I wasn't going to contribute to this thread, but I feel I have to.  It probably won't help and may make me feel worse.

I ask that you bear with me on this one.

When this thread was posted I checked out the ASPIA website as I hadn't heard of that organisation and didn't know what they did.  What I found there shocked me, but not in the way it has shocked the others who have responded.  I was shocked, and it has been almost constantly on mind ever since, because what was described there was essentially my own marriage to my son's father.

Now, my husband has a number of issues relating to his childhood, when he was neglected and abused, but I do also believe that he is on the Spectrum.  Last night I checked out the criteria for an adult diagnosis and I believe that my husband fits those criteria.  His own sister has said to me that she thinks he is on the Spectrum.  His sister also thinks that I may be on the Spectrum, or at least very close to being so.

This post has the potential to be extremely long and rambling, so I will try to be as succinct as possible.

As I read it ASPIA primarily offers support to those whose partner has recently been recognised as being on the Spectrum, and the support offered has as one of its key objective, the safeguarding and saving of those marriages.  It may be that the person suspected of being AS will deny that it is a possibility, and the partner may find it difficult even to broach the subject.  I fall most definately into the latter group.

Four months after I actually left my husband to live elsewhere, I sat with him, over several evenings and talked about the ways in which I could see that I had contributed to the breakdown of the marriage.  I have never pretended I am perfect and I can understand that I am not always an easy person to live with.  I have my own routines and ways of doing things, I can lose track of time when I'm absorbed in one of my interests, I can be excessively pedantic and picky about what are essentially pretty minor things.  I didn't take as much of an interest as I could have done in my husband's various interests/obsessions.  So that's me and my faults.

My husband.  

One of the biggest and most negative aspects of his character is his anger.  There is an active thread here just now about how people express their anger.  My husband's anger was explosive, unpredictable, seemingly irrational, and frankly, frightening to me.  On one occasion he broke a glass panel in a door, a wardrobe and the drawer in the hall stand because he pulled it out and threw it at a wall.  I was terrified.  It is all very well expressing anger in such a physical way, but it is extremely frightening to those around you.

There's another thread here about attachment to inanimate objects.  Years after my husband broke the drawer of the hall stand he was talking about that piece of furniture, how much he liked it, that it was one of the first things we bought together and we would always have it.  After a while I ventured to say that I wasn't so keen on it - after the day the drawer got broken.  He was silent for a while and I could see that he was getting upset, stressed and then angry.  He was angry with me because I had "spoiled his enjoyment of that piece of furniture".  He didn't show any appreciation of how I felt.  His relationship with that inanimate object was more important than his relationship with me.

His relationship with our son is generally ok - for short periods of time, and as long as it doesn't interfere with his interests.  Given the choice between his son's birthday party or going to watch his team play football, my husband wouldn't hesitate to choose the football.  It's one of his obsessions.  The last two parties I've arranged for my son's birthday had to be in the morning, and his father spent the rest of the day at the football and the evening in the pub - because that's his routine.  That's what he does.

He is rigid and inflexible.  After we'd agreed to separate he decided to go to London for a week and asked if I would give him a lift for an early morning flight.  I agreed.  His flight was on the Monday after the attempted terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport.  He was flying from another airport, less than an hour's drive away.  Our son had been out of sorts all weekend and on the Sunday afternoon I suggested that I could organise a taxi for him instead of driving him myself.  That way I didn't need to get an already cranky child out of bed at 4am to drive to an airport on a high security alert, surrounded by cops with guns, and a terminal building which I was unlikely to be able to get the car anywhere near.  My husband was completely enraged by this suggestion.  I had said that I would take him, so I was to take him.  The fact that he would get to the airport in time for his flight whether he went by taxi or was driven by me was irrelevant to him.  He had an idea in his head, and didn't want to deviate from it.  I booked the taxi, got money out of my own bank account for the fare, provided a note of the taxi details etc - and he was still furious with me.  So angry!

Sorry, I was trying to keep this short.  I'm trying to give examples of how some aspie traits, such as rigid and unflexible thinking, obsessions, difficulty grading and expressing emotional responses, and well, a preference for inanimate objects over people can play out in real life.

I know that my husband barely accepts our son's diagnosis.  There is no way he would even contemplate that he might be on the Spectrum.

Everyone here knows themselves very well, and can see the traits they have, and how they differ to those around them to whatever degree.  My husband thinks all of the above behaviours are reasonable.  And from what I know of his own family, these behaviours would've passed for "normal" or pretty close to it.  It's not impossible that one or both of his parents were on the Spectrum.  He has a nephew who almost certainly is.

If you and your partner know you are on the Spectrum you have that as a starting point, for mutual understanding and consideration.  If someone doesn't know, or denies it, then it's very different.

I would add as well, that I was my husband's special interest when he was courting me.  He sent me flowers, bought me "pay day presents" (neither of which I was really interested in, tbh), he was generous, kind and considerate.  He is not an ogre - he has many great qualities, and I know that he didn't set out to hurt me.  But he did hurt me.

So, I don't think ASPIA is a "hate group".  I think it is attempting to meet a need which exists, and to do that in a way which keeps couples together if possible, or at least to assist understanding when it isn't.  The fact that many Aspies have happy marriages doesn't mean that there aren't some for whom it doesn't work out.

I'm pretty much expecting to be shot down in flames for this post, but this is my perspective.  It wasn't an easy post to write, not least because my hands are shaking and I keep having to correct typos.

Ah, and another thing.  Many of you have expressed disappointment in Tony Attwood.  If someone you respect does something which you find puzzling or somehow out of character, then maybe, just maybe, you should step back a bit and wonder why it is that they are doing that thing.

Now I'm going to post reply and be damned!

Marcia, without being at all flippant, it is a fact that there are millions of men in the world who behave like your ex.  Most of them are not autistic.  If ASPIA and the other groups were calling themselves support groups for spouses of temperamental and inflexible people, I don't think anyone here would have an objection.  It's the stereotyping of autistics as generally unsuitable for family life that is the problem.