Category: HFAs and Marriage

It’s Your Fault

While reading through Deuteronomy this morning I ran across these verses:

23 At that time I pleaded with the LORD: … 25 Let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan—that fine hill country and Lebanon.” 26 But because of you the LORD was angry with me and would not listen to me. “That is enough,” the LORD said. “Do not speak to me anymore about this matter.”

Deuteronomy 3: 23, 25-26

I had to stop and read verse 26 again. Did Moses just switch from writing a narrative to directly interacting with his audience? Who is the “you” he is referring to in that verse? I read the first section of that chapter again, and could find no direct clues. I had my hunches, but I thought it best to look further. So I kept reading.

This is what I ran into:

The LORD was angry with me because of you, and he solemnly swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land the LORD your God is giving you as your inheritance.

Deuteronomy 4:21

During this section, Moses was talking directly to the Israelites so he was most definitely meaning, “you fellow Israelites,” when he used the pronoun, “you.”

He DID mean, “you fellow Israelites,” back in chapter 3. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that Moses, of all people, would blame others for what God clearly told him was his fault. I have always struggled a bit with how harsh God’s punishment seemed to be for Moses when he struck the rock instead of speaking to it (see the story in Numbers 20). But only God knows the heart, so He must have seen something that He realized required discipline.

As I am writing this I am realizing that Moses’ patent refusal to accept responsibility for his own actions, that were in direct conflict with what God had explicitly told him, show why God didn’t allow him to lead the Israelites farther into Canaan. Conquering Canaan was going to require all sorts of crazy, strange, unique and downright ridiculous-seeming strategies that would need to be followed without editing or questioning. Moses liked to question.

Moses had done an amazing job getting the Israelites this far. But he was getting tired.

It is heartening to me that God chose to use someone as human as Moses, who, even at the end, wasn’t perfect.

This passage is also getting me thinking – what in my life is out of reach because of actions that I have not taken responsibility for?

Speaking from the experience of being a person with autism, and having relatives with autism, I can say with some confidence, that blaming others for things we should take responsibility for is a common struggle for us. Neurotypical people can struggle in this area, too. But it seems especially prevalent among those of us with autism.

Here’s to owning our mistakes and making it a better day, with God’s help, of course!

Black vs. Grey

So here’s a great example of the difference between my black-and-white thinking, and my husband’s grey thinking.

Several years ago my husband had kidney stones. After a week on meds to see if they would pass, he went back to the clinic in a ton of pain, and they sent him via ambulance to the ER because he had a dangerously high heartbeat. After my mom drove the 90 miles to our house to stay with the kids, I met him in the ER.

They were just getting ready to move him to a room, as his heart rate was still too high, and they had learned that he also had pneumonia! He was telling the nurse that he had taken some Dayquil in the morning because he had felt a little congested. The nurses response was, “Don’t ever take Dayquil or Nyquil, or anything else like those ever again. That is probably what has caused this rapid heartbeat.”

I went home that evening and threw out the offending medications. I had tried Nyquil once years before and had felt like my mind and body were buzzing all night while I was asleep. I woke up more tired and agitated than if I had just coughed and wheezed all night. So I didn’t mind seeing the stuff go.

After several days in the hospital my husband’s heartbeat returned to normal. The doctors never could find a cause for the tachycardia beyond the Dayquil. He recovered from the pneumonia and passed the kidney stones, and is just fine now.

Fast forward to a week ago. He was fighting some early spring cold, and went in search of some bedtime relief. “Do we have any Nyquil,” came floating out of the bathroom.

I had to work really hard to not scream, “You have got to be kidding me! You want to take the stuff that nearly killed you? Do you not remember anything?!” Instead I said something like, “Don’t you remember, the doctor said that you weren’t ever supposed to have that again.” I tried really hard not to sound annoyed or condescending.

His response went something along these lines. “I don’t remember that. Oh, wait, I remember hearing something like that, but I didn’t think it meant forever. I just thought it meant for that situation… I suppose maybe they did mean that…. Ok, thanks, good night.”

All I could do was shake my head in wonderment.

Small Talk

(Marriage tip #3)

I wonder if this area of marriage is easier for a married woman with Asperger’s Syndrome/High-functioning Autism than it is for a married man. The reason I write this is because people with AS/HFA generally do not like to make small talk.

My husband wishes I was a little better at small talk, but being a guy, he doesn’t mind that I am quieter unless I have something I really want to talk about. However, I wonder if men with AS/HFA stress their spouses out a bit more on this point.

Here’s the reason we AS/HFAs don’t like small talk, we don’t gain the same things from small talk that neurotypical people (NTs) do. I have been told that NTs use small talk to gauge how their audience is feeling, to see if their audience is open to talking about something deeper.

Those of us with AS/HFA are not able to read the subtle cues that NTs read during small talk, so small talk is just a pointless, time and energy wasting exercise to us. My husband has decided at times that I must not be in the mood to talk about something important because I seem exasperated, or tired while he tries to engage in small talk. The truth is that I would love to talk about something important. I am feeling exasperated during the small talk because I do not understand the point of it. Anyone gets exasperated if they don’t understand the point of what someone else is trying to communicate to them.

I have also been told that NTs use small talk to warm themselves up. Because verbal communication is generally a bit difficult for us with AS/HFA, we generally only do what we absolutely need to do. Can you see why that would mean that we don’t like to warm up first, but just jump right in?

Finally, we find it very confusing to switch from small talk to something more serious. In our black and white world, either we are hanging out and chatting about nothing (small talk), or we are trying to solve the world’s problems. If we are in the mood for one, we are not planning on being in the mood for the other, so are surprised when the subject moves from light to serious.

