Adjusting to your partner... (NT-AS)

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Whenever i talk about adjusting yourself or your behaviour to a partner... people always tell: NOOOO you can't change your partner, that's so WRONG!

But especially with an NT-AS relationship.... you need to get used to each other and adjust some of your behaviours to cope with the differences. And in my strong opinion, this is something that needs to come from BOTH sides.
It takes a lot of patience and effort from both. But to my experience, this is not a one sided change. If you want to be together... you can't just expect two people from different planets to fit together without some polishing. And i don't feel that it's wrong to adjust what you both can...

In a lot of books and online, i read so often you cannot ever change an ASD partner.
Of course i cannot cure Aspergers. But neither can i cure my "Neurotypicallity".
And often in books this is what you read: as a NT, you need to change your behaviour, adjust to your AS partner, lower your expectations, learn to live with it, make schemes, adjust, stop wanting... stop expecting, blah blah etcetera etcetera. Roughly: the NT is the one that needs to change big time, or else run away.

For a few years it was so painful to constantly read about how you'll never be emotionally fulfilled and that aspies are incapable of feeling love or emotional connection etc. That every change and every sacrifice needed to come from the NT... it made me quite depressed, and angry!

Now underway for 6 years in my NT-AS relationship... we are doing really quite well. And that is the merit of us BOTH.
I indeed lowered my emotional expectations, i changed my way of communicating, i adjusted my behaviour to certain quirks he's got. Yes. And that's hard.
But in the same time, my AS partner adjusted his way of communicating, got used to more physical contact, learned to live with my quirks etc. And it's hard for him too.
It's not easy, thats for sure.
But i'm not doing all the work. We both are.

And there is (i've seen it on very rare occasions when somehow the usual cover was lowered) a huge cave full of emotions, doubts, feelings and thoughts hidden behind his rock solid concrete wall. Maybe i'm lucky. Maybe he's not high on the spectrum. But it gives me a lot of energy to see that he is doing the best he can as well.

Each does what he/she can of course, and you'll have to find out what each can learn, but also what to let go of.
But if i can learn to not talk to my partner when he's concentrating on something,
then he can learn to give me a kiss in the morning when we wake up.

Maybe giving a morning-kiss isn't his normal behaviour, but neither is not-talking my normal behaviour when being together.
You're not a rock, and i'm not a pudding... so we'll have to meet in the middle!

So, why would the NT have to do all the work according to the writers? Do you think that as well?
Curious about NT people and AS peoples thoughts about this.

I think in any relationship both parties need to make an effort to accommodate your partner. My fiance is NT and I have had to put in alot of effort so that we can be happy. He has also worked hard for our relationship because we both know its worth it.

One thing i never realised when I was single is how much work relationships take

I agree that equal efforts need to come from both partners.

Perhaps one of the issues is that the NT efforts are more visible. They're more obvious.

The big efforts for an autistic person can seem like very little to the NT person. They're a constant grinding that may even go completely unnoticed. Exhaustive amounts of energy being spent on the day-to-day coping.

The efforts are there, but perhaps the playing field isn't level in that sense.

When you stay with someone for long, you guys just grow together, and you inconsciously adjust yourselves to each other. People are not these inflexible lumps of metal. There is a limit to what you can ask of your partner, but that works both ways.

I am NT and my partner is on the spectrum, and we both work together on things to make things easier for each other. There are things he needs to work on, and there are things that I need to work on. It flows both ways. This is true, in both NT/ND relationships, or NT/NT relationships. The only difference is, you just have to find a different way of doing things with an NT/ND relationship. No matter what kind of relationship it is, change of some sort is almost inevitable and unavoidable, because both partners need to grow, to sustain the relationship. We are almost a year in to ours, and it keeps getting better. We have our tough times, but we learn from them. Most of our sticking points is listening, and providing feedback, when it is necessary, which I'm realizing is common. It is workable though. These relationships can be successful; it just takes work, love, and a lot of determination between both of you.