Spouses of Asperger's

Hi- for any of you who are spouses of people with Asperger's (or suspected)- how do you stand it?
I'm finding it really difficult to not get upset when I'm crabbed at, rejected, yelled at. He acts annoyed when I speak to him- I'm so tired of the deep sighs and rolling of the eyes.
When I tell him I don't like it when he (fill in the blank), he says he didn't.

There's a lot of denial going on. He even ignored the warning lights in his car and let an engine melt.

Im having trouble not letting this stuff get me upset. Any advice appreciated- is anyone else going through this?

When I read the 1st sentence of your post, CactusK, I thought: "I don't know anything about this." Then when I read the 2nd sentence of your post I thought: "Hey, this sounds just like me!" (My wife could tell stories...) I've been on Cymbalta the past 2+ years though & it seems to have helped in that department. (I'm now in the process of tapering off... so I'll see if the problem returns...) I haven't allowed an engine to melt though. So I guess the similarity only goes so far.

It's not surprising that your husband's behavior has you upset. A person can only take so much. Yes, your husband may have Asperger's Syndrome. (It sounds as though this has not been formally diagnosed.) But even if he does, that doesn't mean you are required to have the patience of a saint. At some point, your husband has to begin to take responsibility for his actions. He needs to seek professional help, get a formal diagnosis & a treatment plan, & then he must follow it.

From my perspective, anyone who struggles with mental illness has to, at some level, take responsibility for doing what s/he must do in order to make living with others bearable, as well as for her / himself. There's no free ride just because a person has a mental illness. If your husband is simply unwilling to do so then, at some point, you must make a decision with regard to how much you are willing to put up with & for how long. You must do what is necessary to take care of yourself.

Some individual therapy for yourself may be helpful to you with regard to figuring out how to handle the behaviors your husband is exhibiting now, as well as, with regard to how long & to what degree you want to continue to tolerate his behaviors. It's possible there may be some techniques you can learn that will help to modify your husband's behavior, such as simply ignoring it. It is true that marital difficulties are seldom caused entirely by one person. It is possible that you are unwittingly doing things that are triggering your husband's behaviors. This is not your fault. It's simply the way marital dynamics tend to develop over time. My best wishes to you both...

Thanks for the reply.
The only thing my therapist could suggest was to leave the room when he gets nasty to me.
It doesn't do any good to ask him to stop "whatever" because he responds that he's not "whatevering"

One of the things he's in denial about right now is that DD needs to take the medication that she's been described for bipolar. It will be 2 weeks tommorrow that we've had the prescription and he still deciding if he'll allow her to take it.

Yes, I do say things that trigger his behaviours. Everytime I ask him to do something- he blows up! It can be something as simple as put the silverware around, open a jar, etc.
Anything that wasn't his idea originally- is a really bad idea.

My mom's advice is to "not let it bother me' but don't know how to do that.

An official diagnosis could be good in this matter. I will not say he does not have AS, he might, but recently I see A LOT of posts about how someone is mean and has bad behavior so they must have AS...

I have AS, not in a relationship but I have a BFF. I see no point being mean to her, yell or put her down. I can't see why I would do that, she is my friend!!!

But there has been times in my life when I have had much less patience, when I had high stress levels, high anxiety and a lot of depression. Then I might not always been nice, but who is, under a lot of pressure?

I have learned a few things about myself; Not promise to do things I might not be able to do (despite people's nagging), my life is full of "maybes" because if I have a bad day and I promised to do a lot I will implode, also I have learned to choose what parts of my life I control (my friends KNOW what of my stuff they cannot touch and change around and I have learned to let go of the rest), I have learned to be verbally positive about other people's successes big and small (instead of assuming the know I am proud) and the most important for me, I have made others understand I need own time EVERY DAY.

Another thing I have made myself understand, is that if people look down on me just because of my diagnoses, eff them, I'm a person just like them!!!

We cannot change, but we can work differently with what we have.

There does come a point where choices simply have to be made...