Aspie men and NT women - what are the biggest huddles

Post Reply New Topic

I am an NT women married to a man I believe is in the spectrum, although he has never been diagnosed and refuses at this point to even think about the fact that "he is not normal" there are so many threads that completely explain all the "odd behavior" I lived with. It even clearer shows me his strange reactions to others not appreciating his style of conversation and his openness with out tact.

His whole life he has been told by his friends (the ones that in my world really did care and tried to help him) that he is not normal - some thought bi-polar - and other things.

The part that is severely bothering me today is, Simply this. If he does have AS then I treated him all wrong for years. I was expecting him to behave "normal" I am not talking about men and women differences - More standard NT social normal things.

Like when you invite a couple to dinner you show up and try to talk to them.

When someone invites you to dinner you do not sit on the couch with your head in your lap and refuse to eat because you are not really wanted there.

At our wedding reception he left and went home to sleep.

he was always complaining about the smells in the house that no one else could notice.

oh the list of confusing behavior is oh so numerous

you don't Cut yourself out of the wedding photos one the wall and then put just the wife back in the frame?

he would steal the photo I had of him in my office .

The part for me that became unbearable is ... when I repeatedly asked him clearly to not do______ and please try this_______ the behavior never changed. he seemed to be able to put it on at whim.

he could shut off completely all emotional connections with me if he was not happy - cold is an understatement. from where I sat.

conversations were insane we had the same argument for years and it always came down to he would never answer a question because he said "I could not comprehend what he was thinking"-" I did not really want to know what he thought" it was too complex"

condescending, rude, abusive, behavior is how it is perceived in a NT world.

OK from a AS perspective is this normal to you or is this even way off for you ?

when we dated I knew he was "odd" in many ways but I like odd and quirky. which is in this case fun and silly sometimes - although he did not know when to stop most of the time. Or when it was Not the time.

But when we married it all seemed to fall apart - is there any hope for these relationships - they seem like so much work. And beleive me I am one of the most patient people on this planet - and that was not enough.


Please don't yell at me for treating him unkind. If an NT has a relationship with a Person they believe to be NT - these are rude, unacceptable, crazy behaviors,

If he's expected to be there, he should be there. If it's not clear to him that he's expected to be there, then tell it to him in an open and straightforward fashion.



I'm a bit confused about this situation



Hmmmm.... Did he also tell you why he did that?



Maybe some of his senses are sharper than those of most people. It's not uncommon for people in the spectrum.



????



Why would anyone do that? Did you ask him?



Hmmm.... Either he's unwilling to change or he just doesn't have a clue how to. Relation therapy with special attention for his condition (whatever it is) might work in case of the latter option. In ther other case, I'm afraid your marriage is doomed.



I guess that's his way of showing anger. Some people get beserk when they're angry while others just close off and lock themselves up into their own little world.



If he is in the spectrum, he probably does have very elaborate thought processes most NT people wouldn't be able to grasp because they're simply not used to it. I've often found many mental tasks most NT people find difficult to be very easy, whereas I have problems taking care of all the household tasks required to live on your own.

I have Asperger's Syndrome, which means I have no instinct or intuition, which includes empathy. To simply get through the day, people like myself need to constantly analyse tons of data just to take care of everything that's expected from us. As an adult, that can be extremely stressful and tiring and most NT people simply don't have a clue of even how many thought processes as involved in baking bacon and egg.



Some of his behavior seems pretty weird to me as well, but without knowing his motivations it's impossible to make a definitive conclusion. To him, his behavior probably makes perfect sense and isn't anything but ondescending, rude or abusive. He may actually believe he's treating you like a princess while you in fact feel emotionally neglected.



People with Asperger's Syndrome (like myself) tend to be very loyal, very straightforward and can be fun to hang around with if you like odd and quirky, however with each of these traits usually comes an equal oposite that's less enjoyable. I guess you can't have it all....



If both of you are willing to work and you find a way to get around each other's less likable traits, there is most definitely hope.... However, this means you'll have to convince him to put in an extra effort himself and to seek strategies that make things easier for both of you. If you don't know how to get him this far on your own, relationship therapy could be an option.

This forum might help:


http://asdrelationships.freeforums.org/

I can explain the pictures. Sometimes people with AS can't bear to have photos or images of faces around because they feel like the people in the pictures are watching them/it makes them feel uncomfortable. People with AS can sometimes humanize inanimate objects. Yes, we know they're inanimate, but we feel stronger attachments etc towards them than is normal. It is likely that he feels very uncomfortable looking at still images of himself for any number of reasons tied in with that Autistic characteristic. It might be that he cannot bear looking at his own still image.

This is quite common in people with AS. The fact that he left your photo in could be because he feels it isn't his right to take your image away, or maybe he feels it would hurt your feelings for him to remove photos of you (which is only why he took away images of himself). This is something you really needed to talk to him about, to find out if the photos made him feel uncomfortable.

I once crossed out my own boobs with a permanent marker because I hated them. I used to hate seeing photos of myself too because I hated my body. I never thought about cutting me out or coloring me out.

Some of it does some normal for me. The reason you behave poorly and overly dramatic around others is simply because you get so stressed about social gatherings, which ironically is a happy event for others. I get around it by being very self aware of the problem at all times:

1. I'm starting to get irritable
2. but nothing bad has happened.
3. It's just because I'm starting to get exhausted.
4. Other people are enjoying themselves, gotta keep my head cool and don't screw it up for them.
5. Keep being positive, or at least pretend

That's my process at such times. Maybe your husband was too depressed to make an effort with himself. Then it can be very difficult, and it's easy to just cut off from the "normal world".

I appreciate all the comments -

But where does reality come in to play?

It seems to me (looking in from the outside so excuse me if i am wrong) that it is almost as if Aspies feel they live in an alter reality. Which might be the case.

And yes I asked all the time about his motive and never got an answer so I remained clueless until I found an article about aspergers just a few weeks ago.

He is 34 years old and has not been treated well by most people if he really does have a real identifiable yet workable issues. he was very insulted when I even suggested there was something "wrong" which all his life people (NT's) have been telling him. A group of his friends thought he had brain damage due to a childhood accident. He joked about that as why he was 'different" and the sad part was that they all believed it to be true because his behavior was ...

Not Normal'

my heart aches for all of you dealing with this since I know what it is like on a very small scale to be different and have inner turmoil the rest of the normal world does not understand. But for very different reasons.

It seems like neurotypical people have some kind of interpersonal reality that exists as a consequence of empathic interaction. Because people with AS lack empathic interaction, we only know reality as we perceive it ourselves and the concept of an interpersonal reality is alien to us.



Maybe AS is the explanation of his behavior. A psychologist could tell more.



We're all scared little animals deep inside our inner selves. Some of us are just better at hiding it and/or coping with it than others.