Aspies seem to have "food issues"

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.” ― Orson Welles

This wasn't something I noticed in the beginning, or perhaps this was part of his gaslighting me, or maybe it was something that grew over time. However it happened, my ex-narcissist had what I consider to be some serious food issues.

It wasn't until my youngest left for the Air Force, and was gone for a few months, that he brought up to me how much his eating habits had changed since going into the Air Force.

The first thing he pointed out was he was no longer gobbling up all the chips, ice cream and cookies as soon as they hit the house. He's also the one who pointed out to me it was his father's eating habits that made him that way. See, Mark had a really bad habit of eating all the junk food in the house almost as soon as it walked in the door with me. He made the observation that Mark's doing this caused both my son and I to get some as fast as we could, before his dad got to it.

So I started paying attention and Elias was right. Mark ate junk food constantly!

I would buy ice cream by the multi-gallon drum and it would be gone in less than a week. I'd not even had a bowl! Mark liked to think he ate healthy, so when he'd have ice cream, he'd put it in a coffee cup to show "portion control." However, he'd eat five or six of those in one evening. And when he wasn't eating it out of a coffee cup, he'd have to go to the kitchen for something and would grab a spoon so he could get a bite or two several times a night.

Another habit of Mark's would be to "sleep eat." Elias and I both told him he did it, but he refused to believe it and accused me of trying to convince him he was crazy. If it were just me who was telling him this, that'd be one thing, but Elias was telling him this, too! Mark would cook food and the dirty dishes would be in the sink in the morning, but he refused to believe he did this. His most common night time meal would be a bowl of cereal with milk. He would eat so many bowls of cereal, once it came into the house, there was never any for the occasional bowl for me. I'd bring five or six boxes in from the grocery store and all of them would be eaten in just a few days, with me getting none of it.

Since divorcing my Aspie, it still surprises me to see cookies in my pantry and I don't remember when I bought them. I'd grown so conditioned to there being no snack junk food in the house it looked foreign to me to see it. I can't remember the last time I bought any junk food for myself. I have a medium-sized bag of chips on top of the fridge and it's only half eaten. I can't remember when I bought them. I tasted one this evening and it seemed like it might be a little on the stale side, so it's been a while, I suppose.

Once Mark's health started showing it was suffering from his indifference, I tried to get him to eat healthier. When we were dating and in the first couple years we were married, I would often make salads for dinner. He'd eat them heartily! But, once the honeymoon was over for him (which coincided with Elias being born - Aspies don't like to be one of several children, they want to be the only one. They don't like the competition) he refused to eat a salad. He declared them a waste of space in his stomach. He'd get so mad when I'd make something healthy for dinner.

I can remember when I saw Mark for the first time in months, while I was waiting at the courthouse for our hearing to start. He was getting out of his car and I didn't recognize him. He was so overweight and his hair was completely grey. He'd also added many, many more lines and wrinkles to his face. He looked like he was 15 years older than he was. That was the moment I realized his spell over me was gone.

For years, people who knew me would eventually meet Mark and tell me confidentially they couldn't believe I was married to him. He was the opposite of me in every way.

The day I saw him outside the courthouse, I finally understood what they were all talking about.

In the weeks since I had him removed from the house, I was eating the way I wanted to eat, which was healthy. I seem to naturally gravitate to a healthy diet. I don't actually diet, but I love fish, grains, salads, fruit, and not a lot of junk food. I lost quite a bit of weight over the five months I was waiting for the hearing. And the thing is, I've kept it off over the last nearly five years. My blood pressure is where it should be, my rheumatoid arthritis has gotten much better, and I take regular walks around the two lakes in my home town, where I live. I also sleep much better than I once did.

So ask yourself... Do you have a weight problem that won't resolve, no matter what you do? Start paying attention to how you subconsciously respond to your Aspie's eating. And if you take the plunge and divorce your Aspie, the weight just seems to melt off with no effort from you.

I lost about 60 pounds since divorcing the ex. I love to tell people I lost over 300 pounds since the divorce. 275 of it was him...

Three years post-divorce from my Aspie and here's how it's going...

So much seizing the day!

A couple of weeks ago or so was three years since I divorced my ex-Aspie and here's how things are going...

• Bought a small house that's just right for me and a pet. I inherited all three dogs in the divorce, but last month two of them passed away; one from cancer, one from myelitis. The house isn't perfect, but it's mine and no one will ever take it away from me. It will also be paid for in another 90 payments.
• My two kids still aren't talking to me, but that's okay. My youngest did manage to give me some insight as to why - he says I'm "embellishing" the affairs my ex had during our marriage. Given that lie came to light, I have to wonder how many others my ex managed to convince the kids of? But mostly, I feel sorry for my ex. He's such a pathetic loser, such a liar, such a POS, the only way he can live with himself is to work that hard to convince both himself and others he didn't do the things he did to me and the marriage. Frankly, pathetic doesn't even BEGIN to describe him and his lies/delusions.
• I still get triggered pretty easily when someone I'm dating does or says something to remind me of the ex. BUT - I'm also more aware of the narcissism I was subjected to for so long. (Aspies are usually narcissists, too) More than once, I've listened to some guy start to feel me a line of bullshit and I've responded with, "You're gaslighting me." I gotta tell ya, it feels REALLY good to call shenanigans on a narc and know you're right to do so. And trust me, they get really pissed off when you do this, which is another good feeling.
• The ex is STILL playing the victim, which is something Aspies do SO well. He refuses to talk to me still, which really is fine, but I have to send him a reminder email more than once, every year since the divorce, regarding the cost of living raise I'm required to get under our divorce decree as I was given a percentage of his military retirement for life. I'm thinking next January I won't do that - I'll just take him to court for contempt, and while I'm there petition the court to continue the alimony, at least until my house is paid for. See, it wasn't in my pre-divorce planning budget to have a car payment but the ex made sure my car was repossessed (because of his doing, not mine, as the car was paid for) so my finances are a little skewed until the car's paid for.
• From the first day, my friends have all told me I look 20 years younger, and this must be true, because when I told my coworkers I was over 50, none of them believed me and it was a genuine disbelief. I honestly believe I added years to my life by leaving the crazy behind me.

All this being said, I'm still much happier than I've been in a long, long time. I answer to no one, I'm not responsible to anyone but myself, and there's no one to call me names, treat me like garbage, or to work to convince me I'm crazy for the sole reason it makes them feel better about their assortment of mental illnesses. (When I think of my ex, which I rarely do any longer, the phrase, "From soup to nuts" comes to mind, and it makes me laugh a little to myself) I'm not going to lie, it hasn't been a picnic since the divorce, but it's tons better than it was before.

Seriously, leaving the Aspie, NPD, Bipolar Diordered mind of my ex behind me was the best decision I ever made. You should consider doing the same thing.

It's been a while since I've posted... But...

There are so many reasons I've not been posting, and it's as I suspected...  My life is SO much better now that I'm post-Aspie.

I wish I could say my kids were talking to me again, but I can't.  At one point, my youngest son and I were back in contact, but he told his dad, the Aspie, and he shut me out again. (More of that Abuse by Proxy I've mentioned)

I have a great job working in the accounting field again. I have a nice car that I pay for myself, the replacement for the one the ex-Aspie sold out from under me.  I have wonderful friends. I am now volunteering for a group that serves the domestic violence shelter in a neighboring county.

And I must be doing something right because I also have a stalker on here named Deb Marino, though I'm sure it's a fake name. I'm pretty sure I know who it is and she's bat-shit crazy so I take it all with a grain of salt.  She's known for being crazy and the fact she used the first name of a former boyfriend's ex-wife and a derivative of my surname were the biggest clues.  We live in a very emotionally unhealthy world. I turned off the comments here until I can figure out how to delete her bat-shit craziness.  It's not as simple as it once was.

Life is certainly good.

One thing you'll note I didn't mention is that there's a man in my life; because there's not.  I made the stupid mistake of dating someone before my divorce was final (we'd already gone to final hearing and I'd moved back to my hometown). Why is it stupid? Because when you leave an Aspie led relationship, you're in no condition emotionally to be in a relationship with anyone.  It's a rough road back and my PTSD is still prevalent at times.

When you divorce an Aspie (or any other abusive person), give yourself time to heal before going into another relationship.  Take years if you have to.  The person I became involved with was a predator, of sorts.  He's an emotionally abusive person who thrives on running everyone else around him down into the ground.  He was such a huge emotional set back for me and I wish I'd never gotten involved with him.

If I tried to discuss a relationship problem with him, he would respond with, "I guess we should just break up." (This is a tool used by abusers and narcissists to keep you in line. They use your fear of breaking up to prevent you from saying anything other than positive things about them).

He had me convinced his family hated me and didn't want me at family holiday functions. (The opposite was true. I ran into a family member of his one night and they approached me to ask why I didn't like them or want to spend time with them. He had them convinced I hated them. This is a form of isolation used by abusers and narcissists so you rely solely on them.)

