My boyfriend has Asperger's - need advice on communicating

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Hi all,

I've been dating a guy with Asperger's for over a month now. Before I met him I didn't know anything about Asperger's apart from a few of my friends in school had it.

He's 33 and diagnosed at 25 with high functioning Asperger's. I'm a 24 year old girl and haven't been diagnosed with anything but I'm not good in social situations and haven't quite mastered the art of communication myself. But I think in my case it's because I grew up in an isolated village in the mountains with really antisocial parents. When my boyfriend met my parents he said that my dad seems to have autism because he didn't look at me and neither of my parents said anything when I told them I got an A in my latest exam, they just stared off into space. Whereas he's got a really sociable family of 6 sisters and one brother, all NT.

Me and my boyfriend are having a few problems communicating. The other night he called me for an hour and he dominated the conversation. After half an hour I said "we've been on the phone for half an hour and I haven't said anything yet" he said "sorry, what would you like to talk about?", and I said "I don't know" so he carried on talking for another half an hour. I really don't know what to do when he's talking like that. I don't know if I should interrupt him or what. He doesn't like pauses in the conversation so every time there's a pause he will fill it.

When I first met his mum she asked "does he listen to you?" I said yes because I'd only just met him but now I realise that when I'm bothered by something in my life like work or when I have a headache I don't tell him about it because I don't want to worry him, but then I feel a bit alone.

I've brought it up with him but he sees it as part of who he is. I've got to the point where I need advice on what to do when he's talking, like when he calls me when I have a headache, we're on the phone for an hour and I don't feel that I should interrupt him to tell him anything and then when he says goodnight and hangs up I just feel I should have told him I have a headache. This isn't every time he calls, sometimes he just listens to me for a whole call, which is nice.

Sometimes I can tell he's holding something back and I ask him about it, one time he didn't like it that I leave the tap on when I'm washing up but he didn't want to say anything because he thought it would upset me.

He's a really nice guy and I want a relationship with him. I don't want to change him but I would like us both to work on communication skills, I just don't know how..

I've tried ASD books but they're all geared towards the speaker with ASD, so they don't give advice to the listener like me.

Thanks for your time

sb

You need him to realize that conversations are mutual and require the reciprocation and engagement of two people, I think you should get used to him rambling about various topics or at least just learn to smile when he is, it's something I do at times myself so I think there's going have to be compromise on your part. You really need to express your boundaries and concerns with each other so that you have open and mutual communication and understanding otherwise you will both be unaware of your individual needs.

I do enjoy it when he's rambling and I have a tendency to ramble too. If he's already told me something then I'll tell him so, but other than that I leave him to it. I would like him to take more interest in my life, I tried saying "is there anything you'd like to ask me", but he said he couldn't think of anything and carried on.

If I was in his position I would like it if someone expressed exactly what they were feeling. If you have a headache and don't feel up to talking at that moment, ask if you can call him back when you're feeling better. If you have something to say during a conversation, interject with something like "Oh, I just remembered something but you finish first"; for me, I don't really like to be cut off and never given a chance to finish my idea - I get over it after a moment but for a dozen or so seconds my brain will hang on that unfinished sentence and distract me from listening fully to what the person has stopped me with; I prefer some signal to allow me to properly finish it first. To avoid this kind of situation altogether, discuss with him about providing 'entry points' for you every once in a while - but this would be completely up to his ability to remember to do so.

And if you have interjected, have something to say; to interject solely to inform the other person of how long they have been talking and to have nothing additional to continue with might be confusing or appear pointless, so try to give material to work with, be it something you want to share or something different you'd like to discuss, or, like before, maybe you're just not up to talking at the moment.

