Aspies are the most literal people you'll ever meet

Flickr Creative Commons: Annie_Belle1

My STBE Aspie husband had several affairs while he was married to me.  Some were online, a couple were live and in color with co-workers (and both of them thought they were the only one.  How cute is that?) and he also dabbled (at least I think he dabbled, it could have been a raging thing with him) in going into those chat rooms where people chat each other through masturbation.  Now, my STBE SWEARS he never masturbated through those conversations.  He would have been the only one, I'm sure.  And if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

It's this black-and-white thinking that will drive you right over the edge, mentally and emotionally.

Once my STBE's affairs with co-workers came to light, once I got phone calls from some very angry husbands, I said to him, "I've been asking you for over a year, accusing you really, about having an affair with someone at work.  You've always told me you're completely honest with me, yet you looked me in the eye and told me you weren't".

His response?  And hold on to your seat...

"That's not what you asked me.  We never did anything at work."

To an NT, this is a lie - a lie of omission.  I won't even touch on the lies of commission, knowingly telling a lie or embellishing the facts, because Aspies tend to not do that.  This is how they convince themselves they are SO honest!  To an Aspie, he WAS completely honest with you.  100%.  He answered the question you asked, not seeing any of the subtleties NTs see on a regular basis.  They do this to confuse you, really.  Leading you into a false sense of security that they really are "honest" people.  They work to make you believe it's not they who lied (a lie of omission is still a lie), but simply you who misunderstood what it was you were asking.

“Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.” ― Criss Jami

The Bible doesn't address lies of omission, but to lie is a sin.  My STBE would hold himself up as a paragon of virtue, using the bible to back him up with this assertion, since he is the son and stepson of two Episcopalian priests.  He presents himself very, very well to the outside world using this as his bedrock.

However, he's broken so many commandments, I wondered if he ever read them.  He not only cheated on me but his first wife.  But with an Aspie, they can make it all sound very correct and proper, thus the fault of their spouse.  They leave out the part where it's they who was neglecting their spouse, staying glued to the television, probably drinking to excess or using drugs as a buffer between them and the insanity that goes on inside their heads. There were red flags with the STBE while we were still dating, but I chose to overlook them.  One of the big ones was, whenever I'd ask him if he saw a certain movie, he'd tell me, "I think I did watch it at some point, but I was drunk and don't remember it."  The lie of omission takes place here.  They skew the reality of it all to make you believe they are the victim in this scenario.

But to him, and his "morality" of being the perfect Christian, he's honest, thus there was no lie, because he believes what he told me is the truth.

Here's a tip - most abusers of alcohol and/or drugs do so because of the "voices in their head".  I don't mean the voices a person might hear if they're delusional, like the Son of Sam telling people his neighbor's dog made him do it.  I mean their internal monologue that most of us have going on in our minds day-to-day.  This is the internal monologue where we work to solve problems, plan our day or evening, what to make for dinner, etc.  For most of us, we can shut this down and go on with our day.  For someone with Asperger's, Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder (which my therapist tells me is primarily women) they simply can't shut it down.

They'll take a minor event in your life together, one that drives them completely nuts every single time you do it, such as sweeping the kitchen floor every night before you go to bed.  They won't say a word to you about it, but they WILL let it fester in their head for days, weeks or months; in my STBE's case, it would be for years and decades - he only just told me about a week and a half ago how much he hated it when I would call him and ask him if he'd like to meet me for lunch while I was in town.  This is something I'd been doing for the duration of our marriage.  He literally kept it inside for over 21 years.  I even did this when we were dating!  This, to me, is a lie of omission, or sorts.  He hid from me his dislike of this rather than tell me I was doing something that bothered him.  He then made it my fault for not telling me.  In his head, he built it up to, "She'll just get pissed off at me if I tell her I don't like it and I don't want that argument".

But who's to say it would have been an argument?  I heard from him so many times, following his being caught in his latest lie of omission, "I didn't say anything because I didn't want the argument."  I would tell him, every time he would say this to me, "But how do you even KNOW it would have been an argument if you didn't give me the opportunity to address it when I first did it?"  His response was always the same, "Because I know you."

