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?