The Most Wonderful Thing

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About two years ago, after 16 years of a precarious marriage, the most wonderful thing happened to my wife and me: We discovered we're both Aspies. Its immediate effect was a new and profound affection for each other. Before this discovery, our marriage - the most intimate relationship of all - had been ruled by both of us trying to avoid as much embarrassment as possible. We were both very shy. I don't mean to be crude here, but neither of us could bear to speak of such things as bathroom issues, and it's not like we're kids, either. I'll be 57 this year.

As we both read about aspie symptoms, we were embarrassed together, cried together, and found a lot of it funny too. Now, we've dropped the whole - if one of us is right the other must be wrong thing. We've dropped the competition too. Being aspies together has leveled the field, as both of us were always trying to prove we were as good as the other. We have found mutual forgiveness and understanding - we're both on the same side now. The Argument is over. We're into this 2 years now, and it's been a second honeymoon. We exchange intimate messages during the day, and can't wait to see each other at night. It's a wonderful thing to be in love with your own wife.

We started going back to church, and doing a lot of stuff we did when we first met: taking short road trips, watching movies, just hanging out in the same room reading together. It's the kind of relationship I always pictured in my mind, that I was never able to have with anyone - this is my third marriage, her first. I've been with her longer than with anyone else, and how we survived, I'll never know. We've made new committments to faithfulness, and to making sure the other knows they're loved.

I never would have thought something so disabling could turn out to be something so good. I mean, who understand me better than another aspie?

As an NT with an Aspie "friend", I'm really getting bugged by the idea that:

1.) I shouldn't be involved with him because I'm an NT (I even have a therapist that says that!)

2.) He needs years of therapy

3.) He will need more support than another person

4.) He needs to change everything.

I'm NT, but had a really bad childhood, so I have problems with eye contact and social cues, I like relationships with rules and distance, I have a lot of need for alone time, and I'm really accepting (and even welcoming) of distance.

I have often thought that he didn't need therapy, what he needed was just to be able to say exactly what you said, "I'm not right, you're not wrong, please do x for me or stop doing y, and no value judgement on that."

In fact, we've started to fight much less with just that. What else did you do for each other without therapizing yourselves to death?

Congratulations. It's a wonderful thing to be able to share what used to keep you apart, and to laugh together at what used to terrify you both. Best of all to be finally understood by the one you love.

Your post made me happy.

Thank you for sharing your lovely post. I'm so glad to hear that you're in love with your wife... and she's in love with you! Good news.

So - praise and prayer where it counts. We did our precarious tightroping elsewhere before we married, so we were pretty clear in that area - but realizing that we both sit [albeit in different regions] on the spectrum has opened the way to all sorts of new insights. It makes a real difference that I no longer have to alternate between "I am normal she weird" and "I am handicapped she whole", and that she can stop saying the same from where she sits. Still, things come up - a few weeks ago she misread one thing I said as suggesting she was not Aspie enough!

Forget the ducks; be swans and enjoy.