Married to someone with Asperger's? Support group here! (Thread 3)

[ChangerOfNameAspieThread]

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.)

Some resources from the threads so far:
www.theneurotypical.com/effects-on-differing-nd-levels.html
www.maxineaston.co.uk/cassandra/
I've probably missed some, but will try to gather them later and put in a comment for the next thread!

Previous threads:
1st thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/3281058-Is-anyone-married-to-someone-with-Aspergers
2nd thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/3325419-married-to-someone-with-asperger-s-support-group-here

From Wikipedia

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's belief

Please can you explain where you think the gaslighting is going on?

I don’t understand how can it be gaslighting if this is an open forum, with public posts where anyone can see what has been written? Where have I lied, misdirected and contradicted?

I do not think it is acceptable that you have to suffer in an abusive relationship. I hope you find the strength and help to leave (as I would in any abusive relationship). I know as an autistic person I have difficult traits that my NT husband accommodates (yet he also has NT traits that I accommodate). Incidentally, I have to take the mental load in the relationship - so maybe this is a Male/female thing (but that would be generalising and sexist)

Categorically, as I have stated several times already, I am not saying you are not suffering. I am challenging where I believe that blame is being placed on autism where such behaviours could be exhibited by any abusive person, autistic or not. We are not by default rapists or incapable parents.

An abusive person is an abusive person. Male/female/NT/ND. And all abused partners should be listened to, believed and supported. That is my explicit position.

I actually don’t follow most of the recent posts, they are also too long.

I do hope that some people here do manage to fix their relationships.

I totally understand those that can’t. Me included. It’s very helpful some of the posts. Particularly the feeling invisible part. I’ve felt either non existant or someone who just gets in the way. It started about a year after I moved in. That’s pretty hard to recover from but I think we can.

I want to help DS to be able to form good bonds, and it has been eye opening for me and DP to realize how brains can differ, and how some things like social skills, language can be helped with patience and practice. I never wanted to assume that DS did not want friends, just because he never interacted. That wasn’t my place. I worked hard to give him some of the tools and skills to have basic interaction. Helped with language etc. He has bloomed, and loves other kids now. Things can improve and change.

DP has acknowledged some of his weaknesses but he is stubborn and won’t be helped. His inflexibility is tough, as new relationships need adjustment, and he didn’t at all. I was left having to fit into a corner of his of existing life. Shame really.

Pina - I was diagnosed in my mid forties. I spend my childhood and hideous teens as an outcast - I was different but not understanding why. My (NT) parents deeply preferred by NT brother as he was charming and sociable. I was friendless and appeared to be lacking “girl” skills. My mum was diagnosed with cancer when I was 14 and inside I was absolutely terrified and cried when she went off to get chemo but was told off for seeming like I didn’t care. Double whammy.

Anyway, my point is the fact you know about your son and are helping is SO WONDERFUL. It will be so helpful.

Sorry. This post probably too long too. But I just wanted to say I’m glad you’re on your son’s side. I wish my parents had been on mine.

Best wishes.

Hi everyone,

Hope you’ve all got nice weekends planned?

H informed me he wants to spend some time with the kids but he won’t be free until after 3pm on Sunday as he has to work all weekend. He hasn’t seen the kids properly for over 2 weeks. Sometimes I feel like I live with another species, his idea of being a parent is so weird.

I’ve got an appointment to see a solicitor in 3 weeks. I just want to move forward from this emotionless relationship now. Time away gave me clarity to see it for what it is. I know it’s unintentional from him as he can’t see it but I cannot go on.

I’d really love someone to give me a hug full of love. He never will.

Hi Moffa, he does sound like he hasn’t got being a parent - you can’t squeeze them in for a few hours every few weeks. At least, you can but you then have to take up the slack. Do you get any time off and support yourself? Single parenting is tough. I hope you get a big hug full of love at some point! Sometimes that is all we need. what are you doing this weekend?

What is everyone else doing?

I’m just in this weekend which will be hard. I do things with DS, and DP will come to a bit. He can be very warm and affectionate but only to DS now. I think he gets a lot of that and that is the one really good thing beteen is. He got a new respect for me from seeing me help DS, and formed a better relationship as a result. It’s good.

Still I feel a bit empty. I’ve even lost a bit of my buoyancy in the house. There’s only so much I can parent, keep my energy up, without just being able to have a good conversation or a hug too! I get a lot from weekends with friends, but me and my kids needs the normality of weekends at home and doing norms, activities. It’s just that I then don’t get any of my own needs met. I wish I could just have people here in the house, or converse with DP.

Apologies spellings etc!

@autistic I’m sorry your childhood sounded lonely and brutal. No one should have to go through that. I hope that you have found some peace with that as an adult, it must have knocked your sense of self terribly. That’s very tough.

Parenting is a huge stressful job. It is relentless, frantic in modern life, where parents are expected to nurture DC through all range of activities, tutoring, personal development, exam success, Oxbridge applications... I mean it used to drives me mad running from ballet to swimming, to 11+ , to what's it every day of the week. School admissions (you know?). Nowadays DofE, work experience for UCAS, homework... you must know what I mean by homework...
SEN meetings, assessments, tribunals...

When people work long hours, have long commutes, there is little time to wind down, to readjust. Add to this ASD in the family and especially in children, with ADHD and it is a perfect storm. A frantic chaotic storm. I've been there. I was in an overdrive for years trying to keep everything together and on the road. I had my depression too, and counselling.

I always had the instinct to stop and relax and enjoy the moment and sort of drop the balls I could afford to drop and have no guilt about this. Just cutting myself some slack. Like in a plane, you've got to put the oxygen mask first on yourself, then on your children, otherwise everybody loses.

