AS diagnosis and current partnership: what to do?

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Shydandelions
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26 Jul 2011, 9:58 pm

I've been in a relationship with someone for three (3) years. For the past year, I've been researching AS and trying to find someone to diagnosis me with it. I started thinking about a diagnosis and what it would do to our relationship, recently, and well, I really don't know what to do.

I've been with my current partner for three (3) years. From the moment that they met me, I pretty much told her my life story. Our meeting went a little something like this: 'Hi, my name is Kimberly. I have emotional problems, I'm not sure what they are but I know that I am different, especially socially.' Over the last three years, she and I have grown up a lot. She met me when I'd just turned 18 and she was heavily medicated (I should mention that we both have/had 'issues,' her issues are no longer there). We've been fighting (if we should call it that) a lot lately. She and I are on different levels. She's turning twenty-six (26) in a few months, and, well, I just turned twenty-one (21). She's clean and I am scatterbrained, so by the time I realize that the house is messy, I can't figure out where to start. The last time we got into a fight it was over intimacy and she informed me that she feels like my parent. I got really offended because I never asked her to become my parent. If I feel like forgetting to pay a bill, or not buying my tag on time, that should be my problem. Not her's. She doesn't feel the same way at all (and I am sure that it has something to do with her job and personality). She's very militaristic.

At first I thought I was fairly high functioning but I now realize that I'm not. We fight constantly about my shortcomings and how overwhelmed I get over the smallest things. If I get diagnosed with AS, I don't think that I can continue my relationship with her. She means a great deal to me and erasing three (3) years with her is going to be hard, but I don't know if I will ever become the person she wants me to be. I don't know if what's realistic for me will ever match up to her goals for me. :roll:

Any thoughts would be amazing.


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Chronos
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26 Jul 2011, 10:08 pm

Shydandelions wrote:
I've been in a relationship with someone for three (3) years. For the past year, I've been researching AS and trying to find someone to diagnosis me with it. I started thinking about a diagnosis and what it would do to our relationship, recently, and well, I really don't know what to do.

I've been with my current partner for three (3) years. From the moment that they met me, I pretty much told her my life story. Our meeting went a little something like this: 'Hi, my name is Kimberly. I have emotional problems, I'm not sure what they are but I know that I am different, especially socially.' Over the last three years, she and I have grown up a lot. She met me when I'd just turned 18 and she was heavily medicated (I should mention that we both have/had 'issues,' her issues are no longer there). We've been fighting (if we should call it that) a lot lately. She and I are on different levels. She's turning twenty-six (26) in a few months, and, well, I just turned twenty-one (21). She's clean and I am scatterbrained, so by the time I realize that the house is messy, I can't figure out where to start. The last time we got into a fight it was over intimacy and she informed me that she feels like my parent. I got really offended because I never asked her to become my parent. If I feel like forgetting to pay a bill, or not buying my tag on time, that should be my problem. Not her's. She doesn't feel the same way at all (and I am sure that it has something to do with her job and personality). She's very militaristic.

At first I thought I was fairly high functioning but I now realize that I'm not. We fight constantly about my shortcomings and how overwhelmed I get over the smallest things. If I get diagnosed with AS, I don't think that I can continue my relationship with her. She means a great deal to me and erasing three (3) years with her is going to be hard, but I don't know if I will ever become the person she wants me to be. I don't know if what's realistic for me will ever match up to her goals for me. :roll:

Any thoughts would be amazing.


Well if you live together and you forget to pay a utility bill then it is her business. Generally, in fact, the finances of a boyfriend or girlfriend actually is the other person's business because money problems can cause a lot of tension in a relationship.

I don't know that you are not high functioning. It might just be that you are still somewhat immature with respect to her, or that you just have a different way of going about things that she does. I'm a fairly messy individual but I still know where most things are and what needs to be done.

I think it might just be that you two have different lifestyles and perhaps she really needs someone more similar to herself in that respect.



Shydandelions
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26 Jul 2011, 10:14 pm

The bill in question is actually just a ticket that I kept forgetting to pay. I would never forget the utility bill (solely because my dad is also on our utility bill as his credit rating is higher than mine). Forgetting to pay our bill means that my dad and younger siblings wouldn't have electricity.

The lifestyles thing is probably more accurate. :(


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Shydandelions
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26 Jul 2011, 10:16 pm

Though, I truly am set in my ways with several things and I have a hard time believing that this will ever change. I think that she and I both keep waiting for the day when I start to behave like a normal adult. If I receive an AS diagnosis, we both kind of have to acknowledge that I might not ever behave like normal people in my age bracket.


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26 Jul 2011, 11:11 pm

Shydandelions wrote:
Though, I truly am set in my ways with several things and I have a hard time believing that this will ever change. I think that she and I both keep waiting for the day when I start to behave like a normal adult. If I receive an AS diagnosis, we both kind of have to acknowledge that I might not ever behave like normal people in my age bracket.


I think an AS diagnosis is irrelevant to ones ability to grow as a person.



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27 Jul 2011, 1:08 am

I am still new to the ASD world, my psychologist suggested I may have AS and I'll be undergoing testing in the future, so perhaps take what I say with a grain of salt because I'm closer to your position than someone with lots of experience and knowledge, but I don't think you should view AS as some kind of verdict in a court room that tells you "You'll always be the same, you'll take your problems to your grave". If I am diagnosed I just need to understand that I need to approach things differently in order to be effective. It's not that we would be broken, but that we are wired to think 'abnormally' and must account for that when approaching a task or life situation. Perhaps it's a world of birds, but for us to get by we will have to hunt like fish - we can still get the food we need in the end, we just get it using different tactics. And I would imagine it will take time for us to discover what tactics work best for us since AS doesn't really come with a rule book (okay, I think I saw a rule book thread on Wrong Planet, but I'm sure you understand what I mean). We are still human and one of the biggest distinguishing factors of a human mind is its ability to adapt. Just look at how quickly we have advanced as a specie, despite there being much tougher animals than us out there.

I think the problems you are facing might not be so much AS-inspired as they may be just the natural cycle of a normal relationship. It seems like you are putting the blame on this one aspect of you and that otherwise your relationship would be fine, but it could just be that you are growing incompatible, AS or not. It happens to NTs, too. Consider your happiness and her happiness, and whatever you may conclude, don't view it as throwing your previous time together away. You still had those moments and everything that came with them. The value of our memories is not dependent on some end-fate, they are valuable for what they are, and they can't be ruined unless we allow ourselves to ruin them. Breaking up would not imply a disaster that wipes your hard drive of experiences you'd shared together, or that either of you are dying, or that nothing meant anything. Breaking up doesn't have to do with the past, it has to do with the future.