Russ T
New Member
Hello everyone - I was diagnosed a couple weeks ago with Aspergers along with a whole host of other psychological issues (presumably resulting or worsening from living life without any awareness of this condition). I am approaching 50, am thrice divorced and currently married. I have a 21 year old daughter from a prior relationship (from whom I am estranged and who is likely on the spectrum herself) and a 4 year old son with my NT wife of 17 years.
My marriage has been difficult and is in serious crisis as my lack of empathy, social awkwardness, mind blindness and extreme anxiety have taken a severe toll on my wife. Due to a series of unexpected stressors, I ended up working with a psychiatrist and a therapist which ultimately led to the diagnoses. I was prescribed some medication to which I was found to be particularly sensitive, turning my normal everyday jerk self into a raging passive-aggressive, suicidal, paranoid nihilist. “Burn it ALL down” seemed to be the general theme by which my subconscious took the reins and ran rough shod over my well tended masks and other concealments.
While I’m now off those meds, I scared my wife and son so much I’m not sure they’ll ever trust me again. I could barely recognize myself (as if I’d even know what “myself” is but that’s for another post). And while I wish I could blame all my troubles on a bad med reaction, that doesn’t account for the decades of seemingly narcissistic and destructive behavior which leaves me bewildered and my loved ones feeling unsafe, unsupported, unloved, untrusting and often betrayed and thrown under the bus.
I suspect that my mother was on the spectrum as well, although it could just be garden-variety narcissism brought on by her own severe trauma in childhood. Her parenting led to what I’ve come to understand is “disorganized attachment” which basically leads to feelings of fear without resolution, incapacity to trust others in intimate relationships while transferring all of my unresolved anger and resentment toward my mother onto my wife. A real recipe for tendernous and well-being. If you’re a sociopath.
Anyway, despite the extreme strain and trauma, I feel slightly optimistic, because at least now I have a name for this thing I’ve always suspected was different about me.
I am particularly adept at masking. It is my understanding that women on the spectrum mask more comprehensively than men typically do, and it seems like my masking is more thorough. So despite the inadvertent misogyny and sexist authoritarian tendencies I exhibit in my efforts to control my home life, my masking is more egalitarian. It’s the little things.
I have never really known who i was, but I was pretty sure that if anyone ever got to know who i really was, they’d hate me. I remember when I was 4 years old, looking at a stained glass window in a church I attended in my youth, and I just knew that there was something wrong with me. I didn’t exactly think God was angry with me, just that he didn’t know I existed. I felt outside the normal world. I felt like people were capable of intense cruelty. I felt like the world was overrun by suffering. But I loved my grandmother, and she held my hand in church, so that was ok. God might not have known who I was, but my grandmother loved me with a heart and soul that few people possess. And that love alone was so much more than so many people experience. So I guess I should count myself lucky. I was bullied a bit but i got to move out of that town and wouldn’t you know it, I followed the bullies years later on Social Media and they ended up in exactly the places i would have hoped bullied would end up so karma something something. They did breed, so it’s not the best news but I’m probably a far worse bully now so i guess i can’t be too critical.
I always did very well in school, I was fortunate to be educated in the Connecticut school system in the 70s and early 80s, back when they really invested in alternative methods for gifted kids with “social awkwardness”...it really was a haven and I believe that was one of the main reasons I was able to find a mask/identity based on being “smart”, competitive and finding common ground with similar academic peers. That, with a healthy dose of perfectionism and an insatiable desire to garner the praise and affection of bosses and other authority figures led to a fairly successful career thus far. Although even that is in jeopardy thanks to unresolved anger, resentment, abandonment PTSD and run of the mill terror without reprieve. Fortunately, my current boss is someone I’ve been collegial and friendly with on a professional level for about 15 years, and I’ve been able to actually let him know a bit about my current struggles, so I have a degree of safety and support there too which I can’t take for granted. But i will tomorrow, I’m sure, because my working memory isn’t always the best and I’ll probably forget I even wrote this. I’ll probably just feel scared out of my mind that he’s going to call me and say “you know what, Russ? We’ve decided you are probably an imposter and so we’ve decided to fire you and ensure you never work another day in your life, so that you and everyone you love dies of starvation and/or humiliation, in some alley somewhere, penniless, in the dark, alone.” That’ll probably happen this time. I just know it.
I know this is rambling on and on, and i was initially inclined to apologize. But screw that. I’ve spent my life apologizing for making people feel uncomfortable, then wallowing in self-loathing, then acting out due to a sense of helplessness and ineffable shame, then starting the cycle all over again. I figure someone reading this is either empathizing (cognitively or emotionally, can’t be both) or is entertained (feeding my compulsion to elicit encouragement and affirmation from others, preferably anonymous strangers on the internet) or might actually have something to say that will hit the right tone at the right time and will resolve all of my various and sundry issues. No pressure.
So I’m going to embrace this new label I have about myself, just as soon as I recover from the shock. I will learn how to be the best person I can be given the strengths and weaknesses afforded me as a result of my genetics, my environment, my culture. Knowledge truly is power, it can be argued it is the only real power, n’est pas? So I will learn everything I can about ASD. I will learn how to be the best father I can be and the best partner I can be. Maybe that will be recompense enough for the ways this has effected my NT loved ones.
