What do you think of this description of AS + NT marriages?

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apologies for all the typos -- I have vision impairments & my TLE and autism all affect my ability to always see small letters
corr: " I would at this point be going into it without a full appreciation of what it is we would both be getting into" = I would not at this point be going into it without a full appreciation of what it is we would both be getting into

I amost also forgot to say in response to the article, and this needs to be said (hence a third post), I found the part of the article about a person with autism/Asperger's mature enough to enter into an autie/Aspie marriage with a neurotypical would need to have hand-holding and monitoring to go to parties was highly insulting ! I have the same get fatigue after negotiating crowds thing many other do on the spectrum, but all anyone has to do to make the party-going turn out successful is tell me ...

it's a horse show party ! (I have gone to so many, I love parties !)

I just crash and recharge my energy levels after the party.

For some, it is more about managing energy levels than some outright misguided notion the autie or Aspie needs the neurotypical significant other or marital partner to be a teacher-chaparone.

But again, at least seeing more articles is a start. At least there is beginning to be a National conversation and some education of those for whom autism and Asperger's has previously demonstrated a certain ignorance.

Interesting article. In a way, I'm glad to see that the autistic partner is being urged to make an effort: in most cases, the nt is told to make compensations and allowances etc.. I always thought that was a bit unfair.

It's a little depressing, but I do understand where the author was coming from, when they wrote about the nt partner feeling like a PR or caretaker: I felt like that around my ex and it was incredibly draining (I'm dx'd aspie- not sure what the hell he was )

I don't think, at least speaking for myself, that people with autism should nt or would not want to make at least an equal effort, if not more when circumstances for for more arise. I think the reason so many NTs are expected to be the caretakers of the autistic partner and carry the entire load in the relationship, is because in this Country the way we all deal with adult autism services and good job opportunities for people with autism is far off the mark to what we need to be doing. I know for myself, personally, there are certain things I am just not able to do in terms of my daily care -- food preparation is a biggie, and my energy levels and pain syndromes/fatigue can get to be a biggies in housecleaning and dishwashing depending on how much housecleaning is required. And this is where, if we are very low on money, forces my husband to have to caretake those activities. However, I have at a few reare times in my life, had a much better income level, and was able to take care of all those needs for myself by employing my little bit greater income to circumvent having to ask my husband to do it. I really don't have a problem with other tasks like showering, dressing, laundry, washing the car, or any of that. So, I definitely think if we could only improce the job prospects for adults with autism and the adult autism services available when the income is too low, this would go a very long way to improving NT-autie, NT-Aspie, and autie-Aspie marriages and relationships. I just don't think anyone ever thinks about this, unfortunately.

apologies for the typos. I go thru these little phases where I don't see it.

I have to say, I think this article misses the boat badly for a number of reasons:

1. It assumes all AS people have the same strengths, weaknesses and various other traits. That's obviously false. We exhibit a greater likelihood of exhibiting certain specific traits relative to those who are labeled as "NT". But, by no means are we all the same. There is a significant amount of variability in aspies (and even more variability when you talk about the entire spectrum). So, for the purpose of this article, the best case scenario is that the author somehow chose to address a few of the most common aspie difficulties in relationships and has drawn conclusions from those--though the actual AS or "NT" labeled person reading the article may not actually face those same issues.

2. The article also assumes blindly that the "NT" labeled person is somehow free of any disorder, condition, abnormality or weakness. Well, that's also highly unlikely. Here's some sobering statistics:

"The updated US National Comorbidity Survey (NCS) reported that nearly half of Americans (46.4%) meet criteria at some point in their life for either an anxiety disorder (28.8%), mood disorder (20.8%), impulse-control disorder (24.8%) or substance use disorder (14.6%)." [Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 62]

"Studies of the prevalence of personality disorders (PDs) have been fewer and smaller-scale, but one broad Norwegian survey found a five-year prevalence of almost 1 in 7 (13.4%). Rates for specific disorders ranged from 0.8% to 2.8%, differing across countries, and by gender, educational level and other factors." [Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 58] A US survey that incidentally screened for personality disorder found a rate of 14.79%.[J Clin Psychiatry 65]

Putting these statistics together, it appears that over 50% and as many as 60% of the population in the US reportedly has either a mood, anxiety, impulse-control, substance abuse, or personality disorder. And those figures are believed to be understated. (And, like ASDs, the diagnoses of those disoreders are also on the rise...)

Moreover, when you do the math (sum the percentages for each individual disorder, it's greater than 100%), it appears that the average person is likely to suffer from more than one disorder!

So, if your average NT person has at least one (and likely more) disorder over their lifetime, and those disorders are likely to last for years, if not a lifetime, how in the world can the article in question claim to draw any reasonable inferences about the relationship between the typical NT person and the typical AS persons. It fails to mention any of the most common psychological disorders that NT people apparently have from time to time. And it doesn't discuss the interaction between common NT conditions and AS. That's a rather significant omission that would cause an immediate rejection at any half way reasonable refereed journal.

