Hi! HELP!!

[Jonnydenicola]

My name is Jon Denicola, I am 23, and I've mainly come to this forum for help. I am not on the spectrum but I live with 3 people that are. My girlfriend, her Mom, and her Dad. I have ADHD and have been alienated on many occasions because I think differently so for the most part I get along with everyone despite how different we all might be. I have a great relationship with my girlfriends Mom and Dad but my relationship with my girlfriend is crashing and I feel like I am just running in circles. I think the reason I get along with the parents is because they have had time to figure themselves out and learned to utilize there brain to thrive. My girlfriend is only 20, She is high functioning, she is very competitive, and despite what she claims tries to function as a neuro-typical. (I hate the term neuro-typical. Are there others?) She is also very afraid of failing and shuts down even when the subjects that were slightly unsuccessful are brought up in light conversation. I've tried talking to her through text and word docs but I don't feel like I get anywhere because she just argues and turns down everything I have to say. I think it might be the way I say things to her. I am not great at explaining things in the first place. Regardless of our problems I feel like at the end, it's always my fault and like I have to be the one to fix everything. It's partly my personality and partly because she has an excuse for everything but never any positive or negative results. I feel like she is to afraid to try new things and when the problem becomes big enough for me to have to bring it up she just lies so that she can stay out of trouble. I am also afraid that I am just expecting what I would see most often. Even when we are doing well emotionally, our physical life is non existent. She is quite sensitive to rubbing and tries to suffer through it without me knowing. I have a care givers personality so finding out I was hurting her is very difficult for me. I also crave satisfying her and feeling wanted and before she became afraid of the physical part of the relationship it could almost happen regularly.

The thing I understand the lease is how and when she is responsible. She is a semi-successful model and can plain trips to great detail dealing with flights and bus and housing and transfers from photographer to photographer. But at home she can't pick up after herself. We are about to go to my friends wedding and we needed a plane ticket. The way our money is set up, she had to do it. It took her 3 days to do what she could normally do in minutes. I don't understand what the difference is and in this particular situation, even if I could have taken care of it I don't want to be forced to always "take care of it".

So any help on ways to talk to her or help her become responsible that would be great. Any tricks on the physical aspect would just be icing on the cake.

There is my soap box at 5am. Any and all help is most appreciated. I love facts and the psych behind everything so please do dumb down info. I will keep working for her forever but help would make life bliss.

Thanks,
Jon

 

[DealingWithIt]

HI Johnny,

Well, you have quite a few problems. As far as adjusting personality, I would talk to her parents about what works as a motivating factor for her. Other than that, there's really not much. I have an ASD friend who doesn't mind messes and he really doesn't seem to see or smell the mess around him, he seems pretty okay with it and months could go by before anything will happen. Some people, even NT (Just a useful shorthand term in my opinion for saying those who are not on the spectrum), are just like that. That seems like a pretty common relationship problem.

Now the touching, I can't help you with that either, but I can tell you I was in a relationship for ten years. Getting to the point where he could touch me took a while, and once there it was pretty easy. However, as things became more complicated, the harder it became for me to tolerate his touch, to the point where being physical was painful and eventually just brought on tears. I can tell you that my ability to tolerate touch, or even people in close proximity has a lot to do with my feelings towards them. Right now, the only people who can touch me, most of the time, without eliciting a reaction are my children. She might not be able to tolerate touch out of feeling frustrated with you. I really don't know.

Not everyone on the spectrum is going to react the same way to a stimulus for the same reasons, you ultimately have to go through her. I hope you can work things out, but 20 is pretty young and she may just need time to find herself and figure some things out.