Communications with Spouse

[GadAbout]

When she first yelled, you are at fault, and unfeeling, for not reading the tacit meaning "I feel upset." Therefore, continuing to discuss the salt levels or asking for a photograph were a bad idea. When the yelling escalated, you should have backed down.

It's called nonverbal communication.

When you let the delivery person's agenda come between you and your wife's stress, you were being further unfeeling by putting a stranger's agenda dictate your behavior.

Honestly - it sounds like I'm blaming you - but I'm trying to interpret your wife's behavior. Here's what you could have done instead of texts and phone calls: tell the salt guy to deliver 5 bags, or not, but not phone your wife to tell her about it. Instead, wait until you get home, then ask why it was upsetting to be asked to answer a salt level question.

It's also possible that you were annoyed by being contacted at work with this trivial matter, and your voice, when you talked to your wife, demonstrated that annoyance. Then she thought YOU were mad at HER which she felt was unfair.

Again, I don't mean to criticize you, just suggest some ways to handle these things better in the future. I hope that's ok.

 

[All-Rounder]

She then tells me I "have no feelings and am So Hurtful". - perhaps pressured by circumstance you forgot to be sweet. In a way, sometimes you are like that, logically driven, forgetting you're talking to a person, even more, to your woman. That means, though, that there is room for improvement.

She seems to highly require emotional and sweet talk, not to bug into your relationship but maybe shes been starving. You dont seem particularly keen in being sweet to her up to her expectations and needs. Try spending more time dedicated to that.

Is it my paranoia or does this post seem to be making you sound like you're smart and she's very emotional. That sounds disrespectful, right? Maybe you and your wife need to rebuild some respect towards one another, and take a break and just do some good activities... right after you get this issue worked out through conversation. But remember, over-conversation doesn't help. As long as both know whats wrong, arguing endlessly can only harm.

 

[Varzar]

I know when I've gotten myself in similar predicaments, it's usually my tone, not my words that are the issue.. I can almost hear having a similar conversation with my wife.. lol
Does she know you are AS?
It helped my wife a lot to understand that my tone doesn't necessarily match what an NT would expect.. She likely thought you were criticizing her or being condescending in your tone even if you thought you were being sincere..

 

[All-Rounder]

Your wife needs to learn to express her feelings verbally, you're not able to tell them. Now this is a very tough thing to learn but she needs to work on it until it gets better. It doesnt matter if she interrupts you, it just matters she tells you right then and there and she feels safe telling you.

 

[Varzar]

In similar situations, I would go out of my way to make sure my wife knows she is helping me out at every step, I can't do this without her, I *need* her help..

Like,
You: Do you think you could do me a favor? I need to know how much salt is left in the softener to decide how much to order.. Would you be able to have a look for me?
Her: I can't tell to salt level...
You: Ah, that's ok. *very soothingly* It's hard to tell sometimes.. It'd really help me out if you could take a picture for me. Maybe I could tell if we need more from that.

Hopefully she would react well to that, and then you'd very sincerely thank her for her help afterwards..
I know from a logical, rational perspective all this "fluff" seems inefficient.. But, the subsequent arguments when you don't are even less efficient.

 

[All-Rounder]

Tom you are a wise man.

Not to barge in, but running away from issues wont solve them. You need to be able to solve such situations in the long run, if one of you is unavailable. Maybe some can be prevented, but there are still issues that seem to be present.

 

[All-Rounder]

Is your wife not a morning person? Think that or did you two go to bed mad at each other, or finally , (lol) did you forget your anniversary, her birthday?

Seriously, I was thinking maybe she was interrupted from housework. But it still doesnt seem like the main issue

 

[All-Rounder]

Just a follow-up. Apparently not only do I lack empathy, but I also made my wife feel like an idiot by asking her to send me photographs.

All hail. My senses aren't dead. I didnt read this when i replied with a similar suspicion, that she may think youre insulting her smarts. I dont think though that that means she wishes you to not have trusted her enough and hanged in enough to let her figure it out and prove her worth, like Tom said. Maybe she was slightly insincere and gave up too soon. If she needs to prove her worth she should take up challenges which prove her worth [smarts] to you [right along with you reassuring her shes smart, why, and that you think highly of her personality, decisions, etc].

 

[All-Rounder]

Now that is an interesting question, and I have wondered about that myself. She has both social anxiety and sensory issues, and has a nephew who is autistic. So, it is possible.

But, how likely is is for two Aspies to mate? And why would she be obsessed with my lack of empathy? I don't understand that.

