Are some aspie responses "automatic", therefore re

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I feel really silly asking this, but here goes anyway. Can anyone make sense of / explain what is going on in this kind of an interaction? This happens between a maybe-aspie hubby and myself (diagnosed with ADHD = addie, maybe somewhat aspie, too).

Background: I have liked apricot jam as long as I can remember. This is a fact about me that my hubby has first heard about something like twenty years ago, and that he has encountered numerous times since. He does not like apricot in any form, never has.

Recently, when we had won a set of small jam jars at a raffle, I was glad to introduce both kids to apricot jam, and they loved it (it was an unusually good jam, too). My husband saw how we all enjoyed our Sunday morning toasts, and - in a slightly aloof and pondering kind of manner, and addressing nobody in particular - mentioned how he has never liked apricot. (Note that there were five other jams in the set for him to choose from)

I don't think I said anything, but I got a sinking, sad feeling. I have before, several times over the years, told him in general terms that responding with something to the effect "I don't like that" just when other people are enjoying a treat that they like can easily make the other people feel affronted and make him look self-centered or as if he is seeking to dominate. I have also specifically told him, some 3-5 times over the last maybe 6 years, that if he says that he does not like apricot just when I am enjoying it, those words make me feel sad.

Yet it is almost as if an automatic program sets into motion in him, triggered by the concept "apricot" - as if he is incapable either of remembering that negative statements about something I like hurt my feelings or of stopping himself from saying the same, routine-reaction words, even though he might remember that they have brought a negative reaction from me before.

His father has the same habit - he also often comments, in the same slightly "absent-minded" manner, that he does not like this or that, which other people sitting next to him at the table are just then enjoying.

I feel pretty confused by this, and yet is seems like such a small thing, too...

But why does he not stop saying something of which I have specifically told him that it hurts my feelings? Especially as he seemingly cannot lose anything by being quiet - there has always (since way before I've even known him) been of his favorite jam (rhubarb) in the house, and always will be (and since the kids developed preferences, also of Little Sister's favorite jam (raspberry), and honey for Big Sister).

The sad thing is that I have all but stopped buying my favorite jam, because his "automatic" negative comment every time he sees or hears about apricot pretty much kills my enjoyment of the jam.

I am not sure if they are automatic...it's more that the person is rigid and can't change imho.

So in my family, my Dad has traits.

He is OCD with food, without it being obvious to people outside the family, oh probably others in the family don't know either.

He prefers my Mum's cooking but it is to the extreme. They eat out, but the places have to be extremely clean, that they eat at. He will nitpick some foods, like what you are saying with the Apricot Jam situation.

I just ignore him and focus on the food.

I just think in an Aspie type family (extending that to OCD and ADHD too) you have to choose what is important to change, and choose your battles, as the saying goes.

Is his jam reaction, really that big a deal, isn't that something you can ignore...?? Compared to other larger issues that may exist in a relationship??

I am utterly bemused as to why his stating what you already know bothers you. Surely you know he does not like it? If he says nothing, he still does not like it, and if he absent-mindedly states as much, he does not dislike it any more. It is mysterious to me that you would be bothered by his opinion about jam, but even more mysterious that knowing his opinion is less relevant than whether he states what you already know.

I understand why the OP is upset. I was eating out with my son recently, and he started talking about spiders. He knows that I'm extremely phobic of spiders, and I've asked him in the past not to talk about them when I'm eating. I can't remember how it came up though... something to do with a video game he'd been playing.

Anyway, he reigned himself in and stopped, but then he had to finish the thought and blurted something out about scorpions and whether they were arachnids or not.

I had a mouthful of food at the time, and I had to spit it out. He completely ruined my meal... not intentionally. But it saddens me that he knows the rules intellectually (don't discuss distasteful things at the dinner table) and yet he still couldn't prevent himself from going on about it.

I seriously think that I'll never be able to eat that particular dish again... potato gratin. I'll never be able to associate the taste and texture with anything other than spiders and scorpions.

It is distressing when you try to help someone learn some social niceties, but they don't seem to listen.

(And I know I do the same thing myself, I'm always forgetting birthdays for example. I can't see why they're important.)

Birthdays are pointless - we barely participate in the first one, celebrating them after that is a marker for the parents, not the child and sets up expectations that can only lead to feelings of disappointment and abandonment later in life when the parties cease to occur. After the coming-of-age celebration at 18 or 21, they're just markers of the aging process and who wants to celebrate that? Woo-Hoo, I'm a few months closer to death!

The spider conversation is a gross-out issue and to my mind not the same as what's bothering OP. Personally, I'm unaffected by that - I got endless grief once for comparing peeling the toppings off (I don't do crust) the pepperoni pizza I was eating to surgery on a burn victim. What!? Didn't change the flavor of the food any. Jeez. Some people are just ridiculously sensitive.

In any case, what I'm getting here is that you're allowing yourself to feel guilty for enjoying something he doesn't care for and not only is that not a rational reaction, it isn't really his fault (although I'll allow his constant repetition of a well-known and irrelevant fact is pedantic and excruciatingly irritating).

