Aspies For Freedom

Listening to your story sounds like the other side of my own relationship. Sooooooo similar it's eerie - my husband always says "I am an idiot" when I get upset with him and totally overreacts. I feel like I am the only one in the relationship, he will never love me as much for the reasons you say.... everything.

The one thing that is really different for me is that I did grow up in Canada, where we both live and I have tons of friends.  I can go out and have my social and many of my emotional needs met any day of the week. My parents are here - I am able to look to many relationships to compensate for what I don't get from my aspie hubby.  And this is essential to the success of our relationship. He can not meet all my needs.  

As far as the children thing - well it is a real concern. I would say my son has a mild form of asbergers, but it is mild and we can work with it.  It takes all kinds to make the world and interesting place, I don't give it too much thought. I just figure that aspies are the rock stars of the furture and I embrace them both!

Your GF might not be as capable of being tolerant as I.  She is much younger and therefore probably idealistic and she relies on you for so much of her social stimilus as well as her emotional, phyiscal and sexual interaction. This is a lot to look to one person for in the best of matches, so throw in your asbergers and her cultural isolation - and I can see why you are facing the challenges you are.

At the end of the day, I think aspies need really patient understanding partners. You can't tolerate being critized for your whole life, it is too detrimental to an already comprimised self image. Perhaps if you found a therapist who specialized in relationships and asbergers you could satisfy her with the formal diagnosis and the therapist could be really straight with her about what she can and can't expect from you as an aspie partner. You could set up some guideing principles for the relationship - if she can live with them great - if not, then at least you will have learned a whole bunch and that much more informed about future mate choices and how to have a successful relationship down the road.

I hope this helps!

asplvr

I have some Aspie traits, but I'm not Aspie. My Partner is Aspie. I know what works for us in our relationship, and unfortunately DB8TR, I don't see a lot of those things in your relationship -- particularly in your girlfriend.

One of the big differences -- the BIG difference -- is that I didn't come into the relationship with the belief that I'm perfect, and you're broken, so YOU have to get fixed. I have ADHD, and I know I'm not the NT Ideal, either. If I wanted the NT Ideal, I'm in the wrong relationship. I totally agree with you that the solution can't be for you to be someone other than who you really are.  When I feel impatient with some Aspie thing erich might say or do, I remind myself -- would I want him to be anything other than Erich? No. Would I want to be with anyone other than Erich? No. Are there times he may feel impatient with my ADHD stuff? Of course.

In the very beginning of our relationship -- the first couple of months -- we went to a couples Communication Group and learned more about how we can talk with each other and relate to each other in ways that make us both happy and let us both feel loved and respected. But that doesn't work if one partner is Perfect and the other partner is the Designated Problem.

she even suggested I had ADHD, an idea I vehemently disliked.

Hey! nothing wrong with ADHD -- it's another perfectly legitimate and often wonderful way of being neurodivergent.

enable me to overcome all of the things she doesn’t like about me.

While she remains hner perfect, narrow-minded, critical non-accepting self? Hmmm...

I need to [change], she says, for us.

If you're not the guy she wants, she needs to go find him.

doesn’t want children with my ‘sickness’.  

That does it. Kick her *** to the curb. She wouldn't want a child like you? be very careful about that one, deb8tr -- or for the rest of your life, every time the kid does something not-perfect-enough for her, she'll be pointing the finger at you "See? It's your sickness that makes him damaged.'

Sorry -- no way.

I've had a similar experience from the other end as well. I'm an NT, and I came to college several years ago and met an Aspie guy, but didn't realize it at the time. I'll call him Sam, for the interest of posting. Sam showed interest in dating me, and I did like him so I gave it a shot for about a week, but I just didn't get why he acted so...different. He was my first relationship, and I just didn't feel comfortable being considered "attached" to him, since I didn't understand his behavior. The next guy I found myself interested in turned out to be Sam's best friend, which sounds horrible, but both guys were ok with it. I, however, turned out not to be ok with it. Every time I went anywhere or tried to do anything with the other guy, I just missed Sam, and missed spending time with him instead. Obviously a relationship with the other guy never really happened, and by spending so much time with Sam, we got closer and eventually I realized he was definitely the guy for me. (along with same as what you said about being best friends, etc)
So what does that have to do with you? Well, perhaps what your girl needs is a little bit of time away from the wonderful man she loves to realize just how much she really does care about you, just the way you are. Sam's quirks annoyed me, but after being away from ALL the parts of Sam, and everything I love about him, I even started to miss the quirks and they became "cute" again, if that makes sense -- and now I embrace him for who he is, completely, not just the parts I liked before.
Now fast forward about a month from when we met, I finally found out he was an Aspie. Initially, I had the exact same questions/concerns that your girl did. I admit, my first thought was, "WHAT? You have a mental illness??" I didn't say that, and I didn't freak out, but I was certainly a bit taken aback...and, as a geneticist, I also wondered about possible future kids. Luckily, I'm an incredibly curious individual. I went straight home that night and looked up as much information on AS/Autism as I possibly could and tried to learn everything there was to know so I could better understand what was going on inside his head. I figured decreasing my own obvious ignorance was a good first step. That really, really helped. I talked with him about it the next day, and we went through all the "typical" signs of AS and which categories he did and did not fall into, and the history of his diagnosis (and misdiagnoses as a child). Wanting to know all of that may seem silly and pointless, but for whatever reason, after learning about everything, I was totally ok with it!
Bottom line here, is she can't possibly understand what's going on with you, only you can. The clinical diagnosis/etc. would seem pretty pointless for you, because YOU know you have it, but maybe she wants it more for her sake. It just feels good to KNOW, and to know that all his funny behavior can be explained (and that it's not anything more serious, because you never know). Somehow, it just felt good to have things make sense (even NT's need a degree of order in their lives!). After finding all that out, instead of deciding I needed to change those things about him, I opted for embracing them even more.
Also, since then, I've learned to participate in his obsessions every now and then. He is incredibly intelligent and, well, obsessive, in the areas of video games and music and especially the overlap of the two. I know what you're thinking, all guys love video games. But no, this is not love, it's intelligence. He knows more about the history, creation, and just...well...EVERYTHING than probably most VG designers today. ANYway. Growing up, I never played video games, and kinda had a distaste for them. But knowing they were important, I made the effort to play through some with him, and actually enjoyed it In return, he let me teach him how to sew a pillow (not an easy task..."crafts" are his extreme weak suit...the room was covered in stuffing), and we were both very patient and encouraging towards each other -- the exchange was a success!
Since then I still occasionally play games with him, and he still occasionally does less-than-enjoyable-for-him activities with me, and we've also found an obsession we both have -- music! We both love creating and composing music, and we do that together, and he sings in a choir I direct.
Don't get me wrong, life isn't all roses and happiness. Sometimes he starts playing his Nintendo in public when I'd prefer he was attempting socialization, or sometimes he starts singing countertenor (think REALLY high falsetto) in public and people stare at us...but hey. We've learned to compromise. I wait patiently while he satisfies whatever it is he feels he needs to accomplish, and then he patiently satisfies my need for socialization But two and a half years later, we're still together, very much in love, and just almost engaged! (I hear the ring has been ordered...but not sure if it's come in yet! Maybe V-Day?)

ANYway. My advice is to first fix her ignorance. Second spend some time apart to see if she really misses you or if she just would rather find someone else. Third try to make compromises -- her embracing your quirks and learning when/why you have them, and you trying to learn when/why she feels uncomfortable about it.

Best of luck to you, hopefully my long drawn-out story was of some help? Keep us updated!