3. Even that minority of the population that claims not to have any disorder certainly suffers from a whole host of fears, phobias, shortcomings, weaknesses, irrational behaviors, dysfunctional tendencies and otherwise aberrant behavior. Yet none of these issues, even the most common ones--say depression, anger management, stress, etc.--are addressed. How in the world can any reasonably generalizable conclusions be made without addressing these issues?

4. In the end, the article could be trying to say that, hypothetically speaking, if the average aspie (whatever that looks like) hooks up with someone from that very smallish portion of the NT population that has absolutely no disorder or other dysfunctional/aberrant behavior, they will encounter difficulty. But, if that's what the article is saying, then it is useless. What are the odds of an aspie (or anyone else for that matter) getting into a relationship with someone who doesn't have any issues?

P.S. If you've met one of those purportedly issue free people, first check to make sure they aren't a compulsive liar.

P.S.S. Hopefully the irony/sarcasm comes through as humor, though the statistics and observations were offered in sincerity. I also don't want to give the impression that I am picking on this article in particular. To the contrary, many pop psych articles are badly flawed. Even those that purport to be rigorous are often junk science in disguise. Caveat emptor!

I know the cultural comparison is becomeing more popular these days but I think it can set up someone for failure because a cultural difference can be overcome by learnign the new culture, and I know that is the point being made, but what if the truer comparison is a dog tryign to learn a cat's culture. There are some things that simply are not going to translate. A dog is just nto capable of knowign th eintimate workings of a cat. There is no point of reference in it's brain. I have seen video of a dog meowing, it's cute, maybe a bit eery, and certainly not normal. You can make a dog act like a cat but you cant tell me that dog knows what it's like to be a cat.

I can appreciate that this article helps to further awareness of AS/NT relationships. I'm sure we cant depend on the AS community to self-diagnose completely, we do need to have the NT's pull some information out of us, if only to prompt us to think on things that we wouldn't think about on our own. But at the same time, NT's do not know what being an AS is like. They cant claim to know how we work. I suppose it might be true that they cannot empathize with our condition. hmmm...kinda ironic when you think about it.

These points are all well-taken. Yet, at the same time, shardoin has a point. I don't think any autism spectrum person would go into a serious relationship with a neurotyptical under the pretense the neurotypical was somehow perfect or idolize the neurotypical. No one would disagree that neurotypicals might have numerous problems and/or issues of their own. If a person with autism did not understand what a relationship entails, then I would say that person is either not ready to have such a relationship or is going to have a lot of learning to do about having a serious relationship with someone. Some of us autism spectrum people have had long-term relationship or even been married -- some of us more than once. That sort of give a person -- any person-- a little bit of experience what a serious relationship involves.

I do however, have to agree with shardoin, and that's where the above analysis, though it gives a great try, misses the mark. The disabilities and different functional brain wiring of people with autism spectrum conditions is a significant qualitative difference as compared to neurotypicals and almost everything the above-analysis mentions. That is not to trivialize mood disroders, impulse control issues, or substance abuse problems. Not at all. But autism spectrum people's different brain wiring results in issues that strike at the heart of what it means to have a deep emotionally connected relationship with someone -- anyone. That includes neurotypicals and even other spectrum people. For instance, spectrum people have serious issues being held, touched, cuddled, ToM. Myself, personally, I am a little better with these things than many on the spectrum, but I still have my issues. I have a serious problem not being held and cuddled enough. More than this, being held and cuddled by someone who is not overly rough with my oversensitivities. Maybe none of this makes any sense, because as a child I didn't like to be touched or held at all, and especially by my parents and relatives. It wasn't because I didn't love them, but just a touch-pressure aversion issue thing. Now, I can't get enough of it.

That still does not mean I can always relate in the same social way a neurotypical might expect, but I can have very deep connections if it is in an intimate relationship. I don't agree that spectrum people and neurotypicals are unable to put themselves inside each others brains -- the cat to see what it like to be a dog and vice versus. Real communication is the key, and also the intimacy and whether the two people in the relationship really enjoy being with each other.

As far as the article, I agree it was not one of the better I have seen, either. It seems like it was speaking more to the purpose of dispelling stereotypes held by some that neurotypicals and spectrum people cannot or do not have serious relationships. They can and they do. And anyone who thinks something is wrong with this idea, just doesn't know much about relationships. Now THERE's a better topic for an article !

Thanks for sharing your viewpoints MKDP and Shardoin. I really appreciate the dialog and hopefully my academic demeanor isn't seen as being negative. Both my parents were academics and I was an academic for many years. So, for better or worse, I see the world as a giant empirical experiment and one of my special interests is developing theories to understand this grand experiment we live in.

The dialogue that follows is also meant to be read in the spirit of academic debate. Though, in this case, I'm not trying to debate either of you. So, maybe it's instead a lecture... (In the academic sense, not the parental sense!)

