Accused of sociopathy

[DesiButters519x]

People say I am cold and uncaring, so I just now shrug my shoulders and say "whatever helps you sleep at night" I did care at some point, but now I just flat out don't care all together. No one knows how I feel but me, and that's all that matters.

[ohmygosh]

Hi guys,

I am in the middle of a separation/divorce.  I have to just say, that new information has come to light in what what really going on with my spouse and I.

 

I just wanted you guys to know that not everyone disappears into cyberspace without change in their hearts and minds.  Feelings and development are static and always changing.  

 

I can say that sharing on this site helped me to express thoughts when my world was closing-in on me. 

 

After I wrote how I was feeling about being in my asexual marriage (that I had no other explanation for, just the closest thing to the symptoms that I could describe) to my spouse without empathy, something calmed down in me. My frustration wasn't important anymore. I had nothing to lose, so I talked to my guy on the phone.

 

I asked him to take an empathy quiz from Berkeley's psych page. 

He scored very low.

 

After talking to my friend, she said, hey, that sounds like Aspergers. 

 

So, I sent him the test for autism spectrum.  1-16, possible, not likely. 17-25, likely. 26-32, very likely.  He scored a 40. 

 

He and I understand that he needs a formal evaluation, but for the first time, the puzzle pieces fit. 

 

His empathy doesn't need to connect to a "bad" connotation. And that there are many people just like him who indeed have good and genuine hearts. 

 

That was my depravity for thinking so.  I have never had an experience before this with a person without empathy who hasn't been a misfit. And, I had no idea what autism was at all. I think I lumped it into my down-syndrome category and never really gave it a thought.

 

My ignorance. But I was and am always searching to understand people in this great big world.   That's just how I was born.

 

Since I found this information out.  I have looked at it a great deal.  It could have saved our marriage, if I knew it before I started to judge him, or for what it's worth, before he started to judge me for not just being okay with who he was after the wedding. Autistic people have responsibilities and capabilities too! 

 

He's a computer geek, and I'm an artisic and language based inquisitive person.  Both of us were quirky, and I was very protective of him when I met him in a social situation.  

 

4 years, and no answer to help me to know where to start to understand how he can say and do the "I love you'd without the territorial behaviors" but not "have my back" in social settings, or affirm me with, "you look pretty."  I tried being very specific with my language to tell him what I wanted, but, in retrospect, I think I was too... no. I tried everything.  I can't keep beating myself up for this. 

 

There were here times when I tried gentle approaches.  He took those for, well, go and fidget with electronics.  We just both didn't know. 

 

I craweled led into my crazy-rejected wife shell, and he craweled into his holy-hell-I need a helmet, and some soothing sounds shell.

 

 Now that he is gone, I have an answer.  He trusted me, but when I craved affirmations, he buried his head and said little.  I took that to mean he was hiding something.  It just got worse the more I felt rejected, the more he crawled into his shell.  Now I understand why.  He wasn't trying to be rude. His response of anger and agitation was to the overwhelming stimuli.  

 

When a woman who wants nothing more than a little affirmation from her spouse is denied this, and her spouses response is anger, it can look like the guy is just "truly rejecting you" as a woman/wife. 

 

A crazy part part is that his mother is a speech pathologist who specializes in severely autistic children.  I told my new therapist this, and she said that people who specialize in sever cases might only know that side of autism.  

 

I think, if I was married to him, I get the relationship/intimacy exposure in a different way. So I can't blame her for not seeing it. 

 

Plus, I am dreadfully persistent at getting to the bottom line, which is not always an easy route. Idk why I'm like that. I envy people who are more stable with not knowing and letting it go. I'm working on that for myself. Anxiety disorder for sure, who knows. 

 

He he hasn't brought it up to his mom since.  It's a very personal thing, which is hard for me, because I have to do the walk of shame, and not tell people about the real reason I was going crazy, on top of me being able to "let it just go." It is my life too. Meh.

 

It's really sad that we could have worked on both of ourselves to connect.  We had a good partnership.  There are therapies that can happen between couples who can trust each other and want to put the work in.

 

In case anyone here has a hard time identifying why they might get sensory overload, have a hard time putting themselves in another person's shoes, doesn't understand why emotional connections are more important than logical understandings, and might have to have time away from social gatherings to down-load, maybe it has something to do with the areas of the brain that process empathy, and just maybe it's a high-functioning autism spectrum, like it turned out to be for us. 

 

My my only intention here is to share what I've learned, since it was a hard lesson for both of us and it could possibly help one or two people out there. 

 

Take care. 

 

 

[ohmygosh]

I guess I might have posted it elsewhere, in another thread, but I finally talked to a mutual friend who helped me to figure out that my significant other most likely has a high functioning form of autism, that has traits of both a lack of empathy as well as sensory reasons to reject touch... plus so much more.

 

Many brilliant and beloved people have this and never figure it out until a partner shares it with them.

 

He took a couple tests for this stuff, and I took the same tests out of curiosity. 

 

He was off the charts. He’s only 32. He doesn’t want to believe this about himself.  It does not suit his interests.

 

I also figured out out that I was going through some sort of affection disorder, where I was losing my mind because there were no answers from him or anyone else.  We did love each other. 

 

Without him him being able to understand me, I was recoiling into a mess of a person. 

 

With his ability to only “see” my mess, and not have empathy or be able to tie himself to being a contributor, he has left. 

 

At at least now I get why I was FEELING so crazy.  

 

I guess thats that’s why I said that some asexuals are perceived to have no empathy.  Mine turned out to really not have it! I guess he can feel things, but he can’t describe the disturbances within himself. They apparently make him click and grunt, and twitch... staving off probably some violent outburst.

 

In retro-spect, and again speaking to our specific situation and not meaning to offend others with different situations, I just wanted to share this info that has painstakingly cost us a marriage... just in case there are folks out there who can relate to the possibility that being a person with underlying autism might have contributed to your indescribable inability to relate to peers of either gender on a sexual level.  My husband questioned his sexual preference for a while because, from what I saw, he could never t relate to either gender, romantically or sexually.

 

Now or I understand why my spouse had a hard time finding what he wants for a mate and had social awkwardness, fixated routines, and childhood behavioral challenges. 

 

He learned, and still works VERY hard to not show his differences to ANYONE.  I respect that about him.  I suck at that. Just let ok at how I am bearing my heart to strangers in hope that it makes sense to just one person.

 

These things happen.... I have to work on letting go. That’s not easy for a gal who is so in her head. 

 

Yey for me!  I figured us out. And he is gone and never even could say I was right or he was sorry. 

 

Is it better to ponder these things, so you can move on?  I guess I married him because he was so cool and collected. So cool... turned out to be a guy who is just working so hard for him... that he had nothing left for me?

 

Yey! I cracked the case. Now he knows himself better, and I am alone at 36 years old.  It sucks actually. 

 

We couldnt bridge the gap, by the way. I was too beat-down after 4 years of loneliness without an explanation. I just couldn’t do it.

[NotAUnicorn]

yeah, by my friend group.

not much else to add but as I display little/no symptoms of sociopathy I find people's jump to this highly explanatory of views of mental health.