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Aspie Marriage

P

Pondering

Well-Known Member
So, just out of curiosity, I was wondering if aspie marriages can be successful. Can they work out decently? What are they like? What are the struggles and rewards? Aspie and neurotypical marriages? Aspie and aspue marriages? Are there any married couples here who either has Asperger's or an aspie partner? If so, I would greatly appreciate it if someone who could relate could explain. Thank you.
 
There's a couple I know I would nearly bet on the husband being autistic. They've been madly in love for over fifty years. I'm working on my fifth year with my baby, despite a few meddling pricks' best efforts.

I think one thing that is both struggle and reward is the weaknesses of both allistic and autistic partner. Depending on your attitude, it makes you feel good to be the knight in shining armor saving your mate when their weaknesses kick in, and on the reverse, it's a relief to know you're protected. Take my relationship for example, my SPD doesn't appreciate bright lights, so my husband does all the night driving. My OCD, however, has rather skillfully navigated limited financial resources and saved our bacon a few times. Allistic folk aren't always known for their research and organizational skills.
 
I'm in such a relationship. Yes, they can be successful, if they both accept their limitations and differences, and give each other space when needed. They both need to accept that their partner's needs will be different, and work around that. Both partners will need to accept compromise. Stereotyped models or expectations of marriage may not work, so an NT partner should not try to impose these expectations on the ASD partner, especially gender roles within a relationship - it probably won't work and will cause misunderstandings and tension, and this is often a reason why such marriages fail. A diagnosis helps a lot to bring understanding to a relationship, and acceptance of each other's differences.

The partners should also set out goals, their individual needs and discuss what they want to gain from the relationship before the committment is made towards marriage: whether they want children, living arrangements, alone and together time, etc. It doesn't have to go quite as far as Sheldon's relationship agreement, but these things need to be discussed from the outset.

My relationship is not a typical realtionship, but it works because my partner accepted my diagnosis and stopped trying to change me or make demands on me, and I stopped trying to change him. We live together, but with separate bedrooms, separate lives, each with their own interests and schedule, but we always do something together on Sunday. We rarely eat together and we each cook separately, but once a month we clean the house together. If he's ill, I bring him food, hot drinks and medicine, and he does the same for me. We don't have kids, we agreed on that. Not all NT males would accept this situation, but he does. I'm lucky, I guess :)
 
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AsheSkyler said:
There's a couple I know I would nearly bet on the husband being autistic. They've been madly in love for over fifty years. I'm working on my fifth year with my baby, despite a few meddling pricks' best efforts.

I think one thing that is both struggle and reward is the weaknesses of both allistic and autistic partner. Depending on your attitude, it makes you feel good to be the knight in shining armor saving your mate when their weaknesses kick in, and on the reverse, it's a relief to know you're protected. Take my relationship for example, my SPD doesn't appreciate bright lights, so my husband does all the night driving. My OCD, however, has rather skillfully navigated limited financial resources and saved our bacon a few times. Allistic folk aren't always known for their research and organizational skills.
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Hah! I love the blood comment on your signature!!!! That's a winner!
 
My wife and I have been together for a very long time. I am a Aspie and she is a NT. However, we were married long before my diagnosis. She has always known that I was different than most people. We love each other and, maybe more importantly, we treat each other like we love each other. The other thing is family. We have five children, eleven grandchildren and one great-grandchild (with another on the way). Given our situation, having such a large family may have been risky. But for us, family and our love for each other keep us together. We are a very lucky couple.
 
I am an aspie and my wife is a NT. We have been married for about 5 years now and things have been really rough. I have had 3 different visits to the psyc unit because I have had serious meltdowns. Within the last year I was finally diagnosed. I do weekly visits with my therapist and it helps greatly. Now we have our challenges but things are good. So with some time of working through things there can be success. She still doesn't understand the way that I think but then again I don't understand the way she things either.
 
