So I guess I have Asperger's

My husband has apparently been doing some quiet research. It makes sense but not sure what to do now. Going back to our counselor is probably the next step. So here I am doing my research. Here's me in a nutshell. I live for service dogs. Especially guide dogs. They can move me to tears like no human can do. They're inspiring, what can I say? Awkward in social places, not a 'touchy' person - a cold fish according to my husband (said with a smile). When it comes to human situations I'm just not equipped.

OK, now what? Guidance, please?

cyclegyrl929 wrote:My husband has apparently been doing some quiet research.

from which i deduce that it's your husband that has the problem with you the way you are, not you. this is pretty typical. it's the NT party in the relationsgip that's usually unhappy, not the AS one, who will usually be blissfully unaware of the problem or often indeed that they might have AS.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:It makes sense but not sure what to do now.

and you've obviously bought into this assessment. be cautious here. people always feel happier if they can give something a label, as if the mere act makes it more understandable and less scary. and this desire can cause some to reach for any label, whether or not it really fits the situation.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:Going back to our counselor is probably the next step.

candidly, i think that if i were you i wouldn't cloud the issues you and your husband are being councelled over with this speculation. for starters, councellors are only human and they're just as likely as anyone else to grasp hold of any label that comes their way. this may just de-rail the whole councelling process.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:So here I am doing my research.

this is a sensible approach. find out as much as you can before jumping to any conclusions. and even after that, be cautious. i'll tell you what i suspect might be going on here. and this is just a might, because your post is pretty sketchy. it might be that because you have problems in your marriage that your husband is looking to pin them on something. and you having AS would be a convenient something. also, it lets him off the hook completely. didn't he know what you were like before he married you, for example? so, why now is there an issue? what's changed?

cyclegyrl929 wrote:Here's me in a nutshell. I live for service dogs. Especially guide dogs. They can move me to tears like no human can do. They're inspiring, what can I say?

nothing wrong or even remotely AS with that!!!

cyclegyrl929 wrote:Awkward in social places, not a 'touchy' person - a cold fish according to my husband (said with a smile). When it comes to human situations I'm just not equipped.

if you do have an AS aspect to your personality, you might not be picking up on certain inferences in what people say. i wouldn't necessarily assume such remarks were humour. but as you do, this again is counter-indicative of AS. there are plenty of reasons that people can be not entirely comfortable with socialising. being shy or introverted doesn't imply one has AS, or any form of psychiatric disorder, per se. candidly, if you're familiar with AS traits, i'm surprised you haven't listed any more convincing ones. upon that basis, just at the moment i'd say you don't have AS. but that's only a very partial and very premature opinion.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:OK, now what? Guidance, please?

keep going to the councelling. keep doing the research. and most importantly, keep an open mind about this.

Have you gotten a formal diagnosis yet?

Our counselor says she doesn't specialize in AS but she is originally the one who suggested it. She can recommend someone who can give me a better idea of what's going on. In her opinion it explains why I focus entirely on one thing to the exclusion of all others. When I didn't work I focused on our house so much that I would have things immaculate and lose my temper if one thing was out of place. Then I got started on guide dogs. Once I got focused on those the house went to pot and I taught myself how to groom poodles, became a certified dog trainer and volunteered at the school until they hired me a couple of years later. I started part-time and worked my way to full-time, then lead kennel tech, then kennel manager in just two years. Now you can't find my couch under all the laundry and my husband its the one who gets our daughter from school, gets groceries and all that in addition to his job. If we go somewhere and I don't find someone with whom I can talk dogs I find a quiet corner and dig into my Kindle or cell phone. I just plain don't care what else may be going on. I find sex distasteful and am rather asexual. It's not that I am unable to be satisfied, it's that it really doesn't mean much to me. I'd just as soon avoid the muss and fuss entirely.

I talked to my best friend in the world - I call her my sister. She has a lot of experience with personality disorders and said that if I have AS it's so borderline as to be ridiculous. If she was officially diagnosed with everything she was borderline on she would be a real mess. Her feeling is the same as yours - my husband wants me to be the issue. I have been the problem our whole marriage according to him and every counselor we have seen because my focus is service dogs. That's it. He's jealous. I would leave it at that if the counselor's weren't agreeing with him. He knows full well that if I had to choose between them and hi rew would lose. So there we are. I'm so tired of the whole thing. From what I have read. in the forum a lot fits but a lot doesn't, too.

if i had to speculate, i'd say you might have some form of OCD. but i'm by no means certain. people with AS can be obsessive. the euthemism for which is 'special interest'. and there can change. they tend to be all or nothing and finish as abruptly as they started. so, there's a bit of a fit there. but i can't seem to relate to anything else you've mentioned as really saying AS to me.

the thing that stands out, however, is the question i posed previously, namely 'what's changed?''. is it just that certain of your 'obsessions' (if that indeed is what they are) are more acceptable to your husband than others? i'm not sure that i see it quite that way but it could be. usually, what drives people that have OCD is some deep seated lack of security (their obsessions are a way of imposing order on the world in order to try to create a feeling of the security that they feel they lack otherwise). and i guess that might form a basis for differentiation between AS and OCD. but i guess the big question here is: how much do you want to save your marriage? and i think that only you can answer that question.

i'll just mention here that i knew someone who was an obsessive house cleaner. i met her in a mental hospital during one of my periods of severe depression. it turned out that she had an over-active thyroid gland. sometimes things are not quite how they appear to be.

Typing on a phone isn't ideal so this will be short.

