Help with Diagnosis

emac1880 · Emu Egg Joined: Jun 24, 2008 Posts: 2

Hi-I am new to this site, and I was hoping that some of you guys who have been diagnosed with Asperger's may be able to shed some light on a situation for me. I am a divorced woman who used to really struggle with frustration and guilt over leaving my spouse of 2 years because I felt sure that he had some problems or a mental disorder or something--I couldn't put my finger on it. However, I couldn't handle being in the situation anymore, because I felt like I was going crazy, so I did end up leaving. I've been doing some reading lately, and now I think that he may have been undiagnosed. I'll give you the story and please tell me your thoughts.

While dating I just thought Mike was a really sweet and smart guy--very quick to please me, be there for me with whatever I needed. He'd spend money on me like it was no big deal and he was always interested in talking about politics and economics which interested me. After getting married though (we dated briefly and didn't live in the same city so I wasn't actually around him in person a lot prior to getting married), a lot of things changed. While Mike was a sweet guy, he was also very stressed out and suffered from a lot of anxiety. It was mostly work-related; he would become obsessed with getting his job done correctly (I later learned that he had previously been fired from a job for being "lazy"--procrastinating on projects and just being overwhelmed and frozen in fear of doing badly so that he ended up doing nothing at all). He would still spend his money, though, even if he didn't have it, and he didn't pay attention to bills. I had to take care of all things finance-related. He was a "neat" person, but he struggled with hygiene, not caring if he didn't brush his teeth every day or take a shower. He didn't seem to get that there was anything abnormal about this behavior either.

He would be obsessed with talking about politics or economics and especially conspiracy theories. He could talk for 2 hours straight, without me ever saying anything, and he may not have even noticed that he was doing it. When he was stressed, he would never talk about it--he would just play video games, watch movies, drink a lot or eat. He would practice a lot of avoidance behaviors when it came to problems he was having. He had a lot of strange health problems (excessive sweating, erectile dysfunction, skin disorders, hallitosis, and others) but he was deathly afraid of going to a doctor. After making him see a urologist for his sexual issues, he came home and curled up in the fetal position and rocked in a corner for awhile. That is the only time I ever saw that.

He would sometimes say things out loud as though talking to people who weren't there. He later told me that he was practicing conversations with people in his mind--people he may bump into later in the week. He felt like he needed to practice social interactions with people, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to do so. He would be rude to people at stores or new people that he would meet, just not saying thanks or you're welcome but seeming to not even notice that he was failing to do it. He avoided doing anything social unless I was with him, never liked seeing his own family (he had a very bad childhood--was ignored, unsupported and had parents who were very self-consumed and unaffectionate) but had no problems being around mine. He was very insecure about his appearance, though he would wear the same kinds of clothes all the time--he had about 100 collared dress shirts that he would wear with the 100 sweaters that he also owned. That's all he wore except for the times he wore a t-shirt.

He procrastinated everything and seemed disinterested in trying to overcome his issues. Though he would say that he was completely in love with me and he would often cry about this when we would fight and he acted immaturely quite often in his expression of emotion, he would never try to work on any of his issues, even ones that seemed really basic and easy. He refused counseling and just had an attitude that he would take care of it on his own, though he never really seemed to try. He also admitted that he would really resent me whenever I talked about our problems and him getting help or asking him to be more responsible, etc. He wouldn't act like it at the time of discussion, but later on when I told him that I was leaving him, he started admitting all these ways that he had been feeling--he said that he'd really get stressed out but feel unable to overcome any of his problems and that even though he knew I was right to be upset at him, all he did was secretly resent me and hold it against me and feel like I should be more understanding and cut him some slack.

He had some OCD traits too--did a lot of counting of things in his mind (he told me about this later), and this is just a random thing, but he had albums of photos he took on trips, but they were all landscapes, no people. He hated having his picture taken. It was like, even though he would seem so arrogant sometimes when it came to his knowledge on politics or economics, and even though he was ultra picky when it came to women (he liked certain types only who had certain interests only and even tried to take me shopping so I would wear clothes like his type), he was also ultra insecure and needy and dependent on female attention in order to have any self-worth.

The biggest thing, though, was his sexual obsessions. Apparently while in his early 20s, he became very fixated on hmm...personal gratification, I will call it. He admitted that he would do this several times a day and this went on for a couple of years. The reason he mentioned it is because he was having significant problems performing and he thought that maybe he had messed something up with his body because of that time in his life. Even so, it never stopped him from trying to be sexual. He seemed to have no control over his body, allowing himself to get aroused at any time during the day, even at work! He would even try to do things to me or to himself while he was sleeping--it was as though his mind never stopped working when it came to sex. Even when his body was not responding, he would try to "make" things work--this was a very common occurrence, and I was honestly becoming disturbed by the whole sexual experience with him.

Anyway, I know that was a lot, and I could write a book on everything, but I just needed to put it all out there to see if any of this sounded familiar to any of you. The relationship is over, and I don't want it back, but if he does have Asperger's, maybe it would help him to be involved in a community of others to try to get some help--though he really struggles with pride, so I don't know that he'd actually do that. I just thought it was worth a shot, though. Thanks.