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.