My husband has decided he wants a more lively sex life. I decidedly couldn't care less about sex. To this end we have been going to counseling to figure out what's wrong with me. Because it's always me. Anyway, the counselor mentioned that AS folks get so involved with what they want to do that it would explain a lot. So my husband signed up on a forum like this and told his story and he's getting lots of sport. I pull my clothes off the pile of clean laundry on the couch, when I get home I drop everything to go do watercolor painting (recent addition) or reading. I prefer to let the rest of the family enjoy the evening without me. Apparently not finishing what I start is a symptom, asexuality is a symptom, preferring alone time is a symptom, awkward pauses or misreading social cures, reading a book when our family is attending a party at someone else's home, etc. If they can't talk about dogs their conversation is boring and I pretty well tune it out. I'm was happy with our marriage and frustrated that he isn't. So I am thinking if taking some more online testing to see what I can find out.

-- Sat Jan 26, 2013 6:49 am --

Typing on a phone isn't ideal so this will be short.

My husband has decided he wants a more lively sex life. I decidedly couldn't care less about sex. To this end we have been going to counseling to figure out what's wrong with me. Because it's always me. Anyway, the counselor mentioned that AS folks get so involved with what they want to do that it would explain a lot. So my husband signed up on a forum like this and told his story and he's getting lots of sport. I pull my clothes off the pile of clean laundry on the couch, when I get home I drop everything to go do watercolor painting (recent addition) or reading. I prefer to let the rest of the family enjoy the evening without me. Apparently not finishing what I start is a symptom, asexuality is a symptom, preferring alone time is a symptom, awkward pauses or misreading social cures, reading a book when our family is attending a party at someone else's home, etc. If they can't talk about dogs their conversation is boring and I pretty well tune it out. I'm was happy with our marriage and frustrated that he isn't. So I am thinking if taking some more online testing to see what I can find out.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:Typing on a phone isn't ideal so this will be short.

My husband has decided he wants a more lively sex life. I decidedly couldn't care less about sex. To this end we have been going to counseling to figure out what's wrong with me. Because it's always me.

lots of women loose interest in sex at a certain age. some were never interested in it anyway. this just isn't unusual. women don't become sexually aroused as easily as men and don't tend to reach orgasm easily either. as with men, women produce testosterone, but at much lower levels. and this is what's responsible for their sex drive. as such, none of the above should be too surprising to anyone. also, biologically speaking, a woman can get pregnant without becoming sexually aroused or having an orgasm. a man can't make a woman pregnant naturally without achieving both. so, in terms of evolution, there isn't much necessity for women to be greatly intereted in sex. and add to that the social (sex before marriage) and reproductive (unwanted pregnancies) issues traditionally associated with women having sex and it's clear that, whilst most men will have sex with any woman, most women are very choosy about having sex with a man. indeed, there have been studies that proove this point beyond a shadow of doubt.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:Anyway, the counselor mentioned that AS folks get so involved with what they want to do that it would explain a lot.

that's sort of true but it's also an enormous generalisation too. anyone who is successful at anything will be to some extent obsessive about that thing. it doesn't mean they have AS or even OCD.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:So my husband signed up on a forum like this and told his story and he's getting lots of s[up]port.

there are three sides to evey story. yours, mine and the cold hard truth (don henley 'long way home'). and, as with any good story, it's all in the telling. candidly, don't let this bother you. if nothing else, it probably placates him to some extent.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:I pull my clothes off the pile of clean laundry on the couch, when I get home I drop everything to go do watercolor painting (recent addition) or reading. I prefer to let the rest of the family enjoy the evening without me.

so, you like a bit of solitude. hardly crime of the century stuff!!! one trait does not a disorder make!

cyclegyrl929 wrote:Apparently not finishing what I start is a symptom,

that's a new one on me. that just makes you a bad finisher. i don't think it's an AS trait.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:asexuality is a symptom,

no way!!! this is so rediculous it's laughable!!! indeed, i am laughing!!!

cyclegyrl929 wrote:preferring alone time is a symptom,

possibly. but also possibly not. there are plenty of other disorders that would cover this base.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:awkward pauses or misreading social cures,

another possibly/possibly not, IMO.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:reading a book when our family is attending a party at someone else's home, etc. If they can't talk about dogs their conversation is boring and I pretty well tune it out.

and another possibly/possibly not, IMO. this sound more like you're an introvert than anything else to me. lots of people are introverts. but for some reason psychiatry tends to favour extraverts as being NT. i'm not sure why this bias exists but it cerrtainly does.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:I'm was happy with our marriage and frustrated that he isn't.

whilst most people with AS are happy with their marriages, most aren't frustrated that their spouses aren't. that's a very NT thing. not AS at all.

cyclegyrl929 wrote:So I am thinking if taking some more online testing to see what I can find out.

well, that doesn't on the face of it sound like too bad an idea, especially if you can use the results to confront your councelllor and thereby your husband too, if it turms out they're wrong. what alarms me most about your story is that the councellor you're seeing is supposed to be impartial. but i get the impression that they've joined forces with your husband to figuratively speaking 'beat you up' over all this. that isn't fair. and it certainly isn't professional either. i think you're getting a pretty raw deal here and you need to stand up for yourself and stop letting these people intimidate you. from what you say, it's your husband that's changed, in as much as he's demanding more sex. and that's something he can't have unless you're agreeable to it. a marriage should be based on mutual respect. on the face of it i'm struggling to see that coming from him. he seems to only want what he wants and is prepared to drag you off to councelling and be very critical of you in order to humiliate you into giving it to him. not nice. not nice at all.

i'll just give you one bit of extra advice here. try taking a good quality multi-vit, such as solgar female once a day. it might make some difference. i know that when my father took multi-vits he was much more socially coherent. it might work for you too.