AS tells NT's how difficult relationships are


John Robison and David Finch talk marriage difficulties for AS
Jack Robison and Kirsten talk young love difficulties for AS and AS
Lindsey and Dave talk young love difficulties for AS and AS
AS relationships are extremely difficult with non-AS

 


My Life with Asperger's

How to live a high-functioning life with Asperger's
By John Elder Robison
Love Is Blind, Marriage Is the Eye-opener
What's it like, being married with Asperger's
Published on December 13, 2011 by John Elder Robison in My Life with Asperger's

When people meet me for the first time, they're often surprised to learn that I have Asperger syndrome.

"Oh, my," they say, sometimes slowly and clearly, as though they're now addressing a child. "It is really remarkable how well you're able to handle yourself socially."

So begins today's guest blog, from my friend and fellow author David Finch. Like me, he has Asperger's. In this essay, David writes movingly about how his Asperger's affected his marriage, and what he's done to build a good life with the typical female of his dreams. . .

So David's story continues . . .

As compliments go, it's not so bad. Still, I can't help but feel a little like an unfrozen Neanderthal when I hear comments like that. "You mean to tell me you're only thirty-four years old and you managed to come here all by yourself?" The implication is that two minutes ago I was just another dude standing around in a sport coat, smiling unexpectedly, but now that I've outed myself, I'm Asperger Guy, and it's a wonder I haven't been yapping the whole time about pygmy fruit bats or the history of the shoe.

What can I say? People are bound to be surprised. One of my special talents is masking certain behaviors, a skill set I've been cultivating since childhood, when began my lifelong career of wanting to blend in. Even I didn't know I had Asperger's until I was thirty years old; the prevailing diagnosis throughout my early life was that I was peculiar. Talk to me long enough, or catch a glimpse of me lumbering around the cocktail party, and you'd find this assessment still to be fairly accurate. But at first glance, you might not call it Asperger's. This is not uncommon. Some with Asperger's may appear more or less not-Aspergian depending on the circumstances. I could possibly elude a diagnosis if I assumed the right character while talking to a psychologist for an hour or two.

My wife, Kristen, knows this all too well. We had been friends for years-I was always that special (dorky) friend of hers, the quirky one who made her laugh in a certain way that no one else could-and one day, we found ourselves in love. We dated for a year, a period of time that, in some ways, felt like a twelve-month-long audition. Be cool, I told myself, roughly ten-thousand times a day. Look normal. Act normal.

We got engaged, and still I did everything I could to impress her, because, as I understood it, that's what a person did when they landed themselves a fiancée. I showered Kristen with affection and praise, went out of my way to act supportive, and never once voiced a negative thought or feeling. What was not to love about that guy?

After we were married, and we were living together around the clock, Kristen began to understand exactly what was hard to love about that guy: he wasn't entirely real. By our third anniversary, the illusion I'd created had been shattered, and Kristen found herself married not to the husband she'd always wanted, but to a husband who had no idea how to go with the flow; a husband who lost his temper whenever his concentration was disrupted-even when it was disrupted by an act of affection, such as a kiss or a simple hello. A husband who couldn't show her the kind of support she needed.

Despite the fact that she had been working with children with autism for several years, Kristen hadn't recognized my mixed bag of baffling behaviors and frequent man-tantrums as Asperger's (of course, no one else, including me, had recognized this either). We had been married nearly five years before her suspicions reached an apogee and she realized I could actually be on the spectrum. Some are amazed by this, but it does not surprise me at all.

A toad analogy, if I may. I've been told that if you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to escape, but if you place a frog in a pot of water at room temperature and gradually bring it to a boil, the frog will not try to escape; it'll just boil to death. (I don't know who on earth conducted these experiments, but I like to think it's true. We can also assume that I'll be the one in hot water for making my wife a frog in my own analogy...)

Marriage can be a slow boil. When you're married, and things aren't going so great, the threshold of pain and drama and wackiness tends to creep up imperceptibly as you go about your daily lives. If, when you were blissfully dating, you could somehow fast-forward to a period in your marriage when that threshold of pain is unfathomably high-five, ten, fifteen years into the future-you would experience the darkness all at once, and you might decide to walk away from the relationship, to leap from the pot. It would be that alarming. "Good lord, is this what our marriage is going to look like?! Well, nice knowing you, do not keep in touch." But life doesn't work that way. Instead, you just sit in the pot, day after day, and boil to death, acclimated for better or for worse to the suffocating conditions.

There is another reason we wouldn't have thought to call it Asperger's sooner: I had never expressed to Kristen just how challenging certain situations were for me. Like how difficult it was to navigate social interactions, how exhausting it was for me to be "on" around other people, or how upsetting it was whenever my routine was disturbed. I hadn't spent a great deal of time contemplating these things about myself. All I knew was that I seemed different from other people, yet prior to my diagnosis I just wanted to fit in. I wanted to seem, for lack of a better term and knowing full well that a word such as the one I'm about to use can swiftly, if unintentionally, stoke the ire of commenters everywhere, normal. As a guy who assigned unique personalities to numbers, was it asking too much to seem normal? I mean, who wants to think of themselves as being inferior? Who wouldn't feel inferior if they were being mocked on a regular basis, even as an adult? Who has the presence of mind to say yes to their freaky, extraordinary selves, especially if they don't know it's okay-nay, advantageous-to be different?

So, how could Kristen have known what it was like to be me? I barely knew what it was like to be me-I didn't even know there was a clinical name for being like me.

When she realized how many similarities I had with Aspergians, Kristen sat me down and guided me through a very informal evaluation. Though I am grateful to be married to someone who doesn't spend her days regarding me through a diagnostic lens, I'm glad that Kristen instinctually pieced it together and invited me to participate in the evaluation. A person can learn a lot about himself when he answers more than a hundred questions designed to reveal precisely how his mind works. For the first time I understood who I am. And Kristen finally understood, too.

Until we went through that exercise, she could not possibly have known just how difficult it was for me to adapt to things, or how great a challenge it was for me just to understand how to be responsive to her needs. Or, in her words: "I never could have imagined how hard it sometimes is for you to simply be."

That's how Asperger syndrome can so thoroughly destroy a relationship that at one time seemed invulnerable. If it's well-hidden, and you're not specifically looking for it, the condition can reveal itself slowly, one misunderstanding and baffling meltdown at a time. But for Kristen and me it's no longer hidden, and we used this knowledge of the so-called disorder to rebuild our marriage. With my diagnosis she found patience and understanding, I found self-acceptance and the will to learn to manage the behaviors that strained our relationship, and together-together-we are finding our way to the marriage we always wanted.