I agree with both of you that the article tries to dispell the notion that AS people and so-called NT people cannot be in relationships together. I think this is a view that needs to be changed because it has the effect of reducing to "AS people cannot be in relationships with anyone except others on the autistic spectrum (and maybe no one at all)." That's simply not true.

But beyond that I am disturbed by a number of other implications of this general topic that I believe are false and harmful. IMO, the dialogue seems to make an unhealthy distinction between the autistic and non-autistic. Specifically, there appears to be this nonsensical assumption that so-called neurotypical people are somehow more well-adjusted or more capable than autistic people. That's just simply not true. One need only look at the condition of the world we live in to see that this is balderdash. Do well-adjusted people blow one another up in frequent and recurring wars? Do they end marital relationships at a rate exceeding 50%? Do they disciminate against people who are different than them, sometimes with tragic consequences?

I could go on. But, I hope I that the point is clear enough already... My point is that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that so-called neurotypical people are more well-adjusted than autistic people. The only evidence that exists is that autistic people have trouble adjusting to a world that is primarily defined by people who are non-autistic. (And at that, I say "so what..." We can define the world differently with time.)

This brings me to one nit-picky point I wanted to make about something that MKDP said:

I think the third and fourth words ("with autism") should be deleted. Given the high rate of divorce within the so-called "NT" community, the nearly exponential growth in the population of divorce lawyers and marital counselors, and the prevalence of "self help" books to help so-called NT people with relationships, I would say there is very little evidence that so-called NT people understand relationships. If you are saying that autistic people are even worse than NT people with respect to their understanding of relationships, perhaps that is valid? But, then again, there is a point at which bad is just plain bad and the degree of "badness" doesn't really matter any more. For example, assume you are a baseball manager and you have two pitch hitters left on the bench: one has a lifetime batting average of .135 and the other .113. Does it really matter which one you choose? Both players are exceptionally weak hitters.

I also want to be clear that I am not criticizing the so-called "neurotypical" population. To the contrary, I am saying there is no such thing as a neurotypical person (or if there is, most people do not understand what the term means). More importantly, I believe we are deluding ourselves by adhering to the false notion that there is in fact a "neurological standard" and that this standard is somehow unaffected by any spectrum-type disorders. To the contrary, the direction of research seems to suggest that there is a much broader set of spectra that affect brain wiring... it's not just an autism vs. neurotypical wiring dichotomy. There are many, many different spectra which produce many (and perhaps an infinite number of) different possible brain wiring patterns.

A "spectrum disorder" is a term used in psychiatry to describe a condition that is "not a unitary disorder but rather a syndrome composed of subgroups" where the degree of affect ranges from relatively severe to relatively mild or nonclinical in significance. [ "Spectrum concepts in major mental disorders". Psychiatr. Clin. North Am. 25 ]

Very few of the "spectrum disorders" are recognized by the DSM. In fact, I would argue that autism is not recognized as a spectra in the DSM-IV (the last published version) in that it includes only four distinct types of autism. A spectra contains a large number of components, not just a few. Other "disorders" thought to be captured by spectra, but not included in the DSM as spectrum disorders, include depression spectrum, bipolar spectrum, post-traumatic stress spectrum, obsessive–compulsive spectrum, social anxiety spectrum, panic–agoraphobia spectrum, depression spectrum, affective spectrum, and mood spectrum.

As the behavioral sciences continue to evolve, I think we will see that most people possess varying degrees of each spectrum type disorder and that there really is no such thing as the so-called "neurotypical" person (though I propose a definition later, in case we feel we must have one for some reason...). To really understand each individual for who they are, we will need to consider all of the various "spectrums" that together form the basis for their own unique wiring.

This brings me to another issue that I think can be helpful or hurtful, depending on how it is framed by the author and how it is intepreted by the reader:



For some sets of NT/AS people, the above description will be true. But, for others it will not be true. I believe this is because we incorrectly assume that so-called NT people are all wired substantially the same. But, that cannot be.

I already pointed out the fact that many disorders are believed to be spectra, which imply they are qualitatively different conditions. Beyond that, there are specific genetic factors that give rise to predispositions for many, if not all, of the aforementioned disorders. This implies that there are many different types of wiring within the group we mistakenly label as NT.

While I think we must realize there is a tremendous amount of neurodiversity across the entire population of humans, if we still feel we need to have a meaningful definition of what it means to be "neurotypical," we could attempt to collapse this potentially vast multidimensional set of spectra onto one vertical line representing all possible combinations of brain wirings. What we would get I do not know. But, what if we could somehow classify people along a continuum from severe dysfunction to mild dysfunction, and we found that it was roughly a normally distributed variable? What would we do with that? Would we define the people who are outside of say a 90% confidence interval as "not typical"? That is, if you are either severely dysfunctional or NOT sufficiently dysfuctional, you are NOT neurotypical? But if you call within the confidence interval, then you are neurotypical? That's the only logical conclusion I can come up with... To suggest otherwise--that neurotypical includes one tail of the distribution but not the other--is not rigorous, not logical, and not particularly useful. But, this means that the most well adapted of humans are NOT neurotypical either.

