I've thought for a while that DH might be on the spectrum but consolidated some of my thoughts last night and looked up some websites on aspergers. Could anyone who knows it well help me decipher whether these are probable aspergers signs or just normal man signs:
- DH finds social interaction - even with his own friends, very difficult. If anyone comes to our house, after the compulsory part of the hosting (eg a meal or a drink) is over, DH can be found upstairs in bed in the dark, or on his computer, sometimes after just half an hour.
- he is very sensory and finds strong smells and sensations impossible to deal with. On winter nights he will insist on having a window wide open to get rid of a smell that I cannot even detect. He visibly reacts when we are out and there is a perfume smell or the smell of dog poo. When DH and I have sex he is obsessed with the way I feel and smell. He wants my body to be soft and if it isn't soft he finds it hard to touch and that often gets in the way of our sexual experience together. He, also, is hyper sensitive to me touching him. If I touch him lightly he will shout "that hurts!" And quite frequently exclaims "ouch, owww" while we have sex, even though my touch is extremely light.
- he is very proficient in maths and gets obsessed by things - boring, abstract things. Probabilities, percentages. He is fascinated by probabilities and outcomes and plays a lot of poker (I have posted about this before.) he also has other obsessions - the prices of things. He monitors them, how they go up, how they go down. Then reads hundreds of articles on why and will happily reel off these facts to people who are visibly bored with the dryness of what he is saying.
- more on sex: DH is mechanical in sex and insists always on "starting at the beginning" if he gets disturbed (by a touch or smell or visual) in the middle. He turns the lights off to have sex and doesn't want to see very much (only an outline). It's like he is reading from an instruction manual. "Ok you do this, you go there, then I go here..." Sometimes when we get into it, it is very nice, but the circumstances and environment for him have to be optimal in terms of his senses (which they aren't always).
- at work he is very admired for his technical ability and good at what he does but he has been given someone to "deal with him/mentor him" because they do not believe that he is "democratic enough." DH is not offended by this and is happy to let his mentor (who I have met) correct him on what to say to who, and resolve the disputes that DH gets into at work over something he has said.
- socially DH can occasionally say some off color things. He will comment on people's ethnicity as a conversation opener. Not judgementally, but purely as an observation. He does not ask other people questions about themselves, but can be sensitive to other people's feelings when he is told about the feelings in the form of a "story."
There are other things I am sure but I can't remember.
What do you think?