heartbroken, my partner may have aspergers?

Unfortunately at the moment I am going through a traumatic time with my partner.He has suddenly left and it has resulted in me feeling heartbroken, paralysed, as there s nothing I can do (he wont reply to any text I send that has ANY emotion in, only replying to texts about practical matters such as finances) and after researching alot, I feel that he may have alexithemia ( A term I only found online yesterday for the first time)We were very much in love I thought...but he has been physically and mentally unwell since he left ( I imediately realised this issomatic presentation of his emotions).He went to the doctor 2 dys ago and has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and the doctor has said that he may possibly be on the aspergers scale.

I initially suspected that my partner had issues with PTSD from his childhood as a result of lack of positive attachment as

(his mother is a VERY cold unemotional person and converses in a very strange way, almost like having a conversation with herself, not realising when the other person is bored)and I had started to work on this with my partner as I knew he was depressed and he had stated that he WANTED to be more expressive..he used to tell me that he DID have feelings of love and emotion but that it never crossed his mind to verbalise them.(he also rarely gives compliment and my self esteem is at an all time low)

I am at a crisis point (in fact the relationship may be over now) due to my partner suddenly leaving 3 weeks ago.

I believe we are both still in love. There is little communication as he is finding it too difficult to agree to talk with me, and I am left feeling abandoned,

heartbroken and totally confused. It is a worse feeling than when I lost my father a few years ago, and that was the worst time of my life.

I texted him today to say that I am ill with worry and that I need to meet and talk for my sanity and he finally has agreed to that.

In his reply to me he said he had been to the doctor who had said he is depressed and suffering with anxiety, and possibly is on the aspergers scale, and is going back for another appointment on friday to see what action will be taken.

I was shocked to hear this but it explains alot like his lack of emotion and lack of dreams...and his lack of expressing happiness.

I have spent all day researching it and came accross terms such as 'committment phobia...Alexithymia...Affective defacit disorder..etc and my gut tells me it is along these lines he is suffering.His mother never ever showed him emotion or physical comfort..and he feels this and has mentioned it as a regret of his. All his ex girlfriends said he was distant...he couldnt meet my gaze in the first few weeks we knew each other and can be painfully shy....in social situations he often will keep talking when the other person has made a comment...so he doesnt acknwledge ppl appropriately in convseration.He told me that throughout his school life he was bullied mercilessly.

I am so heartbroken...so confused...and so lacking in hope. As I am a very emotional, positive person and love having dreams and goals and aiming for them.

I dont know if I will be able to build a relationship back with him now (he ran off 3 years ago when we were engaged...out of the blue.. and it took alot of discussion and time before I would agree to be with him again).I want to add that in the firt 2 years...before he had his first emotional hyjacking,he used to say things like'i wodner what our children will look like?' with joy in his face and in a smiley wistful way...so he MUST have some capability to dream.
Also when Ifirst met him he wa salot more 'nervous' in social situations and didnt laugh very much..but over the years even in the last 2 years he has laughed more, and been more relaxed nad happy in himself.It has been the last few months with me tlaking about 'are we right together if im not making him happy' that I think has upset him and made his question our whole rleationship.I also think he genuiely thought he would be freeing me by him leaving...ashe deosnt want me to miss out on children.but each time we discussed the children thing..he said he would be happy if i got pregnant..quite scared but still over the mooon...but that he found it hard to talk abot it and look forward to it happening.I took this to be that he didnt want any children...so maybe there is hope?

I suppose I need to know if it is possible for someone with these problems to feel love? and to learn to express it in an authentic way? and to share hopes and dream for the future?

From this brief overview do you think it might be possible that we could be helped? I cant tell if its the depression which has taken away his hopes....and the anxity of being bullied all his life and not realising why.

Please can I only have positive replies? I cant bear to hear that there is no hope for us.

kenshou wrote:Please can I only have positive replies? I cant bear to hear that there is no hope for us.

You have to decide whether you want honest opinions or just emotional comforting. This is the place where you'll find honest opinions.

I won't say anything further.

anagram is right, if you want honesty, this is exactly where you will find it! If you want "moral support" I'm afraid most of us are not so good in that arena.

One thing is, I actually question whether he has aspergers, or he's just emulating some of the traits because of his depression/anxiety. I base this on this sentence:

kenshou wrote:His mother never ever showed him emotion or physical comfort..and he feels this and has mentioned it as a regret of his.