So NTs, don’t assume that your partner doesn’t care about what you have to say when they don’t warm up to your small talk. Just jump in and start talking about something important to your relationship, and see if that doesn’t get them interacting a bit more.

I am slowly learning how important it is for my husband to warm up with small talk. It is not comfortable for me, but I just have to remind myself that if I want to have a good relationship with him, I need to do what he needs, not just what I need.

Talking about peeves

(Marriage tip #2)

I have learned that if I am upset with my neurotypical (NT) spouse about something, he prefers that first I start out with some pleasant small talk, followed by a comment about how much I enjoy him. After those pleasantries, I may bring up what is bothering me using an, “I feel this way when you behave that way,” statement. I then should quickly follow up with another pleasant statement. From reading parenting and relationship materials, and listening to married friends talk over the years, it sounds like this is the way most NTs prefer to be told bad news.

This, however, is not at all how those with Autism Spectrum Disorders like to learn about an issue. First of all, we don’t particularly like small talk at any time, though most of us have learned to put up with it, and try to participate for the sake of keeping up relationships.

Second, we want you to get right to the point. It confuses us when you start out with something you like about us, just to have you then launch into something you don’t like about us. It does not make us feel good to have you say something nice about us first. In fact, we feel tricked – here we thought we were having a pleasant conversation between contented friends when, BAM! Sucker punch to the mid-section. You are not at all contented but frustrated with us.

Now it will be hard for us to have a pleasant conversation with you in the future. We won’t be able to relax – we will keep wondering when you are going to drop the hammer on us, again.

It is ok to say a quick, “I love you, but…” But please, no long, drawn out pleasantries. Just give us the bad news, and let’s move on to how to solve it.

You can tell us what you like about us after we have discussed the bad news. We may find that comforting, but please don’t waste your breath on it before. That will just make us feel patronized, disrespected, lied to, etc.

Before I realized that I had Asperger’s Syndrome, I had gotten to the point where I was really nervous about talking to my husband, because I always seemed to upset him, when I was just trying to make our relationship better, and vice versa. Now I understand he is not trying to trick me, but trying to be considerate, from an NTs point of view.

I am trying to be less direct, more round-about, and more affirming like he prefers. I fear that I am really quite terrible at it. It is so uncomfortable, and feels so conniving. But with God’s help, I hope to improve. I think he tries to be more direct with me, but that is a very foreign way for him. The good news is that we are both now aware of our differences, so we are able to focus on the issue at hand, and not so much the delivery of the news.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, by doing unto them what you don’t want done unto you, but that they prefer.

Change of Plans

(Marriage tip #1)

Here is one of the first issues I remember running into with my husband. My husband and I might casually discuss what we wanted to do on the upcoming weekend one week night during dinner. Upon conclusion of the discussion, I would consider the weekend plans set. Come Saturday, I understood that we would do A, then go to B, and so on.

However, my dear husband would wake up at an appropriately late time for a Saturday morning, then ask me, quite innocently, “So what would you like to do today?”

My response – total frustration that my careful communication during the previous discussion several days prior had come to naught. A deep sense of loneliness borne from the fact that my husband, with whom I had spent careful time discussing my desired plans, had not the slightest idea what I wanted. Great irritation at being asked to repeat myself. Fear of the unknown would instantly consume me. My snappy responses would include, “Why are you asking me that? What did I already tell you?”

He would honestly have no idea what I was talking about. Eventually he would remember that we had had a pleasant conversation several days before. “Oh, and I guess we did talk about some ideas for the weekend.” But, in his mind, nothing had been set, we had just been talking.

Those of you on the spectrum know exactly what is wrong with that last sentence. We HFAs never, “just talk.” Talking takes a lot of emotional effort. Talking requires us to let loose into the world what is going on deep inside of us. Talking is not something we do for fun, but out of necessity. I can have fun talking with people, but I don’t enjoy, “just shooting the breeze.” I like to talk about something meaningful.

So how have my husband and I learned to work with each other on this typical communication problem between an NT and HFA?

I have to remind myself that he is not trying to ignore my words. He just doesn’t see every piece of communication as black and white as I do. In his world you can discuss ideas, but not settle on one of them immediately. So though I still get panicky feeling when I feel like he is changing plans, I try not to react, but remind myself of how he thinks – that he likes the excitement of change, and that it will probably be just as fun as the original plans. The panicky feeling has decreased over the years.

He has learned that I truly feel unglued when too many things are up in the air. I am not trying to be difficult, I just truly cannot even imagine living in so much grayness. I feel like I am literally losing my mind (and I do mean, literally. I know that many people write, literally, when they mean, figuratively. I mean, literally.). So he tries to soften the blow by saying something like, “I know we talked about these things, but I was thinking that this would be fun/useful/etc.” If we had planned something specific for a date night, he will call ahead or e-mail me to let me know if he is in the mood for something different. This gives me time to get over the panic, so that I can think more rationally about his suggestion, and be ready to talk with him about it as a reasonable person rather than a crazed meany.

I have learned to be open to a change in plans sometimes, because it is important for him to have that flexibility. Without it he starts feeling too boxed in. He has learned to be open to scheduling things ahead of time and sticking to them, because he knows that I need that stability at times (ok, ideally, all of the time, but that wouldn’t be fair!).

The thing that keeps both of us sane is our faith in God. God is ever faithful and stable for me, and He is ever full of surprises for my husband. So when each other falls short, we don’t have to freak out.