Conversation

Tony [sitting at his computer 20 feet away]: Can you get me "anonymous's" email?
Me [sitting and hard at work]: Sure. But did you know, you can get it yourself ?
Tony: Just get me the f&*ing email.
Me: I'm just telling you that you have the same access to the email directory as I do. I don't mind getting it, but you can get it yourself.
Tony: I haven't done it before. Its simple for you. Get me the email.

I look it up, interrupting my work but not unhappy about it.

Me: The email is anonymous@university.edu
Tony: I said to send it to me.
Me: But I just told it to you.
Tony: I want it sent. That way I have it on my computer and I don't have to spell it. All you have to do is go click.
Me: Its not as easy as that and interrupts what I'm doing. You can write it down as well as I can.
Tony: You and fucking Mario (someone he hates) are a great pair.

Misdirection of inner rage

After a few good days, my husband is now acting out again. My goodness is he a mess. He has completely stopped talking to me and our daughter. He goes to bed at 8 without saying goodnight to either of us. He is never home for dinner and, on the occasion he is home, he never joins us. He acts like he just can't cope with the sight of us. Virtually every word out of his mouth is angry. Yesterday morning, I asked, "Are you angry at me or angry". He said, "Just angry". He answers things in grunts or won't answer at all. If he laughs at something he sees on the computer, and I say, "What are you laughing at?" he says "Nothing". It's like being the mother of a sullen teenage boy. When I got home from work yesterday, he said "Nathalie called". I said, "What did she say". He said, "read your email". He simply wouldn't say what the call was about. When I finally read the email, it said, "Nathalie will meet you for your run at 6:30 tomorrow morning". That he couldn't just say this to me is astonishing and emblematic of his complete unwillingness to communicate. His work is going wrong (I think someone scooped him on the project he was doing) and he is taking it out on us. He simply can't differentiate where his anxiety and anger are really coming from and directs everything and his family.

Tonight, he wasn't home when we got home for dinner. I made dinner and Lauren and I were eating. He comes storming in the house.

"Hi, Tony. Welcome home"
No answer.
"Hi, Daddy"
"Hi" (say angrily)
"Where were you, Daddy?"
"Out"
"Where, out?"
"Not here"
"Where not here?"
"Just not here".

He then stormed out of the house onto the deck. There, he opened the cooler that was still on the deck from a party this past weekend and proceeded to dump all the juice bags (about 30 of the them) on the ground. He then brought them in bunches into the kitchen and viciously stabbed them all in the sink with juice flying everywhere on the walls, cabinets and floor. After a second trip to kill the juice bags, he went outside and lofted the remaining ones into the woods. Of course, Tony was home all day and could have eliminated the juice boxes whenever he wanted. But he waited to do it when we were both within feet of him for some sort of dramatic effect. It worked. Our daughter, at this point, said "can I go to the neighbors?" I of course, said "please".

Tony then came into the house and started complaining that it was a pigsty. I had just made dinner so their was the usual minor dinner-making detritus, but, as always, most of the stuff lying around the house is his mess. He doesn't mind his own things littering the house, just the small additions that my daughter and I make. He proceeded to throw out one of my daughter's plants . I asked him what was wrong. No answer. I asked him about the juice boxes and he said "they were in the way". I said "we always keep the extras in the cooler". He said furiously, "they're in the way. We never drink them and they're in the way". He then said something about leaving. "I said, don't threaten. If you need to leave, leave, but don't keep threatening about it." Of course, it'll never happen.

Later, when things were somewhat quieter, I asked, "Do you want to tell me about your work?"
"No".

A typical night in our house.

Tom Sawyer's fence

We have a garage apartment that we rent. My husband wanted to paint the apartment before our new tenant moved in this Friday but has been too involved in other projects to do it.

This weekend, I got the following email from him:

Please hire someone to repaint the apartment. I don't have the time.

I would have been happy to do that had I known a month ago, but of course, its too late to hire someone by Friday given where we live. So what did I do? I said, "I'll paint it". My husband snarled, "then I'll have to paint over your mistakes so I might as well just do it." So the place will be painted after all.

Its all a game. But he is a hard worker, I can say that for him!

