Hello I'm new here

[Nisk]

Hello I was diagnosed with Aspergers 2 years ago.

I spent all of my teenage years addicted to drugs and got clean when I was 20 years old. I've been clean and sober for 12 years now.

I've been in a relationship for 10 years. We've been struggling for a lot of that but made it work, although it has been getting progressively worse since my diagnosis. We have a 2 year old son, 2 dogs and 2 cats. My partner was misdiagnosed with bi-polar when we first got together and that was recently changed to ADD.

I've held the same job as an ironworker for 17 years doing steel erection on buildings and bridges, I've been the boss for the last 10 years.

I enjoy fishing and building things.

 

[Mia]

Welcome to the site Nisk

Congratulations on kicking the addictions, that's a lot of self-control.

 

[Tom]

Hi & Welcome,
The worst time ever in my relationship was immediately after self diagnosis and lasted a few years (which my wife as a new special ed teacher concurred with). I hope you can work thru it, because we then entered a very good phase with a new and more correct understanding of each other.

 

[Progster]

Hi, and welcome to the forum. Well done for kicking the addictions

 

[Nisk]

Addiction was so long ago now, it was mainly a means to cope with daily social life, a place to fit in and another mask to hide behind. Aspergers has eventually become an asset to quitting drugs thanks to the strict OCDish routines I've created in my life without drugs it would be extremely difficult to start that again.

I've really not had any problems accepting the diagnosis. It was more of a relief then anything to me. I now had an answer as to why I always felt different, why it seemed I had to struggle to fit in and so many other issues I had.

I'm not sure if I was the only one who would sit at night and wonder if maybe they were broken because they didn't seem to have emotions like the other people around them. Or thought that they couldn't look people in the eyes because they were all judging you. All of these issues were explained by a doctor to me after a diagnosis.

The hardest part is my wife accepting it. She is in a place right now where she's read far to many Aspie/NT horror stories online and come the conclusion that I'll never change and can't grow as a person. She's currently seeking her own helpto work through it but I truly believe that your own desire to change and grow is far stronger then any diagnosis or website checklist.

 

[Tom]

The hardest part is my wife accepting it. She is in a place right now where she's read far to many Aspie/NT horror stories online and come the conclusion that I'll never change and can't grow as a person. She's currently seeking her own helpto work through it but I truly believe that your own desire to change and grow is far stronger then any diagnosis or website checklist.

This was the same problem area for me. And she became very informed, but being book informed is not the same as actually doing it.

It is a process, but one thing I experienced was her suddenly thinking I was a lot less mentally competent overnight. Thats hard to take when you have been fully involved and had a successful work career and the bread winner for 20 years. But at the same time there were things she could point to that were bad judgements on my part or too heavily influenced by Aspergers (like social phobias), or the co-morbids like anxieties. So what I had to do was two things at once. One was to make improvements on the weak areas and prove it could be done and also get her to realize and accept there were many things I was doing quite logically and competently. There were lots of discussions involved and it really only started to improve when we both made the discussion positive only and tried to understand each other as much as try to be understood.

 

[Mia]

The hardest part is my wife accepting it. She is in a place right now where she's read far to many Aspie/NT horror stories online and come the conclusion that I'll never change and can't grow as a person. She's currently seeking her own helpto work through it but I truly believe that your own desire to change and grow is far stronger then any diagnosis or website checklist.

I read many of them as well, to try and understand my Aspie husband. Both the good and the bad is out there online, related to asperger's. One of the things I began to understand was that some of the things he said and did usually came out when he was being confronted or had little time to think.

Stepping back from the arguments, and giving both of us time to 'digest' them or even sleep on these discussions helped. Realizing too that his sometimes terrible behaviour was often a function of not being able to think when he was under a lot of stress, and he would react angrily. Made me realize that it wasn't malicious and cruel as I used to think, but more a stereotypical reaction to being pushed too far.

It wasn't impossible for him to think, or even to work at changing his extreme reactions. Being unable to understand another person usually means that the other person has not learned to explain well enough to make it clear to the person they are discussing it with.

 

[Nisk]

Thanks Tom and Mia that's basically where we're at right now. I'm focusing on my issues and she's working on hers. Only time will tell the outcome but I know we've worked through bigger problems and became stronger as a result

 

[Rocco]

Welcome aboard. Hope you enjoy the community. Best wishes.