But I had a time where I felt I was running on a moving track and it was accelerating faster and faster out of control. So I had my crisis. I learned again to stop, relax and enjoy the moment. To put my oxygen mask.

I also learned to enjoy and rely on the support of my partner with ASC. He is great. The counselor taught us how we both need an oxygen mask, to keep our sanity, so then DC and the whole family can function. Chill. Chill together.

Chill, hug, reduce the arousal, stay connected, stay chill, together.

Of course parents and families where there are mental health and neurological conditions have vulnerabilities. e do need support and advice and access to MH services to make real diagnoses, to separate and identify issues and to provide the appropriate valid solutions.

I completely agree and understand that there is a huge unmet need in MH support for families. The need to talk, to share, for mutual support and advice is totally valid and real.

However, the help is needed to diagnose and help the real problem.

Blaming mostly speculations about undiagnosed Asperger's for everything that is going wrong in life, or even for very real problems associated with attachment problems, narcissism, psychopathy or just incompatibility and break down of a relationship with the partner is neither helpful nor legitimate.

It always takes two to make and break a relationship.

And I totally reject the discriminatory analysis and narrative of NT righteousness and autistic guilt. This puts discrimination right at the heart of the relationship.

Indeed makes it unsustainable. Autistic people should not live with partners who dehumanise and discriminate against them.

This thread is rolling as discriminatory entitled demeaning disability bashing. And should not happen in a democratic society. People with disabilities have the right for equality, dignity, respect in the families and in the discourse in the media.

This woman is bloody marvellous.......
[]

I am a female in a NT/ASC marriage. DH was diagnosed a year after our first child received a diagnosis. My children's SEN made it impossible for me to work, so I am now a carer, a SAHM. I have two children on the spectrum and spend a lot of time supporting/advocating for their SEN provisions.

We have our difficulties in communication within the couple, but we work on them and resolve them lovingly.

I recognise some of the treats talked about in the thread, but not at all their representation and interpretation of difficulties of some of the posters here.

I totally reject the discriminatory analysis and the antagonism perpetuated in the thread. I have experience of couple counselling (not because we have relationship problem, it started from a joined trauma, unrelated, but it touches on our interaction). I can say that the right type of counselling really works. The reciprocal, cooperative one. Not the hateful narrative of FAAAS.

It is based on helping each-other to regulate emotional arousal, to reduce anxiety and to stay connected, in which state all problems in the relationship and the family can be resolved easily and, again, on a loving, reciprocal basis.

The antagonism of NT spouses versus partners with ASC and the victimhood narrative perpetuated here does nothing but harm to the families and to the attitudes to disabled people in society. It is mesleading in terms of 'advice' and does not 'support' anything except discrimination and prejudice.

I cannot see how it helps the posters themselves, that vilify and demean their partners in public here, while staying in the relationship for dozens of years. What about your children with ASC? Are they also 'heartless' ?

This just spread false and vicious stereotypes and normalises discriminatory attitudes and discourse.

it must have knocked your sense of self terribly
It is for Autistic to comment, but

My DH and DC have a perfectly healthy sense of self. The problem always is the discriminatory attitudes to their selves in society.

For what I 've read problematic sense of self is a problem with another condition.

[https://www.verywellmind.com/borderline-personality-disorder-identity-issues-425488 Borderline Personality Disorder and Identity Problems]

What strikes me most is the way healing happens - through reconstructing a new identity with a therapist:
However, most treatments for BPD include components that can help you to begin to discover who you are and what you stand for. The first step in finding yourself is finding a good therapist who can help you work on identity problems.

So from this it would appear that the therapy suggested under the pseudoscience of 'Cassandra phenomenon' is addressing this need, but in a discriminatory form. It might have the seed of potentially helping people with BPD to reconstruct their sense of self.
This just need to be shaped and channelled not into a discriminatory 'anti Asperger' identity, but into something more productive.

The support and advice on this thread should be to seek help with the NHS, with reputable MH professionals to identify the issues for both partners and for therapy with the appropriate suitable therapists, not with something like an AS hate cult.

Sigh.

Now DFOD, will you?

Not at all. Spreading hate and malicious stereotypes about groups with protected characteristic should not go on unchallenged in a decent society.

Yeah yeah, we have been told now, OK? There is no other point of view except yours - it must be like that, we understand. We REALLY understand.

Have you considered starting your own thread BTW? You have something to say - why not go and say it to a better and bigger audience than us?

Haffiana - why should Gauda start her own thread? Why is she not entitled to comment and you are? It is a public forum and she has a valid perspective.

And telling her to fuck off is unacceptable too. But that’s typical of the level
Of aggression that has been levelled at posters who post from a different perspective on these three threads.

No-one, NT or autistic, is helped by the perpetuation of myths and misinformation. And it is incredibly important that appropriately qualified professionals give diagnoses of autism. These are not unreasonable points to make.

@GaudaofEda
You seem determined to tell us what we have to do, and also berate us for sharing our personal experiences in this support thread which is clearly labelled as for those with partners with ASD

If you don't like what we are saying to each other, why not just leave the thread?

Pina - thank you for your kind post.

Soverytiredofeverythinggoingon

@GaudaofEda
You seem determined to tell us what we have to do, and also berate us for sharing our personal experiences in this support thread which is clearly labelled as for those with partners with ASD

Did you not read the bit which said that she is NT and her husband is autistic?

Yes Hedgehog, I did read that.
Can I also say to you how very sorry I am that you went through such a horrible set of experiences as a younger person, especially with your Mother's illness, and I hope life is better for you now and you are in a happier place now