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Hi Everyone,

i'm new here, and only just came across this site today. I'm posting because I think that my future father in law might have undiagnosed Asperger's with OCD but i'm not sure. I say that only from reading I have done on the internet which has made me acutely aware of how hard it is to find information on any mental condition unless you magically and perfectly fit the DSMIV.

The reason I am here is because my future father in law's condition is really starting to impact my relationship with my fiance. I need some help. If we can pinpoint what might be wrong, maybe we can help or at least change our way of relating to him so that we don't send ourselves crazy in the process.

Apologies if this is a little long. I will try to give as much information as I can and hope that someone out there can give us some advice.

So! My future father in law. Lets call him "John".

John is in his late 50's, early 60's. He is retired, after a successful career in optometry. He has 3 children.

John was married for some 15 or so years before his wife walked out and left him. The man she and her children describe to me is someone I cannot reconcile back to the man I know today.

I am told that John was a man, devoted to his aging parents, strict with his children, and a man who definitely ruled his household. in an autocratic manner If John decided that dinner was at 6pm, then dinner was at 6pm, every night. It was meat 5 nights a week, takeaway one night a week and sundays off, every week. His children were not allowed to watch TV shows that other kids could watch. If he told them they had to mow the lawn in a certain way, it had to be THAT WAY or else.

John had several hobbies - golfing, boating, hiking, fishing, camping with his kids. From all reports, though he was a dominant man, he was relatively "normal" - ran his optometry practice, spent time with his family, had his hobbies.

In a short space of time his wife left him, and his parents passed away. I am told this was a highly traumatic event in his life. John moved to the beach to live.

Fast forward to the here and now. The John I know is very quiet - an unassuming man. He appears feeble and weak. He complains of poor health - back pain mainly and will not travel in his car further than 10kms. We live a 40 min drive from his house and have done so for two years. In that two years he has never once been to see our new home. Not even when others have offered to drive him. He says he doesnt like being bounced around in the car. Now, he wont go boating for the same reason. John is not attending our wedding (the first of his 3 children) because he will not travel.

Every day he rides his bike along the same route near his home at the EXACT same time. Lunch is always the same bread roll with the same filling from the same bakery at the same time. Dinner follows suit, however there are set meals on the menu for set nights of the week. When his daughter is visiting (every second weekend) they walk at 4pm exactly along the same route. Even when he had open heart surgery to repair a valve, the doctors warned him not to ride his bike for 6 weeks or it could kill him. A week after the surgery with still broken ribs and a 15cm scar, John was on that bike.

When John does his grocery shopping he always buys the same thing - whether or not he needs it. We can go to his home at any time on any day YEAR ROUND and always find 10 butternut pumpkins on the counter, 2 punnets of strawberries and 2 punnets of cherry tomatoes in the fridge. 4 lots of vine tomatoes also on the counter with 3 bunches of bananas in varying stages of going brown. In his bathrooms are always at least 15 toilet rolls. Kitchen towel also is in large supply. There are always 3 containers of peaches on the kitchen bench and 2 blocks of dark chocolate with almond. You get the idea?

In the bathroom we find several packets of unopened dental floss. There is one bar of soap on the sink but in the cupboard under the sink is a collection of half used bars piled up and a collection of new ones waiting to be used. The whole house is covered in a film of talcum powder. On the edge of the bath are 11 containers of talc, all ALMOST finished but not quite.

In the spare room are several bottles of suncream, some in expiry, some not. On the sofa in the lounge are 2 neat piles of backdated newspapers and magazines. On the kitchen table at one end is always a laid out amount of paperwork, bills and such, and always a handful of OLD photos of the kids, or postcards from overseas.

John's furniture is all his parents from when they died. The sofa is literally falling to pieces, with holes, springs and stuffing spilling out. He WILL NOT part with it. The large house has several floor to ceiling built in robes that are all FULL of paintings from his parents house. They also contain boxes and boxes of optometry leftovers - glasses frames, holders and so on.

Johns home appears impersonal. Apart from all this clutter which is kept neat and tidy and packed perfectly away, the house is sterile, simplistic and frankly, depressing.

Last year, his kids decided to clean out a bit. The garage was an overrun aladdins cave of paintings, old furniture and trinkets. Much of it was rotten. I am told that such was the distress of the clean up to him that he broke down. Immediately after this he was admitted to hospital with congestive heart failure. His daughter now will never rock the boat and every effort is made to accommodate his routine.

Yesterday my fiance's sister was invited to our house to watch parts 1, 2 & 3 of the Twilight series (she is 24). I asked her to leave her dads house early to get to our house so that we could fit all three in before midnight. John said "we go for walks then, she cant leave early". When I suggested that they walk earlier he looked as though I had said something in another language or proposed the impossible.

Planning xmas and birthdays is always a problem. John can cope in social situations but either has no opinion, no enthusiasm or is fussy with where he wants to go. He has plenty of locals that he makes small talk with around the place but no friends. There is nothing outside of his normal routine.

Sometimes when we are talking, he will not understand our jokes or metaphors, or really comprehend what we are discussing. He will then become fixated on a certain point and ask really silly questions or get hung up on a detail of something we may have proposed. Perhaps we have said that we will go to the south pier on the beach instead of the north. If he decides that this is not a good idea, he will become forceful or upset with us if we go ahead with it.

He will allow us to take home any of the excess food or items at his house but becomes very agitated or avoidant if we suggest that perhaps he BUY less. When his parents died he became very careless with money, spending it on stupid things and lost their waterfront house as a result.

Our dog used to be allowed inside the house when we visited. John is now suddenly allergic to it and she is no longer allowed near him or in the house.

You may wonder why this is affecting me so much. It is because we cannot visit him or do anything if it conflicts with his set routine. We are thinking about having children shortly after our wedding (this year) and I am concerned that he will not even visit them, that I will have to do all the running around to take them to his home according to HIS timetable. It is witnessing the gross wastage of food and items that goes on in his house and the ridiculous way that EVERYONE enables this behaviour without question, especially his daughter. Even worse, she is now showing signs of having learned that all of this is ok. When she is at our home she will not eat anything that is over a day old. If bread has been in the freezer she will not touch it for example.

I guess I can't handle the absurdity of it all and my compassion has run dry.

Can anyone out there help?

Thanks

xx

Welkome to WrongPlanet.

The WP Kink

Welcome to the WP forums, 01Atwitsend.

I can see some evidence that supports the aspie side, like the routines he withheld within his household. And any straying from the routine results in his frustration, which he easily remedied with further consequences. Looking at it from a psychological standpoint, he is not liable to change anything, especially at this age, since crystallized knowledge is difficult to attain by this point. There really is no educating him on the matter, but learning to understand it or accept it wouldn't be out of the question. It is his life, after all, and ultimately, the decisions he makes will effect only himself in the end. Let your grandkids decide for themselves that he's different in this aspect, but never pass any judgment.

Welcome!