Aspies For Freedom

I've been having therapy or at least four years. I think I handle it myself with professional help.

But my partner still feels I am a lot to deal with. Is there any way that an aspie can be not a lot to deal with? If they are researching and trying to understand themselves and relationships and getting help and using this site?

Sorry if not very lucid. In some distress atm. Would appreciate some input?

I guess what I am asking is, am I doomed to be viewed as a burden by whatever person I am in a relationship with?

Many partners have remarkable trouble understanding thier AS partners. They accuse them of "having zero empathy,"wanting you to 'mother them'" "incapable of parenting" ect. Have seen these horrible sites, http://www.kmarshack.com/news/current/as/faq. html and http://forums .delphiforums.com/ASPartners ? The links are broken, because we don't want to allow an increase in their google ratings. These are almost soley about NT women with AS husbands, so your partner may not be this bad. NT men are normally more accepting of AS women than NT women are of AS men, because we have the "extreme male" brain.

You are not a burden, if there are things that this person does not like you both need to sit down and discuss them. Don't let this drag on and on untill you fall out.

the first one is horrific, living with someone with AS is like water torture. F**k off to whoever wrote that.

The second one is too - a bunch of NT women bitching about their aspie ex's in horrendously nasty ways.

To the original poster - why have you been having therapy?

I feel like an incredible burdern to my boyfriend. What, with me being unemployed and unable to support myself and pay my share of the rent...and everything that goes along with that. He can't handle my "temper tantrums" and tends to escape out of the apartment when that happens. Sadly that's those are the times I feel I need him most. But he calls me immature (oddly enough at other times he calls me oddly mature and he the immature one). He says he feels like my caregiver and not my boyfriend. It makes me feel sad. I don't know how to remedy this. We love each other and I don't want to be a burden.

Of course even when I was living with my parents I always felt like a burden to them. I guess I will always be a burden to someone.

I notice you mention temper tantrums first which suggests to me the main point that you are both unhappy with. you also know that when you have them, he leaves. is there any way you can link these up, that when you see the red mist descending you see him leaving, some way that the results of your actions are more important than the shouting. I really think this would be a good place to start. You can't change everything but this would be a beginning. i also think that he would see that you are making so much effort and that most importantly it is for him because you love him so much.

Perhaps even showing him this thread may show the effort you are making.

True. Everything starts somewhere and the hardest part of admitting a problem is out of the way. You must also accept that you may slip up along the way but if he is there to help you then even better. make the effort the next time you can to sit down and see what you can do, see if he can suggest ways to help you, maybe be appreciative when you deal with a situation that you would normally have snapped at where you have kept your cool.

Problem - Solution - Benefit

Before you snap, stop, breathe, think and then speak. Please give it a go.

I don't know how you all see this but if I was a burden I would want to know as opposed to knowing or suspecting peopel thinking I was. How do you all feel about that.

Maybe it is to this persons credit they have been honest and told you how they feel, it may not help you but at least they have shown decency and honesty by saying yes there are times I am struggling.

I really hope you can find a way forward

I am a burder to my husband because I do not have a job.  Otherwise, I do not nag him, tell him how to spend his money, get all jealous, tell him who he can have as friends and other aspects that his friends have to put up with from their wives.  I just can not get employment so I contribute zero to our financial state although I cook, clean and do laundry.

I think it's about as bad as having a couple from two different cultures... like if I, who live in the USA, married somebody from China. That's about as far as NT and Aspie are apart.

We probably all know people who've married somebody from a different race and/or culture, and are still in happy and successful marriages. And probably we also know somebody who married someone so much like them that they're miserable.

I know a couple who are happily married; one is an NT social genius, the other, a math geek who's on the Aspie side of NT. They're very different; they had a rocky first year while they learned to live with each other: She always wanted to hang out with their friends; he liked being alone with her.. She thinks intuitively, he, logicaly... She loves to work with children; he's in love with equations... But now, three years after those first problems, they've each learned how the other works, and whenever I get an e-mail from her, she almost inevitably mentions at least once how much she loves him... They're the happy "parents" of two cats, and hoping to adopt a child from a foreign country (she can't have kids)... I think their problems aren't any worse than any Aspie/NT relationship might have; and they've overcome them.

Every couple has to learn to understand one another. NT+Aspie is no different. It might take more work, just like it might take more work if I fell in love with a guy from China... But I don't think either partner would be a "burden". You might as well say that the NT spouse of an Aspie is a burden, because s/he doesn't understand what it's like to be buried in a special interest and doesn't have a talent for extreme-logical thinking.

The AS isn't the burden, really. It's the difference between the two partners... And a difference occurs in any marriage. When AS is involved, it's really just a more unique form of the same old gap between any two people.

Yes.

However, so is everybody. No two people can get along effortlessly the entire time, all relationships require some compromises, etc. Which means that any person in any relationship creates some work for the other person, who has to adjust to them, and this can be interpreted as a burden. It can be interpreted as a burden, but it can also be accepted as a necessity, and changes can even be made happily for the person you love. I think that whether a person interprets the struggles inherent in any relationship as a burden or not probably says more about that person than it does about their partner. Of course the partner causes them difficult moments. They cause the partner difficult moments too, and the whole point of a relationship is to rise above those difficulties. So you are doomed to be a burden in the sense that you will always create work for your partner (as will I, as will everyone I know, as will the closest and most secure couple in the world), you are also not doomed to be a burden in the sense that not all partners will feel burdened by you.

Speaking from personal experience, I am an NT (to the best of my knowledge, although I might well be borderline AS) with an aspie boyfriend. I have had to make adjustments for him, of course, and he's had to make some for me. I would never consider him a burden at all. In fact the thing about him that's most like a burden is he's so ridiculously tall - even when I wear high heels I only come up to about his shoulder! Nobody in their right mind would consider somebody's height a terrible burden, well in my opinion AS is no greater a burden than height.

My (NT) partner is from a different culture. When we first met there was a significant language and cultural barrier. I think that this helped the early stages of the relationship for me because my partner had no implicit assumptions of how I should behave and communicate etc.

The reality is that any relationship is difficult - the divorce rates are evidence of that. I found it quite hard to appreciate that a relationship is not perfect, and that each and every problem that arises does not mean that the relationship is finished (black and white thinking).

Also, while it seems that AS traits can sometimes be frustrating to a partner, they can also be some of the key characteristics that attracted your partner in the first place....

And that is a scary thing to commit to.