He worked VERY hard to convince me I couldn't trust anyone but him. Again, this is a form of isolation. Abusers do everything they need to do to remove from your life anyone who is in a position to help you if you need it.

He would wait until the last minute to try to make plans with me and blow up at me if I wasn't available and subject to his whims. (Abusers and narcissists to this to make sure you're sitting at home, waiting on their call instead of going out and, you know, having a life - another form of isolation)

He would routinely disappear on me, refusing to answer my calls or respond to my text messages.  I finally got sick of it and made plans with friends, not seeing or talking to him for three or four days (and remember, he did this to me regularly and would tell me, "That's just who I am. Take it or leave it."  Over the course of the four days, he and I were at the same grocery store at the same time, but I didn't know it until I had left and saw his truck parked near mine.  I went out with friends all weekend - didn't call him, didn't text him, came home late, left early.  You know the drill.  He had absolutely no idea where I was, who I was with or what I was doing.

Not once did he try to call or text me over those four days.  However, the following Tuesday, he sends me a text with those simple words - We need to talk.  I refused.  I told him, basically, "Oh, heck no.  You want to talk while I listen.  But when I want to talk, you run in the opposite direction and refuse.  So, no, we won't be talking."  He responded with, "Okay, I guess we just won't talk another time."

Narcissists hate being shut down the way they shut down everyone else.  I did, however, go to his house.  See, if he'd come to mine and I'd done anything OTHER than sit passively and let him rant, blaming me for everything wrong in his world, he'd have walked out and I'd have been left upset, confused and angry at being shut down - AGAIN!

I walk into his house and tell him it's time to talk.  Being at his house meant he wouldn't walk out.  He did try walking away a couple of times, washing dishes, wiping down the counter, until I finally made him stop.  What came out was he was mad that we didn't see each other that weekend and it was my fault we didn't.  I just kind of looked at him, blinked a few times and said, "Does your phone not dial out anymore? If you'd wanted to see me, you should have called me."

This was the beginning of the end of our relationship.  Once a narcissist realizes they can't control you any longer, they have no use for you.  John realized he'd lost control of me and he started moving on.  He thinks I don't know it but this is when he started dating other people while working to convince me he was completely faithful.  He started saying things like, "We're just friends, nothing more".

About two months before I ended it with him for good, I'd started dating a really great guy (sort of, he, too, has issues that led me to ending things with him and choosing to stop dating anyone at all.) and after a week of no contact with John, he finally got thru to me.  He started giving me this whole planned (read: scripted) speech that was exactly what I knew it would be: it was all my fault, he was perfect, etc., etc. I finally interrupted him to tell him I was dating someone and had been for two months.  He accused me of cheating when he had, in fact, been the one to say he and I were "just friends".  It's always a glorious moment when you can use the narcs words against him like this.

Trust me, don't get into a relationship until you've pretty much healed from the abusive one.  You won't ever get back to the person you were before the abuse, but you can get close.  I know I have.

I'm still fixing things with my siblings, the ones my ex-Aspie alienated me from.  One sister has pretty much been okay since the divorce. My brother still doesn't talk to me, but that's on him for not wanting to understand what it's like being in an abusive relationship, though he's in one himself.  His wife has him so alienated from his twin sister (my sister, too, but the twin sister thing is for emphasis on just how much his wife has worked to remove him from his family). My oldest sister "seems" to be okay, but I'm starting to see chinks in her armor, that she's got some narcissistic personality traits.  She's got gas-lighting down pat.  She ignored my birthday. She blames me for the problems with my oldest son, though she was around for all the BS his dad put not just me but her through to spend time with him.  I don't know if she's showing signs of forgetfulness or if she's just mean and likes to twist me up in knots. I limit the conversations with her because of this.  Just because they're family doesn't mean they're good for you.

I have to confess, I'm still healing emotionally.  But I now have boundaries in place I didn't have before.  My bullshit meter is much stronger and the slightest bit of bullshit means I kick the person from my life.  Period.

Learn to trust your gut.  If it feels wrong, it is.  Take control of your life and the people in it.  Only have in your life supportive, positive people who don't work to make you feel badly about yourself.  Don't ever let someone dictate who you spend time with, where you go, when you do things and, most of all, don't EVER let them isolate you.  Be vigilant!

Life is good after Aspie.  Seriously.

Aspies are indecisive

“If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.”  ~ Charles F. Kettering

This is a big one, at least it was in my marriage to my STBE.

He was SO terrified of making the wrong decision, he couldn't make a decision at all.

A few years ago, I wanted to paint one of the walls in the kitchen.  Being a good wife, I asked for his input.  I mean, it was his wall, too.  Four months and many color swatches painted on the wall later, he STILL wouldn't help me make a choice, always telling me, "I don't like any of them".

I would ask him, "What color do you think you'd like to see on the wall?"  He would respond with, "I don't know".  Oh, I see.  So you don't know the right answer, you just know the wrong answer.  (And this is another thing with Aspies...  Maybe I'll do a posting on that one.)

What it finally took for me to get a color chosen was to sit down with him, four painted swatches on the wall in front of us, and say, "Okay, which ones do you definitely dislike?"  He told me, "All of them."  Me:  "Okay, then, let's try this route. Which one do you dislike the least?"  Him:  "I guess one of the green ones."  (Note: They were all some shade of green - see how painful this gets?)  Me:  "They're all some shade of green.  Can you help me a bit?  Dark green?  Light green?  In between green?  Does one of them appeal to you more in your hatred of them than the others?"

He finally settled on a lighter lime green as the "least offensive" and I painted the wall.  But remember, it took me FOUR MONTHS to get to this point.

I have 21 years of this crap.  His telling me he couldn't make up his mind about "something" of some importance to the household, either big or small.

The worst was when I'd try to discuss financial matters with him, such as starting a retirement plan.  I'd do all sorts of research into it, I'd download documents, I'd print out articles, I'd order a prospectus from the ones I favored, I'd put everything in some sort of understandable order for him and after a couple weeks of this, I steeled myself for the conversation.  See, the STBE doesn't really have a head for figures and numbers outside of a math book.  Finances beyond the basic checking account register eludes him and he starts to become "confused" (his word - not mine).

After all this research, I'd explain it all to him and ask him to help me come to a decision, generally taking more than an hour or two, ending the "presentation" with, "This is what I believe we should do".  After all of this, his response would be, 100% of the time, "I need to talk to so-and-so at work about it".

I could never get him to understand everyone's finances are different.  Everyone makes financial choices differently and based on their personal financial standing.  However, if I wanted an answer from him, I had no choice to acquiesce to his demands I allow him to discuss it with one or more people, usually the "more".  Nine times out of ten, the people he'd talk to about it at work would agree with what I felt was the best course, and when that happened, he'd come back to me with, "So-and-so thinks we should do "this" one."

I'd receive no credit whatsoever in that being MY choice, too.  In spite of the fact I was proven right by SO many of the people he talked to, he never trusted my thoughts or opinions on anything at all.  Not ONCE was I told I was agreed with, nor would he give my thoughts or opinions on financial matters any sort of credence at all (and I have a background in accounting and finance).  Nope, our entire life together was him treating me as if I hadn't a brain in my head.  He also made EVERY SINGLE major family decision by talking to others about it and leaving me out of the discussion entirely.

I began to call what he did "Decision by committee".  He couldn't make a decision on his own.  He refused to trust my decisions.  But he'd trust our major life decisions to near strangers who know no more about our life than a complete stranger walking along the street.  While Asperger's isn't actually considered to be a "mental disorder" (though it was listed in the DSM up until this latest update in the DSM-V where it was grouped under general autism. It IS considered to be a personality disorder and there's a link that discusses the decision-making problems people with certain personality disorders experience.

The mental health community would have us all believe there IS hope (and there's a paragraph towards the bottom of the page I linked to in the prior paragraph) when the person with the personality disorder goes through therapy.  However, what they DON'T address is just how you're supposed to GET that person into therapy?  People with these personality disorders won't even recognize they have a disorder, much less go to therapy for it.  Aspies in particular will take the stance, "There's nothing at all wrong with ME.  You just need to go to therapy to work on your coping skills" and they demand unconditional love for them, in spite of the fact they don't give you any love at all, much less unconditional love.

To close this out, since it's gone on long enough and being an NT, you're intelligent enough to understand the gist of what I'm saying, see the similarities to your own life and apply it to your life, Aspies have one frustrating quality after another and this is one of the more frustrating ones, to be sure.  Aspies have hundreds or thousands of ways to show you, daily, how unimportant you are to them and this is one of them.

Married to an Aspie/Narcissist/Sociopath? You will be alone in this marriage.

