My Aspie Fiance

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I've only read the OP, just disclosing that first.

I would say this is not a guy you should wish to remain with for your own long-term mental health if he's not willing to work on this. Using AS as an excuse is BS and I'm here to tell you that I believe that in a lot of situations where people put the blame on it they are aware that they've not been doing as they should. I am AS and have a very very recent ex who is AS and I cut things off when he started using it as an excuse for things that were a constant issue with no effort to work on it. Things that would be nothing short of unacceptable if I were to do them to him and use the same excuse. By the end of it all, the only thing I wanted to say was "Spare me, chump."

Being selfish and entirely self-centered is not going to cut it in a relationship and after you've been made aware of being that way, you need to change yourself/constantly work on it. I'm not a considerate person by nature and I have the tendency to be oblivious to others needs, but I know that I am this way, so I consciously put effort into not being that way while in a relationship. We all have strengths and weaknesses, that does not mean we should accept our weakness just as they are and say "Oh well, everybody else can deal with it."

For the first 7 months of our relationship, I was always so understanding about his weaknesses. I was willing to work with him and accept it when he inevitably fell short sometimes, but my patience eventually started running thin when he was no longer willing and continued to expect me to uphold my side to the relationship. I would have continued to have been loving and understanding if he had just put any visible effort into it. I wasn't breaking up with him because of his AS, I broke up with him because he wasn't up to challenge of bettering himself like I was willing to do for him and not all of these issues are *just* because he has AS. Many NTs are self-centered people with major areas of weaknesses, too.

I realize that I've just gotten out of a bad situation and I might be projecting a bit, but this might be useful for you. Who knows?

@Jono: If you'll excuse the hyperbole here, let me put it this way--

If I intentionally kill someone and there's no justification for it, it's murder. If I "accidentally" kill someone, it's manslaughter. Depending on circumstances, I might escape punishment for the latter. But regardless of whether I commit murder, manslaughter, involuntary homicide, or whatever, they guy is still DEAD.

Same thing with the aspie fiancé here. Doesn't matter if he means it or not. She is being abused.

I've said it before and it bears repeating: I DO think this relationship CAN be salvaged. The problem is this guy doesn't WANT to salvage it. If he cared, he'd have done something about it. The plain FACT is the OP (read what I quoted earlier) clearly stated there were previous relationships involving children that ended due to undisclosed issues. I don't know what those issues were, but I'm highly suspicious that the problems of the past are catching up with them both in this new relationship because they weren't dealt with after the former marriages were dissolved. And I know that the OP is falling back into those same patterns of behavior because she wouldn't have ended up with this guy and tried to make a life with him if she hadn't. Clearly this guy hasn't dealt with any issues that destroyed his previous relationship. I don't think he believes he did anything wrong in the first place, so why change now? This relationship CAN be saved IF both parties act quickly to turn it around.

I admire the OP for loving this guy in spite of all the wrong he's done her. I admire her for trying to understand him, trying to adjust, and for trying to accommodate him. But she's alone here. He's making a minimal effort if at all just to make her "shut up." But, aspie or not, when is it EVER acceptable to curse someone or tell her to shut up? I've never cursed my wife--or any woman I was in a relationship with, for that matter, even if I felt she had it coming--and I've NEVER told a woman to "shut up." Well…ok…there was that one time, and I was talking dirty to her, which led to…never mind, TMI, and not important… This guy is just keeping her around so he won't be alone on a Friday night. That's all it is. She's just another toy or decoration he can play with or admire when he feels like it. If this relationship is going to get fixed, HE'S the one who is going to fix it. She's already done all she can, and I feel like she's gone above and beyond the call of duty. He's barely taken the first step.

As far as my own relationship goes… I never changed because my wife told me I had to. It was more out of necessity. If I were still teaching in school and still had summers off and no kids to take care of, I'd probably still spend every spare hour playing video games. She gave me a ton of crap about that back in the day, and I stopped doing a lot of things partly out of respect for her, and partly because circumstances changed and the kids needed someone to take care of them more than I needed to teach piano lessons. Daycare expenses were killing us and I was barely breaking even, and that was when I DID have a ton of students and bringing in an extra $1k-$2k a year. So I chose to keep my youngest with me all day rather than daycare, and I replaced video games with writing music and trying to produce an album. I haven't been all that successful YET, but for me it's been all about at least DOING something with my days and having something to show for it. It's all about making the effort, which can eventually translate into something marketable and make sacrificing my whole teaching career worth it. I might be the stereotypical "basement dweller" type. But I don't have to be satisfied with that. Plenty of housewives work from home, have blogs, and make money through social media. I'm a lowly electronic musician who quite possibly is past his prime. But if all those stay-at-home moms can do it, what's my excuse?

Story time: Just played a luncheon gig for a group of senior adults. Played solo handbells. Opted NOT to get a babysitter for my 2yo, which ordinarily would have been a big mistake. It's just I know these people, so when my son was being a goofball, the crowd erupted in laughter. I just smiled and played it off, didn't say a word. They seemed to enjoy my performance. What amazes a lot of people is how well-behaved he is most of the time.

