Advice, please? Boyfriend with Asperger’s

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Hello everyone. I’ve spent the last 7 years looking for a site like this - goodness knows how I haven’t found it until now! Before I launch into my story, I just want to clarify that I understand the tale I’m about to tell is not exclusively linked to my boyfriend having an ASD. I understand that everyone who has a form of autism is totally unique - I’m just seeking guidance based on the experiences of others.

I’ll cut to the chase: I’m 23, my boyfriend is just shy of 25, we’ve been together 7 years. In that time, a lot has happened, we’ve both worked hard to grow together, but the fact is that he just isn’t growing up in any meaningful way.

I’ve graduated and am now working in a decent job, and am a proactive, energetic and driven person. He has alienated his family, dropped out of uni, spent time homeless, can’t hold down a job and has ended up in massive debt - he blames me for various aspects of this, though I would highlight that my parents took him into their home whilst I was at uni when he dropped out. He has pushed me away slowly, and is now retreating into his special interests (gaming and researching ‘truths of the universe’, as he terms them). He has recently said absolutely abhorrent things to his family based on his ‘research’ (he told his mum that she had caused his autism, based on attachment theory), and basically seems to believe that he is different and superior to others. He has become someone who I am not proud to be associated with, which saddens me when I recall the kindness and potential he has demonstrated at various points in our relationship.

I think I’m finally done trying to make things work, because for me to ever be happy in our relationship, the changes I’d be demanding from him would be so unfair on him. We’ve just simply grown apart.

When I expressed this possibility to him, he threatened suicide. He then went off the radar for a couple of days (during which time I was terrified, and his parents had to coach me and assure me that he was playing a game. He has played similar games when we’ve hit problems in the past.). His family believe he may have Pathological Demand Avoidance, which is why he is failing to respond to opportunities to change and is so effective at placing the blame onto others.

I’ve never had a break up before, this is new territory and I’m finding it very hard to make things final - I have my own sadness to deal with, but I’m also very concerned about his welfare. His family are on standby as I have communicated his recent deterioration to them, but he is refusing to engage with them, and they live some distance away. He lives alone, and is currently recieving support from a charity due to his debt. They, his GP, and all those with an opportunity to support him, have been informed that he is threatening suicide.

My ‘easy’ option here would be to pretend all is well, keep tolerating how things are and just keep trying to put out the fires my other half starts in our lives - but I know I am destroying my own life. How do I extricate myself from the negative cycle he has got himself into, without leaving him totally vulnerable?

First: From the simple math, you have been in one relationship since you were about 16. Yes, it's likely you just grew out of it. It's likely you came to the moment when you realise what you want to do with your life and go on instead of clinging to your past. It's just... simple math of your age. It's the time.

Second: It seems your BF has some deeper issues than simple AS. I don't know what his relationship with his parents is and was, what are his traumas and insecurities, etc. He seems to blame others a lot - this is not a part of the spectrum, it is a separate issue. PDA is about getting so anxious and overwhelmed over demands that one becomes unable to act. It may mean procrastination or finding excuses but blaming others is a separate problem.

Playing a game of suicide threats is also not a part of the spectrum to accept. It's emotional blackmail. Aspies often have issues with anxiety and depression, yes, we are often suicidal but it's not okay to use this to blackmail others. He needs to see a psychiatrist about it.

My personal impression is that you need to go on with your live and just let him go. You have your own life to live and his problems are not your problems. You met as almost children, you have memorable time together but it's time to start the next stage. Like an adult child of an addicted parent, you need to get a perspective to see your past.

Okay so disclosure, I'm NT and have a partner of 15 years with AS.

That said, I think you know what you need to do, you're just feeling guilty about doing it. You're also feeling what is called the sunk cost fallacy, where the more time you invest in something the harder it is to abandon it. Like the person who sits at the slot machine all day at the casino. They think they've spent all this money, so surely it will pay off eventually, but they keep sitting there and sitting there and sitting there, spending more and more money, and the payoff never comes, and now they've not only lost all their money, but they've lost all that time as well.

He is an adult. He is choosing his own way and you can't lead him around by the hand your whole life. If he wants to drop out of life and live in a homeless shelter and not get help, that's his decision, but you certainly don't have to accept that sort of behavior.

As for the suicide threat, that's not only manipulative but it's emotionally abusive. And honestly it sounds like he's got more issues than just AS. He probably needs a therapist and also possibly medication.

