Should two Aspergers marry?

My nephew Peter has Aspergers, and had a very difficult time getting through school, but was able to graduate from college by staying completely focused. However, now that he has a girlfriend with Aspergers, he has regressed terribly. She is very manipulative and has separated him from almost all healthy relationships. Basically, she makes his decisions and does his thinking for him to the point where he can not function well enough to take care of his everyday affairs.

We are trying to find a way to reach Peter without alienating him. Should we tell him that any children born to such a marriage would have a good chance of inheriting the condition? And is this really true? Thanks, everyone. (Any other advise is welcome!)

I think they should marry if they want to marry, love each other, and want to spend their lives together.
I would give this same advice to any one.
I have Asperger's and was married to an NT woman. I am not married anymore and I dare say will never marry again. So marrying someone because they are NT or Aspie makes the same difference as far as I am concerned.
Good choice, bad choice - it will be what it will be. AS doesn't change his ability to reason.

wow what's the chance that an Aspie guy finds and Aspie girl? That's really amazing by the way, I agree with rossco. it can work out and there of course are positives and negitaves but its all up to them really.

But it is already NOT working out. Peter has regressed so much that we can actually see him deteriorating from one week to another. He gets obsessed with things and people and doesn't seem to be able to recognize destructive behavior in himself or others. He's now at the point where the girlfriend is dictating everything from where he gets his haircut to what friends he can see. Whether it is Aspergers or some other cause, it has definitely affected his reasoning ability.

I truly believe they each need spouses that are strong where the other is weak. Obviously, they both have severe problems, but marrying each other would be a terrible mistake for both of them. I don't blame Aspergers for all the problems--I think it only compounds some existing issues.

I don't like the sound of this girl, but if they love eachother...

Maybe you should ask the woman to calm down a bit.

Sounds like it doesn't matter if they both have Asperger's or not unless the fact that she has it is what is causing her to take advantage of him. Far as the relationship goes I doubt there is much you can do to convince him that she seems like a bad influence on him if he loves her alot.

On another note. I am dating a girl online that has PDD-NOS and its possible she might be diagnosed with Asperger's sometime soon. As well as myself, my biggest worry is how our relationship will be if we have problems communicating IRL and how would our children be. =/

I agree you, Flavia, that's an unequal, despotic relationship which is doing no good to him, unless you're skipping certain facts, by regarding to it from your specific view and pyschology.

Have you thought maybe she wasn't an Aspie at all?, but could be using that in order to get a major advantage?

I'm pretty much an Aspie guy, even when non-officially diagnosed.

During my life, I've already passed through 2 relationships with 2 women that resemble me in a way to the kind you tell me about.
Second one assured to be an Aspie, but demonstrated me up being manipulative, unhonest, messed up, and messing others up, seeking for her own profit, misunderstanding me once and other, just caring for herself. Whenever she's Aspie or not (I really doubt it now), fact is none of both made no benefit to my emotional state, to my mind, to my hopes. First one, completely neurotypical, and plus classist, conventional, superfitial girl, was even more hugely, deadly hurtful and disestabilizing, and actually changed my mind, and shocked my personality (though made it evolve, and learn so much); because she knew too much about how using advantage of her female charms to attract a man to her terrain, and I was so unaware and unexperienced, and besides so Aspie, ingenuous, well-intentioned, generous, caring, over-worrying, too easily self-guilty and self-blamable... Now I look at most of time I passed with them as a lack of purpose in my life, and a waste of my precious time, <: ). Of course I'm really glad to have given up, and go on my own path; when you're suffering from a relation, it's very hard to assumpt the chance of ending it, until you've already done and notice how much you feel relieved, and don't regreat so much as you've expected; because you always have also good moments, and when they're something new to you, amazing, unexplanable, you get so afraid to loose them up, to having to renounce to them. We Aspies tend to emotionally attach to our customs, our so loved details, our possessions, our people and our current lifestyle.

But now, I can assure you something. It doesn't probably matters how much you try to warn him and advice, and make him open his eyes, if he doesn't want to look out from that reality he's living, and beleives to be so good, unless he becomes really sick, fed up, or disperated, of such a dammaging life, and starts accepting the fact of giving up, to look for an alternative.

Make him notice those alternatives, to know them, see them, and assumpt they're there, and are also possible, and valid, if situation becomes too unbearable, and has run out of control from his hands. That's the best way you can offer to him a huge, unequalable help.

Recall "nobody changes by others' head", it's a popular said we use in Spain for those cases ("nadie cambia por cabeza ajena"). It's just him who can open his own eyes, and look out by himself.

Hope you all the best.

Maybe he needs that at this point of his life. If he's smart, and as an Aspie he should be, and if she's really so bad for him, he'll snap out of it eventually.

I did have a relationship with an Aspie, and it did turn into a disaster, more or less. But I wouldn't say it's anybody's "fault". It just that we managed to draw the worst in each other, social-wise. So maybe she's not doing that intentionally; maybe they would both apperciate some support, if they love each other and want to stay together. Antagonism won't help, they'll just withdraw even more.

It's very difficult, you know, when you finally find someone who understands your needs, to give it up in order to continue pretending you're NT for the people who don't.

And it's not a 'condition'. Aspergers are very intelligent and can be highly succesful and accomplished people, especially if they have Asperger parent(s) to guide them. So I don't see them having children with Asperger as a problem, sorry.

Maybe we're skipping many details, and they're actually happy, he's happy. Maybe instead of a despotic and unequal relationship, as from an outside's neurotypical view, can seem, they compenetrate too well, supporting each other the lacks of each one. Maybe he's happy with someone who is taking care of him, and being helped with every decision, every problem, to find out solution. Maybe he, rather than manipulated, feels and is strenghed, supported, ensured, completed...

Those skipped, unwatched detailes could be decissive, so important, rather than trivials, secondary, prescindible, meaningless, as to most's view it could seem... and they can result too determining, in order to gather real meaning and reality of them both, and their relationship.

My first, previous regarding, or focus, intended to make sense assumpting their situation and reality actually matches the vision, the experience or the appereance you've took of them, or of him, and have shared with us, that could be partial. But maybe, skipping those meaningful details, have switched it, transformed it all, and in an unjust form.

I'm not a judge. Just can talk about my experience, sometimes bad, or my limited theories. What you told me at the beggining of this post resembled me just the bad parts. But there are the good ones, and when you (who is actually living it from inside)'re sure you have them, you are not to permit anything interpose, anything to be an obstacle, for achieving its full consumption (if that's a word).

Maybe instead of unequal, being aware of those details turns it into a full, deep, unsuperfitial, magic one. Where there exist no pre-assumpted roles, no barriers, no doubts, no fears, and high levels of trust and afinity among each other. But we are not the best ones to be judging on that... I wouldn't even dare to do so wether being from the family.

Love is so complicated... so irrational... so strange... and when fully achieved, so pure... It's just too hard to judge basing on subjective, partial, outside and intendingly rationalized standards, according to our unquestioned and dogmatic "common sense", so cultural, so relative, so undeep.