NT & AS-afflicted partner; when is it our turn?

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Agreed: beautifully said.

No, that's not fair.

There are things she does love about the person (or did). There are also significant hardships she faces because she has to do so much functioning for him, and she didn't expect to have to live that way in order to be with him. You're talking about texting, but she's talking about being the connective tissue between her husband and the world, and that's a lot of work. It can also leave her in a terribly lonely position.

In most couples, if someone's not doing his bit but isn't a bad person, the other partner can expect that with work and mutual understanding, things will change. What she's just been told is that things very likely will not change, not substantially, anyway. And that part's to do with Asperger's, not with some unique husband-specific thing.

It may sound inimical to some readers here, but among many people it's viewed as a given that a woman will have to "train her husband, and that the husband in the end will be grateful for it. So no, it isn't fair to tell a woman whose husband's just gotten diagnosed "you knew all along what you were getting into", because she didn't. She had no reason not to expect the normal thing.

If she married him for his good traits, did they disappear with the diagnosis?
No, most women do not marry a man hoping to melt him down and mould him into something he isn't. That isn't fair. Did she marry him hoping ALL his traits she found undesirable ( eg height, weight , hair loss) would magically disappear after the certificate was signed?

I'm a bit perturbed that she doesn't want to label herself NT, but is quite happy to label her husband as AFFLICTED with Aspergers.

My understanding is that marriage counselors and therapists are in general agreement that no one can change their spouse. They say "the only person you can change is yourself."

I have seen all kinds of bogus relationship guides based on the opposite idea, none of them by qualified therapists or psychologists. They give helpful advice on things like using the methods of dog training to adjust your husbands behavior, or how to beat your wife into submission, as god intended.

The sane advice is different:
http://marriage.about.com/od/myths/tp/myths10.htm
http://www.christianpost.com/news/how-t ... fe-111692/
http://newlyweds.about.com/od/gettingal ... spouse.htm
http://www.foryourmarriage.org/changing ... d-yourself

It is true that autitic people cannot change their neurology, it is not true that we are incapable of any change or growth.

I have seen plenty of nt couples separate and divorce because of these stupid myths about changing your spouse. The relationship really is betweem the two people, and the pattern they wove as their relationship developed is really their own. You can blame aspergers all you want but it really does "take two to tango."

The neurology of the autistic partner really was always there in every nt/autistic relationship and it really is always both partners turn. People may have a psychological need to see it in another way, or cast themselves as victims in their own life story, but it appears to me that this is usually fiction.

I had an NT friend who got married and then discovered that his NT wife had adopted a false persona for the sole purpose of entrapping him in a marriage. After the wedding she dropped the act. Her interet in sex went to zero and she began hanging out with drinking, drug using friends who he found crude and disgusting. Despite the vitriolic accounts of masterful deception by aspergers husbands at AS Partners, I have not met autistic people who are capable of that kind of sustained deception and betrayal.

My friend got divorced and he remarried a wonderful woman and become a father to her two children and then two more of his own. Marriage is complicated because people are complicated, it isn't all about autism, and it isn't ever a one-sided thing.

What if one person gradually cuts social interaction out of his life after doing it only when necessary to get a job and a spouse? Granted, of course both people play a part in a relationship being close and warm or less so.

I object to the idea that change is impossible for people with ASD. And even more, I object to the idea that males with ASD can't change when in fact they've become outwardly less social, while females must change, and be fixed.


People are people, not labels.

Then he is making choices and changing. And being a d*ck.

If he was ready to work hard to "get a spouse," he should be willing to work just as hard to keep that relationship alive and sustaining for both of them. If he doesn't, he should not be surprised to find himself alone again.

Once I discovered my own autism, I was able to explain some things to my wife in a way that I had not been when there was no frame of reference in which to discuss them. I will never be relaxed at parties. That's part of who I am. But that doesn't mean I won't go with her. I am not about to say to her, "I won't do that stuff anymore because now we know there is a neurological reason why they are so difficult for me."

Thank you Adamantium. For being forthright. I guess I understood what you wrote, logically. Because I can analyze the logic.

I have a really hard time recognizing when someone is coming on strong to control me, as I take things as literal, and true. Can't really do it well at all. But, what you wrote makes sense, and maybe I need to be more strong about what I need being real. I grow tired doing so much alone to accommodate and being so alone. I do hope it can get better.

