what is love to an aspie? question from an aspie's wife

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I have been married for five years to someone who is just now at age 54 being diagnosed as aspie. I believe this diagnosis is 100% correct and in some ways its a relief, in other ways its very scary...to myself as well as to my husband.

One thing that I am trying to re-evaluate based on this new information...love. I have felt extremely mixed signals in my marriage. My husband is a good husband in many ways, hard-working, can show affection, likes to do things with me and our children. In other ways though I have felt very unimportant to him. There were a few times I REALLY needed him to be there for me and he wasnt at all and I felt very emotionally abandoned and unimportant to him. For example, one night I felt extremely ill and wanted him to go with me to the ER and he refused to go, saying he thought I would be ok and he had an early work meeting the next morning. Another time, I needed him to go with me as emotional support to see my father I hadn't seen in years, and he said he couldnt go because of transportation issues that I felt were solvable but nonetheless he refused to go.

After these incidents, when I told him how very hurt I was, he apologized. I doubt really though that similar incidents wont happen again.

All this background of my relationship is to help you understand the context of my question? What is love to an aspie? What SPECIFICALLY is the "evidence" of your love to your spouse or significant other? Is it something you do, say, show? How do they "know" you love them? Or is there sometimes a problem in your relationship of your spouse feeling unloved or unimportant, or lonely?

I do truly feel in my heart that my husband loves me however he is capable of loving someone. He is loyal and faithful and tries to make me happy, and if he knows something he did hurts me, he does try not to do it again (with varying success). I want to be able to understand love on his terms so I can recognize it more when he is "showing" it and maybe it will help carry me through the times where I feel so lonely and abandoned such as the examples I gave above.

What is love to anyone?

This is a very individual question, really. If you want to know what love is to him, you should ask him.

The incidents you cite, he may not have realized how much you needed him and/or didn't know what to do to "be there for you." This is typical behavior. It's also possible that there was a communication issue. Sometimes people (is especially common with females) "drop hints" or make statements that seem perfectly clear to them but a peson with AS may simply just not understand that something is being asked of them. Autistics tend to be in their own worlds and see things on their own terms and have a hard time seeing things through the eyes of others. So the incidents may just have not seemed important to him. I don't know if understanding this will help you at all but those are my takes on the situations you describe.

*edit* In addition, both my husband and I have major issues with our "plans" beind disrputed. E.g. if your husband had planned in his head to spend all evening doing something and your sudden illness disrupted this, he may very well have felt extremely unhappy or possibly even panic that his plan was being interrupted. I know it's not your fault that you got sick and the above sounds like a terribly selfish viewpoint but we can't exactly help how we feel about it either. I get very upset when things don't go according to plan and have difficulty shifting gears if something unexpected happens, my husband does this too. For that reason I try to plan ahead as much as possible and make those plans crystal clear to everyone so everyone can plan accordinly. This may very well have been a factor in your husband's inability to support you in the instances you describe. Did you by chance spring the trip to see your father on him suddenly? Or did you tell him months in advance with reminders as it got closer?

In regards to how he feels love or shows it, I don't think anyone can answer that besides himself (and maybe not even him ).

In the two incidents I cited, learning about aspergers has been very helpful to understand how these things happen and why they are so hard for him even though I do believe he loves me. When I needed to go to ER, it didn't seem LOGICAL to him to go with me. He knew "this has happened before and she was ok." It happened in the middle of the night. He had a planned meeting in the morning and he would have had to make changes to his plan.

The incident about not going with me to see my father was also caused by having a plan that would have had to be changed. We had planned to do something else that day and to see my father another time. The dates were changed outside of my control, so I had to be flexible and go see my father when I could. My husband wasn't able to be flexible. He used the transportation issue as an excuse although I dont mean that as harsh as it sounds. He wasn't really able to see around it at the time, it seemed too daunting to him.

I know I need to ask my husband what love is to him and how he thinks he shows it to me, what evidence he thinks I should be focusing on when I want to feel loved. But I also would like to hear from other aspies who may have had similar issues or discussions with their spouses. My husband may find it hard to communicate on this topic so any insight others can give me would be very helpful.

Thanks!

Yes, this indeed is a very difficult question to answer, on the whole though, I'd say Aspies tend to be more pragmatic and straightforward with love. That is not to say there is no romance, simply that... well, I'm not quite sure how to put this. Well, I'll use myself as an example, pretty mcuh everything I do operated on some sort of internal 'points' scale, I be nice to people to earn points which encourages me to behave like a NT with NTs. I also operate this system as I, sub-conciously, expect everyoen to operate on a bartering system, e.g. "I like your company, I would like to be your sexual parter (I don't say that obv.), so here is a gift, or a thoughtful gesture in return". I don't think this is drastically different from how NTs, work, just that I think that most of them don't like to admit that's how it works.

In regards to those examples you mentioned, they seem easier to solve. Seems to me he just didn't understand how much those things would have meant to you, which would be common of an Aspie. I'd just clearly state how much those things mean to you and why in the future. And that brings me onto Myth's point, do NOT be subtle to an Aspie where emotions and relationships are involved.

EDIT: I'd also like to say, that you should expect him to have a difficult time explaing why he loves you or what love means to him, this if a ludicrously hard question for an Aspie, don't think eh doesn't love you if he gets confused.

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

- From "The Devil's Dictionary", Ambrose Bierce, founder

I like to think he can't be cured. If nothing else, I'm part of his plan for the rest of his life and God knows he hates changes to The Plan.

I feel love the same way as others whether they be Aspie or NT-the way I express it is different and thats what gets me into trouble and then be involved with another aspie that doesn't read it correctly-you are open for heartbreak on a grand scale.

My first question on this forum and I go right for the ludicrously hard one. I guess the fact that its so hard to answer is what drove me here so it makes sense. Thank you for your thoughts!

One really important realization/validation I am getting...I can't use incidents such as the ones I cited in my post as examples (to myself) of evidence of how my husband *doesn't* love me. They are evidence of aspergers, not evidence of lack of love.

Still searching for what is love...

For how long you two have been married?

I wish it were that easy. After 5 years we still are not used to everything about each other. We still very much struggle at times. I dont see how learning about something (aspergers) that is so basic to who my husband is as a person, can be a bad thing. Not going to take your advice but thank you for taking the time to type it.

editing to add: I also want to say that sometimes "dwelling over past incidents" can be a good thing if you have new information and can have new understanding of those incidents. For me, by going back and dwelling on what happened, and putting it into a different context, I have been able to redefine them in a way that is less damaging to our relationship.

I love my husband and I want to understand how to make this relationship work for me.

I am an aspie. I think love is a false emotion that has been overexagerated in the modern world, mostly down to religion but reinforced by western media. From a practical and evolutionary perspective it is the release of hormones that has the effect of bonding between two mammals, especially between mother and child.

From a subjective, spiritual point of view when people say they feel love for a partner they are exposing their own insecurities about facing the world alone. And because we are brought up with this idea of love being an eternal emotion that can only exist between a man and a woman, then the world is full of people chasing this thing that doesn't exist. We see it in movies, soaps, novels, pop music, magazine articles.....

I think it is down to the personal thoughts of the individual to say what they think love is.

I once had a partner and it didn't go very well after about a year. I have never been able to tell anyone that I love them because I would not be sure of what I was saying.

I actually dont disagree with much of what you have said. I agree love is partly hormones. I also agree love is partly fear of living/dying alone. I think there is more to it than that though, it isnt fully explainable by those reasons.

I agree the media shoves its romantic idea of love down our throats. I dont believe its a false emotion though.