Like Katherine Hepburn says, Aspies don't want to be alone,
they simply want to be left alone.  (Image: Flickr.com CC)

“I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.”   ― Audrey Hepburn

Note: I jumped ahead to #30 on the list because I went off on a tangent in my last posting about Aspies and their pathological need to be liked.  I decided to cut it out of there and do this post.

Aspies/Narcissists/Sociopaths are a funny breed.  They want relationships with people that are close and loving.  They really do.  Aspies/Narcissists/Sociopaths are extremely lonely people.  What they don't realize, though, is they bring the loneliness on themselves by being so reclusive and difficult.

Aspies actually prefer to be left alone, but they want you to leave them alone while sitting next to them.  They don't want to talk to you, they don't want you to talk to them, they don't want to touch you, they don't want you to touch them.  They just want you to sit next to them and bask in the glory of their deigning to be present.

During your marriage, you'll be treated as an accessory to their life.  You will be the trophy wife, the maid, the cook, the prostitute, the wage earner, the day care provider, the brood mare for their children they want (but also don't want them to bother them), chauffeur, masseuse, and any other role of slavery you can fathom.  But the one thing you WON'T be is an equal partner in the marriage.  You also won't be cherished, honored, respected, acknowledged or treated as though you matter in any way, shape or form beyond any of the above roles.  The signs of this are early in the marriage, if you're paying attention.

Nope, Aspies have people in their life for one reason and one reason only, and that's to serve them.  This is why they work SO hard to win you over.  You are now their new source of Narcissistic Supply.

Aspies/Narcissists/Sociopaths have an UNCANNY ability to spot your weaknesses so they can exploit them.  I made the mistake of telling my STBE before we were married that I came from an alcoholic family and suffered from abandonment and trust issues as a result.  He zeroed in on those almost from the moment we were married.  It took a few months, because they groom you in very subtle ways, before they hop onto the "let's see how much we can run them down" train.  They actually USE these weaknesses in you to build you up during the "love bombing" stage, working to convince you of what a lovely, trustworthy, loyal, honest person they are.  Once you believe that, the reverse starts happening.

I also told my STBE before we married - Don't ever lie to me.  Even if it's something you think will upset me, I need to know I can always count on you to tell the truth.  I'd rather be hurt by the truth than a lie."  Many years later, in marriage counseling, I brought this up.  His response was, "You didn't mean it."  Really?  I didn't mean it?  That's the best you can do?  You profess to be inside my head to know what I meant when I said this?

For me, the "A-ha" moment came when we'd been married about six months.  As I'd said earlier, I'm a pretty good cook (adventurous is really what it should be called) and I was always trying new recipes.  This particular day, I'd made a dinner salad with three or four types of lettuce, strawberries, hand-made vinaigrette dressing, toasted almonds, smoked turkey, etc.  His kids were there for the weekend and I called everyone to dinner.

I set the large salad bowl down in the center of the table and asked everyone what they wanted to drink?  I went to get the drinks and when I came back, the STBE had served the entire salad to him and his kids, leaving my plate empty.  It was entirely gone with none left for me.  His solution, once he saw me sitting in the living room eating a sandwich (FUMING!) was to tell the kids, "Once you've eaten all you want from your plate, give Nancy the rest."  I got the leftovers?  Really?  I MADE the damn thing and I get the leftovers?????  Fuck that.

See how this devalues you as a person?  Now, in the mind of my STBE, the Aspie/Narcissist/Sociopath, I'm nothing more than a cook and slave.  I'm relegated to eating everyone else's leftovers.

Another example from my life of the "devaluing" stage is something that happened not long after the "salad incident".  Mark's ex-wife had signed the kids up for bowling on Saturday mornings.  Mark would take them to bowling, then lunch, and I'd use the time to clean the entire house and this was no mean task.  See, Mark being the "Disney Dad" (AKA Disneyland Dad), the kids were never required to clean up after themselves, help with housework in any way, they scattered their crap all over the place and generally didn't do anything but sit around with Dad while I waited on them all, hand and foot.

One particular Saturday morning, he took the kids to bowling while I cleaned.  I also washed and ironed all his uniforms, did all the dishes, cleaned the kid's bedrooms, made their beds, cleaned up their crap from the floor, etc.  When Mark and the kids came home around 1 o'clock, he walked in and didn't say a thing about my having cleaned the entire two story row home.  BUT - he did look around and all he said was, "You didn't clean the baseboards.  What's planned for dinner?"  And he walked away.

Again, devaluing me as a person.  I've not met his unrealistic expectations.  I cleaned 1500 square feet of living space but what he noticed was -  I didn't clean the baseboards.  So what did I do?  I got down on my hands and knees and cleaned the baseboards.  After so many months of being told by him just how wonderful I was, just how much I fulfilled him, he's now telling me I'm not good enough.

This is where the whole "being alone" kicks in.  No longer are you focused on your expectations of being an equal partner in a good marriage. NOW you're focused on "keeping your man happy" at all costs.  He's unhappy with you so you have to work on this, right?  Because we're all told a good marriage is based on focusing on the needs and the happiness of the other person.  And this IS true.  If you focus on keeping your mate happy, it's like a stone thrown into a pond.  The ripples that come from that spread until it touches every part of your life.

Right?

Not in an Aspie/Narcissist/Sociopath marriage.  Nope.  As focused as you now are on keeping your man happy, he's that focused on you keeping your man happy.  Now that the devaluing stage has begun, this is where you'll start doing TOO much to keep your man happy and no matter what you do, it won't be enough.  Only NOW, the Aspie will start complaining you're hovering and annoying them with all the attention.  From this point on, the only time your Aspie wants you to pay attention to him is when he's horny or hungry.  Period.  Any other time, they expect you to flit about like a butterfly, attending to their needs, picking up after them, washing their clothes, doing the grocery shopping, keeping the kids out of their hair and generally being the fairy that comes in the middle of the night to take care of the house.

Gone are the late into the night conversations of sharing your future together.  No more pillow talk because once they're done with the sex act, they'll either roll right over and fall asleep or will get up to fastidiously clean themselves as though you have leprosy and they need to get your cooties off of themselves.  No more small talk over dinner because your Aspie will now have become mono-syllabic and will eat as fast as they can so they can go back to their computer/television show/movie, whatever.  Any attempts at conversation over dinner are met with grunts and loud sighs, thereby training you to just sit there, eat your food, and shut the hell up.

They simply want you to leave them ALONE!

Towards the end of my marriage, the STBE started bringing the iPad into the den to "watch television" with me.  However, as soon as he sat down, he'd put the ear buds in and start watching YouTube videos on the thing.  I was ignored.  If I wanted to say something to him, I had to tap his knee.  This was met with a loud sigh, he'd do this whole dramatic thing that involved pausing the video, then taking out his ear buds, then turning to me with another loud sigh and saying, "WHAT?!?!?!"

I finally gave up.  And so should you if you ever want to be in a relationship with someone who actually wants you there with them as more than a warm body.

Aspies need to be liked by everyone

Aspies are chameleons, taking on the
personality and persona of the person
they're with or want to attract.
(Image: flickr.com CC)

“Really Hagrid, if you are holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I'm starting to feel more and more I should be using the term "Narcissist" in all of this.  Aspies and Narcissists are extremely similar and Narcissism is one of the main qualities of being an Aspie.

As much as Aspies and the mental health community would have us believe Aspies are warm, fuzzy kittens all the time, they're not.

Aspies need to be liked SO much, they'll run you down in the process.  They simply don't understand people really CAN like more than one person.

Over the years, the STBE would run into people at work who just didn't like him.  There was really no reason for it, they just didn't like him.  We all have people like that in our lives and it's nothing wrong with you OR them.  Some people just don't like you for whatever reason.  I've never been someone bothered by this but the STBE?  Oh, man, this would make him absolutely CRAZY!  He would try to talk to the person to show them what a wonderful person he is.  If they didn't go for it then, he'd start inviting them to lunch, or for a coffee, or whatever, but if someone doesn't like you, nothing you do will change their mind.

I used to tell the STBE, "Oh my gosh, just let it go!  Not everyone has to like you and there really are people out there in the world who will never like you.  It's nothing to do with you and it's really not personal.  There's just something about you they don't like and it could be something personal to them.  That happens in life, some times."

But he could never let it go.  It would actually keep him up at night.  It was maddening to not just him but me, too, because I was the one who was always required to listen to him talk about it endlessly and it wouldn't end until the person either told him, "Okay, FINE, I like you!" or they left the company or moved to another location.

Now that you're in a committed relationship with the Aspie/Narcissist/Sociopath, you become the target for all their hatred and rage.

Now, the average husband will say nice things about his wife.  She's a good cook.  She takes good care of the kids.  She's has a great memory for detail.  She always gets really great gifts for people at Christmas.  She makes a big deal out of everyone's birthdays.

All of these are things my STBE has said to me at one time or another, in his nicer moments (far and few between), so I know he believes them to be true.  But he's always hated me for these things because he wasn't able to incorporate them into his life.  Aspies choose mates who have the character and personality traits they wish they had.  But these very traits become a reason to hate you down the road.

