How do I tell my ex I think he has Aspergers?

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Hello, I have never posted on a forum before and am doing so now because i dont know where else to turn. (Im sorry, this is very long...the main question is at the end, if you are finding it too long to read)
I have been in a relationship with a guy for about a year and half. It is over now, the story is really long and involved but we broke down basically because of the way he is and how it caused problems between us, me not understanding him, and more than that, him not understanding himself.
I am heartbroken, i really love and care for him and he feels the same way for me. We were trying for a child and spoke of marriage and our future often.
I have been alerted to Aspergers by a friend who thought that maybe my ex has it. She is a psychiatric nurse but hasnt met him. I feel I have no one to turn to as now he and I are hardly communicating, he has almost totally withdrawn from me, it has been about 6 weeks since we saw each other. Although he told me he loves me and misses me, he cant face meeting to talk as he's too messed up.
So Ive been researching into Aspergers, and it looks to me that he could have it, although he certainly doesnt fit all the symptoms. He doesnt have a particularly highly intellectual mind, nor does he have a particular interest and he doesnt talk at people about his particular interest, which is one of the symptoms i have read about.
It would be really hard to describe him in a few words, but to try to sum up, I was his first real girlfriend, he is 26, I am 10 years older, he wasnt able to talk to girls he told me, and could barely look at me let alone speak when we first met. But when we got to know each other and clicked, he turned out to be so loving and affectionate, open, warm, honest, no BS, caring and kind, and infact, overflowing with love and "us".
Then he withdrew suddenly, after a few weeks, and txt me, in quite cold,insensitive language to say he didnt want to hang out with me, He uses and always has used quite unusual language, he has great difficulty in saying no for example, but that particular time, i expressed that I found him a bit cold and so he cut me off for about 2 weeks, completely withdrew, wouldnt communicate, couldnt. Told me by email to protect mysef from him as he had lost many a friend with his ways and didnt mean any harm but couldnt help it.
Other people he knows that I know have said they found some of his behaviours and ways unusual, random,he always does his own thing in his own way.
Anyway, he came back to me, as full on, apologetic as ever after a couple of weeks, which was a very difficult and hard to understand time for me,he moved in, and it seemed that he would withdraw every few weeks or so, painful silences which he couldnt explain, he would nt be able to look at me and seemed to go very dark, like another person.
I remember making a couple of personal but playful jokes about him, with love in them, and he took them very seriously and wouldnt speak to me for almost 24 hours.
I have found his moods and distances very hard to handle and when I react emotionally to them , he cannot handle it and makes him retreat even further. He has retreated maybe 4 or 5 times since, during which time, he cannot communicate, Infact he has finished with me twice by text in language which seemed so cold and uncaring that i could barely beleive he was the same person. This has been so difficult to understand as it would come out of the blue , where 2 or 3 days before he would be saying how blissed out he was. He would start to open up a couple of weeks later , apparently coming back to be the warm and kind person that he mostly is and say he was not "aware" of how i might have been feeling,.. rejected, confused etc. He seems to lack empathy. He has cried genuine tears afterwards when he realised how he made me feel.
He has told me that at times he doesnt feel human, he has said he doesnt know how to feel, or what he feels, that he controls his feelings.
Anyway, there is much more.
But my main question now, is, at this time, when our relationship has almost totally broken down and we are having very limited text and email contact , How should I approach him to tell him that I think he may have Aspergers?. I feel that it may be a great relief in some ways for him to discover this, but I also fear that he might take it in the wrong way, or be insulted or something.
We eventually broke up because a part of him "wants to be free" still, but in amongst that he has since told me that he realises that he blamed me unfairly for his problems and that he created things in his head about me which werent necessarily true, about my past and the fact that i may not have told him everything, when he has been completely open with me. He also said that he loved me too much that he got scared.
I could just leave it, there has been so much pain for us, but we have a really strong bond, in amongst all this emotional mess and i cannot seem to just drop it like any other relationship as it wasnt typical, he wasnt typical.
Should I approach him now whilst he says he is feeling mixed up, or should I leave it for a while? And if he does turn out to be an Aspie, will there be help, support or anything for him? I think his mother could also have it, he lives at home now where he is comfortable and does his own thing as and when.
Regardless of he and I being together, I care about him and if this could help him to understand himself better then want to share it with him.

Well I gotta be honest here, this post is pretty jumbled so I didn't read all of it but I think I got the gist.

As for your title question - I'd say just tell him that you found out about AS and you think that he might have it and tell him to look into it on his own. Most aspies value bluntness and straightfowardness, so be honest. No hidden agendas or manipulations. If he does some research and believes that he does have it, it might actually help him to sort out all of the confusion he's feeling.

Is there any reason for him to believe that this is true? Or.. is it actually true? Have you hidden things from him?

That would be a huge issue for me and would cause me to withdraw and act cold.

Yes, sorry its so jumbled, its shows how it is in my head!!
Thanks for the reply, thats helpful
To answer your question, I havent actually hidden anything from him, but I havent told him everything yet, purely because we havent kind of sat down and gone over everything, if you know what I mean. I also have a lot more of a past than he does, as far as relationships go anyway and I have told him that I will tell him everything as time goes on and whenever he asks, which he did accept, or rather he told me that he accepted it, I dont think he really did. He did tell me he was envious that I had had more "connections" in my past than he as

just say it, that is the easiest way ... just dont beat around the bush

i remember last time i had a girlfriend, she would drown me in words and i had no idea what she was talking about, but after a while and lenghty explanation she finally understood that the best way was to be short and precise in what she wanted to say

for example, if she was mad because i didnt sweep the kitchen, instead of going from new york to china, all she had to say was " i am mad because you didnt sweep as i asked you to do"

good luck

Not all aspies have all symptoms. Some aspies may not have a keen mind (or at least haven't discovered their mental talents yet, even at 26), while others are completely capable of leading perfectly normal social lives (though you won't see any of them posting here...)


