able to do/be what you need. I say this because while people may not change or do things which are hard for them simply because we want them to, they might put more effort into trying if they know a relationship or your happiness are at stake. Very best of luck!

1. Do you mean affection, or do you mean sex? Are you referring to both? If so, please say so. Spelling things out really does help us to understand what you mean. This may apply to interpersonal communication in general.

2. You say you suspect she is aspie? My advice is to order a few books written by aspie females authors, such as Liane Holliday Willey. Read them yourself, and maybe leave them out where your wife may pick them up of her own volition.

3. If you need something, ask for it. Ask politely, without sighing, rolling your eyes, or going "Hrumph! If you REALLY loved me, you'd be able to read my mind and I wouldn't have to ask."

4. If you have issues with #3, perhaps you should divorce her and marry a psychic. Yes, I'm kidding, but only somewhat.

5. The venus and mars books are a lot of bologna, IMO. Still, the author has sold a gazillion of them and he's richer than I, so I can't really fault him.

She can look at Aspergirls by Rudy Simone and that should help you recognize it if she really is aspie...

I had a moment reading through this thread... Are you sure you're not MY husband?

OK, I know you aren't but my husband and I have had the EXACT same struggle. I am Aspie ("Very Likely") he is NT (albeit with a few aspie tendencies). We also took the love languages quiz and got the same results. We've had the same issues dealing with physical intimacy, and his perceptions of my "lack of interest".
Although it's been challenging, I am working on understanding his needs, and he is working on understanding mine.. We have to compromise - I have to remind myself to reach out to him, and he has to remind himself to give me some space. At first, I was afraid it would seem forced, and he would think I was just putting on an act.
I really DO love him, and I really AM attracted to him, and I DO enjoy "it"... I'm not pretending just to shut him up, you know? just trying to use his language.

I hope I'm making sense.

In my relationship too we have a hard time with affection but over time it has gotten alot better. I know hubby wishes i would kiss him every hour on the dot. But we do set up cuddling periods throughout the day. Mornings I cuddle along with afternoons. Usually give him a backrub every couple of days. And a specific template for snuggling before bed.

Both of us have gotten better at asking and enjoying the asking. He says give me a hug and I will. I'll say I need attention and he will comfort me.

We also tell each other we love each other often. To us this means i love you and im thinking about you
but i do not want to touch me just now or i'm going away to computer game land.
We have specific requests we fulfill.
He has to hug me before leaving for work or i will have an awful day.
I have to let him know i'

Have you given any thought to whether you may have inadvertently contributed to the situation? If she is a very literal thinker, she may understand certain social activities vis a vis a set of rules.

While I am spontaneously affectionate sometimes, my spouse mucked it up for a while. He once told me to not hug him right away when he gets home. Another time, he said not to initiate affection or intercourse soon after a meal. Another time, it was "not right away in the morning" and "not when we are going to bed." He became exasperated that over the course of two years, I pretty much stopped trying to be physical with him at all. I explained to him that it was because he told me not to, and he was very confused! He didn't remember telling me these things. They were just little offhand comments meant to explain why he was not receptive at that time. I, on the other hand, understood them as guidelines for when to do things and when not to do them, and I could tell him that we had X conversation about it two weeks before Christmas in 2009 or Y conversation at the end of July 2010. He had, without meaning to, more or less told me there was only an hour or two of the day when he would want me to hug him, kiss him, or initiate intercourse--two hours when he was usually at work, away from me.

I imagine that if you accidentally made "rules" about when she could be physical with you, and she is NOT naturally inclined to do so, the problem would be even worse. You could use this style of thinking to make a positive "rule," too. You may find that encouragement to adhere to a social script/ritual, like hugging or kissing when you return home from work or just before bed, may help. While words like script and ritual may seem negative to you, for a person struggling to navigate through behaviors or situations she does not understand, they are helpful. Like brushing your teeth before bed, at some point the kiss before bed stops being what you are supposed to do and becomes simply what you want to do; something whose absence or lack you would miss. I hope that makes sense!