Poly and Asperger's syndrome

D

dragonette

New member
Hi everyone,

I'm wondering if anyone here has tried to have a poly relationship with a partner who has Asperger's syndrome (a mild type of autism that affects the ability to read social cues, access and discuss emotions, and deal with tasks requiring planning and organization). Especially in a context of dating long-distance or seeing each other infrequently.

My BF has this syndrome, and it's been a challenge over the two years of our relationship. He can't remember what plans his wife makes for them (if she even tells him, which she may not), so anytime I want him to commit to a date with me he has to talk to her first. But he forgets to talk to her. So I have to ask again, which gets annoying. Stuff like that.

In addition, BF can come across as cold and self-absorbed. If left alone he'll pretty much just talk about himself in a stream of consciousness fashion. If I say something about my own life or how I'm feeling, he'll barely respond and then change the subject. BUT, if I say "hey, I just told you something bad that happened to me. I'm upset and need support" he's overcome with remorse and concern. Also, I've been reasonably successful with discussing relationship issues with him -- he does have trouble accessing and expressing his emotions, but he is willing to listen to me discuss mine, and as long as I stay calm and empathetic, I can usually draw him out about his.

We've never had the same kind of emotional "connection" that I've had with other partners, based on the words exchanged. What I do have with him is a feeling that I've known him forever, can be totally myself with him, am "seen" by him, and am totally accepted. Although he rarely asks me about myself, he's incredibly observant, and will make comments about my personality and experience of life that are very perceptive. Also, like most people with his condition, he is an unconventional thinker, so his stream of consciousness is often more interesting and funny (to me) than a typical person's conversation.

When we were seeing each other twice a week, I looked forward to and enjoyed the time I spent with him, and I felt very secure in his love and affection. Texting between dates was rarely much of a source of connection or happiness for me, but I could live with that.

Now that we're only seeing each other once a month, though, that has changed. I feel like we're becoming strangers. I'm not sure how much of this is the Asperger's and how much is the fact that the most significant thing going on in his life is his possible separation from his wife, which he's trying not to burden me with, but when he texts me at all, his texts are about as intimate as the ones I send co-workers -- "hope you have a great trip," etc. He doesn't ask about the details of my life and offers few of his.

Even though I know the Asperger's probably has a lot to do with this, and when I point these things out to him he says that he misses me, it's hard for me not to feel hurt that he does not seem very interested in communicating with me. I'm (mostly) no longer embroiled in the potential-separation drama, but now I'm in this weird situation where I am trying to connect with him and he's responding in a way that feels like rejection. And the only alternative seems to be no communication at all.

So, mostly I just wanted to update and vent, but if anyone has tips on how to deal with an Asperger's partner, I'd love to hear them!
 
Is he actually a clinically diagnosed Aspie? What sort of counselling regimen does he do?

FWIW, I was raised in the belief that digging into someone's feelings is rude -- it's like questioning someone's faith. I make myself available for my family & friends to tell me what they will; maybe I'll ask some clarifying questions. Mostly, veting is okay. If they want my advice, they'll ask, & I may have to pursue deeper detail at that point.
 
Hey, dragonette! I'm the neurotypical hinge between an undiagnosed Aspie on one side, (our daughter together was diagnosed, though) and an anxious/shy long distance fella who struggles with depression and has a lot of the same super-rational, low-emotion habits of mind on the other. Not a lot of advice to offer on your particular situation, but solidarity in loving awesome awkward weirdos for their non-mainstream approach to life! ;)
 
Haha - thanks Sunray!

Ravenscroft: unfortunately, he does not see a therapist or have any kind of regimen. My understanding is he did have a therapist or counselor of some kind diagnose him when he was a child, but he never went to therapy -- I'm not sure why. I've suggested he see someone, but he wants to know how it would help, and I haven't found anything in my online searching that suggests there's much to be done. The advice seems to be "you should get diagnosed because your partner will better understand why you do what you do if they know it's because of your condition."
 