And it makes me wonder, as I sit here scripting tomorrow's inevitable didactic lecture on pygmy fruit bats: How many of us are struggling with something that reveals itself in such cruelly deceptive ways? That's how Asperger syndrome can so thoroughly destroy a relationship that at one time seemed invulnerable. If it's well-hidden, and you're not specifically looking for it, the condition can reveal itself slowly, one misunderstanding and baffling meltdown at a time

AUTHOR BIO:
David Finch is an author and lecturer. His debut memoir, THE JOURNAL OF BEST PRACTICES (Scribner; January 3, 2012) is available for pre-order now. David lives in Illinois with his wife and their two children.



New York Times

Navigating Love and Autism

By AMY HARMON Published: December 26, 2011 GREENFIELD, Mass.

The first night they slept entwined on his futon, Jack Robison, 19, who had since childhood thought of himself as “not like the other humans,” regarded Kirsten Lindsmith with undisguised tenderness. She was the only girl to have ever asked questions about his obsessive interests — chemistry, libertarian politics, the small drone aircraft he was building in his kitchen — as though she actually cared to hear his answer. To Jack, who has a form of autism called Asperger syndrome, her mind was uncannily like his. She was also, he thought, beautiful.

So far they had only cuddled; Jack, who had dropped out of high school but was acing organic chemistry in continuing education classes, had hopes for something more. Yet when she smiled at him the next morning, her lips seeking his, he turned away.
“I don’t really like kissing,” he said.
Kirsten, 18, a college freshman, drew back. If he knew she was disappointed, he showed no sign.

On that fall day in 2009, Kirsten did not know that someone as intelligent and articulate as Jack might be unable to read the feelings of others, or gauge the impact of his words. And only later would she recognize that her own lifelong troubles — bullying by students, anger from teachers and emotional meltdowns that she felt unable to control — were clues that she, too, occupied a spot on what is known as the autism spectrum.

But she found comfort in Jack’s forthrightness. If he did not always say what she wanted to hear, she knew that whatever he did say, he meant. As he dropped her off on campus that morning, she replayed in her head the e-mail he had sent the other day, describing their brief courtship with characteristic precision.

“Is this what love is, Kirsten?” he had asked.

Only since the mid-1990s have a group of socially impaired young people with otherwise normal intelligence and language development been recognized as the neurological cousins of nonverbal autistic children. Because they have a hard time grasping what another is feeling — a trait sometimes described as “mind blindness” — many assumed that those with such autism spectrum disorders were incapable of, or indifferent to, intimate relationships. Parents and teachers have focused instead on helping them with school, friendship and, more recently, the workplace.
Yet as they reach adulthood, the overarching quest of many in this first generation to be identified with Asperger syndrome is the same as many of their non-autistic peers: to find someone to love who will love them back.

The recent recognition that their social missteps arise from a neurological condition has lifted their romantic prospects, they say, allowing them to explain behavior once attributed to rudeness or a failure of character — and to ask for help. So has the recent proliferation of Web sites and forums where self-described “Aspies,” or “Aspergians,” trade dating tips and sometimes find actual dates. Lessons learned with the advent of social skills classes and therapies, typically intended to help them get jobs, are now being applied to the more treacherous work of forging intimacy.

The months that followed Jack and Kirsten’s first night together show how daunting it can be for the mind blind to achieve the kind of mutual understanding that so often eludes even non-autistic couples. But if the tendency to fixate on a narrow area of interest is sometimes considered a drawback, it may also explain one couple’s single-minded determination to keep trying.

A Meeting
Kirsten was first introduced to Jack in the fall of 2008 by her boyfriend at the time, who jumped up from their table at Rao’s Coffee in Amherst, Mass., to greet his friend, who was dressed uncharacteristically in a suit that hung from his lean frame.
Jack, it turned out, was on his way to court. A chemistry whiz, he had spent much of his adolescence teaching himself to make explosives and setting them off in the woods in experiments that he hoped would earn him a patent but that instead led the state police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to charge him with several counts of malicious explosion.

By the following spring, he would be cleared of all the charges and recruited by the director of the undergraduate chemistry program at the University of Massachusetts, who was impressed by a newspaper account of Jack’s home-built laboratory. Kirsten’s boyfriend, a popular Amherst High senior, had offered to serve as a character witness for his former classmate, and the three spent much time together that year.

The boyfriend told Kirsten that Jack had Asperger syndrome: his condition may have blinded him to the possibility that the explosions, which he recorded and posted on YouTube, could well be viewed by law enforcement authorities as anything other than the ambitious chemistry experiments he saw them.

But if Kirsten noticed that Jack held himself stiffly, spoke with an unusual formality and rarely made eye contact, she gave little thought to his condition, other than to note that it ran in families: his father, John Elder Robison, is the author of “Look Me in the Eye,” a best-selling 2007 memoir about his own diagnosis of Asperger’s at age 39.

After reading of the intense interests that often come with the condition — the elder Mr Robison’s passion for Land Rovers, he had written, was the basis for his successful business servicing luxury vehicles — Kirsten and her boyfriend made light: “I have Asperger’s for McDonald’s,” she would joke. But Jack was all too familiar with the book’s more sobering stories, too: about the despair his father felt in his youth as he looked at happy couples around him and his rocky marriage to Jack’s mother, which ended in divorce.

“All these young Aspergians want to know how to succeed at dating,” John Robison told his son after his speaking engagements. And as a high school girlfriend broke up with Jack over the course of that year, Jack began to wonder more urgently about the same question.

Kirsten’s two previous boyfriends had broken up with her, too, and her current boyfriend was an unlikely match — a charismatic extrovert with soulful blue eyes who thrived on meeting new people. But when she admitted at the outset of their senior year in high school that she envied his social ease, he had embraced the role of social coach.

Years of social rejection had made her, in his view, overly eager to please. “People will take advantage of you if you act that way,” he warned. “If you don’t watch out, you’ll be a natural doormat.”

Noting her tendency to speak in a monotone, he urged her to be more expressive. He sought to quiet her hand movements, gave her personal hygiene tips (“You can’t do that,” he told her flatly when she used her fingers to scoop up food she had dropped on a table at Taco Bell and ate it) and pointed out the unspoken social cues she often missed. He elbowed her as she spoke for long minutes to an acquaintance about her interest in animal physiology. “When people look away,” he explained, “it means they’re not interested.”

And sometimes, he was plainly upset by what he perceived as her rudeness. “I can’t believe you did that,” he huffed when his mother asked Kirsten how she was and she did not reciprocate.

Much of the time, Kirsten embraced the tutoring, which he punctuated with unabashed displays of affection. “I love this girl!” the boyfriend once proclaimed, tackling her on his mother’s couch. Diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at age 11, she never heard the word autism. They were convinced that with some effort she could become as socially adept as he was.
But she also chafed at his frequent instructions, which required constant, invisible exertion to obey. And she despaired of ever living up to his most urgent request: that she share her innermost feelings with him.

