The Married Aspie Cafe Thread (discussion of marriage, etc.)

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I've been married for 2 years, been with my husband for 4 & a half years. He's NT but also likes his solitude and privacy, which is why we get on well. As he's from another country (Sweden) he also is a bit of an outsider which I think helps too.

Neither of us are confrontational so we never really argue although I can often find it difficult expressing problems/stress that I'm feeling with him but he's very understanding.

We don't have children and are in 2 minds whether to have them or not, not so much because of the chance of passing on an ASD but more because I'm worried I won't be able to connect with them if we do.

My husband works full-time but I've been unemployed since last October, when I quit a very stressful job (nightmare boss). We've just adopted our first cat through the RSPCA and I'd love to get more involved in that instead.

I got married a little over a year ago to a wonderful man who spent his whole life with an Aspie - his older brother. We have some disagreements brought on by my Aspie tendancies, but they blow over pretty quickly.

I'm happily married with a baby on the way... I'll update when I find out what gender it is!

I've been married for 6 years to a great NT guy. We have 7 kids between us. My stepson is HFA. We have had our share of problems, but he is trying to be more understanding about things now that he knows I probably am aspergers. 6 of the kids live with us full time (other is in her 3rd year of college). They are most all special needs (autism, anxiety, ADHD, auditory processing disorder, etc). That adds alot of fustration to our daily lives. Especially mine since I homeschool all but the oldest boy.

My main problem with hubby is that he is the "touchy/feely type". Always wanting to hug and kiss and such. Drives me bonkers. I don't like to hug and stuff unless I initiate it, but can't get hubby to understand that. He thinks i'm rejecting him

Jamie

I have been in a relationship for ten years, married the last three. We never ever raised our voices, was eachothers best buddies and had lots of fun as well. Unfortunately she finally figured out the she was in love with a woman, and we split.

We never ever suspected that I had HFA back then, and I only became aware of it, when I met a NT woman 3 years ago. She has a daughter that is born a neonatal, and she shows signs of Asperger's, so I started looking into what that was, only to figure out, that I was too an AS

I got along great with daugther, we were equally "weird", so it was really a perfect match, as long as her infinite repeats of the same tasks, didn't coincide with my aversion to that particular activity.

Her mother, on the other hand, was quite the handful, extremely intelligent, IQ above 150, and beautiful as a super model. I used to sit and stare at her in awe as long as she would let me, she was fascinatingly beautiful. Finally she told me that I had to stop doing that, and from that point on, our relationship suffered. It was like a switch went off, limiting my ability to feel connected to her, emotionally, when I could not look at her, with lovingly focus. I do not have the AS stare problem, so imagine puppy love picture instead.

Then she started talking about me not making her feel safe in our relationship, she began being jealous and controlling, not showing me affection in words or actions, all because I had turned my affections off, due to the "staring incident" and her telling me not to look at her that intensely anymore.

All that led to infinite verbal arguing, where I blamed her for not showing me her affection (and not showing any sexual interest in me), and she would respond that it was because she didn't feel secure enough to be intimate with me. Which then in turn led me to conclude that she was only taking advantage of me. When I got that feeling, I packed my stuff and left her for weeks at a time, which of course just added water to her mill on the insecurity arguement. Over the last year, we have been on/off several times, and finally I got my own place. This ended the relationship.

So now I am alone, for the first time in my adult life, and I miss her and her daughter tremendously, alltough I deep inside know that we will never work together again.

I just hope that I will experience love again, and that it will be able to work with my HFA and need for solitude for long periods of times. Any advice on that setup? What do you do, when you love somebody dearly, but cannot spend you entire life with them, because you need to recharge your "weird'o'batteries" to cope with the NT world?

I've been married for going on 11 years. I have Aspergers, my husband does not. He does NOT understand me at all, and it just seems all we ever do, lately, is argue. He has no interest of even trying to understand me. Marriage is difficult.

Ugh. After persistent reminders from my NT wife and a lot of phone tag with the clinic I got a diagnosis of AS at the beginning of this year. It didn't surprise me at all, and although I never would have done it on my own, it explains a lot about my life, so I'm glad I did.

But my marriage seems to have actually gotten worse since then. Every day it's another way in which I don't listen to her, don't care, don't take her concerns seriously, etc. She never puts me down for having AS, but it seems like the diagnosis just allowed her to put a name on things she had already accepted about me. For all the rest it's always "I read about this and this isn't an Asperger's thing, you're just a jerk".

We fight a lot, except that it's not really like fighting ... it's more like her telling me what a selfish, uncaring jerk I am and me either quietly agreeing, or occasionally getting defensive, i.e. trying to justify my actions or lack thereof, which just makes her angrier. I mostly just try to keep quiet now, but I'm raging and melting down inside, and it often comes back up with me making passive-agressive comments.

One thing that is really disturbing me is that she will bring up things I supposedly agreed to do in previous conversations and tell me how much I let her down by not doing them... except that I have absolutely zero memory of having those conversations or agreeing to any of them. My memory is extremely good, so this is really making me question my sanity... the only thing I can think of is that when I go into a meltdown, which happens pretty much every time we "fight", I can't think rationally anymore and my memory probably starts to fail too.

