Can Asperger's look like emotional abuse?

[NotThemCrows]

I posted on here last week, concerned about my DHs behaviour. I have read the Lundy book (fantastic- huge thanks to all those who pointed me in that direction) and recognised some of the stuff in there.

Last night I had a 1 to 1 session with our Relate counsellor for the first time (had about 4 sessions together and DH had one by himself 2 weeks ago) and she thinks that my DH may have Aspergers.

This does make a lot of sense to me, he is socially awkward, no empathy, no emotional awareness etc.

Could his major problem be Aspergers?

I was just wondering if any else has difficulties with an Aspergers DH that feels like EA.

Either way he still has anger issues, has demonstrated unacceptable behaviour and I have totally had enough of his bs and want a separation.

I am just trying to make sense of it all (or am I making excuses?)

Thoughts please

Peppa, Your post was very helpful, I had started to work out that I needed to build my reserves so that I could take care of my DCs and myself but your post added that clarity. Yes, whatever happens I need to be in a better place. I just have to make sure I action it.

Horse, I did an AS test and I was very low on the scale, again I think this is a factor as we might all revert to our 'natural' state when under stress and as the communication fails as we become less tolerate of each other.

ommmward, x-posted - yes I agree, I always try to label the behaviour, often the difficulties is being calm enough to think it through. A bit like disciplining a child, you have to reflect on the behaviour and decide what approach to take. When I was able to sit back and analyse DH's behaviour I realised it wasn't quite usual which took me to this thread where AS was mentioned and light bulb moment.

This reminds me of something DM told me about her and DF going to a musical before I was born. Poor DF stood it as long as he could, then just got up and left, and (I think and hope) waited for her outside.

DM. who does not entertain my AS theory, has remained puzzled by this unexpected behaviour which seems to her unkind and to have put her in an awkward position. How can DF seem kind and selfish at the same time?

To me, this sounds like DF making the very sensible decision to bale due to sensory overload. This may actually have avoided a potentially more embarassing meltdown in public, with DM present.

That's very interesting Om. It is indeed a modern phenomenon that women expect men to share everything with them. however it is an ideal which most of us probably will never achieve. What we need to watch out for is where children are involved and the relationship is unbalanced. I think we need to set very firm boundaries on what behaviours we will allow our children to witness.

yes, I guess, horsetowater, although (and perhaps especially when there are spectrummy children in the mix) I think it's more important to be modelling a functioning AS/NT relationship, with all its quirks, than to be faking a conventional NT/NT relationship - so people walking abruptly out of rooms when they are in sensory overload rather than having a meltdown, say, is something I definitely WOULD want my children to be picking up as a better of those two options in extremis.

Even meltdowns, actually - I mean, ideally the children would never see them, but it's also not the end of the world for a child to see that once in a blue moon one or other parent (and it definitely isn't always going to be the AS parent who goes into meltdown, at least it isn't in my experience) suffers from emotional overload so much that they meltdown - And Then They Get Themselves Out Of It. I say that because I don't think one can be hard and fast. If things get so overwhelming that someone goes into complete meltdown, you can't exactly tell them to stop immediately because their behaviour is unacceptable and crosses a boundary. So it's all hands to the pump for everyone (including the meltdownee) to defuse the situation as quickly as possible. And learning to defuse such a situation kindly is a massive skill for both adults to be learning. If children observe and learn was well, I think that stands them in good stead for the future, because they ARE likely to be in situations in their lives where people they care for, adult or child, cannot always control their emotions. Especially if they have autistic characteristics, learning how to cope with other people's strong emotions may be quite a challenge, so it's a really good thing to begin that process when there are other people around who are older and ultimately responsible rather than protecting them until they end up in their own relationship without having begun to learn any of those strategies and acquired the tools they need.

I wanted to say something similar ommm but I think you've said what I was thinking much better than I could have :)

Hmm I think for a child to see its main carer going into meltdown is going to be frightening and unsettling. Sure they have to learn to deal with stuff but I think the risks of adverse effects on the child's wellbeing are too high especially when they are young. I think social services would go along with that too.

But if the child also has AS and is learning to deal with their own meltdowns, it does help if they can see it is actually not the end of the world, and that there are effective coping strategies.

Of course it's going to be frightening and unsettling for a child to see an adult meltdown. And that's a reason to be working really really hard at preventing meltdowns, whoever is having them and for whatever reason. But I don't see it as helpful to anyone to say "right. That's it. Any more meltdowns and that's the end of our family; you will have to move out and have only limited access to your children". Had anyone said that to me in the period when we were still getting things sorted, I would now be living a very lonely existence on my own in a bedsit. [and I would describe myself as the NTest one in my family]

Did it damage my children to see me meltdown while we were still learning how to live harmoniously as a family? Yes, but I hope not irrevocably.

