is this typical aspie behaviour?

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My BF is a very unique character. He has never been diagnosed so I don't know where exactly he is, but Autism, Aspergers and Downs run in his family. he has just lost his mom in an auto accident. i don't know how he will cope with it, short or long term, as she was his rock. the one constant in his life that kept him sort of grounded. he always tried so hard to please her, and to gain her acceptance. i think she was on the spectrum too, super intelligent but emotionally cold. so she understood him like no other. they had a very special relationship.

He is super good at math and language, but he is super fixed in his thinking. He has one way of looking at things and one way only. There is no multi layers to his persoanlity, everything is very black and white. and usually, mostly, we can never see eye to eye on anything. he has his view (which to me is somethimes strange and illogical) and I have mine. he can voice his, but when i try to he has a melt down. he doesn't like hearing what i have to say and he reacts immidately with anger and frustration. throwing things and venting. acccusing me of not supporting him or hastling him. this could be in reaction to something as simple as me saying that i don't want to have lunch with one of his friends.

it's totally illogical to me.

he seems to turn everything around into an accusation at me, when that is the very thing that he is doing.

I like to discuss. he doesn't.

often he will make decisions about improtant things in our life, and he won't even inform me.

i feel shut out and left cold.

i don't feel like there is an 'us'. and each time he has a melt down - which involves throwing things and anger and accusations, i feel a little more emotiaonnly drained. and i take another step back. each time it happens i detach a little more. until it has now reached a point where i feel i can no longer be myself. i can't express myself or my opinion cause i never know how he will react. he reads EVERYTHING i say as a CRITISISM, and it's NOT!! !! !

i feel as though i've hardered, creating a shell around myself until i break down in tears as another one of his tantrums erupts.

i honestly don't know if i should stay or go.

to be honest, this week i had steelied my self to a postiion where i was going to tell him i was leaving. i'd had enough and oculd take no more. now his mom has had the accident i know that i can't do that just yet. it wouldnt be fair to him. but i am so fed up of always making excuses for him. always letting him get away with atrocious behaviour and emotional violence towards me, because of his personality. i feel like i have tried so hard to make it work, to the point where i have put his needs first.

i am a soft, sensitive, emotional person, and i have needs too.

i don't want to have fights all the time.
i don't want to be on the end of his meltdowns.
i want to be heard.
i want him to recognize how his behaviour is affecting me.
i want him to stop throwing tantrums and having meltdowns.
i feel like a grown up trying to mother a child and i am in way over my head.

i feel like im drowning.

As I said in a previous post, his actions are not typical of adult men with AS.

An adult man with AS is far more likely to point out the flaws in your argument if you say something they disagree with.

An adult man with AS probably wouldn't care if you didn't want to have lunch with his friends, and honestly, isn't likely to have many friends, or arrange lunch with them.

Your boyfriend could have a variety of issues...borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorder (NOT OCD), or he could just be an @ss, and in this case, I do not think you should assign a label to him as I do not think you have delved much into all that is listed in the DSM-IV.

To be quite honest, if he were my boyfriend, I would have left him long ago. Throwing things, hitting things, yelling, screaming, and belittling simply because someone does not agree with you is not acceptable in a relationship.

If you didn't suspect that he has AS, would you put up with this behavior from a boyfriend? That might sound cold, but why should a disability allow one person to mistreat another? And physical violence is not acceptable.

Only you can decide if you should try to make it work with him or not, but you do have the right to seek a mutually satisfying relationship.

JSB

Chronos I just googled DSM-IV, and obsessive compulsive personality disorder. And the first page of characteristics I read were almost spot! I am in no way qualified to diagnose what he migt or might not have, but from the list of characteristics I'd say that it looks like he might.

I obviously have my own issues to deal with, like why do i stay and put up with it, and more importantly when and if I'm going to leave or not. i'm teetering on a precipice right now, and i need to think long and hard about what I am going to do.

Thanks so much for the insight though Chronos. from what you are saying he doesn't sound like a typical Aspie.

JSchoolboy, you raise a good point. And I can't argue with what you say. Thanks.

My ex has depression. He acted really badly toward me (very abusive) and never said sorry about the behaviour (saying always "I have depression, I can do this to you."). I didn't dump him until I hated him, he kept on saying that if I left him he'd kill himself (he didn't). I stayed with him for three years and it took me almost a year to get back to being myself again.