Why do you feel the need for him to approve (or at least silently allow) your choices?

But I understand his bringing it up over and over must be maddening. Try driving the point home to him the same way - get him a shirt printed that says I HATE APRICOT JAM. Start calling him the Apricot Hater, anti-pri-cot, think of as many ways as you can to label him with his dislike and beat him over the head with it until he doesn't ever want to mention it again. Don't stop until he flinches every time someone says 'ape'.

Then make sure every time you enjoy your jam, you offer him some. He may say 'No thanks', but he'll stop telling you why.

They are.

My partner does this.

Is it the same as stating one does not like something though? I can understand being made to feel "squimish" when eating, so I would not find it strange to be put off one's toast if someone opined they did not like apricot jam because it reminds them of "insert gross thing here".

Yep, you are right about that. With my post I was mostly seeking to understand what this phenomenon can be. I'm quite new to the whole aspie / OCD / ODD / whathaveyou scene (having ADHD myself does not automagically give me insight into the whole spectrum). I thought only Tourettes people had ticks. Or is a thing like this called something else?

My husband has stressed very strongly since day one (which was 20 years ago) that he values rationality above almost everything and anything in people, and therefore - if I look only at the surface of things - it seems weird that he "insists" on repeating behaviors that are so clearly irrational (this apricot thing is just one of many).

- Athena

(nods) yes it really is a phenomenon rather than a psychological disorder...in that some people have enough traits..but they don't need to be seen by a professional necessarily (or whether they can be coerced is another topic)..

so it is typical of the guys particularly to be almost too rational and logical..

another one that comes to mind is in conversations

my father and brother monopolise conversation (brother more ADD traits though)

my father insists that if you listen to him, you can not interrupt, and he has to COMPLETELY finish what he is saying, BEFORE you can say something.

my ex a bit that way too.

UNTIL I went to a speech pathologist thinking there was something wrong with the way I was saying things. She said no, and confirmed that turn taking is normal, and it's normal to interrupt but not too much either.

but keep posting AthenaErdmann, because the more anecdotes around, I think it gives everyone more mutual support, whether or not they are diagnosed or whatever. it is a real phenomenon the dynamics in the relationships are different from norm.

ooh I loved the word "automagically" too

This is likely to be repetitive - I am working to get my head around this, not writing about something I already understand clearly.

Ah, but that is not the point (not for me, anyway). The point is that he knows that his behavior X is unpleasant for me, and yet he appears unwilling and/or unable to stop behavior X, even though he says that he "does not have to" engage in behavior X. To me, this is not rational, and yet rational is what he claims to be. So is he lying, clueless, confused or what? How it would be wise for me to react depends partly on what I can safely enough assume about his background psychology.

I quote myself low-tech: "I have before, several times over the years, told him in general terms that responding with something to the effect "I don't like that" just when other people are enjoying a treat that they like can easily make the other people feel affronted and make him look self-centered or as if he is seeking to dominate. I have also specifically told him, some 3-5 times over the last maybe 6 years, that if he says that he does not like apricot just when I am enjoying it, those words make me feel sad."

The background context is that he claims that he loves me, that he wants us to be happy together and that he does not want to make me unhappy. We have a "speak directly" or "No Hinting" pact since over fifteen years back, and an understanding that if something is not a big deal for one of us, it's OK for the other one to decide / call the preference. He has always maintained that my eating apricot in any form is not an issue at all for him. The most important background for me is that the first of our marriage vows (we wrote them together) states that we will both keep our senses open to understanding ourselves and each other truthfully and realistically, each "unhindered by my fears or my longing for comfort" (which is a really tall order, so forgiveness is also an important part of that first promise).

Put the paragraph above this one in connection with the paragraph below this one, and my reaction is "This just does not compute!". Either he does not mean it when he says that he does not want to make me unhappy or he has some huge hangup on apricot, which he is not disclosing or he is not NT. Or something else that I have not come to think about. I'm trying to figure out which option is likely to be true, because the sane (self-preserving) choices for me hinge partly on his basic psychology. For example, if he is an NT who secretly enjoys ruining my special moments (not just with apricot - it is just one example) then I should get the hell out of this relationship as soon as possible. If he, on the other hand, is a self-unaware aspie with related behavioral traits he truly cannot help, I have some really good reasons to stay and patiently wait for him to see himself more clearly. And if I observe that his behavior is getting clearly more erratic within the next few months, I will throw all caution to the winds, club him down if necessary and drag him to a neurologist - some ticks and traits can be brought on by a brain tumor.

I have told him that his comments lower my enjoyment of a food I like, and that I dislike that experience. I have asked him to refrain from such commenting. He has not followed my explicit request, even though I have repeated it several times, even "proving" logically that doing things that one's partner does not like is not rational, if one wants a happy relationship (provided of course that the action in question is not important to oneself personally). He claims he understands all this. He claims he has no big agenda or hangups regarding apricot. Yet every time certain triggers come into his consciousness (in this example apricot) he reacts almost exactly (word-for-word) the same way again.