My family is very non-affectionate. We just "know" that the love is there, but don't show it or speak of it. Thing is, I don't regret this, as I have aspergers I don't need it. The fact that your husband laments this means that he felt the NEED for it, and that does not speak aspergers. (of course one small factor is not a "be all and end all", just something I noticed).

Another thing is, I know many people such as yourself, want to reach for certain goal (in this case getting back together with him), because it's what you've wanted for a long time and you've invested a lot of time, effort, and emotion into it. But having that history doesn't necessarily mean it's really the best thing for you. This man has a LOT of issues, so you have think long and hard whether you are willing put up with these issues for the rest of your life or not. If you take him back, it must be "as he is". And most of all, don't feel guilty if you decide you don't want to!!

Whether there's "hope for you" or not is not something we can judge just by one post, so you don't have to worry about us telling there is none!
Good luck!

Thank you slugger.
I really appreciate your post!
Yes, I keep remembering things like..he talked for hours on the day we got engaged about plans..and he was quite emotional with watery eyes when he asked me to marry him...and he loooooooves cuddles and loves falling aleep while cuddling...and he is very good with my 2 year old nephew, playing with him for hours and amusing him.And also...in the first few months of our relationship he wasnt great at showing interest in things I was telling him..but he DID seemt o develop a more genuine interest as the year went on...almost as if maybe something was awakening in him rather than he was faking it..I work with children with emotional disorders and each day he stared to ask me how they were getting on and showing genuine interest and concern... I told him somethig upsetting happened.Maybe he only has traits rather than actual asperger.
He has alot of money problems and I think that this has made him feel paralysed and unable to plan for the future as much as anything.
Thank you Slugger

your main problem is his depression not his ASD. i should know because i suffer from depression and it's by far more debilitating than the AS traits i have.

you also need to realise that now is not the time to emotionally lean on him. he's almost bound to run away under such circumstances because he's clearly not even remotely coping with his own life and can't possibly be of any meaningful support to you. and partly this may be because he feels inadequate. i know that feeling only too well. the 'you'd be better of with someone else that's more normal, together, whatever than me' feeling. it's very easy to feel this way about yourself and your relationships with others if you're depressed. and this causes depression to lead to social isolation. and, of course, AS is similarly debilitating because it makes it difficult to interact socially too. all too often it's easier to give in to these problems and become completely isolated from society. this is where it's important to have 'real' friends that don't just give up on you the moment you can't be of any immediate value to them.

now, i have to say that i see no inconsistency between having AS and feeling neglected emotionally as a child. that's something else i can personally relate to. a particularly cruel aspect of AS compared to more severe forms of ASD is that it leaves the person wanting a social life but unable to achieve this. and as ASDs are often genetic then it's not surprising to find a father or mother who's similarly afflicted and unable to intreact adequately with their off-spring. so candidly, that sounds all too plausible to me.

the best you can do at the moment is be patient and supportive and let him know that you'll be there for him when he feels able to come back to you. and you need to encourage him to address his problems. but not in a way that he feels further stressed, because that'll just add to his flight response.

in my experience depression is largely clinical. there can be reactive depression but often there's a clinical side to those cases too. a healthy diet is absolutely essential to good mental health. after that, some degree of councelling might be helpful. but it depends greatly on the councellor. and i wouldn't personally recommend medication unless he's positively suicidal, which he doesn't seem to be. sometimes medication can crow-bar people out of a particularly deep depressive state but more often that not it's just a sticking plaster that fails to address the underlying and therefore causative issue.

Yes I agree aobut the letting him know I am there for him..I have sent several texts syaing that I am here for him always no matter what and sedning him abig hug full of love..and saying that I understandn it is hard for him and if theres anythng I can do to let me know.
But then 4 or 5 days went by...I still didnt know why he had left...and I also was VERY worried...as had no idea where he had gone or who he was with...thats when i sent another text saying that I feel I do need to tal to him...I felt like i was going mad...didnt know if hed tried anythign suicidal or anything.he replied saying he agreed to meet me.I assured him I will be calm and nonconfronntational (he KNOWs this is me anyway and I never like conflict only calm discussion as I am a therapist myself) and suggested we meet at a country park or something.

There's not a lot I can add really...but I will reinforce the idea that depression is by far worse than the ASD issues when it comes right down to it. I've also suffered (and am at least mostly over this bout) of depression, and yeah..it sucks, bad.

As was said, don't emotionally lean on him...he is having issues thinking of just himself, and his problems to even come close to being able to relate to your issues right now.