Please don't make my mistake.

You're between a rock and a hard place here. It seems to me your BF has major issues but yet if you leave him, he might decide to kill himself or go into reclusion. I say this because it sounds like he's emotionally fragile - all aspie guys are emotionally fragile to an extent but some are even more friable.

This is a hard thing to handle by yourself - have you thought of seeing an psychologist/therapist that specializes in ASDs in adults for advice about how to handle this even though I think your BF needs professional help ASAP?

leave him
if you don't now, you'll just keep putting it off

My best guess is something happened to him - he's likely been ostracized for being different or odd, has his own inner demons of sorts chasing him up a wall with a cattle prod, pretty much telling him that he has to be perfect or else. This isn't normal for people with AS, there are those with AS who have very little in the way of what you'd consider working memory so, they can't react on the fly to things and have rigid programs because they know they'll fall on their faces and take reprisal for it - even they though I think understand that they have to be careful on just how much they bug out if a routine is changed because they know at heart that its inappropriate.

Overall though it doesn't sound like he's very conscious, like his body's just going on auto pilot and self awareness is minimal, either that or his brain has some very hard fault lines. I don't know what you can do aside from what you indicated, weather for a few more weeks or a month and leave. He'd need to wake up some how for anything to change and, I don't know if you can willfully make that happen - you could try but I doubt it would work.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 11 Dec 2010, 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I had a similar situation with my Aspie ex-girlfriend. It didn't end well.

This is exactly right techstep... he is not conscious of his feelings AT ALL and his self awareness is zero. When I ask him how he feels, even now with this tragedy (we are talking on the phone right now as his mom lived in a different state) he says he doesn't know.

I ask do you feel sad? empty? alone?
Same response, 'I don't know".

When he has one of his meltdowns, he cannot listen to the other person (who caused it in his view), he cannot empathise, or understand that they might have different feelings, opinions, or actions that are just as valid as his own. Instead, all he does is blame, project, whine about how they caused it, it's their fault, they don't understand, they did the wrong thing... etc.

It's like he has a major blind spot when it comes it his own inner workings.

After the anger and outburst, there is always saddness tears and remorse. but never a sorry.

When I try and inject some reason into it, and say nobody is perfect, his response is, "I'm perfect." he also often relates himself to a superior machine. He is quite robotic in that sense and reacts predictably to promts.

He has a few ticks.

he only seems to have a few limited emotions: anger, saddness being the two predominant ones.

he is quite controlling and can be predatory.

he is methodicaal in some details and blind ignorant of others. So he'll polish his car all day, every day, yet will step over a dirty cup he left on the floor for weeks and never think about picking it up.

I realise now that perhaps he isn't an Aspie as I thought, but i hope you don't mind me posting here one last time, because you all seem to have a far greater awareness of what it could be, and honestly I need all the advice I can get at the moment.

thank you all so much, you have a wonderful community here. and i appreciate all who have posted.

Maybe he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

I've had friends who were - they need to be leader and mentor of the group always, need a fleet of young padwans to teach, but if anyone learns from that teaching or starts becoming a leader they don't like it. Their own functioning can be mysterious to them but, they usually know how they feel or why they feel it. If he's got to act like he always knows more than she does and goes on in a stuffy know-it-all tone or tries to talk like he's Mainard from Tool - possibly but, this guys doesn't sound like he's got much personal glamor or ambition for glamor, rather he just sounds like a wreck.

If you're thinking of leaving him, it could be a beneficial shocker and he may clean up some of his act or at least look for help. When I was 7 my father was an alcoholic. My mother took me one morning and we fled to her parents house while he was at work. She said if he didn't clean up she was leaving for good with me. He immediately sought help and cleaned up and my mother returned to him.

My father was very rational though, so maybe your boyfriend would lose the entire point if you told him that you're leaving if he doesn't get help or something. The bottom line is you sound like too nice of a person to deserve how he's treating you, so if he won't change... it seems like you should leave.

I don't believe a mental condition is any excuse for a partner to have to put up with hurtful behavior.

That he says "I'm perfect" and never says sorry leads me to believe you will have a much happier life without him. You sound like a nice person and thus deserve better than you're getting at this time.

He may be an Aspie Narcissist but I don't know much about NPD, regardless you deserve better.

If you'd like to pm me, it's ok.

I hope things get better for you.