“Just don’t filter,” he said one night, lying in bed with her.

“It’s like the blue screen of death,” she said, describing her difficulty conveying her emotion with a widely used term for a Windows computer crash. “There are no words there.”

“You’re not a robot,” he insisted, intending to comfort her. “I know you can do this. You’re a human being.”

But not, she thought, the kind he wanted her to be.

In contrast to her boyfriend’s emotional probing, Jack’s enthusiasm for facts — like how far his green laser pointer could reach across the University of Massachusetts campus in Amherst — came as a relief. So, too, did his apparent lack of concern for fitting in. A supporter of President Obama, she found herself admiring Jack’s anti-Obama bumper sticker, which almost invariably elicited
angry honks in left-leaning Amherst but once got him out of a ticket.

If Jack had trouble reading Kirsten’s expressions and body language, he also noticed that she had what he considered a perfect smile. On his laptop, he showed her bootleg episodes of his favorite TV show, “Breaking Bad,” about a chemistry teacher turned methamphetamine producer. And on the evenings when he argued libertarian positions with Kirsten’s boyfriend, a liberal Democrat, he often found himself disappointed when she went to bed early.

One afternoon in the fall of 2009 he asked if she was free to meet between classes at UMass, where she was enrolled as a freshman and he was studying chemistry for an associate’s degree. They talked about their childhoods in Amherst, both social outcasts even among their geeky classmates, offspring of academics. Jack’s poor grades reflected the hours he spent reading chemistry Web sites rather than doing homework; one teacher had suggested to Kirsten’s mother, an administrator at UMass, that she would be “a perfect candidate for home-schooling.”

Kirsten told Jack, at some length, of her desire to be a medical examiner. He replied, at even greater length, about chemistry, his interest having shifted from explosives to designing new compounds for medical use. Sometimes, as they circled the campus, she broke in with questions “What’s that?” she wanted to know when his descriptions grew technical, or “Why?” Accustomed to being treated with something more akin to polite fascination when he held forth on his favorite subjects — he often felt, he said, like a zoo animal — he checked to be sure her interest was genuine before providing detailed answers.

Jack, Kirsten noticed, bit his lips, a habit he told her came from not knowing how he was supposed to arrange his face to show his emotions. Kirsten, Jack noticed, cracked her knuckles, which she later told him was her public version of the hand-flapping she reserved for when she was alone, a common autistic behavior thought to ease stress.

Their difficulty discerning unspoken cues might have made it harder to know if the attraction was mutual. Kirsten stalked Jack on Facebook, she later told him, but he rarely posted. In one phone conversation, Jack wondered, “Is she flirting with me?” But he could not be sure.
But Jack, who had never known how to hide his feelings, wrote Kirsten an e-mail laying them out.

And when Kirsten’s boyfriend pleaded with her to tell him what was wrong, she did, sobbing. She could not explain, she said. She knew only that she felt as if she had found her soul mate.

Road Bumps
From the beginning, their physical relationship was governed by the peculiar ways their respective brains processed sensory messages. Like many people with autism, each had uncomfortable sensitivities to types of touch or texture, and they came in different combinations.
Jack recoiled when Kirsten tried to give him a back massage, pushing deeply with her palms.

“Pet me,” he said, showing her, his fingers grazing her skin. But Kirsten, who had always hated the feeling of light touch, shrank from his caress.
“Only deep pressure,” she showed him, hugging herself.

He tried to kiss her, but it was hard for her to enjoy it, so obvious was his aversion. To him, kissing felt like what it was, he told her: mashing your face against someone else’s. Neither did he like the sweaty feeling of hand-holding, a sensation that seemed to dominate all others whenever they tried it.

“I’m sorry,” he said helplessly.

They found ways to negotiate sex, none of them perfect. They kept trying.

What mattered more to Kirsten was how comfortable she felt for the first time in a relationship. Even if she did something wrong, she believed, Jack would not leave her. When he remarked on her obliviousness after she chattered on one day about vertebrate anatomy to their neighbor — “Matson was totally bored,” he informed her — there was no judgment, only pride that he had managed to notice. “Is that why he was yawning?” she asked, laughing with him.

She moved out of her dorm and into his apartment that fall. Despite his distaste for her habit of scavenging, he did not complain when she decorated his bare living room with a plastic orange, magnetic trains and a Wolverine action figure rescued from the sidewalk. And when he rejected her suggestion that a cat would make the apartment cosier, she did not push it.

She liked his large hands, with their long, tapered fingers and wide knuckles, and thought he was the most interesting person she had ever met.

“You’re very pretty,” he told her frequently, looking up from his computer on their kitchen table to appreciate her tall, slender frame, her big eyes bright under her dark bangs.

For his part, Jack rejoiced to find that Kirsten did not hold certain social expectations that had caused him anxiety with a high school girlfriend. He apologized, for instance, that he failed to get her a Christmas present because he had not been able to think of what she would like.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said with a shrug. “I can tell you what to get me next time.”
She tolerated his discomfort with public displays of affection, though she pushed for more in private. When he explained that his lack of expression did not mean a lack of warmth for her — he often simply forgot — she devised a straightforward strategy to help him.

“When I put my hand on your leg,” she said, “you put your arm on my back.”

It was the disagreements that spiraled into serious conflicts when they could not understand and, then, find a way to comfort each other that threatened to break them apart. One might start over
Kirsten’s request that Jack hug her when she came home from school, or his perception that she was already angry at him when she came through the door.

“The more we argue, the worse it gets,” Jack said once, close to despair.

One night as Kirsten cooked dinner, he peered into the pan where she was sautéing vegetables to comment on the way she had cut the cauliflower.

“It’s too big,” he explained. “It won’t cook through.”

“It’s better when it’s not all mushy,” she insisted.

“No,” he said. “You’re just doing it wrong.”

Eventually, Kirsten, unable to contain her tears, fled to the living room.

“What I want,” she told him when they analysed their clashes in less-fraught moments, “is to be held and rocked and comforted.”

But Jack, believing himself accused of a slight he had not made, could not bring himself to touch her.
He needed to be apart, to cool down.

Once, he had tried to do as she requested, stiffly wrapping his arms around her, against all that seemed natural to him. But when it only seemed to elicit more tears, he did not try again.
Instead, he hovered near her. “Stop crying,” he would say, pacing the perimeter of the small apartment and returning to where she sat.

He could not distract himself at those moments, even with the chemistry entries on Wikipedia, or an old episode of “Breaking Bad.”

The Diagnosis
Looking for clues to fix her new relationship, Kirsten began frequenting autism Web sites like WrongPlanet.net, where hundreds of messages a day are posted. “Eligible Odd-Bods,” read one. Another, “Are relationships harder for Aspies?”