The Aspie husband, though, is bothered by these parts of my personality/character.  Using the above examples, this is how an Aspie husband handles these items:

My wife is a good cook:  For an Aspie, he's more likely to tell people something along the lines of, "My wife makes SUCH fattening foods, I swear she's trying to kill me".  And always with just the right amount of derision (and based on them making this statement, they might actually come to believe you ARE trying to kill them - Aspies are incredibly paranoid).  Now the kids, both his and ours, would tell anyone who would listen I was a good cook.  At least they used to.  Now they say nothing because that's what Dad trained them to do.  This is called "Abuse by Proxy" or "Proxy Recruitment", because they actually teach the kids to become abusive towards you.

My wife takes good care of the children:  For the Aspie, kids take away attention from THEM, so this is a major, major resentment on their part.  Aspies are more likely to start making it look to the kids as though you pay TOO much attention to them. He might start calling you a "helicopter mom" or working to convince them you're invasive in their lives.  After a long enough time, they start to resent your presence in their lives as anything more than a source for money, clothes or whatever...

My wife has a great memory for detail:  This is another source of angst for the Aspie because they can't remember ANYTHING that has to do with anyone but them.  Tell them one of the kids has a special event and they'll forget, forcing you to remind them over and over.  They resent you for this and can be heard saying, "I swear my wife doesn't forget ANYTHING.  It drives me nuts how she's always bringing something up that happened days/weeks/months/years ago."  Aspies tend to forget they have a running list in their heads of everything "horrible" thing you've ever done to them, real or imagined, and they aren't afraid to whip it out in any and all arguments.

My wife always gets great gifts for people at Christmas:  My STBE was one of those people who would save his Christmas shopping for the very last minute.  He gave no thought to it the other 364 days a year, outside of giving people a list of what HE wanted, so he was never very good at gift buying.  I remember one year I got a shower head for Christmas while he got a really nice sweater, something I knew he needed.  The STBE asked me once, "How is it you always get exactly the right gift for all of us every year?"  I told him, "I pay attention to them when they talk."  He never understood this - this whole paying attention to people.

She makes a big deal out of birthdays:  I've always made a huge deal out of birthdays. I feel we live in a cold world, sometimes, and that everyone should be made to feel special on their birthday.  It's their day and I do everything I can to make it thus.  The birthday person gets to choose dinner that night, whether it's dining out or eating in, makes no difference.  They choose their birthday cake, and Elias would always choose that I make his.  I would sit down with him and have him choose the cake he wanted.  Too difficult?  I didn't care.  I made it because it's what he wanted for his birthday.  Aspies tend to not remember birthdays that aren't theirs.  If I had a nickel for every time I had to remind the STBE it was someone's birthday and he needed to call them, I'd be able to buy an island.  My last birthday before I filed for divorce was forgotten by every single person in the family.  And no one could understand why my feelings were so hurt.  Even my STBE stepdaughter went so far as to say, "But it's okay that we forgot her birthday.  We're Dickinson's, after all."  In their mind, being a Dickinson is synonymous with being thoughtless, and they're okay with that.

Now, all this being said...  Aspies need others to dislike you so they can feel better about themselves.  See?  So-and-so doesn't like you at all but they like ME so I must be a better person.  They use this to chip away at your self-esteem (and Narcissists do this, too) and make you feel badly about yourself.  It's a really subtle thing and usually an off-hand remark made after a company dinner or picnic, after a get-together either at your house or someone else's.  Yeah, Aspies need people to hate you, or at least have you think they hate you.

Why do they do this?  Because Aspies have incredibly low self-esteem.  They know they're different, and instead of embracing being different and "quirky", they try to make those around them look bad so they can look good by comparison.

Also, Aspies tend to hide who they are when starting a relationship.  They will take on the personality of the person they're with at the time and become extremely agreeable people.  You'll think you've found the perfect mate when the truth of the matter is, they're extremely chameleon-like, taking on the likes and dislikes of the person they're courting (this is also called love-bombing).  They will inundate you with flattery, gifts, be agreeable to whatever you suggest and will be SO likable AND lovable!  They will be the PERFECT boyfriend.  (And as a side note: my STBE told me not long before I filed for divorce, "I knew I had these problems before we got married, but I never told you because I was afraid you'd leave me" - How nice for him.  He got what he wanted, but he made me and several children miserable in the process, abusing us all.  But wasn't that fun for him?)

They NEED you to like them to prove to themselves they ARE likable, conveniently forgetting it's them changing into what the other person might need or want, rather than being who they are.  When dating, you ask:

You: Do you feel like a movie tonight?
Him: Sure, that sounds good.
You: What would you like to see?
Him: You pick one.  I want to see whatever you want to see.  OR I don't care, so long as I'm with you.

So you pick something.  What they never tell you afterward is, they never wanted to see that movie and they hated every minute of it.  And so the resentment towards you starts.  Only they'll never TELL you they resent you for this, at least not for a long time.  They're still in the "love bombing" stage, winning you over.

But once you're in a committed relationship with them, it all stops.  They've won you over so there's no need to continue with being "the chameleon".

I can remember the first thing my STBE said to me the moment we were married (literally - the moment we were married).  He turned to me, held my hands in his, looked at me with a tremendous amount of excitement in his eyes and said, "I'm SO glad I married you!" (and right about then in my head, I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, what a wonderful thing to say!") but then he followed it up with, "I now have a hot wife!"

Talk about popping your balloon, right?

Nope, once they have you, they have you, and they're not letting go easily.  And so begins life with an Aspie/Narcissist/Sociopath.

The process of love bombing me, getting me to like him, is now over.

Good luck with the rest of your life with them because it's all downhill from here.

Aspies will use the children against you

Before reading this, read up on Parental Alienation Syndrome.

During my marriage to my sociopathic Aspie (and most Aspies ARE sociopaths, due to their lack of empathy.  Testing was done using brain scans of Aspies and known sociopaths and there wasn't a whole lot of differences between the two) he would use our youngest son, Elias, as his therapist and sounding board for ranting about just what a horrible person I am.

It's not that I'm truly a horrible person, it's that to an Aspie/sociopath/narcissist, anything you do that's different from them (and let's just say it - EVERYTHING you do is different from them) is "abuse".  When it comes to parenting, they are the ultimate and forever "Disney Dad".  No discipline, no rules and the times you DO make them take part in being "the bad guy", it rocks their whole world.

I can remember one time, my youngest had disappeared with one of his friends.  He was under 10 at the time and neither I nor the other kid's parents could find them.  We were all, every one of us, terrified something had happened to them.  They finally appeared but it was after a pretty rough couple of hours and we were on the verge of calling the police (and the father of the other child WAS a police officer).

The STBE Aspie/Sociopath/Narcissist was out of town for this event and after talking to him about it over the phone, we decided to offer Elias a choice of punishments - either he lose his XBox for a week or he get one spanking with the belt.  I also talked it over with my son's psychiatrist and we gave Elias the time to decide which one he wanted, by telling him he had until his dad came home from his trip to make up his mind, which was four days hence.

When the STBE Aspie/sociopath/narcissist came home, Elias decided he wanted one spanking with the belt so I made the STBE do it since I'd already dealt with all the other crap while he was gone.  The STBE Aspie/sociopath/narcissist went upstairs, gave Elias one crack with the belt and came downstairs BAWLING HIS EYES OUT! 

Why was he crying?  I asked him and he told me, "It just hurt me SO much to do that" and he went on bawling.  Long, heart-wrenching, blubbering bawling.  No mention of Elias and his pain both physical and emotional.  Nothing.  Elias was completely removed from his mind so focused on his own pain was he.  I even asked him, "Is Elias okay?"  His response was, "I don't know.  I just came downstairs right way so he wouldn't see me crying."  I don't know??????  This is your kid.  You just cracked him with a belt and you don't know??????  There should have been some discussion after this with the child.  There should have been some soothing of hurt feelings.  Something.  Anything, other than, "I don't know."

Turns out Elias was barely fazed by this.  He took his spanking and went on with his life.  But this stayed with the STBE for months!  He would break out in tears at odd and random times, such as if we were at an amusement park with our son.  We'd be standing in line at a ride and he would just stare at Elias and suddenly start crying over the heartache he still suffered over having to spank Elias that day.  Aspies/sociopaths/narcissist are SO afraid of one of the kids disliking them for even a nanosecond, they make for lousy parents.  Kids are often ambivalent about their parents.  This is a fact of life.  It doesn't mean they don't love you.  It just means they're your kids.  The STBE simply couldn't bear the thought of being anything less than perfect in the eyes of the kids, even if it meant them hating me pretty much 24/7 and he encouraged that, the hating me.

And that was about the same time he started his campaign of hatred against me with the kids, both Elias and my son from my first marriage.  He started undermining me with the kids 100% and suffered no angst in doing it.

