Married to someone with Asperger's? Support group here!

[picklemepopcorn]

This thread is for partners seeking to understand the dynamics of their relationship with someone with ASD. It is a support thread, and a safe space to have a bit of a rant. Avoid sweeping generalisations if possible, try and keep it specific to you and your partner.
(ASD partners welcome to lurk or pop in, but please don't argue with other posters and tell them they are wrong.)

@TimeIhadaNameChange sorry I haven't experienced that with my DH. Sadly he is the complete opposite and thinks everyone is so great (and is therefore naive)

Time my h is paranoid too, thinks everyone is out to get him. It’s ridiculous at times.

A few weeks ago we had to have a new pump on our central heating system. Before the gas man arrived, he got his wallet (usually hidden under stuff in bedside drawer) and hid it in his car, and insisted on watching the gas man all the time he was here!

@Moffa - I had the same experience with kissing. I think it becomes a sensory overload with tongues - partner would recoil in horror if I tried..

Obsessions with specific people, so and so can do no right, another group can do no wrong. (I'm usually in the second category!)

Current obsession is everyone has ASC except her.

Yeah my DH is obsessed with certain people too. Will really look out for them and regularly call them etc. Sadly I don't fall into that category nor anyone genuinely close to him

Mine mistrusts anyone he thinks is trying to manipulate him or anyone else, but when he does like them they’re wonderful and then at some point something happens and they’re dead to him and he gets down about it.

I wouldn’t say I see signs of paranoia, except in the way he writes off 95% of people that he’s not interested in.

H doesn't seem to have that particular issue with people.
He does trust people with titles (think doctors etc..,) but strangely enough, his first reaction is to distrust me until the fact I know that subject is so obvious that he then believes anything g I say

Struggling today. Dc1 and dc2 asked him fir some help to bake cakes for the weekend (cake stall). It has to be done yesterday evening.
H 'forgot' the list of shopping, took his time for a cup of tea coming back home before going to buy the stuff the dc needed. Didn't come back until 6.00pm. Dcs due to go out for an activity at 7.15pm...,
So I ended up stepping in, hurrying g the dcs to prepare the cake, start cooking dinner because H saw no rush and finishing making the cakes etc...
Amd then wondered why I was stressed out and annoyed.
Well of course miss the bit that I needed to do stuff fur myself.

I HATE the fact I just can't leave him any responsibilities like this.

Thanks, everyone. Interesting to see tha paranoia is present in one or two.

Even more interesting is what you say about some people being able to do no wrong, as that suddenly adds a second explanation to a certain friendship of his. It's basically toxic, I'd go so far as to say he's basically in an abusive relationship with this guy (using 'relationship' in a broad sense). The guy takes him for a mug and has DP running around after him. If it were anyone else DP would have nothing to do with them, but he just can't see it with this guy. He even went as far as to ask a mutual friend why I didn’t like this bloke. He had absolutely no idea.

The tide may be turning, but, as with the threads I read on here from women trying to leave abusive partners, it’s not going to be easy and I'm treading carefully. DP's finally realised that the friend is a user, but when I tried to agree he got defensive of him, so we’re certainly not out of the woods yet. However, if I mention the Asperger's it might help, as he'll realise he has had a reason for being so sucked in.

If anyone has any thoughts on this I’d again be grateful. I can’t get in the way of them too much, as they’d work together so see each other every day. However, other work colleagues have confided in me that they, too, are worried about the situation, so I do have help. Not that any of us are going to interfere other than to try and give DP options of things he can do that don't involve the 'friend'.

MyBrexit - sorry, don’t know what to say. My immediate thought was that it sounds as though he didn’t really want to help with the baking, and assumed tht, by prevaricating, he could get out of it. But that doesn’t explain his confusion at your being stressed.

How I see he with timekeeping in general? Does he assume that time will stretch for what he needs?

What would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in? Would he have been around to deal with DCs' disappointments today?

H did what he normally does he knows are going pervshape but doesnt know what to do. He gets busy with other things.
Which means that even though I specifically asked him to deal with dinner, he couldn't do it. Maybe he was fearful if been in the way. Not sure what he should do. Who knows. But it's a well known technique if his.
If I hadn't been there, I don't know what he would have done. I think just one cake would have been done. But no dealing with the dcs emotionally. He would have expected them to just accept there was not enough time.
And tbf they would have. They are quite used to that/been let down :(

Sorry that was long.
I'm just annoyed that 15 years in I still can't give any responsibility re organisation or something not quite on his radar. Because it just doesn't get done or badly done.

Hi everyone I had to step back for a while but I've just caught up.

Brexit the bit where he stops to have tea when there's a need to get a move on really stood out for me. My husband can't quite prioritise things (at home, evidently it's fine at work..) and I find myself saying, "We need to leave in 10 minutes, you can surely leave X until later." very, very often. He'll be in his bubble, thinking he's actually helping, while I'm asking for help and/or running around doing whet needs to be done to get out the house.

Mine often slows me down in the morning when I’m trying to get out the door as he’ll put the tv on for the children, which slows them down so I don’t do, and his long shower, shaving etc means that I’m waiting on the bathroom.

Not to mention him never getting up if I don’t wake him - it is like having 3 children at times, he has no sense of time.

What about weird staring? DH will just stare at the dinner table, or stare at DS when he's eating his breakfast. When I am finished, I just get up and clear stuff away / tidy up etc, and I chat while I eat. He just stares and doesn't speak until DS has finished eating which takes ages. . There is no vibe, no hussle.