In the library, she paged through autism guidebooks, few of which contained any information about relationships, not to mention sex. But as she read about the manifestations of the condition, she recognized them — and not only in Jack.

A passage about the difficulty that people with autism have reading facial expressions reminded her of being mocked by a friend at age 5 with whom she had agreed to draw “angry ghosts.” The friend’s ghost had zigzag lines for scowling lips and a knitted brow. Kirsten, unsure how to depict anger, had drawn a blank-faced ghost with a dialogue box above its head that read “Grrr.”

In one chapter about the repetitive behavior and thought-process “ruts” that are common among autistic people, she saw her own difficulty climbing out of her black moods. Many children of her generation who probably had Asperger’s, she read, were misdiagnosed with A.D.H.D. because autism carried more of a stigma. Girls with the condition, one theory went, were overlooked because their shyness was tolerated more and “mother hen” friends might shield them from the worst social isolation, as had happened to Kirsten.

And then there was the characteristic of autism — focusing on a detail rather than the whole — that seemed to define the nit-picky arguments she and Jack had daily, even hourly, it sometimes seemed. There was the one, for example, when they were trying to recount something that had happened at a particular hotel, but could not advance past the semantics of its size.

“The hotel was miles wide,” Kirsten had started. “And — ”
“It was not ‘miles’ wide,” Jack had broken in. “It was maybe an acre, but not a mile wide, I can guarantee it.”
“I don’t think you can guarantee it,” she had retorted — and so on.

These fights, which Jack had dubbed “Aspie arguments,” were not soul-sapping, like the ones where he could not comprehend her need for a certain kind of comfort and she could not abide his inability to give it. But the cumulative effect was exhausting. It had been Jack’s similar escalation of arguments with his father that had prompted John Robison to send him to the therapist who gave him the Asperger’s diagnosis at age 15.

No prescription would come with a diagnosis, Kirsten knew. The only drugs for autism treated side effects, like depression or anxiety; she already had medication for A.D.H.D. It might help her get more time for assignments at school, where the constant effort of social interaction sometimes left her drained and struggling even with tasks that should be easy for her. But mostly, she wanted to know if there was an explanation for the awkwardness that had plagued her for so long.

Her answer came in the fall of 2010, the result of a six-hour battery of questionnaires and puzzles and a visit with a psychologist. “Lack of awareness of self-impact,” the report read. “Diminished expression of ordinary social graces.” She had left, the doctor wrote, “without a parting word.”

Many others with the same diagnosis, she knew, were more impaired than she. In online forums, she encountered sceptics who saw Asperger’s as an excuse for rudeness — or, worse, a means of pathologizing essentially normal behavior and diverting resources from those who were truly challenged. Her ex-boyfriend, she suspected, felt similarly about her own diagnosis when she reported the news.

But Kirsten took heart in the official acknowledgment and the community it made her a part of. She changed her account setting at WrongPlanet.net from “undiagnosed” to “Asperger syndrome” and persuaded her mother to pay for a therapist who specialized in treating people on the autism spectrum.

And between classes one day in the library that fall, she read the first chapters of “Thinking in Pictures,” the autobiography of Temple Grandin, the autistic animal scientist whose life story was made into an HBO movie. Kirsten, too, had always thought in pictures.

People with autism, Dr Grandin suggested, can more easily put themselves in the shoes of an animal than in those of another person because of their sensory-oriented and visual thought process. Suddenly, Kirsten yearned for the kind of uncomplicated comfort and affection that came with a small furry animal.

She would talk to Jack again about a cat, she thought, closing the book.

A Meltdown
Kirsten’s diagnosis brought her closer to Jack.

Alex Plank, 25, the founder of the WrongPlanet Web site, also had Asperger’s and had enlisted Jack in the production of Autism Talk TV, featuring video interviews with autism experts.
Kirsten now joined them, and as they traveled to conferences, Alex’s tales of his own romantic ups and downs — echoed by many on his Web site — gave them perspective on their own dramas. “It’s easy for me to get a girl’s number,” he told them. “I can build attraction. But attraction isn’t enough.”

Still, Kirsten’s wish for more physical affection from Jack was proving harder to manage. Once, during a family gathering at his father’s house, she saw Mr Robison put his arms around the woman he had been dating and would soon marry. That, she thought with a pang, was more than Jack would do unprompted even if there was no one around.

If she didn’t ask him so much, he would do it more, Jack countered. Didn’t she understand how fake it felt when he knew he was “supposed” to do it?

Yet when the opportunity arose to date other people, they did not take it. This past spring, a male student sitting next to Kirsten in anthropology class passed her a tic-tac-toe board he had drawn during a lecture. She played along, but when he asked her, “Do you have a boyfriend?” she replied,

“Yes,” and that was the end of it. Nor did Jack, asked to lunch by his female lab partner, show any interest.

But at Fox Lane Middle School in Bedford, N.Y., where Jack and Kirsten, now Internet mini-celebrities, were invited to speak about autism, the staff asked them, “Have you ever thought about dating each other?”

“We’re so platonic,” Kirsten complained to Jack later. “They didn’t even know.”
Nor was she the only one now craving affection. “Why do you pet Tybalt more than me?” he asked after a visit to her mother’s house, referring to the family dog named for the Shakespeare character.

The talk about the cat, when she raised the issue again last spring, was not much of a talk. He was allergic, Jack told her. And the apartment already felt too small. It was obvious to him that it made no sense.

Yet he had grown up with a cat, Kirsten pointed out. His allergies were not so bad. She could keep him supplied with Zyrtec. If he wouldn’t hold her when she was sad, at least she could cuddle a cat.
It was obvious to her, too.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Jack told her.

They could both see the meltdown coming. This time, as she huddled, sobbing, in a chair in the living room, he stretched out next to her on the couch.

“Go in the other room,” she told him. “You don’t have to be here.”
But he wouldn’t leave.

Exploring Therapies
Jack and Kirsten considered autism a part of who they are, and fundamental to what drew them to each other.

But for a time this past summer, Jack became captivated by the idea of designing an empathy drug. On the nights when he was not manipulating the virtual economy of the computer game Eve Online, which he often played late into the night after Kirsten had gone to bed, he read all he could find on the hormone oxytocin, which has been linked to trust and social interaction.

A small study suggesting that some of the social difficulties associated with Asperger syndrome could be relieved temporarily by inhaling an oxytocin nasal spray had generated media interest the year before.

But to Jack, the more interesting possibility was a drug that worked on the same principle as the popular antidepressants called S.S.R.I.’s, whose effect could last considerably longer than a spray.

“I’m sure people are working on it,” he told Kirsten, showing her an obscure Wikipedia entry he had found on the subject one night. “But no one’s published anything so far as I could tell.”
He explained, in his animated way, why the chemistry should work, and also, why it might not.
Then he paused.