Because shes hungry for your empathy, is my guess. A hungry animal wont think about how to scratch bark, shell keep looking at that antelope right in the view and chasing it. Time to chase her and switch roles? My guess is that you cant top her, so roles will still be somewhat her being the chaser. Sad to say, but maybe she can relax and see its nothing bad, with support from you.

 

[Rasputin]

Because shes hungry for your empathy, is my guess. A hungry animal wont think about how to scratch bark, shell keep looking at that antelope right in the view and chasing it. Time to chase her and switch roles? My guess is that you cant top her, so roles will still be somewhat her being the chaser. Sad to say, but maybe she can relax and see its nothing bad, with support from you.

Okay, this I agree with. So all of this has been building up, and we have to somehow talk about it with my being empathetic?

I think what you are saying is I need to shower her with attention and romance, while letting her be in control.

 

[All-Rounder]

Okay, this I agree with. So all of this has been building up, and we have to somehow talk about it with my being empathetic?

Welcome to enlightment. Take up a seat.

1. At least 1-2 times per day be spontaneously offering her truthful compliments without her asking, make it more than her beauty, beautiful women dont feel they matter if others keep praising their superficial qualities.

2. A man must be a slight bit more dominant in a relationship for a woman to feel happy and protected. Majority of women by statistics need to feel that their man is strong and also they may do occasional "testing". This behaviour is instictive and aims to make their man stronger. In the wild having a strong man was a very useful benefit, and he could protect her and her children. Women still posess the instinct in today's world, they seek for gaps in your armor without even realizing it. To deal with her testing you have to be very calm when she gets emotionally unstable, yells, and be able to prove you're not affected by it, and that you can turn the situation around, maybe even with a little comedy, which leads me to point

3. Humor. Women love humor. Women are attracted to men who can make them laugh, and they more easily get attached to them. Often this is an useful trait in impressing a woman for the first time, where other men sound like "friends" you will be the one showing confidence and not being threatened by her beauty or approaching her. This can also save your relationship if she says she no longer feels this way and no longer knows whether she still wants to be in the relationship. Also not letting yourself intimidated by her showing off in some way, eg. if she would say shes a model you could go like "A model, huh, are you a hand model? Foot model?" and shell laugh and say no shes a model for a magazine or something like that, but you betcha youre making a difference. A balance must be found between being a douchebag and not letting yourself shake in the face of her [a strong but reliable, kind man] assets and being able to seem relaxed, even if you dont always feel like it. Grab her, order her to cook something, be a little dominant here and there.

4. Keep communication to minimum, like i mentioned, dont have to talk about the same issue 70 times, 3 times a day. Once or several times is more than enough if there are no clarifications needed. Keep it nice and sounding empathetic, take it slow, you dont have to have answers always ready. It gets easier the more you practice, but just be as kind and compassionate to her needs as possible, even without her expressing them. "It seems to me you had your voice raised" is better than "you've yelled at me", seems less blameful. Hugging before and after is a nice way to make it better as well as saying I love you maybe once in between talks when you think is appropriate [usually when a matter has been resolved].

5. Affection through language and touch. Intimacy is the number 1 important thing in a relationship. You need to find what your wife needs in terms of intimacy. There are four intimacy types: activities together, intelligent conversations, bonding through time and romantic discussions aka spiritual or emotional, and physical. It seems to me a big one for your wife is emotional and maybe intelligent.

 

[All-Rounder]

6. Doing things you enjoy with her. This will let it feel less of faking to be in a relationship, but have your genuine relationship, and this will help improve your self love and your needs too.Take up the initiative, but dont be afraid if she does sometimes. Its fine for a woman to make decisions and you can let her know you acknowledged what she found good about her decision and follow up with doing it.

8. Practice not being as reliant on always having done things right around her. That includes, don't automatically think your voice didn't bother her if she reacted in some way. Seek to find if it did, instead. Get to know yourself through her eyes and perception. Trust her.

 

[Rasputin]

Welcome to enlightment. Take up a seat.

1. At least 1-2 times per day be spontaneously offering her truthful compliments without her asking, make it more than her beauty, beautiful women dont feel they matter if others keep praising their superficial qualities.