The problem isn't that he has no good traits or that they disappeared. The problem's that he's got a host of problems that have wound up being real trouble for her, and while it wasn't unreasonable for her to think things would get (quite a bit) better, she knows now that this isn't likely to happen. She also knows much better than she used to what it means to live with the problems chronically, for years. Things that may be tolerable for a year or two often are not over ten or fifteen years without a break -- it's just too much to do for that long. Nobody would have children if they stayed fourteen years old forever, but for a year, most parents can survive.

Anyway. It's a usual trope in NTland: you don't marry a good husband, you train a good husband. I find it mildly offensive, mostly because of the presumption that guys are oafs, but yep, in most of the world, it appears that this is how it goes. In general the guys are fine with it and (assuming they stay together, and sometimes even if they don't) will say that the wife made them into much better men. Most young guys on their own are not...how shall we say...all that grownup/together before they get married.

I doubt very much that she was looking for perfection. But it's not unreasonable to expect a man who doesn't come wearing a disability sign to pick up normal family and married-life responsibilities, including looking after himself, substantially. She's busy, she has a life and work of her own, and it sounds as though she hadn't expected to marry a man only to become his permanent OT, with support and help in the relationship going mainly one-way for years. Possibly forever. It may have made things difficult for her at work, too.

The good qualities may all still be there, but the sad answer to her question may be "never". And if that's the case, good qualities really may not be enough to compensate for the ongoing loneliness and lack of reciprocity.

From my experience watching my NT mother/AS father's marriage, I think OP's feelings and concerns are legitimate. Thinking 'maybe I just have to do something a different way, maybe it's me, maybe I just have to find the right things to do' around an AS spouse for years, and then learning that it's not you, that it's just the way things are, and no hoops you can jump through can change that, would be shattering and make someone feel like they'd put in effort on a dream and an illusion for decades. If the AS spouse is willing to make an effort to learn new strategies with the NT spouse, I'd say there's hope. If s/he isn't, then I'm all for the NT getting out. Staying with a partner out of solely a sense of obligation, duty, and martyrdom is unfair to the AS spouse and the NT spouse. Both need the chance to grow and change as people, without either propping someone else up unduly or relying on being propped up.

It's a tough situation, because I think a lot of AS folks don't really know how to describe their situation well before partnering--we may not have encountered the language for it or assume that at least some of what we experience due to ASD is common to everyone. The NTs may only see the AS partner when they're making a lot of effort and assume their down times are flukes. So the relationship that results once they live with one another may feel like a surprise (as with all marriages, but perhaps more so with ASD, since, pre-marriage, time at home was likely used to recharge and now that time becomes part of the NT partner's life, as well).

There's also exhaustion. Someone with AS may pull it together really hard for a few years in order to get married and set up a life, and find that over time he or she just can't sustain it, or is even so exhausted from that effort that things really fall apart for quite a while. Not anyone's fault unless that person knows he or she likely can't sustain it.

What I am trying and having trouble coming to terms with is that I love my husband very much and don't want to see him withdraw. And maybe he will come back, he has somewhat.

I make choices and change, too. I choose to take our child with ASD who hates school to a counselor and listen even though it doesn't feel good. I choose to go to school meetings. They rarely feel good. I try to change how I act to make others more comfortable because I think people matter and because I don't want to hurt people in the ways that I have been hurt. I am trying to be more supportive to my husband, without abandoning our child. Who also wants and deserves our support.

When I am exhausted, truly exhausted, I accept. People. Their help. Because there is no choice, and at that point where recently I was, argue with no one. I can't fight anymore. Right now, though, my brain is exploding because my husband threatened to leave over I don't know what, but I think it is about trying to make teenager with ASD fit in. And I think he's over it now, though really don't know for sure.

There is no NT or ASD for me right now, there are people, making choices. And if it were the ASD, that would mean there is no point in my trying, I won't ever connect, won't ever make anyone happy or comfortable, can't learn. So I can try to agree this is no one's fault, I just do not want to believe I'm hopeless and it's all ASD with no individual responsibility. All people have to learn to adapt in relationships. I don't understand, how do ASD like behaviors or traits or diagnoses matter here? Beyond that yes, it makes it more difficult?