Some distance isn't a bad idea...give it time, and as shock said, be there for him. He'll likely keep you a bit at arms distance for a bit while he tries to get over his depression...but really, it's hard to say how that'll work.

And reinforcing again..depression is hard, it sucks, it's really bad...

this will be hard for you to hear but i think it's probably worth while me mentioning it in order to give you some understanding of the problems you currently face.

last time i went down with severe depression i was out of commision for over a year. in fact i become distinctly catatonic when i'm severely depressed. only a few months ago i got back in touch with a special friend of mine. on about four separate occasions she said to me "you just dropped out of my life", or words to that affect. all i could think of to say to her was "i was ill". but i know she felt this deeply. i'm currently trying to rebuild our relationship. but at the back of my mind i can't help thinking 'what if this happens again?', 'am i being fair to her?', 'shouldn't i just let her go for her own sake?'. it's difficult to ignore these nagging doubts. especially if one has a history of such episodes as, i do. so, whilst i love her very dearly, i'm genuinely afraid i could just end up hurting her all over again. and i certainly don't want that.

you are going to have to be extra-ordinarilty patient, supportive and put your needs and wants to one side for possible a very long time. and even after that therre's no guarantee that things will work out as you might currently hope. as i said previously, he really need to get the depression he's suffering from addressed. and this in itself could well be very hard for him to do.

shock_the_monkey wrote:last time i went down with severe depression i was out of commision for over a year. in fact i become distinctly catatonic when i'm severely depressed. only a few months ago i got back in touch with a special friend of mine. on about four separate occasions she said to me "you just dropped out of my life", or words to that affect. all i could think of to say to her was "i was ill". but i know she felt this deeply. i'm currently trying to rebuild our relationship. but at the back of my mind i can't help thinking 'what if this happens again?', 'am i being fair to her?', 'shouldn't i just let her go for her own sake?'. it's difficult to ignore these nagging doubts. especially if one has a history of such episodes as, i do. so, whilst i love her very dearly, i'm genuinely afraid i could just end up hurting her all over again. and i certainly don't want that.

Kinda diverging a bit from the original topic, but this is also important...

I hear people say something similar, as in "what if it happens again?" as in being unable to really control the depression. One friend told me that it "just happens". Personally, I prescribe to the notion that thing happen to cause depression...maybe many little things that build into something, then something just "breaks" causing the depression. Poor diet/exercise/etc also can cause issues.

With that said...my last bout of depression was really hard on me. it lasted two months, and is still kinda there now although it's gotten far better than it was. Like what you did, I basically shut down in terms of friends/family/etc. I'm still excluding some people from my life right now. I tracked my depression down to 4 reasons and am trying to fix those 4 things and am noticing an improvement depression wise. I'm also really trying to get better about listening to my mental state, and trying to notice the little changes before things get too bad...so I don't hit "major-ish depression" again.

The reason I'm posting this is maybe you can do the same. Instead of wondering if it'll happen in the future, maybe there's a way to identify what caused it previously and take measures to try and avoid it in the future?

TDT,thankyou, and thanks to everyone who has posted.

This is the problem...I am here for him and always have been.I have been depressed also so know the feeling (or how it was for me anyway as Im sure everyone is different).
The problem of 'will it happen again?' and worrying about it is exactly the thing..I can coe with pplbeing depressed, I am a therapist but apart from that I ahve alot of patience understanding support and humour. But he NEVER ONCE said ANYthing was wrong...never ONCE said I feel a bit worried about....never said 'I feela bit low'...never said I dont feel like dogin this or that today....and THAT si the issue...that is exACTLY the problem...because he let it build up..it may have been some big isses or lots of little ones..but the fact is he didnt ackonwledge probably even to himself when he wasnt happy.now perhaps thats where the Aspergers comes in...if he could udnerstand his own feelings more then maybe it wold prevent this.
Does anyone have any experience of having AS or being close to someone who does...and how that may have changed the way they could communicate and understand their own feelings?
Although the depression may be worse than the AS I fell that the AS may have contributed largely to him feeling confused..inadequate and not good enough for me.HE had said on quite a few occasions that he didn't feel good enough for me.I always built him up when he said this..but its largely down to his low self esteem and worries..and probably confusion about not bing able to express himself.
I spoke to a therapist specialising in aspergers today and she said that there is LOOADS that can be done to help even NT men be more expressive and undersand themselve smore and DEFINITELY lots that can also be done to help AS men also. She was very encouraging.