Now down to the really nit-picky. Actually, I don't mean to nit-pick. I just want to point out one manifestation of this tendency to overgeneralize.



No doubt the dislike of being held, touched or cuddled seems to be a characteristic of many people on the spectrum. But, here too I notice that many people (not MKDP) seem to mistakenly try to categorize all people along the spectrum as being alike, despite the fact that the existence of a spectrum implies we are not alike, even on the dimensions we are most commonly associated!

Ironically(?), in my family the touch/hold issue seems to be more or less just random. I love being held, cuddlled, etc, and always have, yet my NT wife is pretty much indifferent to it. She even states she doesn't like certain types of touch that a stereotypical autistic person my not like, but that I do like. Adding to the complexity, my AS son won't hug, cuddle, etc. with anyone, except he wants me to cuddle with him almost daily and loves my "big hugs" in which I squeeze him to a point where most "NT" people would feel discomfort. Lastly, my NT (as far as we know...) daughter accepts hugs from anyone except my NT wife or my AS son. She will freely give my NT wife hugs, even though she doesn't allow my wife to initiate the hug. Go figure.

One last point...



That is very interesting. Glad to see that there are other AS folks like me who "can't be held or cuddled enough" (i.e., we probably need it more than most partners can give). But, beyond that, I am different from MKDP in that I also like rough physical contact, like wrestling, boxing, football, etc.

So, maybe my own set of spectra somehow predisposes me to many seemingly normative autistic traits, some seemingly normative "NT" traits, and others that are just uniquely my own. Or, maybe I'm just one of an infinite number of diverse wirings that can exist?

Best,

No Exit, perhaps it is the academic nature of your approach that makes everything you said seem like so much Sophistry, and please don't take this wrong. I know you meant well. It sounds almost like neurotypical-speak of one who is trying to *fit in* with the Aspies. Although you maintain that you are an Aspie. Or maybe your Aspie life is just different than my autism life because you are as an Aspie, higher functioning.

I don't necessarily disagree with you that everyone is on a spectrum of brain wirings theory, since inescapably there are a Bell curve of gradations in the human brain. But my problem remains my view (and experience) that people on the autism spectrum are qualitatively different, and many of us grow up in environments that don't sound anywhere nearly as supportive or friendly as your situation. This qualitative different has serious ramifications if just ONE variable in the spectrum person's life goes wrong -- neglect in the family, of even one of our parents, failure of our schools, work, government entities, etc., and this is because unlike neurotypicals, people with autism spectrum conditions tend to have very little coping recourse to overcome on their own, some of these things that are not their fault yet can fail them.

And I don't necessarily think neurotypicals are so all-perfect and know everything there is to know about running the World, either. It just happens, however, that they are the majority party in political power, so all the rest of those of us on the autism spectrum have to conform to the neurotypical-structured World and the World-view of people who, unlike us, can make friends and socialize so much better than we can. They also have erected a communication structure predicated on print paper and telephones/aurally delivered IRL (in real time). Many of us on the autism spectrum have to visually see everything in pictures -- the words we hear and speak and write, and this takes computers. So we get left out completely by this neurotypical communication World structure, and this has already historically given rise to our being called (and treated as) "idiots" as in the idiot savant: people just intelligent enought to cause tremendous problems for everyone, but who cannot function according to the present World communication structure.

And at what consequences is the price people on the spectrum pay for this ? A vast amount of abuse from almost everyone, including their family members, waste of their lives, and never being loved by anyone -- and that last is by far the hardest. My own life began with my earliest memory of my father playing on the floor with me when I was about 2, and sadistically taking my hand and holding down hard over a radiator until it blistered, my Mom thereafter having to doctor-it up -- these are the people who are supposed to protected me ! When I was 4 1/2, my two male cousins on my father's side, sexually molested me, gave me incrediable nirvana orgasms repeatedly, everytime we all visited at my grandmother's house, and I LIKED it and sought it out after the first time. Now THERE's a good start to a young autistic person's life. I was only 4 1/2 -- how was I supposed to know it was wrong ? And where again were the people who were supposed to be protecting me ? Autism spectrum children and even well into adulthood, don't have a knack for proper boundaries. We need to be taught, but for me, my family obviously failed me in this respect, and worse, failed to protect me. To this day, I can only relate to men, and I seek that closeness, but I never have a real relationship like that. Between my father and my cousins, it ruined me for being able to relate or communicate with anyone who was not male. But, it didn't stop there -- no, when my parents divorced, my father had to come to supposedly "babysit" me, but I was becoming very pretty, and he would come in the evenings and (unknown to me at the time) drop quaaludes and seconal in my dinner beverages, and I would go in and out of it, seeing him carry me to my bedroom, and him parading around me nude with a fully engorged adult erection, and then I would not remember anything until the next morning when I woke up with a terrible hangover, in different clothes. And, unlike my cousins, I DIDN'T like it with my father.