And it might seem as though I'm drifting here (and I probably am) but the basis of all this ranting is: by not telling me I was doing something that upset him, he was lying to me.  He allowed me to go on for months at a time thinking everything was okay, when the truth of the matter is, it wasn't.  He just wasn't telling me.  After several months of "not telling me", he would explode into a rant that would, at times, leave me fearing for my safety.  So now, not only am I dealing with his laundry list of complaints, I'm feeling defensive because I'm feeling as though I'm being attacked from all sides.  (I call this "Pulling the rug out from under me", something else Aspies like to do, in order to keep you off-balance and walking on eggshells waiting for when the next rant or explosion will come)  And this is his own self-fulfilling prophecy because not only am I mad that he's kept from me about 100 things I've done that upset him, I'm now being attacked (from my point of view) and defending myself.  This is all compounded with the anger I'm feeling over having the rug pulled out from under me, too.  I'm so totally confused at this point, I don't know which end is up.

Using the "fight or flight" impulse all humans have, I was in a no-win situation, too.  Were I to stand there and defend myself, I was being abusive (translation: to ALL Aspies, standing up for yourself and not giving them tacit agreement on just what a piece of shit you really are is "abuse"), if I left the scene of the crime, walked away to avoid the argument, I was being selfish and narcissistic, not caring about his feelings at all.  If I sat there and said nothing at all, agreeing with him every step of the way, the abuse would continue and only get worse as time passed, thus enabling him even more.

But to the Aspie, not telling the whole story is not a lie of omission, nor is it a lie at all.  They take no responsibility for their actions, placing the blame squarely on your shoulders.  By the time they get around to telling you the whole truth, they've already convinced themselves it was entirely your fault, forcing them to be less than completely honest.  Certainly, they'd have been a much more honest person were it not for you being SUCH an unreasonable person, not because of anything you said or did, but because of what they THOUGHT you said or did.  His rambling mind got me in more trouble with him than anything I could have done on my own.

Asperger's in Adults or What the hell am I dealing with?

“One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.”   ― John Lennon

Being married to someone with Asperger's is the kind of marriage where you're married to someone with no emotions, no physical reaction to emotion and refuses to be anything but "logical".

According to the medical journals, DSM and other professional diagnostic books and such, Asperger's is:

Excerpted from the DSM-IV (but with the introduction of the DSM-V, Asperger's is no longer a recognized diagnosis, being placed now inside the Autism Spectrum as "High Functioning")

1.  Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:

• Marked impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, and gestures to regulate social interaction
• Failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level
• A lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interest or achievements with other people, (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people)
• lack of social or emotional reciprocity

2.   Restricted repetitive & stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities
3.  The disturbance causes clinically significant impairments in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
4.  There is no clinically significant general delay in language
5.  There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction) and curiosity about the environment in childhood.

Blah-Blah-Blah-Blahbity--Blah...

Let me break this down for you, using the above as a guide (And I'm not a psychiatrist, just someone who's seen many of them with my STBE ASH):

1.  They have higher than average problems with being in a social situation, and to be diagnosed with Asperger's, it should be at least two of the following:

• Trouble with the use of the average non-verbal social actions most of us use.  Actions such as making eye contact with the person with whom they're talking, changing their facial expression to match the conversation such as laughing when something's funny, showing sadness when something's sad, etc., having a more relaxed body language - not crossing their arms over their chest, sitting with crossed legs, etc., and more relaxed gestures directed at the other person to show engagement and to facilitate the continuance of the conversation, such as a pat on the shoulder, the shaking of hands, maybe a wink to show solidarity.
• This is all about having real friends in your age group at the same maturity level as you.  Aspies tend to make friends with people who are either older or younger than themselves, generally younger since they suffer from a frozen maturity level around that of a pre-teen or so.
• This means sharing their lives with others, such as "Honey, I got a promotion!" or "I got an A on my final!"  Aspies tend to either not say anything at all or downplay it when they do.  They'll also fail to recognize your accomplishments, not really caring.  They're not ones to share photos of their kids or family at all and it's rare you'll actually see a photo of an Aspie, and when you do, they're tense as all get out, not smiling, not looking at the camera or wearing sunglasses.
• This is the hardest part of living with an Aspie full-time, as a spouse, child or significant other - the lack of engagement in day-to-day life.  Not only do they not share their life with you, they don't want you to share your life with them.  Also, these are the guys who when you say, "I love you" respond with a smile, nothing at all or "Yeah, me, too."  Any conversation with them is stilted and awkward because they simply don't take part in it beyond grunts or an occasional, "uh-huh".