See, Aspies/sociopaths/narcissists have such a great need to be liked, they can't even stand it when they have to be anything but the "fun time" parent with the kids.  There's absolutely no support as a parent from these people because that gets in the way of, "The kids HAVE to like me more than they like HER!"  Because of this, the kids WILL have a definite preference for Good Ole Dad before it's all over and you...  Well, you will be the abusive monster.

Whenever I tried to punish one of the kids for something (again, both Elias and my son from my first marriage), he'd go behind me to "talk" to them.  There was a rolling of the eyes.  There would be statements made like, "You know how your mom is...!" or "Yeah, I agree.  She's being unreasonable.  But what can you do?" with a huge shrug of the shoulders.  Everything he would say to them at these times was to reinforce to them he was the good guy, I was the monster.  He'd then promise them he's "talk to me" about it all, which translated to, "Nancy, you need to change your mind."

He was so good at this, it took me a while to figure out just what it was he was doing.  A lot of times I'd cave because of his working so hard to convince me of just what a horrible parent I was for expecting the kids to be punished for such a "minor" infraction.

And this is an example of what he considered to be a "minor" infraction (and I'll have a couple more.  This was just a big one) - New Year's Eve, 1999-2000 - My son from my first marriage wanted to go to a friend's house for a party.  He was 17 at the time.  I was pretty sick with the flu and running a fever so he had to wake me up to ask me.  I'm not usually my best after being awakened suddenly like that.  Add to that a fever and you've got a recipe for disaster.  I agreed to let my son go to this party with the proviso he come home at midnight.  He argued he wanted to stay out later due to midnight being "the best part".  Okay then, one o'clock.  I also told him I wanted the kid's phone number and address so I could get hold of him for any reason.  I then fell back asleep.

Around three in the morning, I woke up for some reason and my son wasn't home.  However, the STBE WAS on the computer surfing his porn and engaging in his online affairs and spanking off to "chat sex".

The conversation went like this:

Me: Where's Billy?

Him: I don't know.

Me:  Did he call?

Him: I don't know.

Me: Did he come home and leave again?

Him: I don't know.

Me (now frantic): Do you fucking know ANYTHING????

Him: I know he's not here. (See the disconnect from the reality of what was happening?)

So now it's on...

I called the number my son had left me.  It was a fictitious number.  It went no where and was a disconnected number.  I drove to the address he gave me.  It was an empty lot.  I now had absolutely NO idea where my kid was and the STBE couldn't have cared less.  God knows a missing teenager can't get in between him and his porn/jacking off/affairs.

The Burger King my son worked at with this kid finally opened at 6AM and as soon as the manager unlocked the doors, I was in there like a bull in a china shop demanding contact information for this kid.  After the manager put me through some general douchbaggery, telling me what a horrible mother I was for not knowing where my kid was, he finally gave me the information and I think I drove about 100 miles an hour getting there - TWO COUNTIES AWAY!!!!!

We finally found the house with the help of a deputy we came across.  Turns out, this house was a major drug house and it was supposed to be raided on New Year's Eve but my son turning up in the mix prevented that because they were trying to find out what major drug lord this was showing up like this.

We get Billy in the car and he REEKS of alcohol.  REEKS!  It's coming out of his pores, he's had so much of it.  I ask him if he's been drinking and he denies it.  I tell him I can smell it coming off of him and if he's not going to admit to it, I'm happy to take him to a police station to have a breathalyzer done.  He admits it.  He also admits he was passed out when he was supposed to be coming home.

When we got home, I sat a chair in the middle of the living room floor and told him to sit in it until I let him out of it.  I then told him, "I'm sick with the flu and instead of sleeping I was out looking for you.  Now you can sit there and watch me sleep while you think about what you did."

I took him to work that afternoon, after a good nap, and when I picked him up at the end of his shift, we sat down and talked.  I told him he was grounded.  He asked me for how long.  I told him, "Until I get over it."

Over the next four months, the STBE did his damnedest to convince me I was being "unreasonable" and "outrageous".  I refused to budge on this one.  I finally let Billy off his grounding but the STBE worked me the entire time.  To him, this was a matter of "Boys will be boys".

Another time, this same son, on home for leave from the Army for Christmas, wanted to use our car for a date.  He told us, "I'll wash it, I'll fill it before I give it back you."  Oh, okay, that sounds fine.

He came to us about an hour before he was supposed to pick up his date:  Mom, Mark, can I borrow about $100 for my date and to put gas in the car?

I told him not only could he NOT have the $100 but because he came to us under false pretenses with no intention of paying for the gas he was going to fill up the car with, he couldn't use the car, either.  This was such total BS I can't even say it was funny.  Not now. Not then.  I went upstairs to take a shower and watch some television, considering the matter closed.  When I came back down, the car was gone.  The STBE was, again, sitting at the computer involved in his porn/jacking off/affairs and this is how the conversation went:

Me: Mark, where's your car (already knowing the answer)?

Him: I let Billy use it.

Me:  I thought I told him he couldn't.

Him: I know, but I thought you were being unreasonable so I let him take it.  It IS my car, after all.

Me: I thought he didn't have any money?

Him: I gave him $150.

See?  See how they do this?  Turn the kids against you?  Not only did he openly defy my wishes when he should have been backing me up, he gave Billy MORE than he'd asked for, thus solidifying in my son's mind what a "cool" stepfather HE is and what a total bitch I am.

This went on for years.  Me being the hard-ass parent, him being the one they all went to because Mom was "unreasonable".  The culmination of it for me was when Billy wanted to use my car (after he'd gotten out of the Army and came to live with us) and I wouldn't let him because a couple months earlier, he'd wrecked it by backing into something and didn't tell me.  He looked me square in the eye and said, "I'll just ask Mark.  HE'LL say yes".  

Also in this time frame, he'd become pretty abusive to Elias because of jealousy or because he's also a sociopath, who knows.  His father raised him to hate me, too - Billy screaming at me once, when he was about 9 years old - "Dad's RIGHT!  You're nothing but a total fucking cunt!"

By this time, Elias was pretty scared of Billy and wasn't afraid to tell me so.  I went to Mark that night and told him, "You've undermined me so much with Billy he has no respect for me at all.  He's also gotten so abusive to Elias, he's afraid to sleep alone at night.  I don't care what you and Billy do, but Elias and I are moving out at the end of the month." (And as a side note, this was in October of that year.  Since this was also the month my mother passed away a few years earlier, Mark declared to all and sundry I was simply being "emotional and unreasonable" due to the anniversary of my mother's death approaching)

The result of this was, Mark finally told Billy he was out of it and that all decisions regarding him were mine to make.  This angered Billy so much (following so many years of running the household and manipulating everyone), after a couple months of him trying to get Mark to be his buddy again and keep me in line so he could do whatever the fuck he wished, he attacked me and hurt me pretty badly.

Billy was kicked out of the house and I got an order of protection.  I haven't seen him since and, frankly, I don't miss him because he's become so abusive and threatening I worry he'd try to kill me, given the opportunity.  Even Elias' therapist told me he grown fearful Billy was going to harm Elias and he was on the verge of calling Children's Protective Services about having Elias removed from the house if Billy wouldn't leave.

This is what having an Aspie/sociopath/narcissist in the house does to your family.  They create SO much chaos with their line of BS and then like to stand back to watch their work in action, all the while demanding all the chaos go away because it's just TOO much for them, blaming it on the target parent.

This was about four years ago.  Fast forward to now.  Mark turned on Elias and started targeting HIM with all his hatred of me now that Billy was no longer there to manipulate.  He would drive Elias to school every morning and spend the entire half-hour ranting about what a horrible and abusive person I was/am, even if he had to make it up.  I had no idea this was going on until Elias spilled it to his therapist when he was about 16 or so.  The therapist saw it for what it was, emotional abuse, and called Mark in for a private appointment; just him and the therapist.  I don't know what was said that day, but Mark was put on notice if the therapist ever heard of it happening again, he was going to call CPS and turn him in for being abusive. (He should have done it then, and I should have insisted on it but hindsight being what it is...)

It never happened again, that I know of, but Elias also told me his dad told him, "If you ever tell anyone again I'm doing this, the state will take you away and you'll never see me or your mom again."  With an Aspie/sociopath/narcissist, everyone's fair game for abuse.  It's all about them being able to do/say whatever they wish, no matter how horrible or abusive, and everyone is just supposed to say, "Well, that's Mark!"  The need to be the favored person is SO deeply ingrained in them, they don't care who they hurt in order to have the admiration of others.  They will use people like you might use a box of Kleenex during a cold.  And they don't care.  They have absolutely NO empathy at all for anyone else.  This is also the mark of a sociopath and why they are so similar personality-wise.