Greg said:
I am an aspie and my wife is a NT. We have been married for about 5 years now and things have been really rough. I have had 3 different visits to the psyc unit because I have had serious meltdowns. Within the last year I was finally diagnosed. I do weekly visits with my therapist and it helps greatly. Now we have our challenges but things are good. So with some time of working through things there can be success. She still doesn't understand the way that I think but then again I don't understand the way she things either.
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Communication and education are the key. You both should strive to understand each others way of thinking. One of the best ways to do that is to talk to each other about what your feeling and thinking. Keep up with your consoling and communicate with each other. Good luck to you both.
 
clg114 said:
Communication and education are the key. You both should strive to understand each others way of thinking. One of the best ways to do that is to talk to each other about what your feeling and thinking. Keep up with your consoling and communicate with each other. Good luck to you both.
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Thank you. One of the biggest challenges that we have is that I get extremely offended when she says things then the conversation escalates.
 
Grumpy Cat said:
Can I ask what is it that she says?
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My memory is extremely bad and I forget things. She gets frustrated with me and when she brings things up I take it as if I meant to do it on purpose. Or I will do something and she will say that I don't do things thoroughly when I am doing the best that I can. I think differently than she does and in the things that I am doing I am not doing then purposely. I just feel a huge amount of guilt and get defensive to protect myself.
 
Another thing that is going on is I have a huge issue with communication. I cannot verbally communicate at all!
 
Greg said:
My memory is extremely bad and I forget things. She gets frustrated with me and when she brings things up I take it as if I meant to do it on purpose. Or I will do something and she will say that I don't do things thoroughly when I am doing the best that I can. I think differently than she does and in the things that I am doing I am not doing then purposely. I just feel a huge amount of guilt and get defensive to protect myself.
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Some people are perfectionists at things and expect another person to do a task in the same fashion. If she doesn't like how you do something, then she needs to do the task. I read about that complaint in an NT book. A lot of NT men get backlash from women when they don't do housework correctly.

The forgetting stuff, I try to do lists and notes and my phone to remind me of certain dates. When I'm under stress I have to do lists or I will forget things.
 
Greg said:
Another thing that is going on is I have a huge issue with communication. I cannot verbally communicate at all!
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Well, as you probably already know from reading some posts here, Aspies communicate much better through writing. Maybe for right now when you two are having a lot going on, you can write what you want to say to her. If she knows some stuff about AS, she would go along with this, at least for the time being, so you two can communicate and get through this rough patch.
 
Grumpy Cat said:
Well, as you probably already know from reading some posts here, Aspies communicate much better through writing. Maybe for right now when you two are having a lot going on, you can write what you want to say to her. If she knows some stuff about AS, she would go along with this, at least for the time being, so you two can communicate and get through this rough patch.
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I have found that writing emails works really well or even text messages
 
Cheryl said:
So, just out of curiosity, I was wondering if aspie marriages can be successful. Can they work out decently? What are they like? What are the struggles and rewards? Aspie and neurotypical marriages? Aspie and aspue marriages? Are there any married couples here who either has Asperger's or an aspie partner? If so, I would greatly appreciate it if someone who could relate could explain. Thank you.
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I am in a 13 year relationship with an NT woman. I am a diagnosed Aspie, but we didn't know that going into the relationship. It has been rocky, but we have stuck it out through my problems with dependability, communication, need for space, just plain baffling behavior, and her frustration, anger and disappointment.

She expected more from me in the beginning, I present as an NT well, expressed willingness to grow and change, and I was able to hide my problems long enough for us to get entangled.

She has expressed desire to have a partner who is a fully functioning capable adult, and I've expressed desire for a more understanding and accepting partner. We've invested a lot of ourselves in our relationship, care deeply about each other and appreciate each others strengths and what we bring to the relationship. At this point we are still trying to adjust our needs and expectations, but it's not easy and it may not work in the long run.
 
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