Married to an Aspie - thinking of divorce

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Ok I want to say thank you...after all this posting I don't think this is the forum for me. I don't want to offend and social communciation can be confusing and since I live with 3 on the spectrum my fear as an NT is that I will say or do something that will hurt. I'm at an emotionally raw place and thought this might help. I have always been hesitant. I wish you well and thank everyone very much for your replies, and suggestions...nothing has fallen on deaf ears. I just think I should not participat. Again thank you.

I am an NT married to an Aspie, too. I also manage everything, and I also feel like I cannot take it anymore from time to time. We have an Aspie daughter. Right now we are working on independence together with her therapist, and I have realized that most of their dependance is my fault. If they cannot do or do noy want to do something I just go and do it myself. And when they do something wrong I go and fix it myself. I put everything on me MYSELF. You have to let them take responsibility of themselves, and fix what they did wrong themselves or they will never learn and will never change. Threatening your husband will not work. For some reason Aspies do not respond good to threatening. They just cannot process it. What you have to do is assign responsibilities to our husband and help him remember them. They take a long time to introduce new chores to their routines, specially things they do noy want to do, so you will have to be patient. If you can get a physical way of reminding him his duties (schedule, app, something he can SEE), it will work better. And if he does something wrong let him fix his mess. He will probably fail a couple times, but will get better with time. And try not to get mad at him. They do not react well to that, either. Good luck!

I'm an aspie married to an NT; both in our mid 40s, and we don't have any kids. Honestly, I don't think any other woman could stand to have me around, but my wife is just that special one who does. I have my routines which could drive anyone nuts. Very weird routines, such as the fact that I collect and restore old Cold War era air raid sirens, and I have to be home on the last Friday of every month, to sound a siren at noon. I guess it boils down to what kinds of stress you can deal with, and what kinds will drive you away. We run a business together, and have dozens (literally dozens) of pets with various ailments and weird problems, which we have rescued. We both feel run to our limits now & then, with too many responsibilities. But somehow it's all worth it with no question, and I think that's mutual between my wife and me. Sometimes we get in a discussion about how many times I need to clean up after pets, and we have to plan our days around insulin shots for dogs, and hormone pills for cats & horses, and stuff like that, which is VERY taxing on the personal life.

We work together to make all this fall in place, and that's how we cope with it. If only one of us were to put the effort forward, it could not last.

Not knowing you personally, I can't offer any opinions or advice, other than to follow your gut feelings. If you're in love with your husband, please try to find common ground with the family situation, and save what you have together. If you have indeed become a mother to him, and the flame is out, then maybe some changes are needed.

Best wishes to you & family to get things worked out one way or the other, asap.

Charles

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Last edited by OddFiction on 25 Jul 2011, 7:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thank you for reaching out here and sharing here, NTinahousew3AS! I have been reading this whole thread with great interest since my wife is NT and I am AS. We have two young boys-- one is AS and the younger one has ADHD.

Your situation being shared here is in no way out of place because you may be able to sort out some useful information and/or ideas from all of the input that has been shared. In addition, you may be helping someone like me to avoid falling into the bad habits of your husband by showing us how badly it has affected you. We can learn from venting and sharing issues like this. This is exactly what many of us need to know -- that we are not alone. We may be miles apart, but we can learn from each other.

My only addition to all that has been shared above is my main issue with my NT wife is in verbal communication. She never seems to give me enough detail. She wants me to understand what she wants from her initial statements. I always need to ask her a few questions more to get all the details filled in. I often tell her that my Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) is broken and I need her to tell me more. I just don't get the "between the lines" or implied information without it being spelled out for me. I know that it is a pain for her, but, she does have a lot of patience for me since she knows that it is an Aspie thing. Your husband sounds like he may be even worse in this regard than I am. You may need to give him much more detail about what you want from him than you would normally have to spell out for anyone else.

Please feel free to continue to vent and share here. Also, if you don't mind, please let us know what your therapist's advice is about this issue. I would like to know whatever you decide in the end and how it works out for you.

I am wishing you all the best.

Well it's obvious not all of this is over aspergers. He just isn't grateful period. Not all aspies are like that by the way.

Is that show Wife Swap still on? Maybe he needs to understand just how good he really has it.

The reason I asked if he was also a mama's boy is I know of a couple where the male was a mama's boy and the wife just does EVERYTHING! He doesn't have aspergers but he gets to do anything he wants which is not take care of the kids period.

Maybe you two should get a divorce and you take care of the severely autistic child because he's not lifting a finger. 22 and 23 year olds are not babies and I resent how society keeps pushing up the age to treat adults like they are still infants.

This is very presumptuous. I have taken valuable advice from Ilka on this and have been doing my fair share around the house for a while now, in spite of working very long Hong Kong work ethic hours.