Building up and breaking down

My husband, genius that he is, can build anything. Right now, he has become transfixed with repairing our house. In the last few months, he has rebuilt a deck that had some dry rot shape, replaced and refinished all the doors, supervised the placement of a new French drain in the garden (he doesn't like digging himself), acid-etched and painted gutters, and put in all new outdoor lighting. He has done a beautiful, beautiful job. The problem is, the work comes at a great, great cost. He alienates virtually everyone who assists with any task. He accuses them all of shoddy workmanship. In the last few months, the alienated workers include: the gutter hangers (who didn't appreciate my husband's workmanship sufficiently and didn't feel inspired to match it); the person who brought the debris box (who didn't place it exactly where my husband wanted); the gardener who built the french drain (he went 4 inches over the property line into the woods of our neighbors). And that's just on the projects this month. Previously, we've built an apartment over our garage and redone our kitchen. My husband almost came to blows with both contractors and constantly criticized their shoddy workmanship. He even ripped out dry wall to show them he could do it better himself. One of them eventually called my husband "a f&%^& hard-ass", something that galls him to this day. From my perspective, the contractors' work looked fine to me. Several of my friends have subsequently hired them and been quite pleased.

The new construction fight is not even about our house. Rather, my neighbor has been trying to renovate a "tear down". My husband has somehow taken it over as his project and has been directing our rather naive and young neighbor in what should be done, ripping out joists, putting in beams, etc., etc. As usually, he is excessively demanding (and occasionally ridiculing) of our inexperienced neighbor. The neighbor finally decided he didn't want to devote his life to the project or to serfdom, and hired a contractor. My husband is furious! After all, he was willing to do the work with the neighbor for free! It seems, though, that free contracting from my husband is not worth the emotional price.

On the home front, my husband is constantly angry at the world because the house repairs prevent him from "getting his own work done" . He is seething at me because he feels what he does isn't appreciated. I do appreciate his workmanship. It's beautiful. And I don't interfere with what he wants to do even though, personally, I don't see the need for such perfectionism. And although I can empathize with his need for quality work, he cannot accept my desire to minimize stress, hire someone who is 95% good, get the work done promptly (albeit imperfectly), and move on with life.

Read your email

I had read that email is a great way for people with Asperger's syndrome to communicate. It takes the emotion out and allows them to communicate on their own time and terms. Email is definitely the preferred mode of communication for my husband. He will email me even when sitting across from me in the living room. He goes nowhere without his laptop, and is constantly communicating with others, sending interesting articles he reads, making comments on lists, etc.

There are times, though, when it can be very frustrating. I'll get home from work and ask, "Are we doing x tomorrow?". He'll respond, "Did you read your email?" "No, didn't have a chance at work". "Read your email"! If I say, why don't you just tell me what you wrote, he'll get furious and rant and rave about how he spent time on the email, and I should read it. Then, I'll read it, and it will be one or two words that he could have told me in an instant.

Obviously, he is trying to avoid conversation, possibly because he doesn't want to be misunderstood. But I find it frustrating not to be able to simply talk.

Silicon valley

There are lots of men with Asperger's out here in engineer heaven. And a lot of failed marriages, too. My neighbor just divorced from her husband with Asperger's. He walked out one day. I think he became completely stressed out by having two teenage sons, including one with Asperger's. You can't imagine the screaming that we used to hear coming from their house. Another friend just emailed me to say her husband and son have Asperger's and she finally understands why their marriage has been so difficult. Adding on a child who can't communicate magnifies the Asperger's-marriage challenge many fold.

I have seen 5 therapists--including one couples counselor--through the course of my marriage, All but the therapist I'm seeing now has told me, "we see a lot or relationships like this in the Bay area. Yours is extreme. Get divorced". The last has said, "I can see you've made up your mind not to get divorced. So lets see what I can do to help you thrive as much as possible". I'm managing, and even enjoying marriage from time to time. But love is hard to muster.

Managing the man

My daughter is much more adept at managing my husband than I am! For example, the other day, my husband was telling us a long story at the dinner table about one of his obsessions: nuclear power/energy/bombs. He had visited the Hanford Nuclear Plant and was relating to us the details of his experience. It was a LONG story and, as usual, he "would not tolerate interruptions". Both my daughter and I were only half listening--it's not a particularly interesting topic for 9 year old or for me. In the middle of his monologue, however, he used the "s expletive" and both my daughter and I reflexively jumped on him for it. He became quite hurt, saying "all you care about is that word, not about me or my story. I'm not going to talk anymore.". Of course, he was right, but I tried to assuage him saying, "please tell us the story, we really want to know". He adamantly refused, getting angrier and angrier the more I cajoled. Finally, my daughter said, "what did the reactor look like?", taking the discussion back to the original topic, rather than focusing on his refusal to talk. He immediately began up again, and we got to daydream through 20 more minutes. My husband was happy and peace was restored. My daughter kicked me under the table. She was a genius.