“I wonder if I took it, whether I would be better at being affectionate,” he said.
“I wonder,” she said, “what effect it would have on me.”

They had both undergone a different experimental treatment, for a study at Harvard Medical School. Jack’s father believed that earlier studies with that procedure, which delivered current to areas of the brain, had given him a temporary insight into other people he had not had previously. But they had noticed no such effect on themselves.

And Kirsten had been working hard with her own therapist to develop strategies for soothing herself.

When she found herself in a bad-mood rut, she had agreed with her therapist, she would visualize Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy intellectual character in the animated children’s show “My Little Pony” — of which her knowledge bordered on encyclopaedic and whose goofiness made her laugh. She also kept a list of “twisted thoughts” that she sought to resist when they came, like her tendency to presume Jack was angry when he was making a neutral observation.

“I think it’s helping,” he told her.
A cat, she thought, would help more. In recent weeks, she had been showing him irresistibly cute pictures of kittens from a forum on Reddit.com called “aww.” But she did not mention the cat that night. Instead, she asked if he would come to bed with her rather than staying up to play Eve.
“Will you pet me if I come to bed?” he asked.
She agreed.

Giving Ground
Around Thanksgiving, Jack began to think that he should let Kirsten get a cat. Maybe he would keep the idea a secret, he thought, and make it a Christmas gift. He wasn’t sure.

But Kirsten, taking matters into her own hands, stopped by the animal shelter one day to see if it was possible to get a hypoallergenic cat.
There is no such thing, she told him on arriving home, but females, the shelter staff had told her, are less allergenic — so perhaps that was an option.
“Forget it, then,” Jack said absently.

He had not meant it as a final word. But Kirsten, feeling tears welling up, employed one of the new strategies she had discussed in therapy: going out for a drive, rather than wallowing.

Jack called on her cell phone almost as soon as she pulled out of their street.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Are you — leaving?”
Trying to control her voice, she said nothing. And then, she managed, “No.”
She was driving into Amherst, hoping to see a friend.
In the apartment alone, he paced, the phone to his ear.
“Kirsten,” he said. “Just come back. We’ll get the cat.”
He did have one requirement: it had to be able to chase a laser pointer.

Dating Advisers
On a day early this month, before their planned trip to the animal shelter, Kirsten and Jack stood before a group of young adults with autism at the Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support in Philadelphia, answering their questions while Jack’s father addressed their parents in a different room. “Did you ever think you would be alone?” one teenager wanted to know.

Kirsten answered first. “I thought I was going to be alone forever,” she said. “Kids who picked on me said I was so ugly I’m going to die alone.”
Her blunt tip on dating success: “A lot of it is how you dress. I found people don’t flirt with me if I wear big man pants and a rainbow sweatshirt.”

Then it was Jack’s turn to answer, in classic Aspie style. “I think I sort of lucked out,” he said. “I have no doubt if I wasn’t dating Kirsten I would have a very hard time acquiring a girlfriend that was worthwhile.”

A mother who had slipped into the room put up her hand.
“Where do you guys see your relationship going in the future?” she asked. “No pressure.”
Kirsten looked at Jack. “You go first,” she said.
“I see it going along the way it is for the foreseeable future,” Jack said.
One of the teenagers hummed the Wedding March.
“So I guess you’re saying, there is hope in the future for longer relationships,” the mother pressed.
Kirsten gazed around the room. A few other adults had crowded in.
“Parents always ask, ‘Who would like to marry my kid? They’re so weird,’ ” she said. “But, like, another weird person, that’s who.”

The Cat
The next morning, Kirsten woke up from a nightmare: they were late to get the cat, and she couldn’t reach Jack. She was riding a motorbike with pedals in weird places, and she couldn’t find the animal shelter.

In fact, they would have just enough time to reach the shelter before it closed after getting breakfast and buying a laser pointer with a lower-intensity red beam than his green one to test the prospective adoptees. In the car, Kirsten noticed a blinking “E” on the gas gauge, and the couple had the following exchange:
Kirsten: Oh, we need to get gas. Do you want to stop at the 7-Eleven?
Jack: No, we’ll stop on the way back.
Kirsten: How can you not get stressed when that thing is blinking?
Jack: I’m not intimidated by liquid crystal displays.
Kirsten: You know what I mean, you get anxious about everything.
Jack: I know we have at least 20 miles of gas.
Kirsten: We have to drive seven miles there, and then seven back.
Jack: No, we have three miles back.
Kirsten: Should we just stop at 7-Eleven?
Both of them breathed a sigh of relief when the only female kitten at the shelter pounced without hesitation on the red laser beam Jack shined into her cage. At home, however, she ran straight under the old-fashioned bathtub.

Jack bent down and scooped up the kitten, holding her up to the mirror above the sink. Kirsten stroked her black fur in his arms, their hands touching briefly across the kitten’s back, and in the reflection.
“Are you looking at yourself in the mirror?” Jack asked the kitten. “Are you smart enough to recognize yourself?”
They stood for a moment together, awaiting the reaction.

Postscript
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 30, 2011

An article on Monday about Jack Robison and Kirsten Lindsmith, two college students with Asperger syndrome who are navigating the perils of an intimate relationship, misidentified the character from the animated children’s TV show “My Little Pony” that Ms. Lindsmith said she visualized to cheer herself up. It is Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy intellectual, not Fluttershy, the kind animal lover.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 26, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Navigating Love and Autism.



They’re Autistic—and they’re in Love
Lindsey Nebeker and Dave Hamrick each used to wonder if they’d ever find lasting love. Here’s how they came together—and how, side by side, they face the world.
February 2, 2009
By Lynn Harris
There are two bedrooms in the cosy Jackson, Mississippi, apartment: Dave Hamrick’s is like a dad’s den, with a striped beige armchair and a hanging map; Lindsey Nebeker’s is darkly girly, with spiky dried roses hung over a bed topped by a graphic leaf-print quilt. After work on any given evening, Dave and Lindsey are likely to be orbiting the home separately, doing their own thing. Dave may be flipping through magazines, pausing to stare fixedly at design details or leaning in to inhale the scent of the pages. Lindsey typically sits down to eat alone—from a particular plate with a particular napkin placed just so—and may slip so deeply into her own world that Dave has learned to whisper “Psst…” when he approaches so as to not startle her and, on a bad night, make her scream.

An observer might assume the two are amicable, if oddball, roommates. But Lindsey, 27, and Dave, 29, are deeply in love. And they are autistic. Every day of their relationship, these two beat tremendous odds. That’s because the very definition of autism suggests that for adults with this disorder, love—especially the lasting, live-in kind like Lindsey and Dave’s—is not in the cards at all.

