Help with explaining ASD to my partner - long rambling post!

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Hi everyone. I don't want general advice on dealing with relationships, I want help with explaining how my brain works differently from most other people, within the context of my current relationship.

I'm female, 38, always knew I most likely had some form of ASD but didn't get diagnosed till recently (two years ago) as it didn't cause many problems for me. As a kid I was very academic and so all unusual behaviour was passed over as 'quirks'. As an adult I have mostly been single, or in long distance relationships where I wasn't subject to constant interaction, or in non-serious relationships where deep emotional communication wasn't an issue. I have a couple of close friends, a few less close friends, a pile of friendly acquaintances, good relationships with my family, I get on okay at work and score fine on performance reviews, I've been in constant employment/self employment since I left university and I don't have any problems with depression, normal social interaction or any other general life stuff.

So basically, I'm okay in all other ways apart from how I function within my current relationship.

My boyfriend is 44, twice divorced, with two grown up children. We've been together for just over 4 years and I kind of moved in with him quite quickly after we first got together. I never really 'officially' moved in, I just kind of didn't quite go home one day. I still have my own flat which is currently rented out to his nephew. Don't know how relevant this all is, just giving the background info...

We get on fine and we don't argue much but he is finding it harder and harder to deal with what he perceives as distance and a lack of emotion on my part. I'm finding it harder and harder to deal with his desire for total communication and total closeness and full disclosure about absolutely everything. A huge big deal for him is cause I don't say 'I love you' to him when he says it to me. But he overhears me making babytalk to my dog like 'Ooh who luuuuvs you puppydog' and gets angry about it. Another big deal is that I don't want to get married. I think he sees that as a lack of commitment. My view is that with two ex-wives, he should be able to see that marriage does not equal commitment. He doesn't like that I think things through myself and make decisions on my own. Says that I should talk to him more about things that involve me making decisions. Yet any time I ask his advice about stuff like changing jobs, sorting out my finances, whatever, the response is invariably something like 'Well it's really up to you; I can't make the decision for you...'

He isn't happy with our sex life cause I don't like talking about sex and I don't want as much sex as him. Which I imagine is fairly normal in lots of relationships. But when I don't want sex he seems to see it as total emotional rejection and it makes him feel unloved and unwanted and insecure and miserable. Btw I'm not talking about weeks and weeks here. Longest we go without having sex is 7 days tops. Which I think is fairly reasonable for two people who've been together a few years and who both work odd hours and often don't see each other much despite living in the same house!

But basically we both function completely opposite from each other. I don't need or want emotional reassurance and I being told 'I love you' makes me feel uncomfortable, cause I feel like he doesn't say it unconditionally, he says it to try and get me to say it back to him. Which makes me squirm. Basically he thinks the problem is mostly mine and I think it's way more like 50:50. He's insecure and wants constant reassurance and I find it emotionally draining. And I find him saying things like 'Most people would see it my way' (i.e. his way) to be neither true nor helpful. After all, I'm not in a relationship with 'everybody else'...

He seems to think that I'm being deliberately awkward and using ASD as an excuse. He also makes comments that suggest he thinks it's a 'problem' that I could learn not to have. As in, a psychological/psychiatric illness. I tell him that's that's like getting frustrated 'cause someone in a wheelchair 'won't' just get up and walk or 'cause someone with dyslexia 'won't' just make the effort to spell correctly. I don't think he accepts that it's a genuine neurobiological difference.

I try to explain that the more I feel I have to try to 'act' normal around him, the less normal I actually feel.

Advice/suggestions please.

Or a link to an explanation of ASD and emotions so I can try to get him to understand how my head works...

Thanks in advance...

Edited to add: I don't want general expressions of sympathy, I don't want people saying they think I'm right and he's wrong, I want ideas on how to deal with this in a way that works for both of us. Ideally, I'd like to be able to show him my post and the answers, but I think he might just get annoyed that I'm discussing our problem with a bunch of people online...

On this website, I think in the General Autism Section of the forums, there is a little guide to Asperger's drawn by Greenturtle74, maybe you could take a look at it, and try and adapt it to yourself?

I know it's not much help, but I'm afraid this isn't really my area. Sorry.

I hope your relationship works out.

Maybe a link to the DSM definition (use IV, since that was the one you would have been diagnosed under).

I like this link for a quick explanation/justification that it's a real thing: http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58 ... d4f6a.html ; her book for ASD women in relationships is coming out next month (I've been checking Amazon like crazy since I found out about it).

I was always told that I should just 'be myself', since people liked being around that person. However, that 'self' was just me being 'on' all of the time, which was exhausting after prolonged periods. Not acting per se, but I'd need a break after an hour or so to just be quiet for a while or I'd get irritable.

