Anyone decided it's not worth the effort?

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Has anyone taken the decision to stop the constant effort of pretending and go live life the easy route? What are your experiences?

Last edited by Jingo8 on 12 Mar 2010, 6:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

A lot of what you talk about sounds like the same thing every other adult I know wrestles with... we do have responsibilities that can feel like a ball and chain, and don't allow us to do what we want. I don't know of anyone who doesn't just want to flat out quit the whole rat race from time to time. Being a grown up is hard, hard work.

Have you talked about this with your wife/partner? Each individual needs time to recharge, and it is by communicating our needs to each other that accommodation can be reached. Perhaps, if you feel your relationship is truly as inequitable as you portray it, you should undertake couples counseling... or even just read a good relationship book together.

I'll bet that if you sincerely and compassionately ask, you'll find your wife isn't getting everything she wants either, she'd like to live alone again, not have to take care of you, the house, the kid... and does she have an outside job, too? I doubt she's living in a pure land of bliss, either.

Being an adult is hard work... where ever did you get the idea that it was otherwise?

Less preaching please, "life and relationships are hard work" is hardly worth the time it took to type it.

Clearly everyone has challenges, do we have to cover the thousand obvious points first or can we assume everyone here knows the basics of what it takes to get on in the world and what real life is about?

I'm not talking about bad days, i'm talking about when it seems the balance of effort vs reward, cost vs benefit etc etc swings past neutral. The problem is we only have experience of one of the two options and none of the journey, i'm wondering if anyone has experience making the decision, how they got there and their experiences since.

There's plenty of people who have had no choice but to be alone, but not many i'm guessing who have decided their best chance of a good life is to choose to give it all up and go for a less meaningful/fullfilling or whatever you want to call it life and take the lower expectation/less challenging one. Not as a cop out or becuase you failed or aren't man enough, but as the clearly considered best long term option.

I beg to differ. Being a grownup is not as hard for everyone as it is for those with AS. When your Executive Functions cease to develop beyond the late teens, it's damned near impossible to live as an adult and achieve the kind of stability someone with a neurotypical brain achieves with relative ease, because the 'grownup' part of our brain is quite literally ret*d. If you haven't figured that out yet, you're either very young or not paying attention. Look around you at the normal folk and see if they don't have more economic stability, more stable long term relationships of all kinds, and do it all with a fluid ease that makes AS life a sack race in a wheelchair.

To say our difficulties are the same as everyone elses only lends credence to the kind of insensitive sniping we hear about how we don't really have a handicap or a disability because we aren't visibly deformed. We're all just faking our Autism for attention or to freeload off public assistance. I can't speak for you, but my handicap is very real. And I can look around me and see the differences between my life and level of functioning and those of my Non Autistic peers.

I've decided it's not worth it. I don't commit to anything I can't know I could handle long term like that. It's a very restricted life. There's pros and cons to everything.

I get very worried as I see people getting trapped in systems that are then inescapable without massive upheaval.

I'm not going to tell you to dump your wife, kids, job, mortgage, although it's an option.

You'd be sadder without the relationship. I find having some people in my life is a good thing. But it seems like you're not entirely coping/happy? The best thing would be if you could find more space in your current life. I'd try and negotiate with your wife to try and achieve a more balanced life. Does she know you have AS?

I think you ought to be congratulated for coping so far and as well as you have. I can't imagine I'd do so well.

I agree that being an adult in our society is more difficult for aspies. However, it's not because of any objective disability or retardation. Rather, it's because our society is designed for people with more mental flexibility and lack of focus, while we have more focus and less mental flexibility. There are actually subcultures which favor aspies, and in those subcultures, the very same differences seem like disabilities and retardation on the part of neurotypicals rather than on the part of aspies.

I would also say that "fluid ease" sounds like the appearance from the outside, and not the reality. It's like when a neurotypical friend once asked me for relationship advice because I "seemed to be able to sustain longer term relationships", and I was like, "what the heck do you mean, I'm the last person you should be asking for relationship advice". Evidently he hadn't realized that the reason the relationship I was then in had lasted longer than his brief marriage wasn't because I had a good relationship, but rather because I hadn't realized yet that it was a broken relationship that I didn't know how to fix.

I do think neurotypicals have life easier than aspies in our society, but I don't think it's a bed of roses for them - or if it is, I'm sure it has thorns too.

I have not tried to get out and I don't see how I could, given my situation, which is similar to yours. And perhaps I get a little more of the good parts and a little less of the bad parts than you do, so on the whole I'm not much tempted by the idea.

One thing that I have found helps is taking a look at whether responsibilities can be split in more efficient ways. For example, when we had our first child, we agreed in advance on our split of responsibilities. My wife would take primary responsibility for the child, while various chores shifted from her to me to balance the work load.

We didn't do that with our second child, so there's been some friction. However, we started a discussion on that a couple nights ago, and my wife now realizes she can't just let all excess child care overflow onto me, as even brief interruptions, when random and unexpected, keep me from doing anything useful for an entire evening. I couldn't depressurize enough to, say, start paying bills or working on taxes until 1 am, which meant it didn't get done. She seems to be figuring out how to handle both kids without as much overflow, and without starving either kid of attention too much. I will probably have to take over some additional chores, but we should be able to work things out.

I wonder if some kind of rebalancing like that could help you too.