I was never able to master writing abilities at any time in school, and would get my friends or my Mom to help me do it. I doubt I would have ever been passed from grade to grade and graduated had my trachers known. I have stacks of letters from friends I met at horse shows, some of the most prominent Americans, U.S. Senator's daughters, bank VPs wives, Tobacco company owners, daughter of the then-most wealthy American, racetrack owners, many many neurotypical people who could have helped me thru my contacts with them to *normalize* my life, only I have autism and one heck of a writing deficit and could not write them back ! So I have always lost my friends the moment we move away or I was not at the horse shows to see them IRL, and so my autism writing deficits have had disastrous consequences and repercussions on my life. I have tried to get my attorneys license for 20 years, but the bar examiners, courts, and most legal employers won't budge from the paper and aural telephone/IRL communication methods and give me a performancce exam, so I am perpetually unable to work. I can't get Social Security disability because they try to tell me what the inside of my brain looks like from the fact on the outside I "look like you don't have autism," and for seven years they have just refused to schedule an ALJ hearing. I understand they have backlogs of people with autism not getting benefits they direly need. So I am constantly being threatened across a lifetime with starvation. I have lived in rat-infested barns in the snow with no heat and ice cold hose water to shower in. I can't even write well enough on print paper to fill out a food stamp application, which makes it very scary to have be on the autism spectrum, since no one will do it for me, and we just can get really left out of the loop.

Thanks to my autism and my family childhood sexual molestations, I really never have any friends. Not that I don't try, but people just don't want to be my friend. It is very loney, and very hard to understand why. I have lived a lifetime of this loneliness. Yes, I have had some boyfriends, but my boyfriends have only wanted one thing from me -- a sexual relationship. Not a real deeply connected relationship first, before the sexual relationship. And my parents failed me there, too, not telling me much about having relationships, a huge deficit in their parenting. I did fall in love with a friend I was very close to at the horse shows who was a year younger than I was, we started out for a long time just as friends before we got into having a sexual relationship (unlike all the others), and every moment we spent together was just pure sheer enjoyment, which was something I never experienced at any time in my life before or since in a committed relationship, or really, any other relationship. Unfortunately, love was not enough, and that was a very hard lesson for a young person with autism to learn at a very young age, because his parents (father a neurosurgeon and mother owner of most of the South's papermills) strongly disapproved of the idea their son would marry someone of a lower class level so they disapproved of our getting married. It was really devastating for me, because I loved him.

Meanwhile, my Mom had acquired a substance abuse problem (alcohol), and my father threw me out on the streets when I turned 18 without regard whatsoever to the severity of my autism, the fact he was under court order to provide me extensive adult child support for my autism (essentially a supportive enviroment) which he has never paid whatsoever, and he also failed to fill the application for adult dependent child Social Security for my autism when I turned 18. Without any of these supports, I was like an animal whose owners have abandoned its care foraging and fending for myself on the streets. I did not have the choice of waiting out the parents to come around of this person I loved from the horse shows to approve our marriage, so I married someone else whose parents owned a Thoroughbred farm in KY just simply to get off the streets and have food and shelter. But it came with a steep price -- the person I married, a jockey, had a more serious substance abuse problems than my mother, and when he was under the influence, he got extremely violent. It didn't help that I got pregnant and had a daughter in these circumstances. His mother (my mother-in-law) took me in to protect me and my daughter, but after he came on a rampage and threw his mother 25 feet against a glass window, threw his sister against a wall, and then came after me while I was trying to shield my daughter from his violence, I fled KY for Calif.

My father took me in, but he had re-married, and he and my step-mother because of my autism, called me "The Black Sheep of the Family" all the time to everyone. I heard this abuse so often from them, I sort of came to think of myself as that description, which took me a long time to get over. Not long after I arrived in San Francisco, my father and step-mother threw me out on the streets again. I started riding horses for people as a way to get places to sleep for the night -- with my infant daughter. I had to live in horrendous places, highly unstable living arrangements, and some of my riding students would feed me and take care of my daughter and I knowing I had severe autism and should never have been thrown on the streets to starve and die. Eventually, I got into a horse farm lease, and was doing quite well, until a lady figued out what my gross revenue take was and wanted to prey on/financially exploit my autism to take the farm for herself (after I built up the business), so sent two Hell's Angels to break my arms, legs, and/or rape me, whatever it took to get me out of the farm. (All of it in a journal the State prosecutors found in their possession). They did not break anything, but one of them forcibly raped me by holding my daughter (then age 4) hostage and threatening her life in front of me to force me to capitulate. I fled the farm when the State wanted me to testify against the perpetrator (who had a criminal rap sheet of other prior rapes of women), and went to Conn. to my Mom's. Just before I left, I sent out some college applications, since I was now out of work again and panicking again about my ability to survive.