You don't learn to not have ASD, but you do manage it, and it helps if the people around you support you. After I was diagnosed, my mom and sister started noticing little things like me getting off track in conversations, going on about things others had lost interest in, forgetting social niceties, and now they cue me alot, i.e. a touch on the arm, or gently cutting in, or reminding me that I should call someone. I'm told that they barely notice doing it anymore, since it's a new family norm.

He needs to realize that you aren't 'most people' though, and that your issues are hard-wired into who you are.

Is there a non-verbal alternative? Example- I am not a hugger, except for a few very close individuals.

If these problems have only started recently or after you got your official diagnosis (so that's two years after you've both been together) then he might have a valid point. Whilst it's wrong for him to say you could learn not to have ASD which shows a lack of understanding on his part, from his viewpoint I can see why he thinks you're using the condition as a cop-out to try and justify your differences. Did he know about you having ASD before the relationship or before you moved in? If the two of you never discussed it until just before you got diagnosed then he'll be thinking 'hang on, this wasn't a problem before, therefore it shouldn't be now' It's a rigid perspective to have but if true shouldn't be that surprising.

Also to be honest as petty as it might sound, if my long term partner never said they loved me then gave that sort of affection to the dog everyday, I'd be getting the needle about it, a lot of men would do so. I'm only guessing his perspective here (which I hope you find helpful) but given the information you've written it sounds to me like he might feel you are sponging off him until something better comes along. Your refusal to consider marriage, more then likely gives him the idea that you might be thinking that the grass is greener on the other side and when the right opportunity comes alongs you'll leave him (especially if either of his ex-wives were unfaithful to him this might be a factor in his insecurity as well)

I suggest that the two of you consider couples therapy. A neutral third person perspective might be able to help you both see each others viewpoints, otherwise you might both be locked at a stalemate until the point where you end up going your separate ways.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck.

These problems have not started recently or just after I got my diagnosis, they've been there almost right from the beginning. The first time we went out on a date, I told him I never wanted to get married and I never wanted to have kids. He said he was the same and specifically referenced his two ex-wives as reasons why he wouldn't ever want to get married again and also told me he'd had a vasectomy in any case. Woohoo, I thought. Kids not an issue and marriage won't come up either. Six months in he changed his mind and marriage has been an issue on and off ever since. Ditto the kids thing. He can't believe I don't actually want any of my own and despite my view on this having been exactly the same since we met, he keeps saying things like 'you're going to change your mind and leave me for someone who can give you kids...' So basically, he's insecure about not being able to give me the kids that I DON'T WANT ANYWAY!! !!

He's always known I've been 'different' - the night we met in the pub, our first conversation was about automatic gearboxes and continuously variable transmission. His friends and family all told him right from the start that I was 'a bit autistic' (which I already pretty much knew) so I went along to get diagnosed just to make it official. I was actually hoping they might say 'No you're not, you're just eccentric' but overall it's not a big deal to me. After all, it doesn't change anything.

As for the 'sponging' comment, I find that highly offensive. Like I said, I have my own job and my own flat. I've always been financially independent and I pay my own way. At the moment we live in a static caravan on his farm (ex-wife no. 2 forced the sale of their house, so he has land but no house on it) because he didn't want to live in my flat because he doesn't like the town. Reason I moved in with him is because he works such long hours that if we had continued to live separately and 'date', we'd have seen each other maybe once a week. More than once he's said I should just quit working so he could see me more and I actually think he would prefer me to be more dependent on him financially, more like a housewife, and less like the independent chick I was when I met him.

As I've pointed out to him, if I married him I could still leave at any time, only I'd also be able to take half of everything with me! I honestly think most of this is down to his insecurities and not my ASD, but since I got a diagnosis he keeps talking about it like he can blame all our problems on it and not consider his own emotional baggage.

He was insecure about me having male friends who were either ex boyfriends or who he just didn't like, so I binned five good friends to try to keep him happy. He was insecure about me having male friends I chatted to online - nothing sexual just online friends! - so I binned a couple of virtual friends too. He makes comments about it being 'inappropriate' for me to be seen in our local pub with other men when he isn't there too - so now I don't go out on my own to meet my friends like I used to but he's still insecure. The fact that I don't want to sit pressed up against him holding hands and gazing into his eyes every night also makes him insecure. I've compromised on everything else and I don't see why I should compromise and force myself to do something that I don't like doing just to make him feel better, when he'd probably then just find something else to be insecure about anyway.

The more I write this down, the more I think it'snothing to do with ASD at all actually....

So basically everything you think is right and everything he does & says is wrong and he is trying to control your entire life? In which case why are you on here looking for advice when if what you say is true, you should have left him a long time ago.

You've also taken my 'sponging' comment completely out of context as it wasn't meant in a financial sense but an emotional one where he might feel that you are only with him purely for the sake of being in a relationship.