When I have, in the past, confronted him with observable evidence of some non-rational or clearly-out-of-the-norm behavior of his, his face has gone all rigid and he has ended up quiet, just staring at me. If I tried to continue the discussion past this point, he invariably blew up very fast (in 15 seconds to 2 minutes) and yelled at me for "labeling him as the problem", "ignoring my responsibility of our problems", "being unrealistically demanding", "trying to dominate our relationship" etc. Typically such statements were generally formulated, and included a lot of words like "always", "never", "every time", "nothing" and "all". He has specifically never addressed any of the evidence that I have presented.

Now I can view such blowups (and avoidance of evidence about his own behavior) as an indication that he is an NT with severe emotional issues, maybe a narcissist or deeply neurotic. Or I can view it as a typical meltdown of an autism spectrum person who does not have the tools to handle emotional conflicts very well, and whose identity (self-labeling as NT) gets threatened when he observes or hears of that his behavior at times is well outside "normal". Or I can suspect a slow-growing brain tumor somewhere in his frontal lobes. Or...

I'm just trying to make some sense of my life, and my hubby is one aspect of it that often does not make sense.

Thanks for all the comments and reflections - they do help!

- Athena

I agree with Willard that this sort of behaviour could be excruciatingly annoying, but I don't understand at all why his remark "makes you feel sad". Why do you need someone, or even everyone, at the same table as you to like the food that you are eating, or to at least refrain from expressing that they dislike it?

His behaviour may be a "tic" but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a tic which you are inadvertently reinforcing by making such a big issue out of it. There is no reason to "feel sad" if someone does not like the same thing as you, nor does it seem reasonable, to me, to demand that other people not express their dislike of something just because you do like it.

I am inclined to think that your "feeling sad" whenever he mentions it is because you have a hangup about doing things which other people do not like. Why do you "feel sad" when he says this? What ( "automatic program is set in motion"? ) is going on for you at that moment? What is it about someone doing this that bothers you so much?

PS. I just get the impression that you have been putting a lot of time and energy into trying to work out why he does this rather than more usefully into why you react this way to it.

.

"Now I can view such blowups (and avoidance of evidence about his own behavior) as an indication that he is an NT with severe emotional issues, maybe a narcissist or deeply neurotic. Or I can view it as a typical meltdown of an autism spectrum person who does not have the tools to handle emotional conflicts very well, and whose identity (self-labeling as NT) gets threatened when he observes or hears of that his behavior at times is well outside "normal". Or I can suspect a slow-growing brain tumor somewhere in his frontal lobes. Or..."


You poor thing, you are really going around and around and around in circles I notice from your other threads too.

I have been dealing with similar issues but more with my parents..so it has been easier to conclude that we are all on the spectrum. From that perspective, and their age - I have almost finally come to terms that they just CAN'T change. I actually think one of them is worse at reading people than myself.

With them, I think they got me diagnosed as I wasn't "normal" to their level of what they think is "normal".


Now in a relationship it is a different situation, because well imho, in a relationship I view myself as a sort of "equal"...

Anyway I think the issues you are bringing up are going deeper than Apricot Jam, yummy as it is. Sounds like you either need to have a deeper discussion, heart to heart with your partner or get some further help, on how to tackle the ongoing situations, whether you do it on your own, or with him.

Just imho.

I am wondering is the problem you are having that he walks around as though he is Mr Perfect and does nothing "wrong"; and because you're the one with the label, you get blamed for things not being "right"??? (from the other topics you've posted?)

My other thoughts are

You are trying to diagnose him by posting these topic on the forum, which it is actually not possible to do;

and if you feel that abused in some way, whether he is Aspie or NT it makes no difference, you might need to consider getting out of the current situation.

Because on another topic you listed off, all that you did for his needs when he got home, I am thinking - what does he do for your needs??

Anyway just my guesstimates.

My thinking is that you are looking at his statement as if an NT was saying it. For those of us on the edge of the spectrum, that's easy to do. There are a lot more NTs than Aspies, after all. (And probably especially easy to do with other folks on the border between NT an aspie, who aren't so obviously not NT.)

From an NT, such a statement would likely be judgemental.

From an Aspie, though, I think it's likely actually trying to participate. He's not trying to ruin the experience for you. He's trying to participate in it, to share in it.

Half of the why he makes this statement that bothers you is that you let it bother you. If you didn't let it bother you, then he wouldn't be saying something that bothers you.

Yes, you can choose to change. His statements are his stuff. Not yours. Take responsibility for your own feelings. Deal with your feelings instead of asking him to protect you from them.

Again, while I can't get inside his head, I do honestly think the why is a trying to participate, a being friendly, not a being unfriendly.

I suggest, take it as a statement of fact, and no more. Do not read any judgement into it.

That's such a good point! That's exactly what I would mean by such a comment! Joining in giving/exchanging opinions on a group activity/experience. I knew there was some reason why I was feeling defensive about his behaviour, as if something about my own behaviour was under attack for no reason at all. So apparently mustn't join in with an exchange of opinions about an experience unless I agree with other people's.

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