My son is a diagnosed Aspie, and his therapy definitely helped him better identify emotions that others are expressing. They worked on facial cues, recognizing "I" statements and how to respond emphatically. He still struggles, but at age 28, he has come a long way. I would definitely recommend therapy. We went in with specific goals and that helped make a difference.
 
dragonette said:
"you should get diagnosed because your partner will better understand why you do what you do"
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Really, my feeling is THAT ought to be the main motivator right there. Does he grasp that there are difficulties in your interaction with him, or is he in some sort of denial? (Lowered empathy can do that: an Aspie might not be able to virtually put himself into someone else's shoes, therefore feels justified denying all responsibility.)
dragonette said:
he wants to know how it would help
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Maybe you can get him to accept that YOU are trying to sort out YOUR place in this, & the input from a clinician will be invaluable to YOU feeling better.

IMO, if that's beyond him, you might have to reconsider the relationship. It's likely NOT going to get ANY better by itself. Letting these situations "simmer" generally seems to encourage a non-worried partner to believe that everything's happily settled, & they're very baffled (often hurt) when it all finally falls apart. He might remain blissfully unaware, but meantime YOU will have to carry the weight entirely on your own. Is it worth that?
 
Hi dragonette,

It sounds like some of your boyfriend's actions are frustrating to you, especially now when you're not seeing him as often. I don't blame you for feeling frustrated, even worried about the future of the relationship. Have you expressed to him your sense of disconnection? If you have, what did he say?

Sorry I don't have much to offer in the way of tips or advice. As it happens, I have been thought to be an aspie myself, but I think some of my symptoms are atypical.

Regards,
Kevin T.
 
My partner is undiagnosed, but I strongly suspect that he has some sort of neurodivergence.

Calendar calendar calendar. If he can't remember things, he should be calendaring as much as possible to help him manage his time. If he struggles to remember to reach out when he's going through things, that can even be useful for setting himself reminder to reach out to people and check in.

It also might be on you to decide if you can accept being with a partner that struggles to actively see when you're having your own emotional struggles or connect with you. But it does sound like therapy would be a great first step for him or possibly the two of you as a couple if that is in the cards given the distance (video conference?).
 
Thanks, everyone, for your responses.

I was pretty happy in spite of the Asperger's issues until about six weeks ago, when I decided to see him less often because I was finding it difficult to spend time with him without getting sucked into the drama of his marriage falling apart. Before then, we'd seen each other a couple of times a week, and I felt like his Aspie symptoms were manageable. During this time of seeing each other less (once in six weeks), it's become much harder. In person, I can tell that he's with me and available to give me support so I don't mind so much having to say "hey! I'm upset and need your support." When he was distant by text it was harder to be sure he was willing to be there for me, and in fact I think he probably didn't have the bandwidth because of what he was going through. Not ideal, but understandable.

Ravenscroft said:
It's likely NOT going to get ANY better by itself. Letting these situations "simmer" generally seems to encourage a non-worried partner to believe that everything's happily settled, & they're very baffled (often hurt) when it all finally falls apart. He might remain blissfully unaware, but meantime YOU will have to carry the weight entirely on your own. Is it worth that?
Click to expand...

Good insight. I suspect this may be what happened with his wife. She seems to have had a pattern of convincing herself that everything was fine, then blowing up when she was drunk or reached her limit. I think there were hints of her dissatisfaction all along (I remember conversations a couple of years ago where he'd say "she said this critical thing last night, but she was drunk and this morning she apologized" as if her drunkenness canceled out the criticism completely), but BF thought they were fine until a few months ago, when suddenly she was super upset about a bunch of stuff (some related to the Asperger's, some not) all the time.

They've now decided to separate, which means BF and I will go back to seeing each other more often - a couple of times a week at least. At the time I posted about this I thought the drama with his wife might go on for months longer, and I wasn't sure I could deal with that. Now that they're separating, hopefully just seeing each other more will fix the problem. If not, I definitely will consider pushing harder on the therapy idea.

