Frustrated NT women with "AS"men. Victims or control freaks?

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I'm quite tired of the hoards of women who abound on the internet who are disgruntled that their husbands are not the people they would like them to be. These women with husbands who are jerks, or who do not meet their emotional or physical needs. Inevitably these women go on crusades to determine what is "wrong" with their husbands, often settling on AS, without the husband ever being evaluated by a clinician. Despite this, they will claim they are certain their husband has it. As someone with both AS and OCD, I can tell you, people, sometimes even clinicians with limited experience, have a difficult time forming enough of a proper understanding from descriptions alone to be able to distinguish between like sounding characteristics of the two. I discuss the actual differences between obsessions in OCD and obsessive interests in AS in another post. Similarly, to further illustrate my point, there is a widely held misconception that people with OCD are neat freaks, which is false. OCD is not about being tidy.

Nonetheless, these wives of these men often become convinced their husband has AS, and take to the internet sharing their tales of grief and frustration, spreading as fact often negative characteristics of their husbands as manifestations of AS, often contributing to it's misrepresentation.

In some instances, perhaps the husband does have AS, or at least a diagnosis of it, correct or not, but it's irrelevant, because the fact remains that, regardless, these women overlook a simple fact about themselves.

They agreed to marry someone who wasn't right for them and are frustrated at the fact they have been unable to change them to their liking. There is a male equivalent of these women. It's often men from more conservative parts of the world who marry women from more liberal parts of the world and become upset when she refuses to stop dressing in a particular way (that attracted them to begin with) or keeps leaving the house and socializing platonically with other men, or will not submit to him as the head of the household. In the west, we call these men controlling, because they are trying to control how their wives act and mold her into something she is not.

Let us hold the same standards for these women who are equally dissatisfied with their husbands they seek to control and mold and cannot. There is a lack of ethics in both instances.

How is it ethical to marry someone with traits that are unacceptablec to you and then set to work trying to change them and becoming irrate when you can't? What right does one have to intrude upon a person in this way? They don't. I would not want a man who claims to accept me as I am and then start to pressure me to get breast implants or become ultra feminine after the wedding.

A husband and wife should respect and be considerate of each other but they need to both share enough common ground on which to foster such relationship.

It doesn't matter how nice and intelligent someone is, if you need someone who is emotionally intuitive and they are not, they are not the person for you. It is just as unfair to expect an emotionally faceblind person to read the emotions on your face as it is to expect a blind person to be able to do so.

Maybe some people on the spectrum do have some type of empathy deficit, but if one needs an empathic person , why marry the person who is not?

"He was not like this when I married him."

It's true that people are often on their best behavior when they are dating. Or sometimes it wasn't that the person changed but the environment did and you are seeing the person operate under a different condition. Out of environment, dynamics, and people, people are the most difficult to change.

I do see what you mean, Chronos. It can get irritating.

I believe there are times when these sorts of women see it as a challenge to mold these Aspie men into their "ideal."
They admire the "logical/intellectual" aspects of the man, but want to change them into social beings who are attentive to their every whim. They see a "diamond in the rough," and want to "bring out" the "diamond," so to speak.

I've seen somewhat of a similar process happen with certain women and "bad boys." A woman admires the "machismo" of the "bad boy," gets turned on by the "physicality" of the man. Yet, at the same time, this same women either fears this man, or find his manners atrocious; therefore, she takes up the challenge to change this man from a "brute" to a refined, "gentlemanly" man who expresses his "brute" aspects at the "right moments."

It should be said that certain men do similar things. They are attracted to the aggressive sexuality of a particular woman, yet desire to change her into a more feminine being, while desiring this "aggressive sexuality" to come out at the "right moments."

This is not unlike the premise of such works as "Pygmalion/My Fair Lady."

aggressive sexuality?

Yep. Aggressive sexuality.

There are men who are turned on by "aggressive sexuality," but want to "tame" it. They see it as sort of a "challenge."

This does not apply to all men---whatsoever.

Men who date promiscuous women or women who dress provocatively but then expect the women to become modest when they marry them.

No I don’t know what it is, what’s aggressive sexuality? Like a woman who raped men?

No. Not at all.

If a woman, all of a sudden, decided to sit on your lap while you're both watching TV, she would exhibit "aggressive sexuality."

Anyone married for a long time (as I once was), AS or not, runs into attitudes and habits in their spouse that are not consistent with the rose coloured glasses we peered through in the early days of romance. This goes both ways, for both partners. You either learn to accommodate differences, or blame your spouse in a self righteous way, which can become habitual bitterness. The first can lead to a richer relationship, the second to the deadly influence of mutual contempt. Those who are control freaks are more likely to take the second route.

That is very true.

And in most of the stories; the negative traits these women whine about are often not related to AS in any shape or form - such as alcoholism; or abuse.

Which makes whether they have AS or not totally unimportant.

Also correct.

That just sounds cute and playful.

This?


Yeah i dont know how I’d feel about my gf being indiscriminating and unselective with other guys.

I probably would t care if she wants to wear short skirts or something like that. I’d probably like it. Probably would be best not to around my family though.

That’s my point. One can be “cute-aggressive.”

The "he wasn't like that when I married him." is a common claim and then they sometimes list traits that are, if he truly has them, impossible to hide. Like a severe lack of (cognitive not just emotional) empathy. How do you hide that? You either can tell what the other person feels and then you can act accordingly or you can't but then you can't fake it either.
Or a complete lack of understanding how conversations work. There was that one woman who claimed her husband can't hold any normal conversation. Like, when she tells him that her friend next door has a new cat he responds with "Cats are allowed in apartments here but dogs aren't". Or when she tells him she was at the indoor swimming pool he states a random fact about indoor swimming pools. And I just wondered 'Shouldn't you have noticed this before you married the guy?' (Didn't ask her that though).

Last edited by NorthWind on 11 Feb 2018, 4:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Typically when I ask them why they married him they will either state he changed after marriage or they will swoon over his positive traits, but obviously, in marriage, his positive traits aren't enough to placate her.