2. A man must be a slight bit more dominant in a relationship for a woman to feel happy and protected. Majority of women by statistics need to feel that their man is strong and also they may do occasional "testing". This behaviour is instictive and aims to make their man stronger. In the wild having a strong man was a very useful benefit, and he could protect her and her children. Women still posess the instinct in today's world, they seek for gaps in your armor without even realizing it. To deal with her testing you have to be very calm when she gets emotionally unstable, yells, and be able to prove you're not affected by it, and that you can turn the situation around, maybe even with a little comedy, which leads me to point

3. Humor. Women love humor. Women are attracted to men who can make them laugh, and they more easily get attached to them. Often this is an useful trait in impressing a woman for the first time, where other men sound like "friends" you will be the one showing confidence and not being threatened by her beauty or approaching her. This can also save your relationship if she says she no longer feels this way and no longer knows whether she still wants to be in the relationship. Also not letting yourself intimidated by her showing off in some way, eg. if she would say shes a model you could go like "A model, huh, are you a hand model? Foot model?" and shell laugh and say no shes a model for a magazine or something like that, but you betcha youre making a difference. A balance must be found between being a douchebag and or not letting yourself shake in the face of her [a strong but reliable, kind man] assets and being able to seem relaxed, even if you dont always feel like it. Grab her, order her to cook something, be a little dominant here and there.

4. Keep communication to minimum, like i mentioned, dont have to talk about the same issue 70 times, 3 times a day. Once or several times is more than enough if there are no clarifications needed. Keep it nice and sounding empathetic, take it slow, you dont have to have answers always ready. It gets easier the more you practice, but just be as kind and compassionate to her needs as possible, even without her expressing them. "It seems to me you had your voice raised" is better than "you've yelled at me", seems less blameful. Hugging before and after is a nice way to make it better as well as saying I love you maybe once in between talks when you think is appropriate [usually when a matter has been resolved].

5. Affection through language and touch. Intimacy is the number 1 important thing in a relationship. You need to find what your wife needs in terms of intimacy. There are four intimacy types: activities together, intelligent conversations, bonding through time and discussions aka spiritual or emotional, and physical. It seems to me a big one for your wife is emotional and maybe intelligent.

Rexi, you are very smart, and have given me some ideas. Thanks for enlightening me. One point I might not do is to be too forceful, as I tend to be that way naturally. I am thinking along the lines of a romantic getaway after I have worked on the points you described.

What has happened is I have been too assertive at times, and then backed off in response to her testing. But that was her way of being in control. So, now we need to switch roles to some extent.

 

[All-Rounder]

Rexi, you are very smart, and have given me some ideas. Thanks for enlightening me. One

Teehee, thanks. Hope they will help. They helped me with my relationship. I studied a lot and I still do when confused, I think about such things aiming to get better at identifying causes and proceeding with behaviour.

 

[Rasputin]

In similar situations, I would go out of my way to make sure my wife knows she is helping me out at every step, I can't do this without her, I *need* her help..

Like,
You: Do you think you could do me a favor? I need to know how much salt is left in the softener to decide how much to order.. Would you be able to have a look for me?
Her: I can't tell to salt level...
You: Ah, that's ok. *very soothingly* It's hard to tell sometimes.. It'd really help me out if you could take a picture for me. Maybe I could tell if we need more from that.

Hopefully she would react well to that, and then you'd very sincerely thank her for her help afterwards..
I know from a logical, rational perspective all this "fluff" seems inefficient.. But, the subsequent arguments when you don't are even less efficient.

Varzar, you and I are a lot alike. You have some good ideas, but not quite on par with Rexi. See below if you haven,'t already.

But seriously, you have the right idea. I tend to be too direct sometimes, and need to work on my soft skills. I appreciate your suggestions, and will work on it.

 

[Thinx]

Now that is an interesting question, and I have wondered about that myself. She has both social anxiety and sensory issues, and has a nephew who is autistic. So, it is possible.

But, how likely is is for two Aspies to mate? And why would she be obsessed with my lack of empathy? I don't understand that.

I think it's reasonably likely 2 Aspies may be attracted to each other, bearing in mind they each have many other aspects that are relevant to the mutual attractions. I have noticed that when people have communication problems that are hard to solve, they are often both insecure in the broad sense of attachment theory, so I mean their early experience in their families has left them a bit (or a lot) insecure and they usually have learned to handle that in ways that use distancing, or clinging. Often a distancer is attracted to a clinger, and vice versa. Gender conditioning adds to the effects, stereotypically boys finding distancing strategies and girls finding clinging strategies, huge generalisation sorry.

Add high autistic traits or Aspergers and the mix is further complicated, with our innate communication differences that can cause us confusion, plus the different ways this shows itself in males and females again due to gender conditioning and other factors.