Story #2: He's been sitting with me for the last several funeral services I've played. During the last one I did, a young woman asked HER mother if my boy was just going to sit there at the piano with me the whole time. She replied, "just watch." He's only 2 and barely makes a sound. Young moms want my secret. It's simple: Consistent discipline starting at 1 year. There's really no secret. I expect a lot from kids. I refuse to bribe. Good behavior IS its own reward. Most parents freak out over a fussy baby. We never did that. What you see are the results of that parenting approach. Of course, parents like to argue with me over that, so I normally just shrug and say, "I suppose I'm just blessed with awesome kids," which is true, too.

I'm rambling somewhat, I know. The point is how we've dealt with MY issues and how it's helped our relationship survive for 15 years (married 9). I've been heavily resistant to change and only accepted MASSIVE changes to my work and lifestyle because I had no real choice. I fought it the whole way. I only accepted things the way they are when life beat me down so far there was nowhere left to go. I could see that keeping a private teaching studio in the private school was actually a hardship on us because what I made from teaching wasn't enough to offset daycare. I was willing to fight to keep that gig partly to discourage my competitors and partly for long-term career investment, but when my 2yo was born, it was like the final nail in the coffin. I threw myself into writing/producing music at that point and the results are just beginning to show.

I'm not sure how my relationship experience is going to help the OP, however. Their relationship is different. He actually DOES have a full-time "job-job," and she's STILL carrying him. Unlike my relationship in which my wife seems to prefer carrying me (at least for the time being), both people involved seem to want to stand on their own two feet. What worked for us isn't going to work for them. They have to figure that out. I reached a point at which I had to stop being stubborn, accept the cards I was dealt, and make the most of it. I don't feel like the OP must accept the cards she's been dealt. Her fiancé likes his cards and doesn't want to give them up. In the context of a card game, two people working together is called a "hustle." They have to win TOGETHER. He's still playing a zero-sum game with her. He doesn't want to split the winnings. He wants to keep it all for himself. That's not a team. And he's certainly not going to make it work cursing his fiancé and telling her to shut up.

There's no relationship here. What's going to work best for her IF he doesn't make some changes is to end it. Otherwise, she's going to have to accept this forever. I'm begging her not to torture herself like that.

This morning I wrote a note to my fiancé bringing up what bothered me last night and this morning, it was the same type of usual troubles, cursing and communication. I wanted to be sure that I was able to let him know I felt because I had to go to work and he was still mostly asleep. I had brought up about him possibly taking anger management classes to see if that would help, he said his last wife had him take anger management classes and they didn't help because they didn't touch on any of his triggers. We talked a little bit about it and we gave each of our feelings about what had happened.

I read the other posts and it is true that I want him to put more effort into trying to work with me to make the relationship better. From what I understand from him his past relationship had no tolerance for trying to work with someone with AS so he spent a majority of his time staying away from her, closed up in his room playing games. He didn't eat with the family he just shut himself away to avoid problems or arguments. My previous relationship was a mentally and/or emotionally abusive one that truly didn't care about anything I said or felt. I was bit by one of our dogs and even after a week went by and my arm had swollen and turned purple he told me to not go to the ER because he didn't want the dog to get into trouble. We got divorced finally because he toyed with my emotions one too many times with saying that he originally brought up about us splitting up just to see how I'd react.

My AS fiancé will listen to me, and I think with effort I will get through to him and hopefully help him understand that some things shouldn't be said, or in a certain way. He says he raises his voice only because I do, if I do I don't realize it, and I try hard to control my tone no only not to yell but also because he can have sensitive hearing.

I appreciate the responses to my post because I like finding out good ways to deal with the situation, I'm not beyond leaving but I would rather stay with him and work with him and only leave if there seems to be absolutely nothing else that can be done.

Yeah…I'm gonna defer to Jono on this one. Good advice.

Like I said, I really do think this relationship is salvageable. It may not seem like it, but I'm on your side here in terms of making it work. I've been in a troubled relationship (not marriage) with an NT before, and the difficulty for me was understanding the difference between abuse and someone acting out because I genuinely messed up. The painful lesson I learned from that was, quite simply, miserable people are going to be miserable and will make you miserable, too. In our case, there was nowhere left to go with the relationship. We slept together a few times afterwards, but when she started telling my friends we were getting back together and resumed yelling at me on a regular basis, I decided enough was enough and it was time to pull her b!tch-hooks out of me.

I only bring that up to say that we both had issues in the relationship, and I feel that by dealing with those issues and seeing other people, we both ended up in happy relationships. We just couldn't do that with each other.

I think you can find a way to do that. I still think you need to downshift a few gears and maybe later revisit your engagement and future marriage. If you enter into this thing as a miserable person, and likewise, if he does the same, it's only going to get worse. Cursing you and telling you to shut up is absolutely intolerable. Some people benefit from relationship counseling, like marriage counseling, and my former fiancée and I gave it a try before we split. In YOUR case, it might save the relationship.

The thing that makes me a little nervous, though, is if you're already trying to salvage the relationship NOW, what can you realistically expect in your marriage? My wife and I had our ups and downs before getting married, and we came together and accepted the issues of the other as just a part of who the other person was…something to be celebrated rather than tolerated. It might require a whole different way of viewing relationships for you, but for us it has been foundational.

Angel2kalen, can you keep us updated? I'd at least like to know if any of my suggestions are helping.