Yes to the staring at an object, or just into space. H stares out of the window, or reads the back of the marmite or peanut butter pot every morning.
I chatter away but he rarely replies

Hi all - I wrote a post on Friday about my partner and what I suspect is undiagnosed ASD.

Bit worried as reading a lot of these posts it seems many of your relationships have ended due to the challenges. I wondered whether anyone has any positive experiences of things that worked for them? I recognise a lot of things in this post.

Have only been with DP 1.5 years but do see a future and we have talked about marriage and kids (albeit vaguely) and I’d love to hear about your experiences with your partners when you got married or had children - worries me to see some people say their DP/DH got a lot worse afterwards??

Hi, Insightful,

The best bit of advice I worked out for myself is that when things are tough not to blame DP but the syndrome. So when he hasn't spoken to me for a few days (which happens from time to time) if I can make myself acknowledge that it's the Asperger's at fault and not him. It doesn't change the situation, but it does remove the emotion and stops me getting so upset.

Further to that, and after discussion from him, I know tell him what he's doing, as, quite often, he doesn't realise that he hasn't said a word to me all week, or, at other times, has been acting as though he's really angry with me when he's not. It was incredibly scary the first time, telling a supposedly very angry man that he was angry, and to stop it, but he snapped out of it immediately.

How accepting of the ASD is he? I'm lucky in as much that whilst DP is undiagnosed he does accept he is on the spectrum. So we can discuss these things together and figure out how to deal with them. If he wasn't aware things would be so much harder.

Can't help with marriage or children though, sorry.

Hello! I'm four years separated from and recently divorced from my ex-H who was diagnosed with Aspergers about 3 years ago now. I worked with autistic children and always knew. We had a very tempestuous relationship tbh and he was also unfaithful but we get on well now it is a business relationship of sorts co-parenting our kids. They live with me and only stay one night a fortnight with him which works out best for all of us. I find email communication works better for us than by phone or in person as fewer misunderstandings.

I have had some luck pointing out to dh when he’s rude - he walked off the other day and got into a lfit without holding it open and waiting for me(!) and I ran for the lift, managed to catch it and when I got in said ‘that was rude, most people would’ve held the lift’.

He looked perplexed, he said you could have taken the stairs.

Similarly I don’t think he’s aware that he looks cross a lot of the time.

It’s much harder to find quiet time when you have children - it’s a serious problem for introverts and people on the spectrum. I think that’s why my dh seems worse now - much less down time and time to workaround difficulties.

insightful it does depend to a large extent what kind of support network and flex you have when you have children - involved gp and friends that can take the kids when you need downtime etc.

TimeIhadaNameChange - thanks - unfortunately the only time I ever brought up ASD (in a very nice way) he shut it down saying no one had ever mentioned that ever (which I am astonished about) and pretty much refused to get any help about it - said he’d rather try and sort out some of the issues himself (things we had argued about like his selfishness, hoarding tendencies, seeming lack of empathy at times etc)

Things are generally fine but can’t help worrying a bit about the future if things suddenly became a lot more difficult for him. Although I know that you can never ‘know’ how someone will respond to marriage or fatherhood even if they are totally NT!

Wishiwas17again - good point. I personally would want to make sure I am near my family anyway and my friendships/networks are very important to me but hadn’t thought of it like that.

I know there are things about his ‘tendencies’ which would probably make him a great father - he’d want them to have the best, be successful and he’d always want to be doing things ‘right’ - I would just have to hope he saw it that way and the selfishness didn’t get in the way!!

The selfishness mostly comes down to dh needing a lot more sleep/down/quiet time than I do - lots of it. I can only speak for mine but he finds the noise/chaos of the kids very wearing and can take them to the parking or swimming once, but then that’s it for the weekend (the weekends he isn’t working or sick).

I do think the not wanting to get help is a worrying sign, having children does put every parent under more pressure. The way he shut down the discussion isn’t great either, just like my dh and not a great tactic for being able to discuss the many complications of children

At least you have some upfront awareness of the potential issues, that’s good.

Yes I have to staring at the empty space too.

It’s much harder to find quiet time when you have children - it’s a serious problem for introverts and people on the spectrum.
Yes fully agree with that and H was a nightmare when the dcs were little. Better now they are teenagers.
However, I dint think ASD can or should allow anyone to use their partner as emotional punching ball. Fair enough they find it harder, fair enough they need some quiet time (every single evening and at the weekend). But I wouldn’t accept now to be treated the way H treated me then. A disability, whatever it is, doesn’t allow you to teat people like crap.

That’s also the issue I have with reminding myself that it’s the syndrome and not H. I’ve done that a lot before. Only to realise afterwards (as in years later!) that actually it was ArSe behaviour, not AS iyswim.
Dc2 is very certainly on the spectrum too. Very bright too so able to ‘mask’ up to certain point. I wouldn’t allow him to just have a go at me or his dbro just because he happens to be annoyed to by something (else usually). I’m not sure now why it was ok for me to let H get away with it for the same behaviour. I’m sure H wouldn’t behave in that way at work either....

i don't think it's even conscious mybrexit, my DH is generally supportive, but I realized today that I've said no the last 4-5 times over the last year I've been asked to go on a work related trip, and the reason has always been my DH's constraints related to his work. The effect of this on my status at work makes me wonder what the other cumulative effects are.

He takes ages to cook dinner on a weekend, and it's nearly always too late for the kids - he sees that as him making a massive contribution when I clear up, look after the kids whilst he's taking a long time to do it, and then I'm doing 90% of the bedtimes.

It's this lack of perspective that gets me down - in his mind, he's doing lots more than his own DF.