About 1.5 million people in the United States (an estimated one fifth of them are female) have autism, with varying degrees of severity. The disorder can create sensory issues, like hypersensitivity to touch and sound, and impair social skills. While some autistics are gifted (often in music or math), they may be utterly baffled by the nuances of small talk and eye contact. Expressing empathy can be virtually impossible. Imagine a first date—never a breeze for any of us—with those limitations.

“I hear a lot of loneliness, sadness and fear among the autistic adults I meet,” says Stephen Shore, author of Beyond the Wall and an internationally recognized expert on autism who has the disorder himself. “Without a natural understanding of communication, it’s much more difficult for people with autism to find and sustain an intimate relationship.” They have hearts that feel; it’s the funky wiring in their brains that makes things so challenging.

Contrary to stereotype—the Rain Man-esque loner who’d rather count toothpicks than make friends—adult autistics often know what they’re missing out on and hope to find love, like anyone else. Since hanging in a crowded bar or going on a blind date can be terrifying, many connect through social-networking websites. Still, successful relationships aren’t very common, especially relationships in which both partners have autism.

Lindsey and Dave have experienced their fair share of heartache: at school, among so-called friends, in their search for partners. Yet both have also summoned the courage to take a risk, perhaps the biggest risk of their lives, for each other. Theirs is a still-unfolding tale—an unconventional story about unconditional love.

Autism has been making headlines lately, especially now that more and more children are being diagnosed with it. Celeb mom Jenny McCarthy, for one, speaks and writes about her son’s autism. The head writer for Days of Our Lives developed a story line about an autistic child based on her parental experience. Last fall, autism-awareness advocates raised hell over the “Autism Shmautism” chapter in comic Denis Leary’s latest book. Observations included “Yer kid is not autistic. He’s just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.”

The attention, good and bad, has made it somewhat easier for adult autistics to find acceptance in the world. Former America’s Next Top Model contestant Heather Kuzmich—who has Asperger’s syndrome (considered an autism spectrum disorder) and who had trouble making eye contact in TV interviews—has become a role model. Claire Danes is starring in a forthcoming HBO biopic about best-selling autistic author Temple Grandin. Also helpful are sites like wrongplanet.net, geared toward autistic adults, where users can find answers to questions such as “How do I learn to flirt?”

Lindsey, an auburn-haired beauty with an artistic, bejeweled style you might call peasant-goth, has been more fortunate than others (including her severely autistic younger brother). When she was 19 months old and not talking, her parents tested her for autism, and she got the benefit of early treatment. Today, her occasional wandering gaze and the forced cheer in her voice make her seem just a bit off. It takes effort, she says, not to sound “robotic.”

Even as Lindsey’s speech caught up and her talent for playing piano emerged, she developed habits typical of autistics: staring for hours at the fibres of a carpet, for example, or performing soothing rituals like stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. Classmates teased her mercilessly, and she’d come home with kick me signs on her back. Real friendship seemed painfully out of reach for the eccentric, awkward girl who came across as blunt. In high school, when another student asked Lindsey what she thought of her new makeup, Lindsey recalls, “I told her it looked fake. She became silent, and I knew I had blown it.”

Depressed, Lindsey burned herself with a curling iron and cut her arms with safety pins, hiding her injuries with sweatshirts. “Lindsey’s struggles were heartbreaking,” says her mother, Anne Nebeker, 63, a retired teacher in Logan, Utah. “I was very anxious about how she would manage as an adult and whether she would have a social life at all or find love.”

Yet Lindsey’s torment fueled a determination to learn the very skills that eluded her. Her best resource: Dale Carnegie’s self-help classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. Advice as simple as “Be a good listener” began to help, especially by college. The subtleties of romance, however, remained a mystery. She’d fool around with a guy and get dumped a few days or weeks later without explanation. “I had no idea what I was doing that was scaring guys away,” says Lindsey. “I felt like I had failed somehow.” In her early twenties, she gave up. “I decided to focus on the friendships I’d managed to make,” she continues, “and quit worrying about love altogether.”

That’s when she met Dave. It was 2005, and they were at an autism conference in Nashville. Diagnosed at three, Dave grew up with pronounced fixations. He’d tote around empty Clorox bottles, and carry a thermometer to assess the air temperature. Like Lindsey, he had trouble making friends. Dave also has Tourette’s syndrome, which can overlap with autism; it’s the cause of his near-constant head jerks and occasional stuttering and grunting noises. His parents were told he would always be in special education, never able to work or live on his own. By fourth grade, he was in a mainstream class; he went on to college, where he majored in meteorology.

When he and Lindsey met, Dave says, “I was hopeful, but realistic. “They e-mailed and talked on the phone, then hung out again a few months later at a conference in Virginia. On their last night there, at a café, Dave took the plunge. Seeing Lindsey’s hands resting on the table, Dave reached for them. “When she didn’t pull away, I knew I had a positive result,” he says in his endearingly geeky, text bookish way. The next day, he gave her a bouquet. “I’d never gotten flowers from anyone, other than my dad after a piano recital,” says Lindsey. Looking Dave in the eye was hard for her. So, she says, “it was a relief to close my eyes and lean in to kiss him. I had my guard up, but some part of me was willing to give it a try.”

Two years later, Lindsey and Dave moved in together. It’s a big step for any couple, but for autistics, it can mean merging two rigid ways of life. Dave likes it cool; Lindsey likes it warm. Dave needs his mattress firm; Lindsey needs hers soft. These may sound like trifles, but what are merely irritating to others may be, for an autistic, 20 fingernails on 20 blackboards. They’ve discussed every last detail, down to light bulb preference.

When Dave awakes for work, Lindsey—a night owl—may still be up from the evening before. By noon, she’s improvised a few riffs on her beloved Steinway and is performing the 20-minute ritual of preparing her three thermoses of coffee (touch of flavored syrup, drop of almond milk, heat, adjust, repeat), which she will take with her to her job…at Starbucks.

Being a barista isn’t her Plan A. She dreams of studying photography or special ed in grad school. Dave has turned his fixation on temperature into a meteorology career (his e-mail name is “weathering autism”). An entry-level forecaster at the National Weather Service, he finds his job exciting. It requires only limited face-to-face contact with strangers; on a typical day, he gives callers weather reports or heads out, alone, to release a weather balloon.

Both often come home exhausted, like actors who’ve been on stage all day. That’s one reason Lindsey and Dave need so much time alone after work, and why they rarely call each other to check in and chat. “Every day, we put out so much effort to speak properly in the workplace and other social settings,” says Lindsey. “When we talk on the telephone, our conversations normally don’t last long because we get uneasy when the small-talk script runs out.”

