How has a diagnosis changed your relationship

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I am considering an evaluation for autism. A few years ago, my husband and I were in marriage therapy. It failed because my difficulties communicating came to dominate our therapy sessions instead of working through the problems we were there to address. I knew going in that it becomes difficult for me articulate anything when I'm under emotional stress, but I didn't realize how stressful it would all be. I also learned that I rely on logical assumptions to understand and respond to my partner's emotions, which is problematic when you helpfully explain why what they're feeling doesn't make sense in a misguided attempt to make them feel better. When we finally pulled the plug on therapy 14 months later, my therapist said that she felt many of the difficulties I was experiencing wouldn't be substantially improved by more therapy because people who process emotions nonverbally often have trouble in talk therapy.

I feel very sad about all of this and my husband believes that she was suggesting I am on the spectrum. I've never felt I had a 'communication impairment' until we were in therapy (at age 32), and I see little benefit to looking backwards with aspie-colored glasses without being diagnosed as such. I don't know whether a positive diagnosis or a negative diagnosis would be better, but I am interested in seeking an answer and finding someone with experience working with aspie/NT marriages if it is part of the issue. I very much want our relationship to thrive.

I'd like to know more about other people's experiences and whether an evaluation and diagnosis was helpful, harmful, or didn't make a difference in your relationship, and/or if you've ever experienced a difference in how therapists would approach a couple knowing someone is on the spectrum.

To be honest, my autistic traits have had no effect upon my relationships--except when it comes to women getting mad at me because I should have "known" what to do in certain situations without them "telling me."

I'm thought of as weird, anyway--diagnosis or no diagnosis LOL.

Im the same way, under emotional stress im terrible at remembering words and actually saying them. I often start making random noises and pretty much stim like crazy while talking.



I was diagonosed this october, and I never felt I had any communications problems before. But once I got the diagnosis and started reading and understanding the differences of aspies, a lot things suddenly made sense. I needed help to really understand the problems I had with social communications. Granted 22 is not 32, but aspies are not that good at understanding themselves in relation to other people.
A diagnosis would probably be useful to understand yourself, and that is the first step in improving your relationship to others.

I was diagnosed about a year ago, three years into a relationship. We spent a year and a half of that time in couple's counseling. When I was diagnosed, I did offer her an out; I told her that “dating someone with Asperger's wasn't part of the deal”, i.e. we acknowledged that this changes some things, and some things are about how I am wired, and we didn't know how much of what I do and don't do can be attributed to Asperger's. I thought it was only fair. No hard feelings, we're best friends, if this is a deal breaker it's best we do this now. She chose to stay.

We started learning about Asperger's independently from each other, and the first book she read was called “Life With a Partner or Spouse With Asperger Syndrome: Going over the Edge? Practical Steps to Savings You and Your Relationship” by Kathy Marshack. It was not very encouraging. The advice she got out of the book did damage to our relationship and after I read it I felt that it makes people with Asperger's out to be monsters, or more like people with Borderline Personality Disorder. Having experience with BPD individuals and reading a wealth of books on the subject, a lot of the advice she gives was the same as in books about surviving a relationship with someone with BPD.

A more helpful book was “Aspergers in Love: Couple Relationships and Family Affairs” by Maxine Aston. We both read this book, and it had a much more positive prognosis for ASD/NT relationship dynamics and offers some good information as to some characteristics of Asperger's and how they relate in a relationship and how to cope with them. I liked it.

To be truthful, sometimes she gets angry with me and uses the fact that I have Asperger's to attempt to hurt my feelings, or she will invalidate me as an individual with statements like (regarding me not expressing something I apparently should have) “Whatever, it's what you do. You have Asperger's. I just deal with it”. I've learned to not let that get to me. For the most part she is supportive and proud of me, though sometimes I feel like she still has expectations of me that are outside of my nature.

I want to include my ex, because she was the only woman I've ever considered marrying (I'm generally against the institution). She taught me everything I know about “being a person” and how to interact with people. We were together eight years, eventually she dumped me, I moved out of state, you get it. We have been friends for over twenty years and remain best friends today. When I told her, she cried. She finally understood. Everything she didn't understand about me made sense. Many of the reasons she dumped me can be attributed to Asperger's, and had we known that we could have approached it with understanding and we'd still be together. It brought us closer and we have a level of understanding between us that strengthened our friendship bond more than we could have imagined.

Finally, I have one friend in this state outside of my relationship. She pegged me as being on the spectrum before I even had the idea that I might be. While I am terrified at what being open about having Asperger's (and the depression and anxiety issues) would do to my career, I trust her and when I told her that I was diagnosed, after she said "I know", she was very happy for me that I finally had closure on the things that just didn't make sense to me and that now I can look at the world as a participant with Asperger's, not like a complete and total outsider. From that point on our friendship has grown, and she, out of everyone I know, best understands how to communicate with me and how best to interact with me. She understands the things with which I struggle and treats me with compassion without treating me like I'm "special". Again, my diagnosis strengthened our friendship and I finally feel like there's at least one person in my life who "gets" me.

Sorry about the novel. Brevity is clearly not my strongest skill.

The memoir Journal of Best Practices (sorry no link -- just search it on Amazon and it comes right up) is about how one guy resolved problems in his marriage to overcome some of the negative tendencies he had due to his autism.

He kept a notebook of "best practices" together with his wife, and they worked on it together.

It had some stuff I rolled by eyes at from Dr Baron-Cohen, but I also felt it was a very aspie way to resolve a problem. Less of a guide on how to do it, more of one guy's experience and his mental processes as he went through it. It read a lot like a diary.

Anyway, I recommend it, in addition to the book the poster mentioned above.