2.  Aspies have MAJOR focus when it comes to their "special interests".  They'll have a hobby and their whole life is about that hobby, to the detriment of everyone and everything else in their life.  They'll do this hobby in every single free minute they have.  Some Aspie might even have a tic of some kind (called a "Stim" or "Stimming", which is short for "Stimulation or Stimulator") that brings them comfort in stressful situations.  The Stimming is different and individual to the Aspie, but you'll know it when you see it.

3.  Asperger's causes them problems in most facets of their life, be it with friends, or at work, or in another environment that requires them to interact with others. ( My STBE ASH was recently challenged at work over his knowledge of a certain subject pertaining to his job.  It was a mild challenge, but a co-worker had to come into the room to prevent my STBE from slugging the poor man)

4.  They seem to have pretty normal speech patterns and such but to those of us who live with them daily, we tend to notice little "idiocyncracies", such as a slower speech pattern, saying the wrong word in certain situations, etc.  Once, my STBE was told by a psychiatrist he felt my STBE was mildly retarded because of his slow, careful, measured speech pattern.

5.  Aspies generally have higher than average IQs and if employed are generally EXTREMELY good at what they do.  This is part of why it's so hard to get people to see just what the matter is.  They can be extremely good problem solvers if you can get them to focus on the problem at hand - which is difficult to do.  Most Aspies, by the time they are adults, have honed their skills of adaptability to suit most social and external (meaning outside the home) situations.  They are very chameleon-like and can easily fool people.

Okay, all this being said, my STBE has ALL these problems, with the exception of stimming.  I don't know I ever saw him stim at all.  However, he came from an extremely dictatorial father and an apathetic and childish mother who allowed her feelings to be hurt over the slightest infraction to the extent it would send her to bed, what I've come to call the "Shrinking Violet Routine".  She's a Drama Queen to the nth degree, as is my STBE.  Anyway, the stimming - if I had to guess, it would be that his father spanked it out of him.  His dad was never strong on letting people be who they are.  It was his way or the highway.  And the STBE got spanked A LOT.  

But he hangs onto stuff longer than he should and makes it sound worse than it really was.  Unless it was him committing some sort of action that had you gasping at its violence.  Then he downplayed it completely to become the single most innocuous act known to man and wasn't I the proper fool for seeing it any other way?  My STBE had a particular fondness for being too aggressive with my dog, which he hated with a passion.  He told me once he hated her so much because she and I had similar personalities.  However, he would get pretty aggressive with her and when she reacted the way a dog would, he'd haul off and hit her either with his fist or open hand; every so often, he'd kick her.  When I'd deign to tell him what I thought of this abuse, he'd start in on me, drumming into me just how wrong I was, that I didn't see what I saw or heard what I heard.  If my dog would yelp in response to his hitting her or harming her in some way, and I'd hear it and say something, he'd start in on, "That's just how she is!  She over reacts to EVERYTHING!"  (now he's gas-lighting a dog?)

Speaking of the "hanging onto stuff longer than he should"...  My STBE is 53 years old and is STILL upset over a dirt bike his younger brother got when he was 15 and his brother was 12.  He's STILL angry and hurt about it because HE wanted a dirt bike and his parents KNEW it!

He can also give you a litany of the last 21 years of every transgression he believes I've committed against him, either real or imagined.  But, ask him to remember saying something horrible to you, like the time he told me he couldn't stand to see me without clothes on because I was so fat it made him nauseous, and he'll take to the grave with him the insistence he never said that and that I'm making it up because I need to find something wrong with him.  (Seriously, I never had to look hard - he was always doing something that was either hurtful or annoying)

I'm starting to ramble, now.  I've been forced into silence for so long, I have too much to say, all the time.  That's the reason for this blog, to get it off my chest and try to help others at the same time.  Misery loves company and all that, you know.

Be on the lookout for my next post and tell me what you think of this one.