On weekends, they’re more likely to prowl a bookstore than go to a party or a restaurant. Their friends—mostly from college and conferences, some of whom are autistic—don’t live nearby. They also prefer to eat by themselves. Dave, as if he had superhero hearing, is sensitive to the sound of chewing. He can eat only cooked vegetables—never raw, crunchy ones. Lindsey finds it so torturous to deviate from her food rituals that Dave’s occasional invitation to dine out can send her into sobs. “I just keep telling him, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t,’” she says. “I feel awful about it.”

Once in a while, with enough notice, Lindsey says yes and they’ll head to a bright and bustling pan-Asian buffet; it’s the opposite of romantic. Dave, lit up like a kid on Christmas Day, will happily put away several crabs’ worth of crab legs. Lindsey, wary of food she didn’t prepare herself, would rather prod stiffly at her wasabi than moon over Dave. But what other diners can’t see is something even more tender than canoodling: Lindsey and Dave’s willingness to step outside their comfort zones to please each other.

Adjusting to sex took time. Lindsey was somewhat nervous about the fact that she was a virgin and Dave was not. “Spontaneity was not an option,” she says. “People with autism really have to mentally prepare for everything.” She felt bogged down by the procedures she’d established in her head from seeing romantic movies like Pretty Woman—“OK, now I’m supposed to take off his shirt.” Three years into their relationship, though, they readily visit each other’s beds.
Marriage, they say, is a possibility; children, they’re less sure about. Both worry about a genetic predisposition to autism, a valid concern, especially given that both Lindsey and her brother have the disorder. Even if they adopt, parenting seems perilous. “Dealing with our rituals and sensory issues demands so much from us,” says Lindsey, “that I don’t know how we’d take care of someone else.”

Lindsey still gets depressed when people misunderstand her. “Sometimes, after a bad experience, I shut myself off from the rest of the world,” she says. “I don’t have to face judgment in my room. “Recently, as a man at work was talking, she tuned out but kept nodding and smiling (a frequent habit). Suddenly he blurted, “Did you hear what I said? I got mugged last night.” Lindsey was crushed. “It’s exhausting,” she says, “to be 27 and still have to work at getting interactions with people right.”

These are the times when she needs Dave most. “He reminds me that tomorrow is another day,” she says. “He makes me feel like I’m worth something.” Dave loves to stand behind her, wrap his arms around her waist, press his nose into her hair and take long, deep breaths. Last Valentine’s Day, he festooned their bathroom mirror with plastic gel hearts (he’s been obsessed with the shape since he was a kid). They’re still there today.

Though connecting with others will be a lifelong struggle, Lindsey and Dave have formed a bond that defies their autism. They may sometimes come across as blunt to strangers, but speaking their own minds clearly and directly—just as they did when they moved in together—has helped their relationship. There’s none of the “if you have to even ask what’s wrong, then forget it” passive-aggressiveness many couples experience, no expectation of mind reading. “People like Lindsey and Dave put so much thought and dedication into making their relationship work,” says Diane Twachtman-Cullen, Ph.D., a speech-language expert who specializes in autism and knows the couple well. “Frankly, we could all take a page from their playbook.”

Lindsey’s mom is similarly awed. Anne Nebeker recalls that when Lindsey and Dave came to visit her for the first time, “we went to a local lake. The two of them were running around and splashing water at each other, and I was so pleasantly surprised to see them doing a normal-couple thing like that. Even when Lindsey calls him ‘Hon’ and it sounds natural, not forced and rehearsed, I am amazed. I am so happy to see her in love.”

These days, when Dave whispers as he approaches Lindsey, she’ll whisper back; it’s become a term of endearment. “Psst…,” he’ll say after he walks in the door and sees Lindsey in the living room. Her face lights up when their eyes meet. “Psst!” she’ll respond, smiling. She knows that with Dave, she’s in a safe place. “I’m so lucky to have found him,” she says. “When I’m with him, I forget about my challenges.”


Writer Lynn Harris is a contributing editor at Glamour.



“We used this knowledge of the so-called (Asperger’s) disorder to rebuild our marriage. With my diagnosis she found patience and understanding, I found self-acceptance and the will to learn to manage the behaviors that strained our relationship, and together-together-we are finding our way to the marriage we always wanted”. Says David Finch on John Robison’s web page
http://www.psychology...

Premise: Marriages/Relationships between Non-Asperger Partners and Asperger Partners Are Extremely Difficult:
just as a relationship when both people are Asperger is difficult     By J A Morgan
4th January, 2012

Dr John Gottman (2) of the Gottman Relationship Institute says that in his years of research into marital relationships –interviewing and studying more than two hundred couples over 20 years, that a lasting marriage results from a couple’s ability to resolve the conflicts that are inevitable in any relationship and other vital ingredients.

The widely defined deficits and impairments of Asperger’s syndrome/autism spectrum disorder (AS) will also have a huge impact on the ability of the person to carry out the maintenance of a lasting marriage/relationship with a non-Asperger (non-AS) spouse/partner/carer.

The honest appraisals of the difficulties in their relationships of long-term marriage and young love described by: David Finch and his former wife Kristen “How to Live a High Functioning Life with Asperger’s” (4); Jack Robison jnr with his girlfriend Kirsten “My Life with Asperger’s” (5); Lindsey Nebeker and Dave Hamrick “They’re Autistic and They’re in Love” (6) give a long look into what would also occur within a relationship between a person with Asperger and a non-AS spouse/partner/carer.

The authors are all on the spectrum; and have shed new light on why a relationship with an AS and a non-AS will also struggle to be successful. Despite this the above mentioned are to be congratulated for the insight into their struggles.

The younger couples have described their intimate relationship with another person on the spectrum but the difficulties they encounter will be magnified when a person with AS attempts a relationship with a non-AS person who is defined as having achieved mature developmental levels. These young people are to be commended for their efforts to navigate a very difficult and trying time.

What is particularly disturbing is that in the 16 or so years that Autism spectrum has been identified there has been very little acknowledgement by the medical and psychiatric/psychological community that those with AS do desire to have relationships and that many of them marry. The difficulties of AS with social interaction compound the difficulties in the relationship; especially when there is a non-AS partner. The real difficulties of non-AS partners/carers/spouses are parallel to those encountered by the person on the spectrum, but compounded by neurological differences which are overwhelming.

“Only since the mid-1990s have a group of socially impaired young people with otherwise normal intelligence and language development been recognized as the neurological cousins of nonverbal autistic children. Because they have a hard time grasping what another is feeling— a trait sometimes described as “mind blindness” — many assumed that those with such autism spectrum disorders were incapable of, or indifferent to, intimate relationships. Parents and teachers have focused instead on helping them with school, friendship and, more recently, the workplace.

Yet as they reach adulthood, the overarching quest of many in this first generation to be identified with Asperger syndrome is the same as many of their non-autistic peers: to find someone to love who will love them back.