Recognize this for what it is and do what you need to do. You can't control what he does; he's an adult and needs to act like it. You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved.

This might be the best thread of it's kind I've ever seen posted here. Far too often when someone joins to request relationship advice and their relationship with an ASD person seems unsalvageable, I'm sitting here wondering what the most tactful way to recommend a breakup may be. Here, as a breath of fresh air, you've already posted that not only do you acknowledge this as the best course of action for yourself, but you've already taken concrete steps toward it. This is very, very, good.

I think what you need to know is that his health & well being is not your problem. It's not your responsibility to be his caretaker or feel like you're obligated to be on suicide watch. Him threatening suicide to you is emotional blackmail in an attempt to get you to stay. That's it that's all. Almost no one ever follows through with suicide, or even an attempt, when they threaten to do so after a breakup. And if they attempt, it's a classic cry for help because they don't know what to do and/or it's an extreme attempt at emotional blackmail to manipulate the other partner into staying with them. Do not fall for any of this. He, and he alone, is responsible for his own health and well being. If he were to ever take such drastic action as to attempt, or complete, suicide, that's on him & his choices for himself and has nothing to do with you, or anything you've said or done - especially since it seems you've been nothing but loving and supporting with genuine concern for his well being despite it not being your responsibility.

The other thing you need to know is that not only is a breakup the best course of action for yourself, it's also the best possible thing for him, too. If you were to cave in to his emotional blackmail & manipulation and stay with him, obviously it would be very destructive for your life goals, professional, personal & otherwise, but it would also be incredibly unhealthy for him as it would enable him to keep being the same self destructive person that he is. So many people don't tend to change until they hit a personal rock bottom & then decide to take decisive action and do something to benefit themselves. If you stay, you'll enable him to stay in just as dark and bad a place as he is right now, or worse as he continues his downward spiral. Once you leave, things will become very real for him as he won't have the comfort of your presence in his life and then will be forced to make a decision as to whether this is the existence he wants for himself or if he's going to pivot and begin doing something different in order to be, and have, better for himself. All of those things are on him to decide and do - none of them are your responsibility to follow up with and do anything about. It may even be best for both of you if you have zero contact with him, completely excommunicate him from your life, so that you can move on with a clean slate & he won't have false hopes that you're going to ever get back together.

It's a different twist on the old cliche "If you love something, set it free.." It's time to set both him, and yourself, free.

Ugh...

I’ve been where your bf is right now. Maybe I’ve been more persistent in my academic life, maybe I’m a little more proactive like you are. But it’s a bad place to be. The answer to your last question, quite simply, is you can’t. He’s going to be vulnerable. He might hurt himself, and if he does, you’re going to be left wondering what you could have done differently. But if you hang on, it’s just going to drain your life. Maybe you can be strong and hope for a turnaround. Maybe you can create an impenetrable wall of peace and calm around you and shut the storm of his existence out, only nurturing what is good and positive about him and leaving the rest. But you are taking a big risk there.

I think you know what you need to do. Just do it quickly.

I’ve also been where you are. Every relationship is different. This one girl I was with FOREVER, like from late middle school through college, I was her first EVERYTHING. So having been there through it all, I felt horrible at just the thought of ending it because I just couldn’t feel guilty for ending the last 6 years of our lives. I was living in a sort of fantasy land, but the truth was she had been wearing me down a little at a time over a period of years until the abuse turned outright brutal. I’d just gotten desensitized to it. What happened was a girl I’d crushed on waaaaaay back in the day showed up out of the blue and showed interest in me. I think my greatest fear had been being alone for the rest of my life, and I didn’t deserve better than what I had. The other girl proved to me that, yeah, anything is still possible, and I woke up to the reality that MAYBE if I really did end up alone forever, I’m still better off without HER.

That’s how I went from being in your position to his, because after the other girl dumped me, I FINALLY realized just how truly desperate and pathetic I’d become. I became much more emotionally detached from women, and that led over time to a total philosophical makeover on how I view love, happiness, and relationships.

A lot of people disagree with me on that, but at any rate things got MUCH better for me.

Don’t let the fact that you were so young when you got together figure too much in your sentiment for him now. Things happen and people change. Don’t let the thought of wasted years turn you back. You are a take-control kind of person. Keep looking foreword and be awesome.