Would it damage the children more to have the family permanently broken up because some arbitrary line had been crossed rather than trying to minimise the children's exposure while learning intensively how to prevent the recurrence of such meltdowns? Hell, yes.

Very interresting input here.

And I think this is actually one of the big issue with an AS/NT relationship.As the NT person, I am expecting some things to happen. One of them is to share some emotional closeness with DH. And we are not.
We are close in some ways, have actually managed to be cuddly again but... when it comes to sharing emotions, it all goes down to pot. The thing is, if it was only something that happens when there is some sort of emotional issue (I mentioned the death of my gran for example) that woud be OK. But for me, it is going down to what we share when we make love, ie for me it feels like having sex not making love iyswim (God I am saying much more than I ever anticipated here...). Which isn't condustive to a happy and fulfilled sexual life.

The other issue for me is the fact that I cannot see a way to broach the subject with DH. I think if we were both working at it together as ommm was saying, then it would be different. A the moment I do it all on my own.

You know the thing that is completely crazy is that I am not british, my culture is different and I do things in a very different way than most people (more 'hippy' type perhaps?) and who I am is going so much against what DH would have seen as 'OK' when we got married. Why on earth did he chose me, the one person that would make his life difficult by proposing so many new & different ways of doing things???

Re dealing with our AS husbans, perhaps we should apply some daoist phylosophy here: 'Don't get involved with other people.' ie, as I read it, let them deal with their own issues and do not take it personnally, try to change them/make them better??

BTW for me the issue with the dcs is around their sef-confidence and whether they feel love and respected by both their parents. I do know dc1 doesn't feel like this towards DH.
dc2 might have some AS traits. He is quite oblivious tbh.

Hello, I've come to this thread via dontaskme's and haven't read it all. As I'm not currently affected by the issues myself, I'll try not to hang in too much. I was prompted to reply by this post:-

ThePinkPussycat Sat 18-Feb-12 02:08:27

NPD is merely a label for a cluster of behaviours and beliefs. One theory of PD is that following emotional trauma in childhood, sufferers become stuck at the age of the trauma, emotionally speaking, and I think there may be something in that. I don't believe it is thought to be due to differences in the brain, like AS, and is a result of nurture, not nature.

Actually there are measurable differences between PDs and 'non's in brain configuration AND activity patterns. Quite a few of these differences are similar to those noted in autists. It's unknown, yet, whether all PDs (or all cluster B disorders) show similar differences. Neuropsychology is a new discipline, and PET scans are still hideously expensive. Most of the existing work has been done on convicted psychopaths, though it's now being broadened out to BPD.

It has been theorised that 3 factors go into making a criminal psychopath: Brain shape; genetic marker; early trauma. A person with the brain shape and genes, who had a happy and secure childhood, will never be like everyone else but isn't motivated to inflict harm. If yous aw the documentary, you may have noticed that the specialist's wife said "He's a Jekyll and Hyde character" - she told the camera there's a whole side to him which is secret. The specialist, it turned out, has the gene and the brain but a lovely family.

In autism, too, there's a brain difference similar to the sociopathic one and a genetic component. I don't know if there's a linked gene. The brain difference, in both cases, causes social difficulties such as lack of empathy and language errors. There are also similar tendencies to hyper-sensing. In severe autism, lack of sensory filtering leads to an utterly painful battering by sensory input. Asperger's sufferers often have one over-developed sense - two Aspies I've known had better-than-perfect vision (his optician said "Like an eagle") and abnormally sensitive hearing, respectively. This is also found in sociopaths.

Please do note, I'm not theorising that ASDs and PDs are the same. I'm confirming they are both genetic in origin and can only be managed, not cured. They are both spectrum disorders and share some characteristics.

After trying to live with both at various stages in my life, all my life, I'm satisfied I'm more NT than not. And I will never again choose to have more of either in my life. The way my brain's constructed, I want effective two-way communication (of all kinds) with people: not an endless puzzle that can never be solved. I do think this is the main point for anyone trapped in an unbalanced relationship.

Naming a problem can help with decision-making, but it's not worth getting bogged down in the details! My (narc/aspie) mother said "When I was a girl, it was just different personality types, we didn't have all these names." She's got a point.