So thanks for reading. I’m going to drive back home now. I’ve been typing this on my phone while sitting in my car at the local grocery store. I’d say there’s a 30/70 chance the locks will have been changed. That’s what i would do, if i had me outside coming back at any time. I’m effin’ crazy. As the above should have made quite plain.
Ciao,
Russ
My marriage has been difficult and is in serious crisis as my lack of empathy, social awkwardness, mind blindness and extreme anxiety have taken a severe toll on my wife. Due to a series of unexpected stressors, I ended up working with a psychiatrist and a therapist which ultimately led to the diagnoses. I was prescribed some medication to which I was found to be particularly sensitive, turning my normal everyday jerk self into a raging passive-aggressive, suicidal, paranoid nihilist. “Burn it ALL down” seemed to be the general theme by which my subconscious took the reins and ran rough shod over my well tended masks and other concealments.
While I’m now off those meds, I scared my wife and son so much I’m not sure they’ll ever trust me again. I could barely recognize myself (as if I’d even know what “myself” is but that’s for another post). And while I wish I could blame all my troubles on a bad med reaction, that doesn’t account for the decades of seemingly narcissistic and destructive behavior which leaves me bewildered and my loved ones feeling unsafe, unsupported, unloved, untrusting and often betrayed and thrown under the bus.
I suspect that my mother was on the spectrum as well, although it could just be garden-variety narcissism brought on by her own severe trauma in childhood. Her parenting led to what I’ve come to understand is “disorganized attachment” which basically leads to feelings of fear without resolution, incapacity to trust others in intimate relationships while transferring all of my unresolved anger and resentment toward my mother onto my wife. A real recipe for tendernous and well-being. If you’re a sociopath.
Anyway, despite the extreme strain and trauma, I feel slightly optimistic, because at least now I have a name for this thing I’ve always suspected was different about me.
I am particularly adept at masking. It is my understanding that women on the spectrum mask more comprehensively than men typically do, and it seems like my masking is more thorough. So despite the inadvertent misogyny and sexist authoritarian tendencies I exhibit in my efforts to control my home life, my masking is more egalitarian. It’s the little things.
I have never really known who i was, but I was pretty sure that if anyone ever got to know who i really was, they’d hate me. I remember when I was 4 years old, looking at a stained glass window in a church I attended in my youth, and I just knew that there was something wrong with me. I didn’t exactly think God was angry with me, just that he didn’t know I existed. I felt outside the normal world. I felt like people were capable of intense cruelty. I felt like the world was overrun by suffering. But I loved my grandmother, and she held my hand in church, so that was ok. God might not have known who I was, but my grandmother loved me with a heart and soul that few people possess. And that love alone was so much more than so many people experience. So I guess I should count myself lucky. I was bullied a bit but i got to move out of that town and wouldn’t you know it, I followed the bullies years later on Social Media and they ended up in exactly the places i would have hoped bullied would end up so karma something something. They did breed, so it’s not the best news but I’m probably a far worse bully now so i guess i can’t be too critical.
I always did very well in school, I was fortunate to be educated in the Connecticut school system in the 70s and early 80s, back when they really invested in alternative methods for gifted kids with “social awkwardness”...it really was a haven and I believe that was one of the main reasons I was able to find a mask/identity based on being “smart”, competitive and finding common ground with similar academic peers. That, with a healthy dose of perfectionism and an insatiable desire to garner the praise and affection of bosses and other authority figures led to a fairly successful career thus far. Although even that is in jeopardy thanks to unresolved anger, resentment, abandonment PTSD and run of the mill terror without reprieve. Fortunately, my current boss is someone I’ve been collegial and friendly with on a professional level for about 15 years, and I’ve been able to actually let him know a bit about my current struggles, so I have a degree of safety and support there too which I can’t take for granted. But i will tomorrow, I’m sure, because my working memory isn’t always the best and I’ll probably forget I even wrote this. I’ll probably just feel scared out of my mind that he’s going to call me and say “you know what, Russ? We’ve decided you are probably an imposter and so we’ve decided to fire you and ensure you never work another day in your life, so that you and everyone you love dies of starvation and/or humiliation, in some alley somewhere, penniless, in the dark, alone.” That’ll probably happen this time. I just know it.
I know this is rambling on and on, and i was initially inclined to apologize. But screw that. I’ve spent my life apologizing for making people feel uncomfortable, then wallowing in self-loathing, then acting out due to a sense of helplessness and ineffable shame, then starting the cycle all over again. I figure someone reading this is either empathizing (cognitively or emotionally, can’t be both) or is entertained (feeding my compulsion to elicit encouragement and affirmation from others, preferably anonymous strangers on the internet) or might actually have something to say that will hit the right tone at the right time and will resolve all of my various and sundry issues. No pressure.
So I’m going to embrace this new label I have about myself, just as soon as I recover from the shock. I will learn how to be the best person I can be given the strengths and weaknesses afforded me as a result of my genetics, my environment, my culture. Knowledge truly is power, it can be argued it is the only real power, n’est pas? So I will learn everything I can about ASD. I will learn how to be the best father I can be and the best partner I can be. Maybe that will be recompense enough for the ways this has effected my NT loved ones.
So thanks for reading. I’m going to drive back home now. I’ve been typing this on my phone while sitting in my car at the local grocery store. I’d say there’s a 30/70 chance the locks will have been changed. That’s what i would do, if i had me outside coming back at any time. I’m effin’ crazy. As the above should have made quite plain.
Ciao,
Russ