While at my Mom's, I started looking for a horse job, and went to Virginia to interview for one. I stopped at a big horse show while in Middleburg, and my old best friend whose parents disapproved our marriage and I ran into each other in the grandstand, and spent a few days together. But he had to inform me he had waited for me for awhile when I married my first husband to get off the streets and survive, but then married someone else on the rebound and had two small children. I never saw him again, and it was the heartbreak of my life, because he was the one friend I had, male friend, who never hurt me. I was so devastated, I could not take the Virginia job, and returned to my Mom's in Conn, where I was met with a subpoena under court order of contempt forcing me to have to return to Calif. to testify agaist the rapist, whose friends had been making death threats against me if I testified. But I had to go because I was under subpoena. It cost me my daughter's pony, Toby, to make the trip -- financially. Another devastation.

So after the trial, stuck back in Calif., when one of the college apps hit, and I was admitted on academic probation (due to not having been able to complete sufficient math and foreign language credits in high school due to my autism) I decided to try to go to college with the hopes I could train myself despite my autism to be able to move from dependence to being independent in a real job where I would not be preyed on all the time by others due to my autism vulnerabilities. And I did really well in terms of managing to graduate with three degrees. But I still couldn't write -- it's just that I was able to find classmates to trade computer edits of their papers for doing my paper print writing --even in law school. My classmates helped me, and my professors (even law professors) passed me, because although I have to use computers to communicate, they knew I was very intelligent and deserved a fighting chance despite my autism spectrum condition. But not so, the bar examiners -- with them I hit a brick wall.

For 20 years, I have been denied my bar admission for every excuse they can think up to make yet another reason to deny me. The bottom line is they hate people with autism and don't like teh idea of licensing someone with autism. So I have never been able to achieve the final few inches to cross the finish line in a very long and arduous journey for the one thing I earned that would make my life independent. And for that, I have paid several steep prices. My father became a predator on my daughter because I could not get my bar license immediately after law school, and caused me a brain injury in a violent attack on me when I tried to rescue her (he took her in violation of my court parental custody order to "save" her from my inability to get an immediate bar admission), pushed my Mom to commit suicide on his lawn which I witnessed, then testified against my Calif. bar admission. The brain injury really affected me for a couple years, significantly. After my Mom died, I was thrown on the streets again, within days of her death. That's when a law school friend (male) said he would help me with recommendation letters to get into the bar, but when my Mom's car was repossessed, and I got a $300 car and the radiator broke so I couldn't get to my crummy temporary minimum wage job, he used that as an opportunity to forced me to start a degrading sexual relationship with him to fix my radiator and other minor things to keep my job and housing. I have never told that to anyone, because he is a lawyer and it would ruin his career, despite the fact he did this to me because of my autism. This is very typical for people on the autism spectrum to be constantly preyed on by others in very debasing ways, financially exploited, and abused constantly -- it is the dirty little secret of autism.

Eventually, I got a job with extensive accommodations equipment for my autism, paid by the State of Calif., and I had the job for 3-4 years, but the lawyer I worked for had a gambling habit and gambled away all his money, and had to let me go. WIth a huge gambling debt hanging over his head, he then also pilfered almost $14,000 from a settlement I got without my authority -- just yet another in a long string of financial abuses and exploitation that many of us on the autism spectrum have to deal with every day of our lives. While this was going on, I had been e-mailing with someone from Florida who was caught in the bar admission process and had found one of my published cases. After my lawyer-former employer pilfered the settlement money from me, I was going to end up on the streets again, this time behind on my truck payments and facing repossession so I would have been on foot with a brain injury and autism, and just more of the same living on the edge of literally not being able to survive -- always a feeling like you are playing Russian Roulette with your very life. My e-mail friend (male), knowing what was going on, promised me if I came to Florida from Calif. he would fight for me and help me get my bar admission in Florida so I could be independent. My daughter sold her horse to give me the money to make the trip and be able to keep our other horse she gave me for my autism therapies and to help me cope emotionally with my Mom's death, which I still have problems with to this day. So, I went to Florida.