This is simply not true.

It is true that there are many who tell themselves this--but the data says otherwise. Look at what marriage counselors say: marry the person in front of you, not the person you imagine they could become.

Look at the divorce rates.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/0 ... 84261.html

I think there is some cultural factor in the fantasy belief in "training a good husband." I speculate that there may be a correlation between areas where this belief is prevalent and higher divorce rates.

In any case. it is entirely unreasonable to expect the person you marry to become someone else. If that's the problem, the dissatisfied person should end the marriage, admitting that they were deluding themselves when they entered into it, rather than blaming the other party for remaining themselves. That problem has nothing to do with ASD--though I suspect people with ASD are far more likely to take their partners at face value than engage in elaborate fantasies about who they will shape them into being.

None of this is to say that ASD-related issues don't have an impact. But how the couple manages that impact is up to them.

I will go with my wife to a party and then need to rest the next day. I am way less functional the next day. There is no point in trying to fight it, only bad things come of that. Can we change that? No. Does that mean I won't go to those parties ever? No, but I do need time to recover. I can work this out with my spouse--I give her the effort of socializing with her friends at the party, she gives me the space I need to regenerate after that exhausting effort.

The main thing is to like each other. To be friends who care for each other. Try to build the positive and mitigate the negative. There is nothing about ASD that stops a person from pursuing these goals.

It certainly won't work if the NT partner defines as the minimum necessary compromise something that the ASD partner cannot do. But just look for a different path than the one that goes straight through and insurmountable obstacle.

A therapist once explained to me that a healthy relationship consists of two people who are self-sufficiently happy choosing to share their lives. A relationship which places one partner's happiness in the control of the other is unhealthy co-dependency.

Last edited by Adamantium on 27 Jan 2014, 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Absolutely. I find the idea of "changing your partner" completely abhorrent. Compromising with someone is a joint venture, but trying to change someone smacks of controlling and duplicitous behavior (IMHO).

I'm sure it does. I don't find it wonderful either. The fact remains that this is how it goes for much, if not most, of the world. If you hang around with many middle-aged married couples socially, it's impossible to miss; they'll talk about it openly themselves. Mostly in their 30s, after that it's old news. The companionate and respectful marriages are, as far as I can make out, more likely to fail than the ones where the man and woman adopt somewhat stereotyped roles and make their identities in them -- and need each other, so to speak. Would the therapeutic community think this is wonderful, I doubt it, but then again the therapeutic community's got a high rate of mental illness and divorce. I'm not sure I'd look to them for norms.

Anyway. Someone asked what it is about AS that makes a person so difficult to live with, and...heh. just interrupted by a "everything is a disaster, and now here are new extra constraints on how we can interact because I can't cope" call from the boyfriend. Yeah. Anyway, I'd started giving examples, then erased the whole thing, because what good what it do? If you can't do anything about it, you can't. Besides, what I don't want is more rounds of "That isn't a problem!" Because it's classic AS and more than I want to deal with. It's not a problem for you, no. It is often a problem for the people who have to deal with it in order to be with you, work with you, or take care of you, whether you think it ought to be or not. And no, that doesn't make them evil or bigoted or closed-minded or cruel or unloving. It means that AS often comes with behaviors that can make for real difficulties. Which I think is well-recognized anytime the complaint's made by someone who actually has AS.

They say "when you've met one aspie, you've met just one aspie." The idea is that people with aspergers are a very heterogenous group and the ways their autistic traits are expressed are very diverse and unpredictable.

But it seems that the message from some people who have been in relationships with aspies is "when you've been in a bad relationship with one aspie, you know what problems will exist in all their relationships."

I know the first statement is true, so I'm guessing the second is false.

Oh, this again. Yep, when you need a diagnosis, it's fine to sort into categories and to have a look and compare your own behaviors and say yes, well, that's me; same when you're comparing troubles amongst aspies on a forum, lots of "me too" and acknowledgement of troubles caused by one's own AS. But as soon as anyone who hasn't got AS has trouble because of the aspie-ish behavior of someone with AS, everyone's a snowflake, AS has nothing to do with anything.

It's less than persuasive.