Good levels of intelligence don't necessarily help as we know, at least until we understand some of these factors and get information and help. The couple is a great unit for mutual support potentially, but also ideal for mutual projections, and where those of us who are insecure (aswell as Aspie maybe), get stuck is often around these projections. A partners harsh sounding voice elicit's the other partners strategies of attack or distress, in turn this elicits confusion or projections from their partner... it's an NT thing too, and each couple's experience is unique and hard to see, as it's each person's learnt reality, that they had to utilise to cope in early relating.

However, it's all workable with, @Rexi has suggested some great ways forward. Good luck with this!

 

[Varzar]

Varzar, you and I are a lot alike. You have some good ideas, but not quite on par with Rexi. See below if you haven,'t already.

But seriously, you have the right idea. I tend to be too direct sometimes, and need to work on my soft skills. I appreciate your suggestions, and will work on it.

@Rexi FTW!
You're right @Rasputin, we are a lot alike. I've noticed that too.

Was thinking about Rexi's list this morning, and realizing I have an issue with #1..

1. At least 1-2 times per day be spontaneously offering her truthful compliments without her asking, make it more than her beauty, beautiful women dont feel they matter if others keep praising their superficial qualities.

Whenever I try to give people (anyone, not just my wife) and sincere compliment, ~90% of the time, they take it as sarcasm or patronizing.. I've had several conversations with my wife about this, and apparently, my tone doesn't sound right, but I can't hear the difference.. She'll even tell me how it should sound, I'll try to mimic, and it still comes out sounding wrong..

 

[Thinx]

Again, I would say, factor in attachment security too. If one partner is fairly secure, they tend to be able to accept a compliment, giving leeway for their partners way of delivering it. However, many of us hear compliments insecurely, and we may instinctively respond from our defenses.

 

[Varzar]

Again, I would say, factor in attachment security too. If one partner is fairly secure, they tend to be able to accept a compliment, giving leeway for their partners way of delivering it. However, many of us hear compliments insecurely, and we may instinctively respond from our defenses.

I googled attachment security, so I now have a vague idea what you mean by that.. I'm still not sure *how* I'm supposed to factor that in. Two cases here,
1) where it's a near stranger, and I would have no way of knowing what their attachment security is like.. And..
2) where it's my wife.. She presents herself as being very secure, but I think she hides a lot of insecurity underneath...

 

[Pats]

The following happened this morning:

(1) Salt delivery person calls my house to see if I need salt delivered for our water softener.

(2) My wife tells the guy to call me at work, and she texts me.

(3) I call home and ask my wife to look in the water softener to tell me what the salt level was. She is unable to determine salt level, be so I ask if it looks full. She gets frustrated and starts yelling.

(4) I ask her to take a photo of the salt level and to text it to me. Also ask her to tell me how many bags of salt we have. She yells even louder, and hangs up the phone.

(5) Not knowing how much salt we need I call the delivery guy and tell him to bring five bags, a modest quantity. Then I call my wife, and inform her that five bags will be delivered Thursday.

(6) She then tells me I "have no feelings and am So Hurtful".

(7) I tell her she misunderstood me, and I obviously misunderstood her. Then I apologize for whatever I said that was hurtful.

(8) My wife then tells me I was impatient and disrespectful by asking her to send me photos. That I am unable to tell how other people are feeling.

Can someone tell me where our communications went wrong? I was at work, and could not check the salt level from home. I never yelled or even raised my voice, but apparently I come across as unfeeling.

It SOUNDS like you did nothing wrong, but we haven't heard her side. It's funny how things like this can cause hurt feelings. BUT, it IS possible your wife felt that you were basically calling her stupid. Like the man who came out to fix my dryer vent (that was clogged up) and the first thing he asked was if I cleaned the vent filter. Really? Or when I told my husband I heard a peacock and he asked if I knew what a peacock was. Or when I saw a rat and was asked if I was sure it wasn't a squirrel or something else. Questioning my answers is like calling me an idiot.
But at the same time, if your wife put it on you to deal with the salt man, you were trying to do just that and wasn't getting the information you needed to handle that. Reminded me of when my mom would call me at work. Once, she said the kids were playing poop hockey. I guess the dog had pooped in the floor and they were using a broom to sweep it out the door instead of getting a napkin and picking it up. But I was like, what do you want me to do about it from here and did she expect me to leave work and come home. As long as they were getting it up, I didn't care how. Oh and it was her dog. She ended up taking the girls home and leaving my 12 year old son home alone that night.