Unfortunately, I had to again get married for all the wrong reasons -- to stay off the streets. I did think I loved my second husband, but he has TBI and has done several violent things to me out of epileptic episodes he cannot control, which has made it very hard for me to feel physically safe with him and really sort of destroyed my feelings -- it's pretty hard to love someone who hurts you all the time. We have had a very rough time of it, although the first few years we were married were much worse than now. He asked me to marry him because he ran out of money, would not have gotten his bar admission without my financial help, and I had a settlement (money), and he promised if I helped him eh woudl help me get my bar admission (again, more empty promises) -- he told me he did not love me then and for most of the six years of our marriage. So, we sort of entered a quid-pro-quo relationship -- he got his bar license and I do his law clerking work, never really get paid for it, and in turn he keeps me off the streets and does my meal preparation and caretaking stuff I cannot do. (Well, I could do them if I had sufficient income to pay for alternatives, but I don't because I cannot achieve my bar license so I can earn the money for myself). I am a savant, so I can do many law clerking things, but it has turned into a situation where he prefers to keep me dependent on him financially and without my bar admission so he doesn't lose control of my having to work for no pay as a savant for him. I think he means well sometimes, and says he loves me now (he used to call me names and tell me he hated me until recently), but I really have over time come to doubt he has the TBI capacity to love someone in the way I need to be loved. He is still too rough with me and my oversensitivites, and I am just in a very difficult situation. He also refuses to help me get my bar license--broke his promises, and tells me too bad now, because he has his law license and I don't. So our sort-of truce-standoff goes on, indefinitely. But my life is very empty and I really cannot call it *living.* It is more like the walking dead that just goes on and on.

So I think the point I am trying to make again is, there is an enormous qualitative difference between the effects the different autism spectrum brain wiring has on the lives of people with autism than neurotypicals. We are affected by inability to socialize, never have any friends, people don't want to hire us, we need extensive accommodations to work which employers don't like to give to give us an opportunity, we can't every seem to achieve our professional licenses even when qualified because of fears/hatred of our autism, we get preyed on financially and sexually as well as physically abused by many, many people , and we NEVER, NEVER have a deep relationship with another -- we are always vulnerable due to our autism spectrum differences, and some of us have an extremely difficult time trusting other people and even communicating with them. And it IS this way even when we get some of the best interventions from at least one of pur parents that shoould make it so it is not this way for us. But, that is how our lives are -- we have autism and THAT is the way it is. Unless you have an autism spectrum condition, you really cannot understand what it is like to be forced to live life this way -- through no fault of our own and despite trying harder than anyone else and achievements that are remarkable for even neurotypicals much less someone with autism.

I don't think people with autism fail to understand serious long-term relationships, or it is that we cannot achieve a very good relationship with a neurotypical and them with us, but the problem is ever finding such a precious relationship that just is because the two love each other unconditionally, and one is not using controlling power to abuse or exploit the spectrum person. I don't know where one finds such a relationship, since it has only happened to me twice -- once when I was found not good enough to marry the person, and now but I can't really talk about it and probably the other person doesn't really or just would not want to care that way about a person with autism, although I cannot speak for him since I have no ToM what do I know, really. So again, I would have to say, an autism spectrum condition strikes at the heart of what it means to have a deep connected relationship -- with anyone. If this miracle were to happen to me, I am not sure how I would take it since I am not sure I would know how to respond to something that good happening to me in my life, I mean a full blown real relationship that really mattered with someone I really love. Which gets back to the cuddling, really one of my great deepest needs, and the relationship I crave that I can never seem to have, know, or enjoy with someone who loves me, too. I am not talking about rough play, either, since I ride horses and it can get rough, but rather I mean cuddling, and tenderness, and just the joy people autism never get to experience or have in their lives.

And I am not trying to knock the Sophistry, nit-picking, or your efforts to assuage how it feels from the perspective of a spectrum person -- but autism spectrum conditions ARE qualitatively different, and never, it seems, for the better. And I am sure this very deep sadness and deprivation is how I will end my life many, many years after it began -- no matter how old I live to be. It IS autism. Our parents, schools, and our government fails us, the adult support services are not there, we can't even get anyone to stand behind the accommodations we need to tell our work or licensing authorities we need the accommodations and why we should have our licenses, and we just have no friends, no life, no love, just a big empty ZERO.

This IS autism, and spectrum conditions ARE qualitatively different. Very sadly. Because everyone wants the same good things out of life -- including people with autism. It's just that we can't ever have them. Very very sadly.

Best.

Wow.mdkp I feel your pain. I can get through each day by immense mental effort to suppress the things that have happened to me. But suffice it to say we have much in common that I will write back about later today with no academic tone at all.

I've got to take care of my daughter right now so I can't write in any detail. But, in fairness, if I wrote as though I have a very supportive environment, I'd say that I inadvertently gave you the wrong impression. That said, my family and social environment has not been as bad as what you described. But I did experience many of the things you describe, and still do once and a while encounter, in no particular order, bullying, molestation, physical threats and much more. If not for being given a unique intellectual gift and a special interest in cognititve behavior therapy (starting at a relatively young age), I believe I might have killed myself long ago in my teens or early 20s.

My current family life is not as supportive as it may have sounded either. The pain I have endured to ensure that my kids live the best life they can is something that I am constantly battling. I am in no uncertain terms sacrifing my own well-being for theirs by staying in a relationship that is often descructive for me personally. For every positive input I receive in my professional life, it is taken away and then some by incessant criticism and negativity, and other similar forms of emotional isolation from my partner. And, oddly, these are not because of my aspie traits. She would find fault on a daily basis with Jesus Chist himself (not as an historical person but as a religious icon who believers describe as being "perfect").

