Parenting and Undiagnosed Aspergers

A little background, my wife and I have a one year old and three year old and have been married for five years. Before we had kids there wasn't much issue in our relationship, we mostly did our own thing and there wasn't much reason for conflict.

However, after we had kids and our eldest got up to the toddler period I started to see signs that my wife might have undiagnosed Asperger's. Without going into detail, I've done quite a bit of research and most of the elements are there.

She'll do stuff like:

• Walk out of the room on our son without acknowledging him
• Miss cues when our son is wanting to connect
• Startle easily and yell at him at inappropriate times
• Fail to model good behavior, do things to him, then get mad when he copies her

Some of the above points to some level of mind blindness where she doesn't seem to understand how to maintain a strong, consistent relationship with our children.

My eldest loves her more than anything but you can tell that the relationship stresses him out because she's just not consistent. He is considerably more relaxed around me.

The above raises a few issues:

1) My wife is undiagnosed and likely doesn't understand that she has Aspergers. I've been trying to relay some of this information like encouraging her to watch for our son's cues. But it's difficult to come right out and tell a thirty-seven year old that she may have autism.

2) Our son's behavior is becoming a little more unpredictable because my wife seems unable to deal with him appropriately a little too often. She'll get a good streak going, then do something out of hand and our progress of teaching our son gets lost.

3) And as an aside, as her husband I'm starting to slip into a level of depression as she often misses my cues too, and doesn't really seem interested in me beyond a superficial level. I often feel like I have to do all the cognitive heavy lifting in our relationship. This is more of a vent than an ask.

It's been years since I posted at this forum so I'm not sure what reception this thread will get. But I appreciate any advice.

Hi @Desafinado - welcome back to MSF. Sorry you are feeling you have to carry a larger load in your marriage.

Diagnoses by an ordinary person like me or you can be very inviting, but often without the breadth of knowledge and experience of a professional, it is fraught with misdiagnosing because symptoms can overlap from one condition to another. If she will go to a therapist, then maybe a reliable diagnoses is possible, but if not there is another alternative.

You can identify as you have already started to do where the disruptions are in your situation and try to find ways to adjust to them. This is not always easy.

Maybe you could benefit from having a therapist who you can talk to personally and who can support you in difficult times. What do you think about that?

Hope you get the support you are looking for.
@CANDC

I appreciate the reply.

Mentally, I'm usually ok dealing with challenging situations, but this one has been tricky because I don't have anyone to talk to about it. The work-load of two small children keeps me from regularly contacting friends and family, and when I do manage to talk to them it's difficult to discuss this issue because my wife could be within ear-shot.

But it's more practical advice that I'm interested in. I can't imagine approaching her about a diagnosis - overall she'd likely be better off not knowing. But there are issues - maybe, as you say, the best I can do is work on it issue by issue and hope she manages to learn / change.

That must be really tough situation for you.I am right now dealing with a person who has undiagnosed aspergers.No social cues,stubborn, childish,selfcentred,refuses to recognize own behaviours. I personally know how difficult such people can be.The thing is a therapist can be more adept at giving the right advises.
What worked for me is when you ask them ,just like you ask a child to do something,they tend to listen.I mean you have to imagine you are talking to a child ,not to a 37 years old.

Hi OP sorry for a late response, I just read this today - how are things going for you and your wife?

I’m curious as to why you feel you can’t approach her about the possibility of autism traits? Why do you feel she would react badly to this?

One thing I’d like to suggest is having an open discussion, not one that is directed towards her but a general chat about neurodivergence perhaps. Maybe prompted by something you’d read or seen on TV, there has been lots of publicity and awareness about women and autism recently, and a few high profile women talking about their diagnosis. It’s nothing to be ashamed of (like it might once have been) and the stigma is not there like it was.

I’m thinking if you had an open chat with your wife she might possibly be already more aware of any traits she has than you’re aware. And if nothing else it paves the way for future conversations about possible assessments.

@Desafinado
If you want to chat, my husband is on the autism spectrum.
Feel free to message.

Thanks, I've done this. Her mother is also clearly on the spectrum and we've talked about that. We've also discussed autism more generally a number of times.

My hope has been that she picks up on some of the subtext, and has something of a realization, but that doesn't seem to be happening. And I'm basically of the opinion that her self-concept will be better if she makes the discovery herself, rather than me bringing it up with her directly.

It's been challenging as there seems to be a bit of a communication break-down between us. Her behavior over the past few years has pushed me into functional depression, but the only way forward seems to be to set the whole issue aside, as I'm not seeing a way to communicate this with her.

And all she sees is my increasing de-motivation, and likely interprets it as me not caring about her. I'm really trying to care, but it's hard to stay motivated when it's not really reciprocated.

Anyway - maybe there isn't a 'solution' so to speak. But it's nice to at least express these thoughts.

I appreciate the offer, I may take you up on that eventually.

No problem at all!
For me, it’s always good to know that you aren’t alone in a situation.
The offer is there, but no worries if you don’t want to or aren’t up for it or even if you’re not quite ready to type/say it out loud.

It's more just a time thing, with two small boys there's not much to spare.

And I feel like I already have a good understanding of the situation. I'm thinking I may just need to do some further reading, and better adapt to her, rather than expecting it to ever go the other way.

That’s good you’ve been talking indirectly about autism and in the context of her mother too. I’d say sometimes it’s a series of many different conversations that can lead to a better awareness eventually. In any case keeping talking about anything if you’re having communication problems sounds like a good thing.

I’m really sorry you’re coping with functional depression right now and that must be impacting on your energy levels and motivation too.

Just an FYI, the University of Washington has a lot of resources on self diagnosis and is validating resources for self diagnosis for Autism (particularly since adult assessment is so inaccessible). Also embrace-autism.org is a nonprofit in Canada that is studying and helps with self diagnosis resources for Autism, and it's run by Autistic researchers.

As CANDC mentioned, you cannot diagnose her, but self diagnosis is widely accepted by the Autism community due to the lack of accessible resources. Looking at some of the self assessments and screeners may help your wife if SHE is interested in learning more about it. But again, they are self assessments, not for a 3rd party to fill out for her.

And, in terms of the relationship, addressing the actual problems might be the way to go versus pinning those issues on one thing or another. If there is a communication issue then it's about understanding the issue and how you each communicate individually and learning to communicate with each other. Now if one of you is Autistic and one is Allistic, that can impact the communication, but the solution is still the same - talk about how you communicate differently and accommodate each other so you can understand each other.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the resources, I'll check them out.

The approaches you mention re: communication are along the lines of what I've doing, but I think the lack of diagnosis is a major barrier to effectiveness of the discussion. I do approach problems one by one, and some have improved, but ultimately she doesn't understand where some of these characteristics and conversations are coming from.

She's gotten better with our kids after three years, because the results of poor communication skills are glaringly obvious when you're making your children upset. But with me it's more challenging because those skills are a little more subtle.

For example, a few months ago I sent her an article on how to look for and understand the cues of one's partner. But ultimately I don't think she really understood it, and after a few weeks forgot that she had read it. Had she known that some of these problems were coming from Autistic traits, the article might have registered.

I'm really doing the best I can to communicate and improve our relationship, but at times I think there's an issue with intrinsic ability. We can talk about this or that, but a lot of the time the habits just don't change. And some of these problems are typically things that people learn from subtext, not explicit conversation.

The approach I've taken since my last post is to do further reading to understand her better, and accept that her communication skills and traits are just something I need to adapt to.

I think if she recognized that she has Aspergers things could improve dramatically, but it's just not something I'm going to put on her, because that's a dramatic change in self-concept.