Hello,
This is my first post. I just found this forum.
2 1/2 years ago I met a woman and fell in love with her fairly rapidly. Which wasn't easy. I originally thought she had BPD after I googled "extreme inappropriate anger". After a while I started going to a psychologist who, even though it is perilous, agreed to help me try to understand her. She (the therapist) concluded, and I now deeply agree, that the woman I love is a fairly high-functioning Aspie.
Unfortunately, she does not know she is (she might have a vague understanding that she is, but she does not want to know). She has lived a very difficult life, and admit and accepts a diagnosis of bi-polar (wrong) and mild schizophrenia (probably right, she controls it so well it is hard to tell). After having lived with her for two years, I add dissociative identity disorder to her diagnoses as well (really).
I have tried to bring up Aspergers and she just does not want to hear it. To quote her: "I don't want one more f'd up mental disease". She will not go to therapy. She suffers from paranoia (but given her life, it is not unjustified) and says of therapists "they ask you about your life, and then they crucify you with it".
So she won't admit she has aspergers, and we can't get therapy for it because she won't go.
In addition to her, there are two other Aspie coworkers in my life, and that has taught me that first, the woman I love (I'll call her Kate) is a person, not a diagnosis, that what she really has is a complex of things that add up to "Kate's Syndrome". I have have learned the there is a much variation between Aspies as there is between NTs. I know, duh.
The hard thing for me is that since most diagnosed Aspies are men, there is very little for me to read about Aspie women, and about NT relationships with Aspie women.
So, if you Aspies out there are willing, please let me ask you some questions, recognizing that every Aspie and every NT is different. Some of these questions I have indeed asked Kate, without real luck getting a response. Others I just can't ask because she does not admit her diagnosis.
Please don't waste your time telling me I may have the diagnosis wrong. 18 months of weekly therapist discussions and reading and study and most of all living with her for 2 1/2 years confirm for me that I have it right.
As you read my questions, please keep in mind that I am absolutely crazy in love with this woman, and I am convinced she loves me deeply as well (and says she does), although sometimes it is hard for me to know.
I am going to do one question to the group at a time, so as not to make my post ridiculously long.
1.) The most difficult behavior she has is "ignoring me". This is actually the behavior that caused my therapist to start asking me questions to investigate the possibility of Kate having aspergers.
When I come home from work, she used to say nothing at all. No smile, no hug, no nothing. She kept looking at her computer or watching TV. Over time, after my complaining, she has learned to tear herself away for a moment, but I can tell it is really hard for her. The first year of our relationship (our honeymoon period so to speak), an hour or so after I came home she would seek me out and then be very affectionate for a few minutes. But these days, we can be at home together all day, and she will never come into the room where I am. If I go where she is, she might not even look at me unless I call her name. Then she will interact with me, but only long enough to answer my question, or receive the information I have to give her.
I can ask her for attention, and she will give it to me. Sometimes, maybe once a day, sometimes less, she will be suddenly affectionate, very affectionate. If I do something nice for her, she melts, and is very appreciative. But ignoring me is her steady state condition.
It is so confusing, because over the course of the relationship, I have often interpreted this as her not caring about me, and when I tell her that she denies it, and will often make extraordinary efforts to show me she cares. I hope this example does not color my question in the wrong direction, but for example, yesterday I was complaining that it just really did not seem like she cared about me, and last night she came home from taking her daughter to a school event, woke me up, and made love to me in a way that could leave no doubt that she cared for me. She was amazing. Which makes being ignored again today even more confusing.
Can any of you help me understand this behavior, from your point of view as an Aspie? I hope it is not offensive or presumptuous of me to ask...
Thank you for your time.
Kevin
This is my first post. I just found this forum.
2 1/2 years ago I met a woman and fell in love with her fairly rapidly. Which wasn't easy. I originally thought she had BPD after I googled "extreme inappropriate anger". After a while I started going to a psychologist who, even though it is perilous, agreed to help me try to understand her. She (the therapist) concluded, and I now deeply agree, that the woman I love is a fairly high-functioning Aspie.
Unfortunately, she does not know she is (she might have a vague understanding that she is, but she does not want to know). She has lived a very difficult life, and admit and accepts a diagnosis of bi-polar (wrong) and mild schizophrenia (probably right, she controls it so well it is hard to tell). After having lived with her for two years, I add dissociative identity disorder to her diagnoses as well (really).
I have tried to bring up Aspergers and she just does not want to hear it. To quote her: "I don't want one more f'd up mental disease". She will not go to therapy. She suffers from paranoia (but given her life, it is not unjustified) and says of therapists "they ask you about your life, and then they crucify you with it".
So she won't admit she has aspergers, and we can't get therapy for it because she won't go.
In addition to her, there are two other Aspie coworkers in my life, and that has taught me that first, the woman I love (I'll call her Kate) is a person, not a diagnosis, that what she really has is a complex of things that add up to "Kate's Syndrome". I have have learned the there is a much variation between Aspies as there is between NTs. I know, duh.
The hard thing for me is that since most diagnosed Aspies are men, there is very little for me to read about Aspie women, and about NT relationships with Aspie women.
So, if you Aspies out there are willing, please let me ask you some questions, recognizing that every Aspie and every NT is different. Some of these questions I have indeed asked Kate, without real luck getting a response. Others I just can't ask because she does not admit her diagnosis.
Please don't waste your time telling me I may have the diagnosis wrong. 18 months of weekly therapist discussions and reading and study and most of all living with her for 2 1/2 years confirm for me that I have it right.
As you read my questions, please keep in mind that I am absolutely crazy in love with this woman, and I am convinced she loves me deeply as well (and says she does), although sometimes it is hard for me to know.
I am going to do one question to the group at a time, so as not to make my post ridiculously long.
1.) The most difficult behavior she has is "ignoring me". This is actually the behavior that caused my therapist to start asking me questions to investigate the possibility of Kate having aspergers.
When I come home from work, she used to say nothing at all. No smile, no hug, no nothing. She kept looking at her computer or watching TV. Over time, after my complaining, she has learned to tear herself away for a moment, but I can tell it is really hard for her. The first year of our relationship (our honeymoon period so to speak), an hour or so after I came home she would seek me out and then be very affectionate for a few minutes. But these days, we can be at home together all day, and she will never come into the room where I am. If I go where she is, she might not even look at me unless I call her name. Then she will interact with me, but only long enough to answer my question, or receive the information I have to give her.
I can ask her for attention, and she will give it to me. Sometimes, maybe once a day, sometimes less, she will be suddenly affectionate, very affectionate. If I do something nice for her, she melts, and is very appreciative. But ignoring me is her steady state condition.
It is so confusing, because over the course of the relationship, I have often interpreted this as her not caring about me, and when I tell her that she denies it, and will often make extraordinary efforts to show me she cares. I hope this example does not color my question in the wrong direction, but for example, yesterday I was complaining that it just really did not seem like she cared about me, and last night she came home from taking her daughter to a school event, woke me up, and made love to me in a way that could leave no doubt that she cared for me. She was amazing. Which makes being ignored again today even more confusing.
Can any of you help me understand this behavior, from your point of view as an Aspie? I hope it is not offensive or presumptuous of me to ask...
Thank you for your time.
Kevin