I haven't pressured him much about therapy because he seems to have no interest, but I do try to express my needs and concerns as they come up - repeatedly, not just the first time, so he knows it's not "settled." When we were seeing each other more often I didn't consider the Asperger's a major issue - things that had bothered me early on stopped bothering me once I became sure that he loved me and that his behavior was not a sign of disinterest.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the next phase of our relationship...but definitely still evaluating whether I can get my needs met with him. We're just moving past the NRE phase, which may mean that this becomes more of a problem. We'll see....
 
Aspy advice

Hey, I'm undiagnosed but very sure of my aspieness. I've gone to councelling and my wife and I have worked a lot on stuff. A few insights that might help...

Aspy brains take a while to switch gears. If my wife just starts talking to me while I'm doing something else, I'll talk to her and say 'yes' and 'no' and it will seem to her like we've discussed the topic. But later I don't remember anything about it. She now gets me to raise my hand when I'm actually listening. It's silly but it totally works. It gives me time to switch gears fully and then I'll actually remember. Still, a shared calendar is great. We just use Google calendar but whatever works. We share a calendar with her boyfriend too so we're all on the same page. Saves a lot of back-and-forth between multiple parties when we can all see when we're mutually available. We also use EverNote to share to-do lists and grocery lists and stuff. Also, never try to communicate while other things are going on around you (a conversation right next to you or the TV on) as we have a hard time knowing what to focus on.

Empathy - aspies aren't too good at reading people and don't have very good "theory of mind" ("if I'm interested in something of course everyone is", or "if I know this bit of information the person I'm talking to does too"). This looks a lot like a psychopath, except a psychopath totally understands people and reads them very well, but just doesn't care about their feelings. We care a huge amount about people's feelings, we just aren't good at figuring people's feelings out in the first place. Don't try to communicate with body language and facial expressions and tone of voice. Say exactly what you're feeling! He will likely be very responsive. We generally take things as factual information, so a lot of things that would bother a neurotypical person don't bother us. However we can have quirky sensitivities and trigger us quite a bit. Also, because we don't understand body language and facial expressions and vocal tones, we don't use them very well ourselves. So it looks like we're androids or something, when really we have a full range of sometimes very intense emotions going on underneath.

We don't generally understand sarcasm, subtle implication, passive aggressiveness, stuff like that unless they're really obvious. My wife has a hard time not reading into things I say sometimes. I just mean what I say most of the time.

I ramble when I'm tired, stressed, excited or nervous. He may be feeling more of these emotions when he isn't seeing you as much because each meeting is a bigger deal. He may also have more pent-up info to share, whereas when you're seeing him more often it can be shorter amounts of sharing over more sessions. I only ramble to people I really like, so you can take it as a compilent. Again, if it's too much, he won't pick up on you looking bored, sighing, trying to change the topic etc. so say exactly how you're feeling (in a nice way). Sometimes I can relax until I've got a topic off my chest, and then I can relax and let the other person talk about something different. It's a very strong compulsion to finish the topic sometimes and it's really really uncomfortable for me to stop midway.

I have a hard time listening to my wife, especially some topics. She let's me sit side by side with her instead of facing each other, and she let's me play solitare on my phone while we're talking. Being able to drop the stress of eye contact, facial expression and body language really helps me. It also sends a clear signal to her that because I'm not looking at her she needs to rely on her words. One thing my wife found is that her expression started to decrease after a while because she wasn't using it at home! So watch that. 8) On the upside, she's become a very good communicator with other neurotypical people.

I think for a lot of aspies a poly relaionship is the way to go for their partners. We're super awesome in a lot of unique ways, but it may be beneficial for our partners to have relationships with neurotypicals at the same time to fill in our gaps.

Hope some of that helps!
 
Your BF sounds very similar to my husband. He was diagnosed as a child with Asperger's as well but never got any treatment for it really. Although he is currently in therapy and we've found that to be very helpful.

A lot of the problems we have stem from our very different styles of communication. I think MrOriginal2 gives some very good advice up there, a lot of it resonated with me.

I've found that having an understanding support network that I can go to when things upset me, people who won't be judgmental and who understand how Asperger's works is very helpful too. It gives me a chance to analyze things without having everything blow up. To that note if you'd like to chat with someone who has a similar situation going on feel free to shoot me a pm on here.
 
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