Prefix your statements with concerns, if you have them; if you need to say something, but don't want him worrying too hard about it, try something like "I don't want you to worry but...", or tack them on the end if this way does not feel natural for you. For me, if someone tells me not to worry, I usually won't. He might be different, but it could be worth trying. You still need to exercise your needs in the relationship regardless of his Aspergers, it is not your condition. Augment what you can if it results in your end-benefit (like avoiding confusion/ambiguity), but don't adopt his burdens purely for his sake - or at least, not all of the time (sometimes you may be able to justify it as a temporary compromise). To continuously deny your emotional needs I feel would not make very good grounds for both of you to remain happy.

To be honest, if it was me, just showing me this post would probably be the most effective thing; but of course this would be highly subjective and could have unintended negative effects with the wrong personality type, so I can't necessarily recommend it. However, letting him know that you've been researching and getting the opinions of other people with ASD might lend your concerns a significant sense of importance (if he is the type to catch on to that).

The fact that he can't think of anything to ask doesn't mean that he's not interested. At first I thought the same, so I asked, and my boyfriend (who has AS) said that it's just because he really doesn't know what to ask but he likes to hear me talking. In my case, I'm the rambling one and he's quite silent, but you said your boyfriend sometimes talks to fill the silence so you could try to fill the silence before he does.

Welcome to WP!

tell him that a small silence is ok. i learned in social skills class that its good to take turns in a conversation and putting a little pause in there can let the other person know its time to talk. maybe it would be better for you to add something in rather than try to get him to talk about another topic.

I told him it's ok to have pauses when talking in real life, like walking around town. I guess I should have thought of something to say about myself but I'm more used to people asking me directly, "how are you?" "how was your day?" etc. Just something I'll have to get used to I guess.

yeah a lot of aspies don't say those. things like that sometimes become arguing points. i would try talking to him the way he talks to you, he may like being talked to that way.

I ramble like this, too. Basically, just interrupt him and say what you wanna say. At least for me, I don't get mad. When you find a "gap" in the conversation, just say what you wanna say, and turn the conversation toward what you wanna talk about. Basically, for me, I look at a conversation as an exchange of knowledge, if that makes sense, not an exchange of feelings. I mean obviously we all to a point conversate for emotional validation, but I think I'm much more like "I will give this person _____ knowledge" and then I expect the other person to give me _____ knowledge back. I'd say my best friends in general are people who will ramble back at me, if that makes sense. Generally conversations with my good friends in real life, sorta go in "blocks" not back and forth, I don't know if that makes sense, but imagine it like this. I'm talking about Patlabor, my favorite anime, I go on for a few minutes, my friend finds a gap to talk, he'll go talk about like, I don't know...Pakistan, and how TV was in Pakistan, and the conversation will continue somehow magically. My best friend, I don't know, maybe he's NT, maybe he's PDD-NOS, he's black, so culturally that's a bit different, and I'm not a psych, etc, but basically, every phone conversation is just us telling a story that happened. I'll call him with a story that happened to me that day, he'll call me with a story that happened to him that day, how either of us went on a crazy adventure in the woods, something to that effect.

So yeah, basically the best thing to do is just interrupt him and talk about what you wanna talk about. I'm 99.9% sure he won't take offense to it, and if he does take some massive offense to it, he's probably a jerk. Basically, just go back and forth what you wish to talk about, and instead of just going "uh-huh, OK" when there's a gap in the conversation, just say what you want, and he'll probably talk about it. As I said, back and forth, you, him. One thing you might find interesting is, I have a friend, possibly AS, he rambles on similarly to me, he told me in the Middle East, it's considered polite to interrupt a conversation, as it shows you're paying attention to what the person is actually saying. I think this is true, and it's sorta the way I "work," I can't judge people by suddle emotional cues in their voices or whatever when they say "aha, OK, I understand" I can only process if they understand/like what I say if they say an actual paragraph back to me.

That said, I don't mean to discourage you, but if you're having trouble like this a month into your friendship, things might not turn out so great. I had a friend who was a "good listener" as you seem to be, and...we don't seem to be friends anymore. If you wanna sum it up, assertiveness is needed.

Oh well, good luck and God bless I guess.