@Dryope: Thank you for sharing that information. I have been curious about that book, but was a bit put off by the description. It's always good to hear an assessment from "our" perspective.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences, everyone. I will be checking out those books.

My husband was recently diagnosed (not me). It didn't change it that much. I think it changed his own view of himself somewhat and that has maybe changed our relationship. It's hard to say how THE DIAGNOSIS changed our relationship exactly because our relationship was already rapidly changing anyway. We had been together for over 20 years without a diagnosis so I guess we'd already figured out a lot of the "tricks" needed to communicate and stuff. Also, he had a huge mental breakdown of sorts a few years *before* he received the ASD diagnosis, so it seemed to come after the storm had already passed, so to speak. But it has explained some things to me. I haven't read anything on NT/AS relationships, but I have read a few books about Asperger's specifically (already have read MILLIONS of books about autism, since our kids are autistic). Hopefully understanding Asperger's might help me help him avoid the stuff that caused him to have his "mental breakdown" (not sure what the correct term for it is, I'm using that term colloquially).

We also tried marriage therapy in the past and had it fail, likely due to the therapist not "getting" my husband. She was kind of fixated on his lack of facial expression which really does not matter to me, but she took it as a sign that he was a douchebag and that I was in denial of that fact. She also didn't seem to know how to converse with him at all. I felt like I had to take the lead in talking to him (which completely defeats the purpose of going to marriage therapy) because she would fail at getting him to tell her what she wanted because she was too indirect. But we quit that before he was diagnosed, so his diagnosis didn't change that. All it does is maybe explain why she had those issues with him. If we could find a marriage therapist who understood autism, that would be good, but I highly doubt we will. There are not many, if any, services for middle-aged adults like my husband (and probably you) who have held jobs in the past, pass well most of the time, etc..

It might be worth getting for YOU and then if you can improve yourself, your relationship might also improve.

Definitely helped.

Over the weekend we watched an episode of Intervention where the mom of the addict was clearly an aspie but it was never mentioned and her different feelings and behaviors weren't respected. In that instance, if the mom had been diagnosed and her NT kids and grandkids understood why she was different I think they would have respected her more as the head of the family.

Great book! http://www.amazon.com/The-Journal-Best- ... 1439189749

Oh wow I am glad to know I am not the only one in an aspie/NT relationship. My wife and I have struggled for 5 years working on communication. I only found out about 6 months ago that I was on the spectrum as well. Communication for me is almost impossible verbally. I struggle with it very much. However in writing an email and writing down it is very effective. After many therapy sessions things are finally turning around and we are starting to communicate better. Not great but better.

Everything for me is very logical and black and white. When something is said to me I take it very literally. Which is a problem because I become easily offended by different things that are said. I am here to tell you it is so difficult to see everything in black in which. No middle ground.

Thanks for the advice I also felt this way since I just got diagnosed on Friday. I'm going to check out that book probably both of them. Reason I finally expected I had it was I could only keep a job for a year and the employer would to start saying things to me and also small mistakes I would make. Being married to a NT can be frustrating sometimes becuase you can't decripe your self and sometimes the wrong thing comes out. I'm glad I know now and so does my wife but I think knowing little things like what book to read now could help out.

I was very recently diagnosed (last week) but had suspicions for around three months prior to that. We have just finished in marriage counselling, and between that and an awareness of my issues and need for solitude our marriage has improved and is no longer in danger. I think for my husband just knowing that lots of the ways I behave aren't personal has really helped. Also he is being much more tolerant of meltdowns and general anxiety. On my part I'm learning about aspergers and how to cope better.

Apparently my diagnosis changed my relationship quite profoundly - my wife left me a few days later. She didn't exactly want to end the relationship, but presumably figured that her attempts to mould me into the man she wanted me to be were futile on account of my having a brain-wiring problem that couldn't be cured, and so tried to turn our marriage into an occasional-visit kind of relationship. Anyway, I eventually divorced her for it and found somebody much more suitable for me.

In spite of my experiences, I still think that finding out about AS has the potential to improve a relationship, though it depends on the SO's state of enlightenment and personality. I would think that some people would be more understanding once they realised that the interpersonal problems the AS traits cause are not down to emotional laziness or anything else that can be fixed by the usual NT-NT channels. The enlightened partner would hopefully be more forgiving and make some realistic adjustments to ease the strain. Equally, the Aspie would probably need to use the new knowledge to find out how they could meet them halfway, and to take it on board that just because their ways were down to their disability didn't mean that they somehow ceased to be hurtful.

I've experienced the frustration of neurotypical expectations impacting on me as an Aspie. I've also experienced the frustration of living with an extremely Aspie person (not a spouse) - although I was well aware of the diagnosis and could often understand the traits in a way NTs can only dream of, it was still pretty hard for me to resist the temptation to dismiss that Aspie as a lazy, self-centred jerk, and I'm generally thought of as a kind, patient man, so god help a neurotypical who couldn't see the traits from the inside like I could, even post diagnosis. The bottom line is, even after diagnosis, it's still likely to be hard work, which is not for the squeamish. I should add that my current relationship has been working very well for over 2 years, which seems to show that it can be done.

My relationship was on the skids when diagnosis came on to the agenda. The confirmation of autism tipped the balance and we're still together ten years later. That there's an explanation for the otherwise inexplicable ignorance of what should be obvious can be significant.

Good to hear that awareness really helped save the day. I've often noticed that people can get horribly judgemental about others when all that's really going on is that they don't understand their behaviour. In the absence of an explanation, they somehow avoid just admitting that they don't know why, and instead they guess that it's down to bad character, willful awkwardness, or some other kind of unacceptable inferiority that could easily be changed if only they had the "right attitude." It's a surprisingly easy mistake to make.