I want effective two-way communication (of all kinds) with people: not an endless puzzle that can never be solved.
It is certainly one of the issues. What do you expect from your relationship, what do you call a 2 way relationship. Eg. in my case we have a two way relationship on some levels. On other level, it isn't a one way relationship. I would more say it doesn't exist at the level I would have hoped initially (see my post above). I don't belive that other people aren't a puzzle. We all are to the others because it is impossible to know what the others are thinking (and feeling. Some people can't even tell what are their own feelings). It's just that most poeple follow a certain script that makes them 'easier' to understand whereas AS people don't which makes them more difficult to understand. However, once you know the 'rules' they are not that different.
It does mean though that you do need to make an effort to understand what is going on, perhaps in the same way that you need to make an effort to understand the way people are behaving in a foreign country where the script is different?

I do think this is the main point for anyone trapped in an unbalanced relationship.
That really depends what you expect from that relationship though. It is only unbalanced if you expect A and you have B.
And no one is any more trapped in a NT/AS relationship than in a NT/NT relationship.

Just to say that much of what's being discussed here is also cropping up on the Worried about my sanity thread. So much good advice and insight.

Yes, I should have said 'feels trapped'.

I am a fucking expert at watching my tone of voice, my precise choice of words and at interpreting things that sound rude in the most generous way possible. It's exhausting. With non-AS, non-PD people, I can just get on with communicating and we'll all understand each other thanks to non-verbal clues and environmental feedback. I speak several other languages and cotton on fast to different cultural mores. This is all because I'm NT.

I understand the differences, Peppa, believe me! I'm not saying one way is 'worse' (except wrt to malignant sociopaths, obv) and can see advantages to the other kinds of character. But I've now chosen not to put myself through hoops of fire for them. I no longer care what the diagnosis is, because the impact on me is the same - and so is the effort I have to make when communicating with them.

I did say I wouldn't harp on here, so am off now :) Thank you for the space!

garlic that's OK :). I don't think you have to stay in a relationship with an AS man just because he is AS either.
And yes it is more work than NT relationships. And it will not be suitable for everyone. And it might not meet what you expect/need from a relationship.
And that's OK.

But for me at least, my relationship with my AS DH isn't about me making huge efforts to be 'at his level', to 'understand him' or to 'make things easier for him'. It is about myself and learning to be a better person for myself. In some ways it is a very selfish thing to do.
But what has happened is that as I changed my behavior (for myself but not for him), my relationship with him changed too. And the one with my dcs. All for the better.

I have been wondering though. If, like quite a few of us here, we did get married and have dcs with these men, then in some ways the relationship must have been 'good enough' at some level. I know my H has had quite few girlfriends before meeting me but it was never a long term thing. The way he is was obviouly not OK for these women and they knew straight away.
But for me, his attitude must have been OK. It has been OK until we had dcs and it all got too much for DH. That's what tells me it can should work for us.

Yes as you say it is bloody exhausting garlicand one thing I (?people with AS) want from my home and family is for it to be a safe place of refuge where I am able to have a rest from the concentration and attention with which I have to conduct the rest of my life. Sadly this too can cause problems with family interactions

The brain is a very plastic organ (in the technical sense ) and I wouldn't be surprised that the self-wiring it does from birth shows up in neurological differences. I do take your point re PDs though.

'Twould be quite handy if it was literally plastic, eh? We could all have 'em remodelled to suit!!

I used to help out at an autists' social club thing (in a bar.) The noise was incredible, as they could all let loose for once instead of word-watching, etc

My god, did they swear a lot!!!

Peppa - your post at Wed 07-Mar-12 16:37:36

yes, that. All of it.

On some level, the quirks of AS/NT are/were right for the pair of people in question. I can so easily list some of the aspects of our relationship which are down to our particular AS/NT blend which would drive many many women crazy, but I LOVE those aspects - because of various of my own personality quirks, I don't want the NT norm.

Garlic your input is appreciated. I can't keep up with this very well. I said before that it doesn't matter why people are the way they are but how they make you feel . It is hard to face up to the reality that you've made the biggest mistake in your life, for 25 years. It was easier to just blame him but of course it was just bad luck that we met at that party that night and needed each other.

But in the end it is about the children. They have a right to feel safe and to reach their full potential and that is far more important than any reconciliation that might or might not happen.

Yes one it is very worthy to model good conflict resolution to children but if it should never involves emotional turmoil and certainly never damage.

Bler stoopid smartphone!

horse, You haven't made a mistake!!
How can it be a mistake? Why would you want to look at a 25 years relationship and say it was all a mistake? Was there never some good times? Is there not some very good things that came out of that relationship (Children perhaps?)?
Nothing is black and white.

Thanks for pointing out this thread peppa and ommm. I am going to read it and come back!

Reading back, isn't it interesting that garlic and I have both had to do the same careful monitoring of our speech etc, she because she is NT interacting with AS or PD or AS/PD, me because I am AS interacting with NT or PD or AS/PD (NCL).