So far sounds like a standard-fare aspie... taking a long time to open up to another person but once they do have all those qualities you mention.


That suggests that, if he is in fact an aspie, something about that relationship overwhelmed him. One of the standard aspie responses to too much mental stimuli is complete shutdown. It's almost a survival trait for aspie minds, which can't comprehend social situations in much the same way as other people (people not on the autistic spectrum are referred to here as "neurotypicals" or NT's, which is what I will use for the rest of this post...)


Again, signs of AS, but not necessarily definitive proof.


Literal interpretation is a hallmark of aspie mental processes. Since aspies can't even pick up (much less interpret) subtle things like body language and tone of voice without significant training, the actual word content is all they have to go on.


Aspie withdrawal is often accompanied by a complete shutdown of emotions so that the person in question can attempt to sort out everything that is going on. It's similar to a computer crashing, in that all the function programmed into the computer (i.e. complex emotions, ability to understand abstract concepts) doesn't work, and it takes a considerable amount of time to "reboot", as it were...

The best thing to do if he's in a withdrawn state is to leave him alone as much as possible, and if you have to communicate with him, put all of your meaning into your words, as opposed to using tone of voice or body language. To make it easy, try writing down what you want to say to him so that you get your point across in the words. When he recovers from the withdrawal, he will seek you out and communicate with you again. It may take a long time as you've discovered, but being understanding of certain mental needs of aspies will help prevent withdrawals in the long run...


Send him over here if you can... if only to provide the common experience so that he doesn't feel alone anymore...


Aspies don't really have a single reaction upon learning of their condition. Some are relieved to find out that what makes them different from everybody else has a name and that they're not merely a freak, while others get extremely defensive and refuse to discuss the condition with others.


Hmm... probably would be a good idea to talk to him again at some point. All the issues you're describing seem to stem more from a general misunderstanding than anything related to just being a prick in general. Misunderstandings come up quite frequently in aspie/NT communication; both of you just have to learn to resolve them in your lives. The relationship is definitely worth another shot if you ask me, but ultimately it's your choice.


I'd say leave it for a while, as when he's emotionally troubled he would probably enter a withdrawal state if you even tried to talk to him. If possible, try to meet his mother. If she has AS as you're saying, she would be able to provide an objective review of this guy and should be fairly easy to get along with (since you demonstrated a caring and loving nature, she wouldn't have much problem with you).

Regardless of whether this guy is an aspie or not, you should definitely try to encourage him to get that tested (although, like I said, in some cases it may lead to denial), and to get the help he needs. If he turns out to be an aspie, it's definitely a good idea to show him WrongPlanet, as many of us here have gone through much of what you're describing, and we'd be able to help him understand some of the things he's feeling.

And it's that kind of spirit that I wish more women in this world had. So many of us (especially those of us moping around here on the Love and Dating forum) have fallen easy prey to manipulative women in the past, that it's a wonder that any of us trust women at all anymore...

It seems possible that he's somewhere on the autistic spectrum. However, if you think learning about Asperger's will be a fix for the relationship, I highly doubt that. You could write him a letter, or send him a good book on the subject.

If you think he will benefit from knowing then tell him.
If he needs closure, explanation, mediation, psych help..

Like other people said, just come out with it.

I just want to say thankyou for replying to my post. Your replies have been helpful and i am really grateful. Particularly Mr ToadofSteel, I really appreciate that you had obviously taken the time to read right through the post even though it was a bit of an outpouring and must have been quite hard to read. Thanks v much.
I am going to leave it a while and let a little more dust settle before I approach him , and I have read quite a bit of the stuff on the forum here learned loads, I will probably read more too as it is really helping me to understand.

Well, being one of the few aspies in the world who is also knowledgeable in NT thought patterns, I find it important to try and explain the common misunderstandings between NT's and aspies. So many times an NT gets her feelings devastated because of something that the aspie didn't even realize he was doing. When I explain the likely line of thought behind whatever actions are at hand, it makes much more sense to the NT in the situation...


Well, let us know how it all goes...

Keep in mind that asperger's is fairly rare, only maybe about 0.5% of the population has it. There's plenty other kinds of nuts and fruitcakes, some of them yummy, and more common explanations should be considered first.

Without knowing further details, it sounds like he could have Social Anxiety Disorder (13.3%) and maybe also Borderline Personality Disorder (3-4%). Both of these are treatable with therapy.

How come I read somewhere that 1 in every 300 people has Asperger's then? Now, I'm not good at maths but 1 of every 300 people cant equal 0.5% of the population, can it???

0.5% is actually greater than 1 out of 300:

1% is 1 out of 100
0.5% is 1/2 of 1%
1/2 of 1 out of 100 = 1 out of 200 (which is more than 1 out of 300...)

I heard 1 in 150...to be honest, I'm not sure they're sure...

One thing is you'll need to be a little careful to be supportive while you explain.

What happens to some of us, at least, is that you find yourself with enraged people around you, and you don't know why. You find that you have to keep a 'vision' of what the other's expectations, likes and dislkes, etc. are. Doing this for several people can be quite harried, which is why we're not usually the life of the party...;0

I think that he may eventually find some closure with this, heaven knows I thought I was just a wierdo until I found out about AS. Knowing that there are others like me brings me up, knowing it's a permanent condition brings me down. But it all evens out.

Good luck. Wish I'd known about AS when I was 26, my life would have been a lot different...

I can't tell from the information provided. He just sounds like a jerk to me. You can do better, and trying to help him will just keep you focused on him. Move on.

1. Walk up to candidate.
2. Say "I think you have Asperger's Syndrome".
3. Enjoy work.