I've tried to be helpful by explaining what his viewpoint (based off your original post I might add, not what you've written in reply afterwards) might be which in turn could enable you both to find a mutual understanding which in turn is why I suggested couples therapy. You did state in your original post that you didn't want sympathy but now your resorting to saying 'I'm right, he's wrong' because nobody else has done that for you. Whilst he's clearly got his own problems and showing signs of being blind to his own double standards, you're also contradicting yourself on the asd issue, on one hand you say he claims you're using having asd as an excuse for 'being awkward', then you're saying he's using your asd as a scapegoat for all of your relationship problems and now you're saying your differences have nothing to do with asd? Which one is it? Because they can't all be true.

There's no point asking for advice if you are going to twist anything you don't want to hear.

Last edited by Daemonic-Jackal on 08 Mar 2012, 1:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It might be fairly common for couples in long-term relationships to go without sex for 7 days, but I'm not sure that I would call it reasonable. If I reached the only-once-a-week point in a relationship or marriage, I'd definitely feel unfulfilled, if not to say unloved. I think this might be the main problem. He thinks that something is amiss because you don't desire physical intimacy as much as he does (as much as most men do), so he's looking for other signs that the spark is gone and you have drifted apart from him. As a result, things that didn't bother him before now seem to confirm his suspicion.

As a 43 year old women with two ex-husbands, I'd be doing some serious reflecting on why he is twice divorced.

In my case I was the one to do the leaving and after my second marriage fell apart I realised that I needed to have a long hard look at myself, which I did for almost 2 years, in weekly counselling sessions.

Do you know why he has two failed marriages behind him, and do you think he has gained any personal insights as a result?

I'm from the West of Scotland farming community myself, and while divorce is more common than it was, I reckon that for a farmer to be be divorced twice is still very unusual.

Yeah, you're probably right. If I had sex with him every night on demand even when I really didn't feel like it and faked like I really wanted to, he'd be perfectly happy and assume everything in our relationship was blissful...

LOL! I didn't even think of that interpretation 'cause emotional sponging is definitely not me. I'm perfectly happy being single and don't require a relationship to be happy. I've never been one of those people who feels incomplete without a significant other. So please excuse my misinterpretation. And I HAVE told him this, many a time. Problem is, he IS one of those people who can't function as a singleton and so doesn't actually believe me when I say I was happy in myself being single. This is a lot of the communication problems between us I think. We have differing viewpoints/attitudes on a lot of things and his standard response since my diagnosis is 'well, normal people don't see it that way'...



I'm not actually saying all of those things. I don't use ASD as an excuse for anything. But since I got my diagnosis, he keeps bringing it up as the reason for any disagreement we have. I guess I maybe didn't explain myself as well as I could have. I'll try again!

It's like, if we're at loggerheads about anything, instead of considering that we might both be equally at fault or that I might have a genuine gripe about something, he now says I'm just being autistic. Like, he thinks I must be being unreasonable purely because he knows I've been diagnosed with what he sees as a mental condition and he hasn't. Therefore he's normal and I'm not. Therefore he's right and I'm wrong. I would like to be able to explain ASD to him so that he understands it doesn't automatically make me a 'mental case'...

As I've never lived with anyone in a long term relationship before, I have no baseline to compare this one with. Therefore sometimes I think maybe he's right and that everything IS my fault. Then I think 'No way, he's got ten times more emotional problems than I do and his expectations in a relationship are unreasonable.' But just as I say to him not to compare me with other people to decide if my attitudes are reasonable or not, equally I try not to do that with him. So I try to compromise to make him happy, as I do realise that a successful long term relationship doesn't usually just happen and that it is something that will usually take constant work.

Then sometimes I think: Wait a minute, I'm from a happy family, we all get on well, my ASD has never been an issue for anyone before now, and none of my close friends think I'm unreasonable or difficult or uncompromising, just him. And he's the one with a hugely dysfunctional family, who demanded sex from his first ex-wife every day and even the same day she gave birth, who had an affair with his (now adult) kids' babysitter, who has a mother he didn't speak to for 8 years at the behest of his second ex-wife, who has a daughter he disowned at 14 and now barely speaks to, yet supposedly *I'm* the one with the emotional problems. That's when I think maybe the ASD isn't the main issue here. But like I say, with not having a baseline relationship to compare to, what do I know about it?



I'm not twisting things, just trying to explain myself better. Maybe just venting as well as thinking out loud.
I do appreciate any and all input...

wait a sec. your boyfriend did these things?

i read all of your stories and explanations and i thought maybe couples' counselling may help. then i got to this part and now i see it a bit differently.... he has issues to work through on his own, and he sounds like a dysfunctional mess. what do you get out of being with him, that you have stayed with him until now?