Mark kept up his tirades against me, planting the seeds of hate in the kids, to the extent none of them are talking to me now since I filed for divorce.  Elias, whom I was once so close to and who could/would talk to me about anything and everything, told me in our last conversation I was an abusive bitch and "You need to just kill yourself and put me and Dad out of our misery".

Now who does that sound like?

Since Elias left for the Air Force, we got along pretty well for the first year or so.  At least until about eight months ago.  He started getting extremely angry and hostile towards me (and I found notes Mark had been making beginning about the same time - this past July - that he had begun making plans to divorce me.  This explains why Elias' personality and love for me changed so radically and so quickly) and had cut me off from him then.  His campaign to hurt me using the kids went into effect LONG before he left, LONG before I had him kicked out.

If you were to ask Elias today if there were any good qualities to me at all, he couldn't come up with a single one.  A few months ago, he told me he KNEW he could always count on me to be there for him, while knowing he couldn't count on his dad to have his back.  Now, he'll tell you the opposite, along with about a dozen other horrible things about me.  Not long before he cut me off, he'd also stopped telling me he loved me.

Parental Alienation, anyone?

Note: I'll be honest - I can look through the list of PAS symptoms and see where I'd done things like this to my son.  One item that stands out, #8, is - I refused contact with my family for several years.  This was following a long campaign by the STBE Aspie/sociopath/narcissist to convince me my family was awful, his family was wonderful.  He also outright lied to me at times about it - such as when I was in the hospital following major surgery.  I'd asked him to call my siblings (my parents were gone by this time) and a few other people to let them know I was there.  He even had a list and took my cell phone with him to call them so he could have their numbers.  He was gone about an hour and came back to report to me none of them cared.  He told me my siblings all took the stance, "I don't care.  And please tell Nancy to stop calling me".  Seems they'd also tried to call the house to talk to me and he would tell them, "Nancy doesn't want to talk to you".

I was LIVID at all my family once Mark reported this back to me and I wrote them all a pretty scathing letter about staying out of my life.  It wasn't until three years later my oldest sister had the courage to call and she got me on the phone (right after Mark had been kicked out of the house).

So, yeah, taken out of context, it would look like I'm guilty of PAS by the simple fact I prevented Elias from having anything to do with them.  Which is exactly what Mark wanted.  I'm working on fixing things with my siblings but the nephew I helped raise still refuses contact with me as do a couple other people.  When you divorce an Aspie/sociopath/narcissist, they spread it around.  MY family heard from him about the divorce before his OWN family had.  They want everyone to hate you as much as they do.

Aspies are NEVER at fault - no matter what

“When you think everything is someone else’s fault, chances are that you’re looking at the wrong side of the looking glass.” 
― Jennifer Megan Varnadore

Aspies will always find someone else to blame, even if they
were the only one there when they dropped the egg.

I don't even know where to start with this one.  After 21 years of everything being my fault, it's difficult to separate in my mind what WAS my fault and what was HIS fault.

In any marriage, it takes two to tango.  In any marriage, sometimes you're at fault, sometimes they're at fault.  But in an Aspie marriage, it's ALL your fault.

Aspies deflect blame like it's required to breathe.  Did your Aspie zip his penis up in the zipper of his pants?  It's all your fault for buying him the pants that have an OBVIOUSLY faulty zipper.

Did your Aspie run someone off the road because they didn't look over their shoulder when they changed lanes?  It's all your fault for being in the car with him, playing the radio.  As a side note to this one: My STBE did run someone off the road, once, because he changed lanes and didn't look over his shoulder.  When I asked him later why he didn't look over his shoulder, he told me, "If I looked over my shoulder every time I changed lanes, I'd never be looking at the road!"  Shame on that other driver for not reading his mind, thus knowing he would want to change lanes, so the STBE could do so without encumbrance, huh?

When he said this, I responded with, "Maybe you're changing lanes too much, then?"  He stared at me for a few seconds.  I could see his eyes nearly spinning in his head.  He actually shook his head for a brief second, as if to try to make sense of what I'd just said, and then he paused, looked at me hard, and reared up and slapped me across the face so hard I saw stars for a few minutes.  He walked away after that.  I guess he spent all his rage in that one slap.  The next day, he saw my black eye and the bruise on the side of my face and asked me what happened.  I was stunned!  To this day, I can't explain this one so if you have an answer for it, let me know.

But I digress...

Nope.  Aspies are never responsible for anything that happens in their world that might be a little askew or wrong.  They'll always find someone else to blame.

This started becoming more apparent to me after our youngest left for the Air Force.  It took me a few months to figure it out but I did figure it out.  And I felt terrible!  Once I reconciled in my head what was happening, I sent the following message to my son.  At the time, we were still close enough to discuss this and I got the feeling he appreciated my sending this, even if it was months and years too late.

I'm sending you a message this way because I know you don't have Internet, thus, no real way of checking e-mail.  But I also don't know which e-mail you check regularly...

I'm in a group on FB of spouses of those with Asperger's.  I wrote this today and wanted to share it with you.  This says it better than anything else I've ever said...

Sounds like my life, Lisa. I've often told people, "My husband would lie to me even if the truth wouldn't hurt him".

They're like children, in that respect. I'm so tired of the arguing about who did what. For a long time, my ASH blamed our youngest, who was, for 10 years, an only child, due to the disparity in ages between him and our next one. My husband would constantly blame our youngest for everything going wrong in the house. It wasn't until our son was gone to basic training that I learned just how much my ASH was doing, after years of yelling at my son. I can't even count all the times I told him, "And now I'm punishing you twice as much for lying...!"

I called my son not long ago to apologize to him for it all, realizing now it's been my ASH, all along. But the damage was done. He's a great kid but he's been hurt a great deal by it all, not trusting his father or I for a very long time. I beat my head against the wall for years, trying to figure out just what I was doing that was so awful he felt he couldn't trust me. And now I know; I let him down in a most appreciable way.

It makes me sad to think of how many times my son walked away, deflated and hurt, simply because his dad used him as a shield from his own wrongdoings and lies and I didn't know any better. I wonder how many times he cried to himself before he just gave up and built the wall we now have between us.

I wonder, sometimes, if I'll ever be able to make it up to him and I doubt I ever will.

And such is life with an Aspie Narcissist.  They will deflect blame onto the rest of the world with no remorse or contrition as to who they damage, even if it's their kids.  They will blame anyone and everyone but themselves, and WILL leave a great deal of damage in their wake.

I tried to find to post on this page a meme I saw once or twice that said - Narcissism: The only mental illness where the sufferer is left alone and everyone else gets therapy.  Or something like that.  What does this have to do with an Aspie always blaming others?

Q: How many Aspies does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:  Only the one.  One to hold the light bulb while the rest of the world revolves around them.

Aspies are so married to the idea it's they who are perfect and it's the rest of the world at fault, they simply can't let it go, even when/if presented with evidence to the contrary.  They will lie, cheat and steal their way through life for the sole purpose of never having themselves to blame.  When confronted with the fallacy of their argument, that it is they who were wrong or responsible, so begins the gas lighting.  Lies, lies and more lies to cover up the lies they've told before.  And the thing is, Aspies come to believe their lies so, to them, it's the truth.

A study was done (and I'm searching for the link - they seem to be eluding me today) where brain scans were done of both sociopaths and those with Asperger's and there were a lot of similarities.  Also, there's a huge similarity to Psychopathy, too.  The biggest similarity to all three of these is the lack of empathy.

Empathy is what we all feel when we see those ten hour long commercials of the starving children in Africa or the twenty hour long commercials for the ASPCA.  We're sad.  We imagine how difficult it must be for those poor children.  The more tender-hearted of us might cry at the thought of so much suffering.

For an Aspie (or a Sociopath, or a Psychopath), they feel nothing.  Nothing at all.  They don't have the ability to step into the shoes of another person and imagine how their actions can affect others.  They don't stop to think how blaming someone over and over again will chip away at their self-esteem over time.  They also don't stop to think how blaming someone else for their problems and bad times might begin to make someone question their own sanity!  But I'm SURE I didn't leave the milk out!  I'm POSITIVE I put the ice cream away when I was done.  I KNOW I didn't turn up the thermostat.

However, with the Aspie, they don't care that what they're doing is causing you anxiety.  They couldn't give a rat's ass their denying turning down the thermostat has you questioning if you're developing a second personality, one that hates to be cold, or that you're beginning to believe you're suffering from delusions (and I heard this one A LOT from the STBE - You're CRAZY and delusional!

For the Aspie, it's all about being "perfect".  And the sooner you remember that, the better off you'll be.

Aspies are gas lighters - Or, "You didn't hear what you thought you heard. You didn't see what you think you saw"

One of the most confusing parts of being married to an Aspie (and those with both Narcissistic Personality Disorder - NPD - and Bipolar Disorder - BP - will do this too) is they do something called "gas lighting".

Gas lighting is where someone tries to alter your reality for their own purposeful gain, usually bad or manipulative.