Then the next day she will smile at me or we'll go for a walk holding hands and I'll remember how much I still love her.

I wouldn't recommend marriage to anyone, really.

Sorry this is an incoherent post... I'm upset and looking for answers.

Really that sounds so similar to my marriage experience. I'm going to bring my spouse into therapy tomorrow. I'll let you know if there is info that could help you.

somehow my husband got used to me.
but his relatives find it difficult to handle me
im too quite, shy, dont make eye contact
they rarely come here they ask my hubby to meet them at restaurants, malls, etc.
my relationship with my in-laws is over....
Aspie's would find marriage quite straining.

I'm happily married to my best friend. We've known each other for 13 years, and have been married just over four years. We have a three year old son, and hoping one day to have more. I'm not an easy person to live with, but somehow my husband has figured me out and he does pretty good with me.

I only recently learned about AS and discovered that I test on the "likely" end of the Aspie scale.

My husband and I have been a couple for almost 19 years and will have our 10th wedding anniversary later this year. My husband is most likely on the aspie end of the scale, just noticing all his various quirks and traits as I research more about AS, although he hasn't taken the Aspie Quiz as of yet. We have two young children who are also (surprise!) showing signs of aspie traits as well. I guess we're just a little family of weirdos.

Anyways, in the beginning of our relationship, we had lots of issues, most of which related to communication problems. I did a lot of "self help" books and humorously (now knowing I'm an Aspie) one that really worked for me was Men are From Mars,Women are from Venus. The funny part is that in this book, you approach your relationship from the point of view that you and your partner are from different planets. Even though you "appear" to act and think the same, you are as different from each other as a Martian and Venusian. How like aspie/NT relations in general!

Anyways, being with another (probable) aspie has actually been a real blessing for me. We share some common (perseverative) interests and have other interests separate from each other that still benefit the other (I love power tools and DIY home repairs, he's good with computers).

We both have a need for "alone time" and don't get all uptight about it when one of us needs to "go off for a while". This took some discussion and practice at first (for me) but once I figured out he wasn't losing interest in "us" just recharging on his own, I also realized it was ok for ME to have MY alone time too. That was a BIG help for our relationship.

We also both think the same way, process information similarly and value similar things in terms of sequential reasoning, logic and perception. We used to have "fights" which were really more like discussions and long analytical co-dialogues about our perceived issues. Fortunately, we both look at things very sequentially, analytically and prefer logic to emotional-based reasoning. This actually resulted in productive discussions of relationship issues and logic-based approaches to problem solving our trouble areas. It was quite refreshing to have after a series of relationships based on purely emotional "logic" and non-reason.

And, we both find that we understand each other darned near perfectly. Until we don't. But it's not a big deal, because we can just happily dissect the misunderstanding together and compare it to our existing body of knowledge and analyze it to our heart's content. Instead of feeling threatened or judged, we *enjoy* analyzing each other and see it as a sign of love that the other one cares enough to direct so much focused mental energy on the other one. In other, past, relationships, this analysis tendency was a real deal-breaker with NT types. It has and still ends friendships for me

Having kids has also really helped, at least for me, because I am better able to deal with unpredictability and chaos in my life now (having had ample opportunity to practice dealing with it ) I find I am less uptight, more accepting of differences and things outside the "rules" or "borders" and can just let more things go since they aren't really that important in the long run anyway.

Now, we have a very good basis for our relationship. It was a lot of hard work the first decade, moderate work with one or two significant "speed bumps" the second decade and has developed into a true refuge of mutual understanding and admiration. There has always been a lot of love and respect, which is what carried us through some tough times, but now that we've ironed out our issues, we have built a really solid partnership and friendship with trust and love. I adore my husband and all his quirks. He loves me and mine. We would not change our "aspieness" for anything, because that is part of what makes our relationship work so perfectly. We just needed to fine tune things for a bit to get it working so well.

Being "aspie" doesn't have to be a drawback in a relationship. There are ways to make it work and have it go wonderfully. I think my relationship is better than one I could have with an NT. In fact, it is better than all the ones I've ever had with NTs in the past.

It really is great to see a positive post. I wish your continued happiness and success.

I have been in a committed relationship for nearly two years. I am feeling as if I would like to be married to this guy, but he isn't keen on the idea of marriage. I would feel awkward bringing it up, since I would like it to come from him. We are preparing to move in together. I wonder why I feel this way, since I always thought that marriage was a narcissistic display where people made a big production and then divorced three years later. Yet I can see certain people in his life who are not taking our relationship seriously, and continue flirting and acting entitled to his company. Also the fact that we are an inter-racial couple adds to this, IMO. I feel that people think that I am just a plaything for him because I am not Caucasian. When we go to social functions, people always assume we are not together and then get really surprised when they find that we are.

Maybe I am thinking of marriage all wrong, or hoping that it will solve things that it cannot. What do you guys think? I would appreciate input.

Never mind. I thought this thread was active.