I will write more later. But, in the meantime, I want to know if you have good analytical skills? You write exceptionally well (and I write for a living and have taught others to write at the college level, so this is not an empty statement). If you have analytical skills to go with your writing skills, I just might have a job for you (if you want it) in a field where I think high functioning autistic people do have, and some more significantly challenged autistic folks my have, a distinct advantage as long as they can write, analyze, and do math. Oddly enough, it is a profession where so-called NT people also have a natural disadvantage, though they are obviously still "in the majority" in my field.

Best,

Last edited by No_Exit on 01 Jun 2009, 10:50 am, edited 2 times in total.

No Exit, take care of your daughter, and when you can get back, let's talk. I did go to law school, so yes, I got put thru the how-to-write mill. But I can only do it on computers ...

But, children always come first as they must and they should. Having been put through the awful divorce my parents had, while I am not necessarily against divorces per se (handled one as a law clerk involving a father with two autistic children that was a very amicable arrangement keeping the children's needs in mind with no parental ex-spouse fighting), I can definitely say no matter WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON (even a divorce), children must come first.

Maybe I just do have, despite my severe autism a mothering instinct, maybe I got it from my animals, or maybe I inherently have it. I have spent considerable time -- many years -- teaching children of all ages from 4 1/2 through age 18 (not counting the adults), how to ride horses and ponies, many riding lessons, family crises, the riding instructor serving as the family referee and the psychologist and the Priest and the school teacher, picking children up off the ground crying when horses and ponies throw them, teaching them to get back on, teacher them how to work hard enough to learn to ride, how to care for their horses and ponies, going to award ceremonies with them to honor their achievements, helping them thru the tears and the victories at the horse shows, all of it -- so I can definitely understand how important it is from the perspective of the child for the mother or father -- the parent -- to be there for the child and all that is going on in the child's world.

I would never be one to stop a parent from all the child time a child needs. So many children are not so fortunate, So go have a great time with your daughter !

It appears to be a trend to demonize aspie man relationship wise. I couldn't say if there's any truth in it, since I've only been involved with NTs, but I cannot help thinking that if this was said about women everybody would scream bloody murder. I thought gender based sweeping generalisations are discriminatory.

*a bit off topic, sorry*

MDKP, I am still processing what you said in your post. I am going to try to explain why I'm still processing it.

Have you read the research that seems to indicate that asperger's people have "too much empathy" rather than "no empathy"... and that it is like someone turned the volume dial way past 10, which makes it extremely painful for us and that explains our delayed and lesser developed ToM. If its immensely painful, we try to shut it out, which causes the delay.

That line of research describes me 100%. I literally feel other people's emotions so intensely that I cannot easily distinguish what it is that they are feeling beyond very basic emotions, anger, happiness, fear, etc. And when the typical NT person experiences several emotions at one time, or they make statements that demonstrate varying or multiple emotions, I get overwhelmed and I cannot process it.

What you wrote was so painful for me to read that every time I try to read it completely and contemplate responding, I want to cry uncontrollably or beat the hell out of those men that hurt you so deeply. As a result, I honestly cannot read the whole thing from start to finish. I have read it in total, piece by piece, over time... But now I still don't have a clue to really show you the empathy that I do actually feel (more or less too intensely to be functional).

One thing I can say is that my "very academic" argument from earlier was motivated by one of the ways in which I believe autistics are discriminated against. The discriminiatory issues you mentioned, some of which I too have experienced though not to the same degree, are perhaps the most egregiious, inexcusable, ugly and unforgivable. The one I was attempting to talk about is the way in which, whether in relationships or other avenues of life, the NT world tends to marginalize autistics in a way that I feel is very harmful and completely unwarranted. We are different, often very different, than so-called NT peopld. But, as a group, we are not inferior on any dimension. Just because we are, on average, more logical than emotional, may not be great at eye contact or small talk, may have difficulties with other daily activities, etc. does not mean that we are inferior. There is the other side of the coin in that we are often more talented in certain specific areas, we often have talents that a more typical brain simply could not acheive, we are (I think) less inclined to abuse other people, we generally don't form armies and kill hundreds of thousands of people, etc. etc...

Let me know how I could contact you about the job idea. Everything my business does is done on computers. And my best analysts work from their homes, remotely, 100s and sometimes 1,000s of miles from the office. In fact, I personally live 400 miles from the office (of the business I own, with a business partner) and go there only about every other month for a day or two max. The "social noise" makes it more difficult for me to do my job and leads to unnecessary stress that dilutes the quality of my work.

No Exit, I am in a very severe depression right now, from something that happened last week .. just completely utterly devastated beyond devastated. I am having extreme problems communicating. It got me very spaced out (not taking any drugs), turned my artwork upsidedown, and I am not coping with any of this very well. I will have to respond when I have more ability to speak. Or I doubt I can make any sense.