The moral: don't argue about the argument.

Unlock the door

When my husband comes home, he wants to arrive at a house with the door unlocked so he doesn't have to fumble with his key. I'm afraid I often forget to unlock it for him. I get home, perhaps minutes earlier, carrying groceries, talking to my daughter, thinking about dinner, etc. etc. I simply don't remember. If I do forget, my husband's first comments as he walks in the door are an angry, snarling attack at my incompetence. It upsets me, my heart pounds, and I begin to sweat. Then, I get a grip and say, 'hello, dear, welcome home".

Name calling

On Saturday, my family went to a town Mayday celebration. We parked in the empty lot of a small, neighborhood grocery--a place where my husband stops at least once and often twice a day. The parking lot has posted signs, "30 minute parking for shoppers only", so I dutifully went in the store and bought a coffee and a bottle of water. We then walked to the start of a 2.3 mile "fun run". Before the race started, my husband decided to return to the car and put away his sweatshirt. When he got there, the security guard told him he had to move the car; the lot was for shoppers only. They got in a big argument in the lot about it. At the end of the altercation, my husband called the security guard "a butthead". The security guard, in outrage, went across the street to get the sheriff. My husband got in the car and drove off, stopping at the sheriff to say "I called him a butthead". The sheriff responded "do you want to spend a night in jail?" My husband responded "on what charge?" and drove off to park 30 feet away in an adjacent lot. He's been fuming ever since, raising the subject every 4-5 hours.

So last night, I was reviewing my daughter's homework. There was a question, "why do people call each other names?" Lauren had written, "because they want to make people do what they want". I said, I thought it was because people needed to feel more powerful and that inside, they were feeling insecure. At this point, my husband yelled, "they call people names because they are angry and frustrated". I said that everyone gets angry and frustrated but not everyone calls people names. At which point my husband yelled, "YOU ARE CLUELESS! You must have missed that class in medical school!" and stormed out of the room. I guess he was angry and frustrated. Or was he insecure?

How does our marriage survive

Surviving our marriage is a constant effort. Here are some keys:

• Have a good job and some money in the bank in a separate account. This is important for several reasons:
• Your spouse may not be able to hold a job so you will need an income
• Your spouse may spend your money but not let you spend his.
• You can rent a separate place where you can get away (see below).
  
• Have a second place to live. This might be a family member's house or your own place if you can afford it. We have a small condo and our original home 15 miles away. My daughter and I live in the condo during the week (my husband may or may not show up at my daughter's bedtime) and the house on the weekend. We have found this absolutely essential because:
• It means my husband--who "works" out of our home--can avoid the daily stresses that come with homework, piano practicing, etc. It also gives us peaceful evening when otherwise, he would agitate the household with various anxieties.
• It give us a place to entertain guests that annoy my husband (virtually everyone) and even to put them up overnight.
• It gives my husband a place to come to if, on the weekend, he finds the day's activities agitate him.
• Learn to say this phrase: "I will not fight with you" when he starts that inevitable argument over nothing.
  
• Be very specific about what you need. This is the hard one for me. I am used to social conventions and can't always articulate to him with the directness that he needs to be able to understand. My daughter, actually, is better at this!
• Never expect your spouse to do anything new. If he says "yes" ahead of time, there is a very good chance this will change to "no" later. Plan your social life as if he will never be there. Once in a while, you may be surprised.
  
• Anticipate turmoil any time there is a change in daily routine. Prepare by having back up plans for childcare, dog care, etc.

These have helped our marriage survive, although it doesn't thrive. And love is not a common word that comes to mind.

Daily stresses are too much

Last night, my daughter got home from a 2-day weekend away. Normally, she is quite "sensitive", and a perfectionist. But now, she was fried. When she is tired, she becomes emotionally brittle. Unfortunately, there were some things she needed to get done after her weekend play. She needed to do her chores (empty the dishwasher, walk the dog), finish her homework, and practice the piano. Although I tried to give her down time, when it finally came to asking her to "get to it", each thing got a rise out of her.