If you think you can, meet up with him at some place that means something to you both, like where you first met, fav restaurant, the zoo, a nice park, whatever. Have a pleasant afternoon. Sometime in the middle afternoon, review the good times, your sadness that it has to end, and your best wishes. It may take some time to deal with, but by sunset it’s done.

While this is important for ANY breakup, it’s absolutely especially critical to yours: invoke the no-contact rule and DO NOT deviate from it. The more you draw things out, the more hope he feels he has in the relationship, the more likely he is to hurt himself and, in one form or another, you. He needs professional help with being suicidal. You can’t help him anymore there. But if he can get help and you’re out of the picture for good, it will be the most help to him. So give him one good day (if you feel you safely can) to say all he feels he needs to say, and then it’s done. Once it’s done, you have to move fast. Get out of there. Invoke no-contact. Take your life back.

Give yourself time to grieve the relationship. 3 months, easy. And after that put yourself in the dating world. Looks to me like you never really got a good chance at all the positive experiences of getting to know people and dating, so this will be new and exciting. Take your time. Don’t rush. Enjoy life.

And by all means, keep coming back, let us know how you’re holding up. We’re cheering for you!

Well he doesn't appear to be making any progress being in a relationship. I have a family member who was much the same way without the suicide threats and when his long term girlfriend finally did leave him, he appeared to improve. I don't know what she said when she broke up with him. He now appears to be out of his slump somewhat and dating. I think he needed the relationship to be over or put on hold for some reason.

Thank you everyone for your constructive replies. I’m sorry to report that this is still dragging on - his family have asked me to cut contact with him (without us having sat down and actually talked about the fact that our relationship is unhealthy and separation may be the only answer) to force him to seek support from them.

They sadly don’t seem to appreciate that, after 7 years, whatever the disparity in our situation, the bond between us and the extent to which we are part of each others’ routine makes this quite challenging. I want the best for both of us, of course, and I’m still as certain as it is possible to be that that is going to be apart, but at the moment getting any sort of closure is an uphill struggle.

The fact that I’ve taken a new job, which had made moving in together not only desirable but a practical necessity, is meaning this is taking quite a toll on me.

Nothing worth doing is easy. It’ll be very difficult at first, but as time passes you’ll regain your balance & a sense of yourself on your own without him. It’s the old cliche “time heals all.” You’ll be ok, just gotta tough it out and wait.

PS you can always come back here and vent if you’re tempted to do something you know you shouldn’t, like contact him.

And I agree with his family at the moment.. don’t contact him, it may give him false hope for the two of you and prevent him from reaching out to his family for help. It sounds like it’s best that you go along with their wishes as then they can help him. It’s nice that they’re willing to do that. Contacting him would just shift the burden of his current state right into your shoulders and that’s not where it belongs. Let his family help him through this, let yours and your friends help you.

This is a hard one and my heart goes out to both you and him.

I myself am just now looking back into my past to see how my Aspergers has effected me and those that I love, so I don't know how much good advice I could give you on that aspect, but I do have a similar experience that might help.

This is a very personal subject, but here it goes: I was engaged to a guy named David for slightly over two years. We both had our dissorders(if that's what you'd like to call them). It was tough as I was having AS meltdowns more frequently, not realizing what they were, and he suffered from schizophrenia which would cause him to have delusions that would make him think he didn't need his medications and he'd stop taking them. He would end up suicidal due to not taking them and I would always have to convince him to start taking his meds again.

One day I had a particularly bad meltdown and ended up in jail for resisting arrest(not my proudest moment). While in jail David stopped taking his meds and wound up with diabetic ketoacidosis. He passed away two weeks later. I ended up developing PTSD because I thought it was my fault that he died and it something I still deal with.

What I'm trying to get at here is, even though you love him deeply, and I can only guess that you feel in part responsible for his well-being, if the relationship is just not healthy for you and/or him, you have to cut ties. If something does happen it was probably going to happen regaurdless of any part or lack-there-of you may have had in it.

You can only watch over, and take care of, him to a certain point, and his decisions are just that: his. It is the hardest thing I've ever experienced, feeling responsible for someone I love so deeply, and to hear he died and I wasn't there, but the truth is I could not have predicted it, and he had a support system comprised of his family helping him, so I prbably could have done nothing to prevent it anyway.

If you need to get out if the relationship, do it, and trust in the support system he has other than you.

Sorry for the long and rant-like post. My thought are with both of you.

My advice in life is do not economically tether yourself to an unhealthy relationship when you have alternatives, and you have alternatives. Find a roommate other than him or rent a room somewhere.