In order to understand gas lighting, perhaps understanding the origin of the phrase will help.  Gaslighting is a psychological term related to the mentally ill that comes from the 1940's psychological thriller Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.

Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) is a man with a mission.  He marries young Paula (Ingrid Bergman) who has inherited a house in which her aunt was murdered many years earlier.  The killer was never found and once Paula became an adult, she moved into the house with her new husband.  Seems the murdered aunt had some valuables stored in the house and Gregory wanted them.  In order to get them, he had to marry and then get rid of Paula, and the way he chose to get rid of her was to drive her insane.

Throughout the movie, Gregory is doing small things to make Paula believe she's losing her mind.  He'll move a piece of furniture then tell Paula, when she asks about it, "It wasn't me.  You did it and must have forgotten".  He'll turn down the gaslights in the house (and this is where the name of the movie came from) and when asked, "Who turned down the gaslights?" Gregory tells her, "Why, you did.  You don't remember..."  He would move her jewelry to other parts of the house and not tell her, leading her to believe she misplaced it, then when she stopped searching he would put it back in the original place.

While living with a gaslighter isn't usually this obvious (at least to the casual viewer), it's just as damaging as it was to poor Paula in the movie.

What gaslighters are trying to do is alter your reality.  I've caught my STBE in so many affairs it's not even funny anymore.  Every time I'd go to him with evidence, he'd deny it and give an alternate (sort of plausible) explanation that was designed to convince me I wasn't seeing/hearing what I believed I was seeing/hearing.  My STBE would deny until the day he dies I was seeing things wrong.  Alternatively, he'll admit the affairs but find some way to make it entirely my fault and work to convince me of this.

Other times, he would say or do something incredibly hurtful and when I'd call him on it, he'd deny he ever did or said whatever it was I came to him with.

For gaslighters, it's not about being right, it's about convincing you to agree with them, even if it's something so off the wall no one in their right mind would ever believe it.  Even the gas lighter may know they're lying, but it's not about that to them.  It's about YOU saying they're right.  Period.  However, with Aspies, they can come to believe their lies so to them, it's absolutely the truth.

What this will eventually do to the victim over the long term is convince them they ARE crazy.  My STBE's favorite term for it was "delusional".  Towards the end, this kept me up most nights, the wondering if I was, indeed, going crazy.  I'd even gone so far as to see a therapist to find out just how crazy I was.  After three or four sessions, the therapist emphatically told me, "Nancy, you definitely don't have a mental health issue beyond depression from being in an abusive marriage".  This was the first time I heard the term "gaslighting" and had it explained to me.  Once I understood what was happening, I felt infinitely better and the most sane I'd felt in a long, long time.

WHY THEY DO IT

Gaslighters usually don't do this for the same reason Gregory did it to Paula.  Most of us aren't inheriting houses filled with jewels and gems.  Gaslighters now do it as a form of self-preservation.  As I'd said earlier, it's not just Aspies who do this but those with NPD and BP.  Also, people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are known for this, too.

Aspies, NPDs, BPs, BPDs, NEED your admiration and that of others to feed their low self-esteem. (See this article on Narcissistic supply).  If you're confronting any of these people with a fault or problem in the relationship, their first reaction is to deny there's anything wrong with them at all, that it's you who needs "fixing".  They will then launch into a tirade of just how many faults you have and will sprinkle it with "paranoia" (you), utter perfection (them), and will work to convince you of this, all of this.

The conversation might go something like this:

You:  John, I've been concerned about something that's going on and I need to address it with you.

Them: (Giving you an attentive look) Certainly, let's sit down and talk about it.

You:  I ran a virus check on the computer today and was in the history under your login.  I saw in there you're spending a lot of time inside a website that focuses on helping spouses cheat.  Based on the history, it looks like you're going there several times a day.  It has me worried you're cheating on me again.

Him: (Loud sigh, rolling of the eyes and starts with a loud voice/yelling) I'm SO sick and tired of you accusing me of cheating!  I've never cheated on you (and my STBE actually said this to me, after having been caught in several affairs) and if you weren't so paranoid you wouldn't be going into my history looking for it (you'd already given them the real and valid reason why you were in there, but to successfully complete their gaslighting of you, they need to alter reality - both yours and his).  This is SUCH a violation of MY privacy!  I swear, you're getting crazier by the day and WHY I stay with you is beyond me!  Everyone at work always talks about how much they can't stand you and I always defended you but I just don't see how I can do that anymore!  You should see a therapist about this paranoia!  And since you're always accusing me of cheating, how do I know it's not YOU who's cheating and trying to deflect it onto me!  I DEMAND you apologize to me RIGHT NOW for these unfounded and made up accusations of cheating on you!

It's at this point you're really upset and defending yourself.  Several things have happened during this rant:

1. The gaslighter has gotten you off the original discussion, his possible cheating
2. The gaslighter now has you on the defensive
3. The gaslighter is telling you you're paranoid (and not for the first time, I'm sure)
4. The gaslighter is telling you that you should be seeing a therapist
5. The gaslighter is now telling you that your questioning his fidelity is actually you attempting to hide the fact that you're the cheater (even though you're not)
6. The gaslighter is further undermining your confidence in yourself
7. The gas lighter has successfully diverted not just the conversation about your feelings, but he's also probably gotten you the the point of apologizing.
8. He now has you focusing on his feelings, his needs, his wants and you feelings, needs and wants are no longer even of topic.

Mission accomplished for the gas lighter.  If you've been in a conversation in the past that sounds like this, it's probably time for you to take steps to either put a stop to this or to extricate yourself from the relationship.

And one final thought to leave you with, as you're reeling from the abuses of the Aspie gaslighting you.  I found this on a website I found called Live In the Moment and it's SO true and SO life affirming!

What creates your “broken heart” when you get rejected

When someone rejects you without saying anything negative about you, you will likely begin to immediately think 2 things. First, you decide what the other person thinks about you, and then you believe that their opinion must be right. In other words, you make an assumption about what they think about you, and then you form the conclusion that what they think must be true.

Here are a few common examples:

1. The assumption about what they think: “He thinks I’m not good enough”, “He thinks something is wrong with me”, or “He doesn’t think I am worthy of love”
2. The conclusion that what they think must be true: “If he thinks I’m not good enough, then I must not be good enough”, “If he thinks something is wrong with me, there must be something wrong with me”, or “If he doesn’t think I am worthy of love, then I must not be worthy of love”

You may be aware of these thoughts or you may not be. But if you’re feeling hurt, they are there.

Once we believe these negative thoughts about ourselves, we are essentially worsening our opinion of ourselves. When our opinion of ourselves worsens, we experience the feeling of hurt or being broken hearted. (I won’t get into the details of why this creates hurt in this post).

To help you with this, I'm putting some links here to help you:

Are You Being Gaslighted?

10 Signs Your Man Is 'Gaslighting' You to Make You Seem Crazy  (Note: The writing on this is kind of poor and the examples given are pretty mild, innocuous and naive.  This was obviously written by someone who's never been through it.  But the overall message is the same as I'm trying to impart here)

Parental Alienation Syndrome and the child(ren) involved - Even adult children

Emotional vampires will leave you exhausted following an
interaction with them.  Sadly, by the time you realize you're
in the presence of an emotional vampire, it's too late.

Today's posting is for something funny and SO indicative of an Aspie/Narcissist/Bipolar Disorder sufferer.  In addition, I'm going to be explaining in detail just what the Aspie/Narcissist/Bipolar Disorder sufferer will do to hurt you in the divorce.

If you've been following this blog at all, you already know my story: I'm divorcing an Aspie/Narcissist/diagnosed Bipolar Disorder sufferer.  Any one of these is pretty damaging to the emotional/mental well-being of any spouse to them.  I got the trifecta of abusive personality disorders when I married my STBE.  And more than once, it's driven me to the point of thinking the only way out of this marriage was through suicide.  Thank God, those thoughts are behind me, now, and I embrace the wonder of life and look forward to having one without the abusive Aspie/Narcissist/Bipolar Disorder sufferer in it.

The back story:

I've been working to maintain no contact with my STBE because he's so abusive in nature.  He managed to trick me into contact recently, and I'm now back to no contact after the hurricane/tsunami/tornado/earthquake that came with him and am improving again.  However, I've been getting messages from people over the last week from people who know my youngest son and they're worried about him a great deal.

As I've mentioned previously, when you're divorcing an Aspie/Narcissist/Bipolar Disorder sufferer, they'll use the kids to hurt you - and not just a little bit.  For the above personality disorders, in any divorce, it's a "Win at all costs" attitude.  Since these people have absolutely no empathy, using the kids is just another gun in their arsenal, even if it's so bad for them it means decades of therapy, if not a few suicide attempts, for the kids.  They simply don't care.  It's not about what's best for everyone, it's about what's best for THEM.  Aspies/Narcissists/Bipolar Disorder sufferers are emotional vampires.  They will suck the life out of you faster than a speeding bullet and once they've depleted your supply, they'll move onto the next person, and the next, and the next.  So long as there are gullible people in the world who are willing to fall for the charms of the emotional vampire, so shall the narcissist abuse.

