Adamantium wrote:
Jono wrote:
The problem with the OTRS/CADD concept is not that it claims that AS can be the cause of problems in the relationship, it's that it only talks about the effects on the NT partner and thus tends to put all the blame on the AS partner while ignoring the NT's own contribution to the relationship. There's no recognition anywhere that trying to live up to (sometimes unrealistic) expectations of a partner while at the same time not having the foggiest idea what your partner really wants from you can also be stressful. The only difference between that stress and the stress experienced by the NT is that, to an extent, the AS person has had lifetime of it from living in world populated by 99% of NT's to such an extent that it's become normalised by the time they even get a chance to have a relationship. In fact, that's why they learn to mimic being NT in order to be successful in NT society. It's tiring and can lead to burnout.
I don't agree with this.
The idea is about the distress experienced by an NT who has not had their conventional expectations of as relationship met. The fact that the autistic member of the relationship has problems of a different nature doesn't really have any impact on this. There should be no expectation of balance in this because it is about subjective experience. Rationally, the idea that the autistic person is under stress and has a lifetime of stresses is not relevant to a discussion of the emotional life of the NT partner. One person's pain does not invalidate another's.
This goes both ways: the subjective experience of the autistic partner does cannot invalidate the subjective experience of the NT partner and the subjective experience of the NT partner cannot invalidate the subjective experience of the autistic partner. This is true of all relationships of any kind.
But the material about OTRS is not trying to be primarily helpful or objective. The language demonizes autistic people with sweeping generalizations that no one attempting objectivity could employ. This is done in the name of validating the experience of traumatized NT partners, but it goes too far.
No one should deny the experiences and emotions of these suffering NT spouses and partners, and it's fine to explain the relationship between particular expressions of autism and these problems, but to go on to suggest that all NT/AS relationships are like this is just wrong. It doesn't help the suffering person. It doesn't help the relationship and it isn't true. Nor is it remotely ethical to ascribe the negative consequences of all sorts of co-morbidities in autistic people to their autism.
I deleted my last post because I wanted to rewrite to explain this better.
I'm not saying that talking about the experience of one partner invalidates the experience of the other. What I meant was that, it tends put all the blame of the relationship problems on only one partner instead of looking at how both partners contribute to the relationship problems.
I thought that this point would be fairly uncontroversial since that was one of the most common criticisms against CADD on WP in 2009 and before, at least it was in the threads that I participated in when discussing Maxine Aston's early books. In fact, I thought that it was also part of Ari Ne'eman's criticism when CADD started to be used to argue that AS people were not fit to have relationships or live in families as this quote from ASAN's response to Tony Attwood's reply to their 2009 petition illustrates:
Quote:
By failing to acknowledge that stress within a relationship can contribute to depression for either partner, Dr. Attwood—and by your repeated endorsements of Maxine Aston in books and interviews—you are perpetuating the false claim that being in a relationship with an Autistic partner is psychologically harmful to a non-Autistic partner. There is no scientific basis whatsoever for suggesting that depression affects only the non-Autistic partner or that it is caused by affective deprivation related to the Autistic partner’s responses. Several recent research studies specifically examining the affective dimensions of empathy and alexithymia found no impairment in the affective responses of Autistic individuals. (Rogers, Dziobek, Hassenstab, Wolf, & Convit, 2007; Berthoz & Hill, 2005; Silani, Bird, Brindley, Singer, Frith, & Frith, 2008.) Rather, cognitive and linguistic differences lead to misunderstandings. Thus, a presumption that the non-Autistic partner suffers from affective deprivation is unwarranted. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network recommends that those who counsel couples with one Autistic partner should adopt a nonjudgmental approach to identifying and constructively addressing misunderstandings that have occurred.
http://autisticadvocacy.org/2009/06/asans-response-to-dr-tony-attwood/The bolded parts are my emphasis. It's fine to validate the feelings of the NT partner but it's when this is stretched into assuming that all the problems are the fault of the other partner then that's when it becomes a problem.
30 Mar 2015, 4:31 am
I agree the above statement seems self evident, especially if you can imagine yourself marrying the finest person in the world (which I luckily did) vs. marrying Lizzie Borden's ax instructor (absurdum, I know). Thanks for the insight.
) and since I feel I have little more to offer on this subject I will bow out and watch from the sidelines as more knowledgeable people "kick the can" if they will.
. Love you all.
