Is it very difficult to acknowledge the validity of an alternative perspective when someone points out you aren't doing it?

[yogabanana]

You're trying to perform "emotional alchemy", regardless of the negative consequences.

And why exactly? You're not going to emotionally align with your husband.
The techniques you describe won't even give you the best middle ground.

What you're looking for isn't possible with a majority of NT males either.

What is emotional alchemy?

 

[Hypnalis]

Alchemy is a pseudoscience, commonly (but not entirely correctly) considered to be the attempt to turn base metals into gold by chemical means.
(That transformation isn't exactly impossible, but you need the kind of equipment that CERN has. Or a supernova explosion - the fusion processes in stars like Sol can't create anything heavier than Iron.)

I used it to capture the sense of "impossible transformation".

BTW - people with ASD describe themselves as having Alexithymia, but it's a word you may be unable to understand from our perspective. I quite like the literal meaning: "no words for emotions".

We have emotions, but our "emotional palette" doesn't match NT norms, and neither does the intensity.
And there's a lot of variation among ASDs.

 

[Aspychata]

First, let's look at the clothes hamper issue. Just make it ridiculously easy. Buy two more, put them in places where he has to see it. Put a nice sign above, please put clothes in hamper. Yes, it's simplistic, but who cares, it could save the marriage. Second, examine why the non use of the hamper bothers you to the utmost extreme? It seems to symbolize not being listened to? That helps narrowing down your true feelings. Usually when somebody says divorce as many times as you have, it's going to happen. Could you consider a temporary separation, like a month away? This may help you reflect and decide if divorcing is the answer. Anyways, good luck with this. Maybe every week, have a date night to reconnect again?

 

[thejuice]

To answer the thread title as a general talking point on autism and in no way making any comment on your situation:

There are some perspectives that I see as not valid and any appeal to emotion just won't wash with me, especially if it comes from a childish place.

Usually the truth is somewhere in the middle though. I used a brick wall approach as a self preservation method against a chaotic emotional vampire here. So if someone thinks I'm a jerk because I won't soothe their spiteful temper tantrum I'm fine with that because I'm not their parent. I have no truck with an unbalanced 'my truth' type.

With my ex i noticed the tone and body language way more than the words. They came across like attacks because she was a poor communicator and picked very insensitive times to bring up her issues. She was also a champion at majoring in the minors!

A harsh, frustrated tone, aggressive body language and the delusional martyr attitude will make me defensive, want to justify myself, shut down and not see the other perspective.

 

[Au Naturel]

I would argue that all perspectives are valid to the person holding them. That doesn't make the objective truth. Some do not mesh well with reality and tend to get you into trouble or seriously impede your life in other ways. That's where the friction occurs.

Sometimes, there is an obvious misreading of fact, but most of the time, it's two people seeing the same fact and fleshing out reality with our own biases and insecurities. A given fact can be tweaked in any number of ways to support wildly conflicting worldviews. Once you understand a person's underlying values, you can see how they get there.

Usually, people don't know the fundamental values that drive them. They just have rationalizations. All humans work this way, including wanna-be Vulcans like me.

I believe in "Live and let live." I'm not here to live up to your expectations, and you're not here to live up to mine.

To make that work, you have to be willing to walk away without bad feelings rather than trying to convince the other of their folly. That effort makes you a fool, as well.

 

[AprilR]

It seems like your personalities and needs are a bit different. You expect for him to accept your emotions, that he hurts you as facts on their own, which is understandable.

This probably hurts him on an emotional level, because he does not mean to hurt you, is unable to understand your emotions are as real as the objective truth. So saying he is dismissive and abusive is unfair to him.

I think this is different than a NT who is on the same wavelength as you, but is dismissive of your emotions as a behavior in regards to you. In my experience, some autistic people see emotions and emotional truths as not really more important than objective truths. This is not specific to any person or situation, more like a general worldview. They don't view their own emotions as truth either. (at least in my experience)

I am also like this to a certain level. I did not accept my own emotions as a truth on their own and valid in the past. I still struggle with this, that i am free to have emotional truths, and i can feel them freely. My dad, who is also autistic is also like this

 

[Atrapa Almas]

(The OP seems to be no longer posting and this thread is from December...)

 

[Hypnalis]

Also worth noting that OP seemed to be looking for control rather than compromise.

This:

But again, the invalidating responses and various forms of defensiveness have resulted in very little closure or resolution on anything

is "therapy language" of the kind used by "talk therapists" (who are useful for some things, but not this) and Reddit ,(which is full of people who recommend setting unreasonable goals, applying wildly inappropriate coercive techniques, and suggest that women terminate relationships over minor resolvable issues.

In relationship terms this is "playing to lose".

OFC I may be wrong, but sometimes it's best to err on the side of caution.
I'm strongly opposed to applying coercion to one of us who's in a vulnerable position. To me, it's for the same reasons as the consensus here is that ABA is problematic.

IMO it's a good thing to teach a cooperative person some useful and relevant skills, or to work together towards a compromise or a way to help each other to behave well (like polite, agreed checks, reminders, ways to apologize without any inherent loss of status, etc).

Conditioning via aversion therapy - not so much.

So I slipped in that "emotional alchemy" comment deliberately, and similarly "loaded" post #22.
I'd do it again too

 

[Au Naturel]

Also worth noting that OP seemed to be looking for control rather than compromise.

This:

is "therapy language" of the kind used by "talk therapists" (who are useful for some things, but not this) and Reddit ,(which is full of people who recommend setting unreasonable goals, applying wildly inappropriate coercive techniques, and suggest that women terminate relationships over minor resolvable issues.

In relationship terms this is "playing to lose".

OFC I may be wrong, but sometimes it's best to err on the side of caution.
I'm strongly opposed to applying coercion to one of us who's in a vulnerable position. To me, it's for the same reasons as the consensus here is that ABA is problematic.

IMO it's a good thing to teach a cooperative person some useful and relevant skills, or to work together towards a compromise or a way to help each other to behave well (like polite, agreed checks, reminders, ways to apologize without any inherent loss of status, etc).

Conditioning via aversion therapy - not so much.

So I slipped in that "emotional alchemy" comment deliberately, and similarly "loaded" post #22.
I'd do it again too

I agree with you on the "therapy talk." No ordinary human would ever come up with phrases like that. These are terms that have been heard and repeated.

Invalidation is such a wierd concept. You can objectively validate a thing, an action, or a solution to a problem. For example, the business I just shopped at can validate my parking. I can have my theories validated/invalidated through peer review and experimental results. My passport gets validated at the border.

You can't invalidate a person; they just are. You can't invalidate a feeling; it just is. Another person might think your feelings are invalid, but that's just their opinion and should have nothing to do with how you feel internally. If you allow another person to validate/invalidate your feelings, you've surrendered your free agency in the matter. You allowed yourself to think of them as an emotional validation authority.

Often as not, "validation/invalidation" is really about empathy/no empathy, understanding/misunderstanding, agreeing/disagreeing, or caring/not caring and your resulting emotional response to being supported/not supported.

Do not try to "invalidate" the other person's defensive feelings. Instead, try to understand them. That is the key to progress.