The domestic situation is very different to work. At work I make sure that there are written procedures to ensure that tasks are conducted consistently and systematically. At home I have great difficulty understanding the unwritten rules that dictate when routine tasks need to be done differently or at a different time. These rules are fart to subtle and complex for my AS mind to rationalise. While I can follow a decision tree and task lists, If I use my initiative, I will get things wrong and have more chance of ending up in the dog house than if I had not done anything at all. I still do not have a workaround for this other than asking stupid (from an NT perspective) questions which is often counterproductive with respect to my wife feeling more like my mother. I am very open to constructive suggestions here.

Same for me too. Communication is difficult the other way too, for similar reasons. I get accused of not giving enough detail - or sometimes too much detail. I don't have this problem communicating with my AS daughter. We can miss detail in our shorthand speach and still understand each other fully. My wife and NT daughter can feel pushed out when my AS daughter and I chat.

My wife may not be so understanding or as patient as yours. She gets very frustrated. The worst situation is when either of us thinks they have understood the other only to find out later that we have only partly understood or understood wrongly.

This has been a fascinating Topic because it encapsulates the aspie/nt struggle and the posts have been so open handed.

NTinahuse, it sounds as if you have amazing organizational skills, insight, patience & determination. I applaud you for stewarding a calm household, no easy feat under any circumstances. Despite my respect for your decision to cease posting; I'll say that you have valuable stratigies for mothers of autistic kids worth sharing. (Add mothers in general, for that matter.)



This scenario is one I am very familiar with, all too familiar with. It's maddening to witness. I don't know the motivation of the father; ego protection? self protective denial? misplaced "protection" of the son? lack of enough reserve energy after the job to cope? Regardless, it has the appearance of selfishness; in the face of extreme need in the son, of which the father is uniquely equipted to help; the father will not look nor hear, muchless act.



When I read this, I knew that you'd arrived at the logical next step; having read all the posts and that you'd truly tried it all and likely, then some.

My best wishes to you and your family, sometimes the most loving action is the toughest one.

[quote="BassMan_720"] These rules are fart to subtle and complex for my AS mind to rationalise. quote]

Typo, I am guessing

Or a Freudian slip

I love my husband very much but being married to someone with AS if draining. My husband can walk right past trash on the ground and say he didn't see it. I just don't know if this is true or he just doesn't care enough to pick it up. I feel like if I could just understand what the truth and the facts were, maybe I would no longer take his lake of attention to detail for things important to me as such a personal affront. I can't even point out something without him getting uber defensive. I've heard many say that it's like having to be your husbands mother and I have certainly felt that way at times. We have been married nearly 7 years and if I had no other stress, I think I could handle his differences without feeling alone in my marriage, without feeling like the foundation, without feeling like everything's on my shoulders. I don't feel like any change is ever a lasting change and truth be told, I'm depressed and although I really don't want to give up, I'm exhausted and feel like I'm just going to break in half at any time. My young son also demonstrates symptoms and I'm trying to get him ready for kindergarten...alone... We are Christians and I believe God put us together but I just don't understand why he doesn't try to overcome these obstacles. It makes me feel like I'm not important enough for him to change although I don't believe he feels this way. I think he's just stuck in his symptoms, ways, and patterns and just cannot break himself of these things. No less, that doesn't make up for the lack of my needs being addressed in our marriage. Am I asking too much?

Hi reckoning

Your situation sounds very familiar. I am a 54 year old married aspie who found out sbout the condition only 2 years ago. I am happy to try to answer some of your questions but from experience, I would rather talk detail in private.

Your husband's behaviour is very typically aspie. He can't help this: really. I csn also steer you to a more exclusive website specifically for people in aspie relationships. If you wish to know more feel free to PM me.

Is there any chance that your husband can get therapy? My Aspie husband has changed a lot (for good) since we married. Because he made the effort and changed himself to adapt to married life. But his Asperger's is mild. I know it is not possible for everybody. Therapy has done wonders for our daughter. I do not know how effective it is for adults, but I know it is possible, and it might be a possibility worth looking into, if you can get it and/or afford it.

Hello - I have been just learned that after 12 years of marriage he has been officially diagnosed with aspergers. We have a 6 1/2 year old that is an aspie as well. I've suggested to my H that he might have it and he never told me, but he had looked into it and said he thinks he might "fit the bill". When issues arose at work he went to see a psychiatrist and has now been diagnosed. I love him and care about him and maintaining my family as a unit, but the truth is that staying in this marriage, i feel, is going to be the death of me. It is SO LONELY. I know that there isn't a magic answer, but I am desperate to find some help. We are in in therapy and the therapist has advised him that the success or failure is going to rest on him. He wants to try, but I feel so deflated.