This doesn't sound like a relationship you want to stay in or salvage. First off, his aspergers isn't the cause of a lot of the things you mentioned. The manipulative, and blaming others, that's something else entirely. Hard to say if it's narcissism or that he's just a manipulative person in general. Suicide was manipulation, nothing more, he is not going to kill himself, he just wants to make you stuck. He doesn't seem to want to better himself, in fact, he seems perfectly content with what he's doing (or not doing) with his life. I think you should find someone else that is more worth your time and affection. And it might feel hard since you have been with him for so long, but it's going to be for the best. His issues, are things that you can't fix, and that he doesn't want to fix either. Don't let him having aspergers make you feel bad for leaving the relationship, and ignore his threats, he's trying to control you. This is NOT a healthy person to be around, I promise it will only get worse if you stay. I wish you the best.

Nasty, and inconsistent. He has pushed you away, yet he still wants to claim you.


Don't know. I have always liked people to be clear, and I deal with being told to go away a lot better than with having to guess or being ghosted. It seems you were clear enough, but he responded badly.

There is something else to consider. Mostly, when people know that a valued relationship is threatened, that is when they work hardest to maintain it, and generally the way they try is either the same or an escalation of what they have done in the relationship. A man who is loving and attentive becomes more so, a man who is controlling becomes more controlling. What your boyfriend did looks like an attempt to control you by guilt. I searched for scientific papers on motivations for suicide, to see whether spite is one of them. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioural-and-cognitive-psychotherapy/article/why-suicide-the-analysis-of-motives-for-selfharm/21C12A3A60AEA0F8BC069E3FE81D51A1 lists vengeance as one motive. If your boyfriend is both depressed and spiteful, he might make his threat true.

If your boyfriend has ever been violent, or threatened violence, there is a risk that failure of the guilt trip strategy makes him escalate to violence.

It is good that you seek to end this relationship without further harm to your boyfriend. It also looks like it is good that you seek to end the relationship. I hope you find a way.

You just rip the band-aid off, really fast. Quick as you can.

I’m not a fan of ghosting. But if someone is emotionally blackmailing you, threatening suicide and so forth, that’s grounds for ghosting.

An official breakup date is more than what these people deserve. Yet still I believe in compassion even when it’s not deserved. Always keep the moral high ground. Ghosting in this situation is warranted and nobody in fairness could blame you if you did. I’d prefer NOT ghosting, but you most certainly can feel free to keep it on the table.

Another thing to consider under emotional blackmail is that the reality of all breakups is outright brutal. The best breakups happen when two people are mature enough to see that things aren’t working out and never will, and all the love in the world won’t fix it. Those are the “I’m so sorry, but PLEASE don’t just disappear! You’ve always been such a wonderful friend and I never want to lose that” kinds of relationships. The kind where your kids have play dates and you invite the ex+guy she dumped you for out for Mexican with you and your wife.

That’s what you want if you can get it. But breakups are brutal even then, because nothing sucks worse than a relationship when it’s over, and nearly always when you’re on the receiving end of it. It sucks then because you have no control whatsoever, no way to protect yourself or keep your lover close. Your life is in total chaos and there’s no way to take it back. It really does feel like your life is over.

That’s the way it is and the way it has always been. If you cannot survive being in a bad relationship, you have to leave, simple as that. As much as you’d want to think of the other person first and do the right thing, you cannot be held responsible afterwards, especially if self-harm happens. This is one time when you have to think of yourself first and put the consequences far from your mind.

Absolutely awesome good replies you’ve gotten here. I haven’t much to add, but to wish you good luck doing what needs doing, and processing the temporary but possibly huge emotional pain.

You really have to choose for yourself, your own well being and YOUR future. This is not the time to make wrong decisions based on emotional blackmails.

Toughen up, really hard, and stop the relationship...

If you can move. And don't tell him where you have gone to.
Reduce communication and interaction (face to face meeting) slowly. After a while, you can say that it is over, we never see each other etc. But also during this time, you can tell him what you're unhappy with eg his unwillingness to change, move forward with his life, grow as a person. In that sense he will hopefully take responsibility for his own actions, perhaps he will come to the realisation that he needs to take control and accept his own mistakes and faults.

I know this seems like the passive agressive way out, and it's not direct and up front. But he clearly has rejected the up front approach with his threats. You are left with little option.