My husband and Asperger's

Specki4eyes - lots of love & admiration for sticking it so long. Your story shows exactly why diagnosis & a label can be so important. When my daughter realised the full extent of her husband's undiagnosed Adult ADHD & only recently diagnosed dyslexia (plus the impact of 35 years of not being understood by parents, school & society) she felt others thought she was a mug for marrying him. Then she read how they hyperfocus & make people feel very special in order to win them (as MaryXYX describes). At the time SiL was being done over by a business partner/"friend" who was exploiting his disability & draining away his business & money. As waiting lists at the only 2 diagnostic centres were so long, we paid for him to see a psychiatrist who was brilliant & very compassionate, giving much more than we could pay for. A diagnosis & label has changed his & our lives & saved his marriage & earning ability. He has a combination of drugs, exercise & routines (CBT & couple therapy were useless). It is a life long condition & always a struggle especially if he forgets to take the medication or stays on the computer after 9pm then rants if you remind him. But he is very creative, a brilliant father (as long as you don't leave the kids for long in his care - he'll forget he's got them) & has revived his business.
It's not the labels of diagnosis that's bad, only wrong diagnosis for wrong reasons. Labels can also be used as a 'badge of honour' & an excuse rather than a factor in behaviour & of course this has to be challenged (as I often dare to do with SiL) but given how hard it is to live full time with these conditions in a society that shows little or negative understanding of them, can we blame them for seeking some advantage sometimes? Some people can live without a diagnosis (like Rory Bremner) but they usually have positive circumstances or can find a niche in which they can be accepted. Prisons are full of people with these conditions - undiagnosed & unlabelled before it was too late. And it can be hell on earth for those around them. Our SiL has opened our eyes to something we knew little about 5 years ago & I know also realise husband is on the lower end of the Aspergers spectrum & our brains are wired very differently - it makes life & communication easier know we know.

OMG! I've been living with that behaviour for 30 years - unfortunately the love has long since died and I'm giving up the fight. I feel so angry and nothing about his bizarre perception of life is amusing to me any more. My anger and disappointment is eating away at my heart.

In the first heady days, I was bemused..he was handsome, charming and completely took over my life. After only 10 days he proposed..despite the fact that he was still married to Wife No 1 and had just ditched a hastily-formed 'serious' relationship with a woman he had met on a 2 week holiday in the Canary Islands. (She had given up her job and followed him back to the UK only to be unceremoniously dumped within weeks.) He's always had a convincing rationale for every crazy thing he's done. And its always someone else's fault.

I know! What was I thinking? Well I just went with the flow until he came to me and said I've booked us in at the registry office on (date). I was flattered and also I adored him. Immediately after the marriage, boing! the manic behaviour began..I became a member of staff to be controlled and re-constructed, as did my kids, my dog, my parents. My friends were shunned, but they have stuck with me and accepted him for my sake.

I tried and tried to retain my own 'self' and have partially succeeded, but at the cost of the relationship. Why did I stay so long? Pride I suppose; not wanting to admit my mistake; security?? Life has never been dull but it has been chronically painful. I wanted 'Happy Ever After'..not possible in this relationship.

Marriage to an Asperger guy starts out looking very promising. If you are his "special interest" you are likely to receive a lot of care and attention. The trouble is that things settle down and you realise he just doesn't connect emotionally. That's difficult, but hey - you can "reform" him and make him the sort of man you want, can't you? That project lasted over 30 years before the diagnosis, and the realisation that he wasn't a "difficult case to reform", he had a medical condition. Then the only option is divorce, but unfortunately a medical condition isn't valid grounds around here. "Unreasonable behaviour" however is, and the behaviour of a guy with Aspergers can easily be described as unreasonable. Problem solved.

This is unfortunately a very common scenario. I've been in enough support groups to know that.

Nellie (((hugs)))

That must have been a shock lucy, or did you have any clues?

Sorry to hear that Lucy . One of my close friends was engaged twice before he came out as gay. I think he tried so hard to be be straight because of what his family might think!

Hi Katgransnet

Yes most definitely. I was married for thirty years before my husband came out as gay.

Some years ago I was listening to the late lamented John Peel's "Home Truths" programme and heard an item about a couple who had written a book "An Asperger Marriage" by Gisela and Christopher Slater-Walker. The husband had been diagnosed with ASD in his mid-thirties. I found that I could relate to much of what the wife said, and after reading the book realised that, although never diagnosed, my husband had more than a touch of Asperger's. Now my grandson, who at 3 was diagnosed with ADHD and autistic traits, has at 15 been given an ASD diagnosis, presumable mostly masked by his early ADHD behaviours which are receding and controlled now, to a large extent.

By the way when asked how he felt about being given another label he said "Well, I'm just me, aren't I?".

I can relate to most of what Sue says. It rings bells.

eloethan, your second paragraph – yes, indeed.

Although some of the things that Sue Hepworth describes are, at a distance, very funny (I especially liked the sinister blue underpants), it must be difficult to live with someone with Aspergers.

I would imagine you'd have to very comfortable in your own skin to be able to deal with such searing honesty, and to be able to overcome the discomfort of seeing your partner unknowingly boring or insulting someone.

My grandson is on the autistic spectrum. He has just started high school, and goes to what they call the Nurture Centre.
After two weeks of getting upset every morning, he has now said he likes this school better than the primary school, because he has somewhere to go. He still has a friend take him in to his tutor group, so can avoid the crush of 1500 pupils on the whole. He can go into his nurture group any time he wants to if he gets agitated. He has certain teachers that look out for him, and he can go to if he is worried. So he actually feels he has more security now than he had in his primary school. And so do we.

This would not have happened if he had not been labelled. So it can be good to be labelled.

Most schools these days are much bigger than the ones many of us went to. They are scary for teachers, let alone kids with Aspergers, which, by the way, no longer exists in this country. It is now classified as ASD.
I very rarely dream, but one of the ones I still have is of being in the wrong classroom in the wrong school building and wondering why the class have not turned up.

Oh dear! after 38 yrs of this situation I have lost my sense of humour about it. Some realisation that Aspergers was the root of my DHs problem came to me about 10 yrs ago.

The issue is, that this is a syndrome with the implication that a range of behaviours of similar type are included and are displayed in varying degrees by different people.
The behaviour I observe and have to live with fits a lot of the classic "features" of the syndrome.
Talking at people about something that interests him in an unstoppable manner and not being able to see or comprehend that the poor person having to listen is being bored silly. This is such a problem that people avoid him.
A poor sense of humour in that I cannot make a silly throw away remark that others would just take as just an aside without it being analysed, or explained or contradicted.
Poor social skills in such areas and great difficulty in understanding anyone else's point of view. Its the constant talking at me I find hard to manage on a daily basis.
Sorry about the rant, but I really can't find much to laugh about in this. I must add that there is some increased behavioural problems I think are the result of problems following the removal of a benign brain tumor three years ago.

Sorry to rant. I will shut up and return to my chutney!

This blog shows how conditions like Aspergers can be accommodated over many years, and it reminds me that there are lots of people like this who have never had, or needed, a label or diagnosis to enable them to lead a normal life.

I've been reading about people in the USA who are constantly seeking categorisation of their, and their children's, personalities and perceived illnesses, so they can use such conditions in litigation and custody battles. I would be horrified if this country followed suit.