These emotional outbursts simply overwhelm my husband. He becomes unbearably tense and starts muttering negative things about everything--the house, my daughter and me. Last night, to my daughter, he made enumerable snide, unloving remarks and imitated her. My daughter then ran to her room and slammed her door. My husband went on a rant about what a defective child she is. When a sliding door to our deck suddenly fell down during this "happy" time, my husband went nuts about how we don't care about the house and how one of us must have broken the door. My daughter started muttering, "I hate him". Finally, when my daughter completely lost it in frustation over her homework, my husband started yelling to me: "shall I call the police?" My daughter responded with, "I hate him. I hate him! and I hate you too". My husband then left the house and stayed elsewhere for the night.

When I talk to my daughter, I tell her the importance of pulling herself away from things that frustrate her, getting a grip, and coming back to them later. Unfortunately, it is impossible to impress these things on her when she both has a genetic predisposition toward emotional lability and has a father who models control so badly. His rants just feed hers and vice versa. I can't fault my husband for leaving. He needed to get a grip. But he needed to leave earlier. He is killing his relationship with our daughter, and harming her in the process.

Driving in the car

One of his salient characteristics of my husband is that he HATES changing his pace, be it on foot, on a bike or in a car. When my husband, my daughter and I are walking downtown and my daughter and I stop to window shop, my husband will not wait. He will keep going and expect us to run to catch up. If we ever go for a hike in the great outdoors (which happens rarely), he will never allow for pauses to look at an interesting bird or tree. He simply presses on. Many times, when my daughter was little, she would chase after him, fall, and end up crying miserably. He would get angry in response. So he won't walk with us anymore. He finds it too annoying to be held back by our interests.

Being a passenger in the car can be even more hair-raising. First, all other drivers are automatically idiots. If someone in front of us waits too long at a stop sign, my husband starts with the expletives. If the person in front is going slowly, looking for an address, my husband will fume and rant. On many occasions, he will try to pass to maintain his own speed, often under unsafe circumstances (we missed a head on collision once by only a foot or two). He tailgates incessantly so that he doesn't have to put his foot on the brake. The worst occurs if he has to pee. Then, he simply drives like a maniac. He doesn't recognize why, but I do!

Needless to say, I try to be the driver and rarely let him take my daughter anywhere. It is quite
debilitating, though, not to have a partner who can share in the never-ending carpooling inherent to having a child.

The good and the bad

Here are some of the good things about being married to my Asperger's husband.

1. He can fix anything
2. He keeps life interesting (never a dull moment)
3. He is very smart and his opinions are unique, often thought-provokingly so
4. His routines are predictable; he will not disappear
5. He is faithful sexually
6. He is easy to shop for since he only wears a restricted number of things
7. He is personally quite clean and neat
8. He can be extremely funny, especially in what he writes
   

Here are bad things about being married to my Asperger's husband:

1. He cannot tolerate any "disturbance in the force". Any change from routine causes anxiety and anger towards my daughter and me. Example: when my daughter had a fever and missed school, he stopped speaking for 2 days.
   
2. He has no empathy. Example: when I burned my finger while cooking, he screamed at me for interrupting his long monologue on nuclear bomb production. He will not be interrupted.
   
3. He cannot tolerate noise, including happy laughter and playfulness of children.
4. He does not perceive how his negative moods affect others. He is a dementor, sucking joy out of the room when he is unhappy.
   
5. He can't hold a job because he is hypercritical and intolerant of everyone else's incompetence.
6. He finds little joy in our daughter; he makes her feel more like a burden than a gift.
7. He cannot find happiness in other people's successes.
8. He has focussed interests that he will talk about endlessly and loudly without noticing the glazing over of people's eyes.
9. He is miserly, at least with respect to the family ( he can spend money on himself). He doesn't mind spending "my" money.
10. He can NEVER apologize (everything is always someone else's fault) and almost never gives a spontaneous hug or says "I love you".
    

Sounds bad on balance, no?

Catharsis

I have been married for 15 years to a man with Asperger's syndrome. Although I didn't know this when we married, reading about the syndrome and working with an Asperger's therapist has left no doubts about the diagnosis. It is as clear as the nose on his handsome face. "Tom" is a textbook case.

I hope this blog will be a place for me to let out steam, to share stories with others, and for us to learn together how to survive the turbulence of an Aspergers marriage. And I do mean survive. I am determined to stick with this marriage. Crazy? We'll see.