Because my son has me blocked on Facebook, I have an account neither he nor my STBE know about and I logged into it to see just what it was my son was saying that had everyone so alarmed.  On the page, I saw my son talking about how depressed he is.  The STBE responded to him with (and it pains me to have to look at the posting again to put this here, but it illustrates the Aspie mind so well):

As I well know, depression is no joke.  People who don't own the black dog can't really understand, although some will genuinely try to help.  Since they usually don't get it they often miss the mark.  Don't discount well-meaning friends.  They won't understand when it seems like you're blowing them off.  Allow people to drag you off to the gym or to get some Chinese food.  Those things will actually help and you find out who your friends are.  Acceptance is great, just don't stop there.Take action.  You know what to do.  Call me anytime you need to.  I'm there for you 24/7.

For the longest time, I couldn't figure out just how my STBE was alienating my son from me (See Parental Alienation Syndrome), and after seeing this post, it all became clear to me.  In order to help you see just how Aspies work (and this is a form of gas lighting, altering the reality of the victim, in this case, my son), I'll break this paragraph of my STBE line-by-line to help you understand it better.

First, let me state, my son has suffered from some form of depression for quite some time.  I took him to two different counselors, who seemed to be helping him.  It was during his stint with one of these counselors it came out that my STBE was using that half-hour in the morning and half-hour in the afternoon, the times he drove our son to and from school, to do nothing but rant about what an awful person I am.  My son was an emotional wreck and told his therapist he was beginning to feel as though he was the only one who could fix our marriage.  In short, my son was being used by the STBE by forcing him to become his therapist.  My son was only 15 at the time.  Rather than actually SEE a therapist, the STBE was forcing others into the role.  He'd done this to me for years and I'd put a stop to it by telling him I couldn't do it any longer and he needed to find an actual therapist.  He refused to do so, saying he didn't need one, and turned it onto my son.

Now, let's break down the Facebook posting- and some of this will make me look paranoid to the nth degree, but after 21 years of living with my STBE, I've seen this all to much.  A great deal of their mental/emotional abuse is subtle):

1. As I well know, depression is no joke.  People who don't own the black dog can't really understand, although some will genuinely try to help.  - "I'm the only one who understands you.  Others might try.  Others might say they do.  But I'm the only one who truly does."  This is his way of letting my son know it's "I" who doesn't get it since I don't suffer from depression.  Never have, probably never will, outside of this marriage.  I was a happy, optimistic person before I married the STBE and I shall be again, post-divorce.
2. Since they usually don't get it they often miss the mark.  Don't discount well-meaning friends.  They won't understand when it seems like you're blowing them off. - This is an extension of #1.  Now my son's being told it's not just me who doesn't get it, but neither does anyone else, even well-meaning friends.  This is a reinforcement of the STBE being the only one who understands him, thus he is the superior parent and human being.  They are both now precious snowflakes and no one gets them BUT each other.
3. Allow people to drag you off to the gym or to get some Chinese food.  Those things will actually help and you find out who your friends are. - On the surface, this all sounds like good advice, right?  For a mentally healthy person going through a normal, average dose of depression, it is.  For a narcissist like my STBE, this is a calculated statement/move.  This is a form of alienation, a common tactic used by Narcissists/abusers.  Now the STBE has my son judging his friends based on the amount of support they give.  No one will be able to measure up to the standards a depressed person will actually have.  And, let's just say it, unless you DO suffer from depression or are a therapist, you'll never truly understand it, therefore will ALWAYS fall short of the mark.  And, people being people, the more my son blows them off, the less likely they become to ask him to go anywhere with him.  The less they come around, the more depressed he becomes.  The more depressed he becomes, the less likely they are to want to be around him at all, because who wants to spend all their time with a person who refuses to have fun or laugh nor do anything to change work towards changing it?  The idea being planted in the mind of my son is: his father is the ONLY person who truly gets him, thus creating a bond of trust that supersedes all other relationships in his life.  His father is now grooming him to be further abused, all in the interest of feeding the need of the STBE to have a narcissistic supply.
4. Acceptance is great, just don't stop there. Take action.  You know what to do. - They now have a secret language that only the two of them understand.  The words used here are cryptic and insinuate to the rest of the world they are conjoined and alone in this, therefore, there's no need to interfere because Dad's got it handled, right?  Wrong.  For a narcissist, there's no greater joy than taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable person, as my son is due to the divorce.  This is rocking his world and nothing makes sense any more.  What the STBE is spoon-feeding him is something to latch onto so he can have just ONE thing that makes sense.  The parental alienation is almost complete and the real abuse is about to begin.  I watched this happen with his two kids from his first marriage and they STILL hate their mother, 22 years after the divorce, both of them adults aged 30 and over.
5. Call me anytime you need to.  I'm there for you 24/7. - This is the big one.  Note there's no mention in any of this to see a therapist or medical doctor.  There's no mention of seeking help in any way, shape or form, outside of "Call me!"  This is the reinforcement to my son that the STBE is the ONLY person he should contact, as he's the ONLY person who can help him.  And that 24/7?  Nope, he turns the ringer off on his phone at night.  The precious snowflake that is my STBE simply CAN'T have his sleep disturbed at all.  People who suffer from depression that lasts longer than what's ordinary or average, more than a few days or weeks, SHOULD see a medical doctor or therapist.  For someone to suggest anything else is thoughtless, uncaring, unsympathetic and, let's just say it, dangerous.  People who have been depressed for a long time are more prone to suicide than anyone else.  If you know ANYONE who could be clinically depressed, encourage them to seek professional help - ALWAYS!

Now that this has all been explained for you, this leads me to Parental Alienation Syndrome, which Aspies/Narcissists/Bipolar Disorder sufferers WILL do!  Like they need oxygen, they need the constant and firm adoration of those around them, even if it means they are psychologically damaging others.  Remember, they have no empathy.  The people in their life - their wife, their children, their "friends" - are all there to serve a purpose known only to the Narcissist.  Also, the people in their life are easily replaced once that narcissistic supply runs dry, generally by the parasitic host figuring out what's going on.

Parental Alienation is insidious.  How can you figure out it's happening to you?  Research, research, research.

These alienating strategies worked together to give the child the following three-part message: (this is excerpted from Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome)

• The alienating parent is the only parent who cares,
• the alienating parent is needed in order for the child to feel safe and good about him- or herself,
• the targeted parent -- who is dangerous and does not love the child anyway -- must be disavowed in order to maintain the love and approval of the alienating parent. 
• Boldly stated this way, the message resembles the message cult leaders convey to cult members.

 Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is such a damaging emotional assault on a child (even adult children), it's described in this way:  Alienated children are no less damaged than other child victims of extreme conflict, such as child soldiers and other abducted children, who identify with their tormentors to avoid pain and maintain a relationship with them, however abusive that relationship may be. (For the complete article, see here)

The article goes on to say - For the child, parental alienation is a serious mental condition, based on a false belief that the alienated parent is a dangerous and unworthy parent. The severe effects of parental alienation on children are well-documented; low self esteem and self-hatred, lack of trust, depression, and substance abuse and other forms of addiction are widespread, as children lose the capacity to give and accept love from a parent. Self-hatred is particularly disturbing among affected children, as children internalize the hatred targeted toward the alienated parent, are led to believe that the alienated parent did not love or want them, and experience severe guilt related to betraying the alienated parent. Their depression is rooted is feelings of being unloved by one of their parents, and from separation from that parent, while being denied the opportunity to mourn the loss of the parent, or to even talk about the parent. 

Okay, I think I've given you enough to chew on for now.  But in the beginning of this post, I'd mentioned something funny.  Here it is:

What is it that makes this so funny?  The Facebook account he's referring to?  The one I've apparently trashed with "pretty psycho" stuff?  It's been shut down since he left in November and I've never "done" anything to it at all.

Like abusers need to abuse, so shall narcissists tell huge lies about you in the interest of discrediting you to the rest of the world (meaning, the source of their narcissistic supply).  And if I WERE to post anything on his former account, it would have simply been the truth.  If the truth makes him look bad, then it's HE with the problem, not me.  Oh, and this "make new friends"?  He's trolling for his next parasitic host.  And don't believe for a moment he didn't try to go to the page to see what was on there (nothing, because the account was deactivated).  Aspies/Narcissists/Bipolar Disorder sufferers lie even when the truth won't hurt them.  It's like breathing to them.

I'm so glad I'm out of this farce of a marriage.  After finding copies of his medical records a couple weeks ago and learning he'd been taking medication "off and on" since 1993 for Bipolar Disorder (something he'd never told me), I can safely say, our entire marriage was based on his lies.