This is something that has always made me bristle, people just off hand say "everyone has problems". These people cant comprehend, how simple over stimulation can affect a persons quality of life and social interactions. Add in the stimming , not speaking the social language and co-morbids like anxiety, depression, OCD or ADHD.
A seemingly bright and interesting yet quirky person is not taken seriously they are "over
analyzing", "just need to come out of their shell" or "being manipulative". This person has no clue the difficulties and defeats that are part of our daily life along with our more visible gifts.

This is something that has always made me bristle, people just off hand say "everyone has problems". These people cant comprehend, how simple over stimulation can affect a persons quality of life and social interactions. Add in the stimming , not speaking the social language and co-morbids like anxiety, depression, OCD or ADHD.
A seemingly bright and interesting yet quirky person is not taken seriously they are "over
analyzing", "just need to come out of their shell" or "being manipulative". This person has no clue the difficulties and defeats that are part of our daily life along with our more visible gifts.

I'm always soooo tempted to respond, "no, you need to get back into your shell - and if you'd think just a bit more, maybe you wouldn't say such stupid things."

Thanks for the responces, i've been checking just not had much of use to respond with. I'm likely to take the weak option of going with the flow, keep putting in the effort and draining myself but preparing for the inevitable one day. Maybe something will happen to change things as time goes on.

Definitely I do this. Before being diagnosed I tried to escape from the mainstream world of work by joining the alternative communes movement. Although it didn't solve all my problems (and created a few new ones), I was eventually a lot happier with that than I've ever been in a "straight" job. But it became clear that the worker co-operative I was in was going to collapse economically, and I had to go and get another mainstream job.

I've been thus employed for a long time now, and the employer has had to make adjustments for me now I've been diagnosed (without which I suspect I'd have burned out by now), but the adjustments (although they've helped) aren't really specific enough, and after nearly a lifetime of employment pain, I still relish the notion of getting out for good. It's not just an occasional feeling of "stuff this!" on a bad day......even on good days it feels like a prison sentence. So I'm saving hard, and am hoping to be able to afford to retire in 2-3 years time and just coast on savings until the pension kicks in. I always saw my mortgage as a chain that helped to bind me to the day job, and mercifully that's all paid off now.

I don't see this as giving up or weakness.......I've never seen conventional employment as anything better than a necessary evil, except when I first started as a school leaver, and even then I didn't hold out a lot of hope that I could come to like it. And I've demonstrated that I'm perfectly capable of holding down a job indefinitely. I just want my life back! Nor do I intend to sit on my butt watching TV and drinking lager when I leave - while my health holds, I'll be busy, but it'll be on my terms, not on somebody else's.

That's the world of work. As for social stuff, I've no intentions of turning my back on people, in fact I hope that I'll have more energy to get involved with them once I'm free. Social stuff has always been on my terms - if somebody doesn't feel right for me, I've always been able to get away from them....only at work have I felt walled up alive with unsuitable types. As long as I know it's my free choice for people to be around me, I find it much easier to get along with them.

Of course I worry about whether I'm doing the right thing......I don't know of many others who echo my sentiments. But I also worry about whether my greatest mistake might be that I didn't get it together to drop out a lot sooner, and that I've already wasted most of my life, and will be too old to enjoy what's left of it, by the time I get it back.

I decided it was not worth the effort 3 years ago, and I attempted suicide. I did not die. I met God instead. I know, I know. I'm one of "those". I won't push my beliefs around, I promise. I'm aware that my religion isn't the only religion. It's just that that part is pertinent to the story. Anyway, God made me change my life that day. I wasn't dead, so I was supposed to be doing something else. I laid in my room alone for a very long time and detoxed (not fun, not pretty, and it smells awful). A few months later, he brought me an amazing man and 2 lovely children. These are what keep me going on a day to day basis. I struggle a lot with the weekly grind, and I often get so angry that I'm sure I am going to throw my office desk out of a window, but I can step back, see photos of my kids, of my Eric, know that I function high because I want them to stay. Living without them is not an option for me.

I want to run away!! And dang to responsibility......

I almost feel nauseous........due to the burden sometimes........and wonder if I will stuff it royally.

Yep, it is hard not to just run and run and run.

Mics

I wish i felt that strongly for my daughter i really do. Before she was born i listened to all the words from people about the birth being a life changing experience and your child being the most precious thing in your life and your whole outlook on life changing... and it's just not happened. Sure i care for her and i want to keep her safe, but it's not changed my life, i don't feel any magical thing that i've never felt before, there's no new emotions or feelings or anything, just the same sort of feelings i have for my wife and parents etc. I remember holding her wrapped in a towel and looking at her and thinking how amazing it is she's alive and here now after 9 months and that i made her, but it was the same feelings i've had many times in my life, maybe a little stronger, but nothing new.

I'd love to truly feel like people say.

I'm so sorry to hear you haven't experienced that genuine parental love. Kids are hard work, and for me it's that love that keeps me fuelled to keep up with it and keep my focus on what's important.

Have you considered therapy? When people don't connect to their children there's often unresolved emotional issues that make you avoid that kind of intimacy (because there's really nobody who can see into and through you like your child). Maybe therapy and self-discovery could shed some light on why you're not feeling what you want to feel. Maybe you feel you would be too vulnerable if you felt that strongly.

I don't know, I don't know you, but I would say that your feeling of not loving your daughter as much as you want to should take priority over your relationship with your wife, as it probably points to something fundamental in your life.