Kirsten says of her diagnosis in 2010 around 18 years of age, after her answer came as the result of a six-hour battery of tests, that “no prescription would come with a diagnosis”. The only treatment for AS was for the side effects of anxiety and depression. “In online forums, she encountered sceptics who saw Asperger’s as an excuse for rudeness. Bullies who accuse NT’s and others of bullying”.

Many children of her generation who probably had Asperger’s, she read, were misdiagnosed with A.D.H.D. because autism carried more of a stigma. Girls with the condition, one theory went, were overlooked because their shyness was tolerated more and “mother hen” friends might shield them from the worst social isolation, as had happened to Kirsten.”

In the past, and sometimes today, those with AS have been undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and had gone on to marry non-AS, who were unaware of their AS spouse’s condition. This has resulted in confusion and despair for the non-AS partner, because they are unable to explain why their relationship is so dysfunctional. These articles written about the self-identified difficulties in maintaining relationships for those with AS gives insight and an obvious explanation why a marriage between people with vastly different developmental levels (non-AS and AS) will probably never be a successful union.

Kirsten has acknowledged the strong possibility of a genetic link with AS: “she gave little thought to his condition, other than to note that it ran in families”.

Kirsten and Jack also note that drug trials they participated in “seemed to have no effect”.

To classify a marriage, Gottman looks at the frequency of fights, the facial expressions and physiological responses of both partners during their confrontations, as well as what they say to each other and in what tone of voice they interact verbally. For those with AS their lack of modulation in the tone of voice is a difficulty. Lindsey describes how “it takes effort to not sound robotic”.

There’s much more to a successful marriage than knowing how to fight well, however.

One of the first things to go in a marriage is politeness. Kirsten observes that Jack’s body language could be construed as impolite. “Jack held himself stiffly, spoke with an unusual formality and rarely made eye contact.” As laughter and validation disappear criticism and pain well up: attempts to get communication back on track seem useless and partners become lost in hostile and negative thoughts and feelings.

Successful couples usually addressed their issues before their anger boiled over. They deal with disagreements by having discussions, sometimes over several days or weeks where each can air their perspective, rather than shouting matches. Usually they arrive at a compromise. Even when discussing a hot topic they display a lot of ease and calm; have a keen ability to listen to and understand each other’s emotions. These couples are called “validators”. In the midst of the disagreement they still let their partners know they consider their emotions are valid, even if they don’t agree with their point of view. This is the expression of their mutual respect. It helps to limit the number of arguments by solving problems.

Dr Edward A. Dreyfus (1) says marriage has begun to take on a different meaning and serve a different purpose than was traditionally the case. Today's marriages, more than any time in history, depend more upon communication, intimacy, relating, compromise, negotiation and understanding. We must be able to negotiate in the living room and make love in the bedroom, and be skilled at both. There is a distinct lack of skill with AS to fulfil these requirements: “Jack had trouble reading Kirsten’s expressions and body language.” Jack also has difficulty revealing his emotions through body language: “Jack, Kirsten noticed, bit his lips, a habit he told her came from not knowing how he was supposed to arrange his face to show his emotions.” This will make it impossible for a non-AS to connect emotionally with someone with AS: non-AS “read” much more than just the spoken word.

Expectations in loving have similarly changed. Since love-making is no longer exclusively for the purpose of procreation, no longer just for a man's pleasure, and it is no longer expected that men be more knowledgeable and experienced then women, then couples expect more from one another, requiring greater communications between them.

Therefore, the very basis for marriage changes from fulfilling certain functions to fulfilling emotional and psychological needs. Kirsten complains “We’re so platonic” about her relationship with Jack. She accurately describes what it’s like to be in a relationship with someone on the spectrum.

Psychologist, Dr Judith S. Wallerstein, co-author of The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts, carried out in-depth interviews with 50 couples who have been married at least nine years, had children together and independently regarded their marriage as happy. Dr Wallerstein identified "psychological tasks" as the pillars on which any marital relationship rests.

The following are Dr Wallerstein's tasks:

  • Separate emotionally from one's childhood so as to invest fully in the marriage and, at the same time, redefine the lines of connection with both families of origin. Those on the autism spectrum because of the developmental deficits; remain immature and naïve throughout their lives.

  • Build togetherness based on mutual identification, shared intimacy and an expanded conscience that includes both partners, while at the same time setting boundaries to protect each partner's autonomy. However, “To Jack, who has a form of autism called Asperger syndrome, her mind was uncannily like his.” This is an unemotional approach to attraction and love. It was purely her mind that interested him. “She was also, he thought, beautiful.” Yet he did not tell her.

  • Establish a rich and pleasurable sexual relationship and protect it from the incursions of the workplace and family obligations; it is the second part of this task which must not be overlooked or taken for granted. “The months that followed Jack and Kirsten’s first night together show how daunting it can be for the mind blind to achieve the kind of mutual understanding that so often (may) elude even” non-Asperger people. When AS is added to the mix with a non-AS person there is very little mutual understanding.


A sexual relationship for a non-AS person with someone on the spectrum is unsatisfying and very difficult. There is a lack of spontaneity and joy.

The difficulties are illustrated by the relationship between Jack and Kristen:

From the beginning, their physical relationship was governed by the peculiar ways their respective brains processed sensory messages. Like many people with autism, each had uncomfortable sensitivities to types of touch or texture, and they came in different combinations. Jack recoiled when Kirsten tried to give him a back massage, pushing deeply with her palms.

“Pet me,” he said, showing her, his fingers grazing her skin. But Kirsten, who had always hated the feeling of light touch, shrank from his caress.” Their sexual encounters lacked spontaneity and joy. They became choreographed and stylised. “When I put my hand on your leg,” she said, “you put your arm on my back.”

  • (for couples with children) Embrace the daunting roles of parenthood and absorb the impact of baby's dramatic entrance into the marriage. At the same time the couple must continue the work of protecting their own privacy. Lindsey and Dave are to be commended for their genuine, mature consideration of whether to be parents or not. Just as non-AS, sensibly, have to weigh up possibilities of having children. “Marriage, they say, is a possibility; children, they’re less sure about. Both worry about a genetic predisposition to autism, a valid concern, especially given that both Lindsey and her brother have the disorder. Even if they adopt, parenting seems perilous. “Dealing with our rituals and sensory issues demands so much from us,” says Lindsey, “that I don’t know how we’d take care of someone else.”

  • Confront and master the inevitable crises of life and maintain the strength of the marital bond in the face of adversity and create a safe haven within the marriage for the expression of difference, anger and conflict. David Finch was unable to monitor the inevitable breakdown of his relationship. He describes how “Marriage can be a slow boil. When you're married, and things aren't going so great, the threshold of pain and drama and wackiness tends to creep up imperceptibly as you go about your daily lives.” This demonstrates the result of his mind blindness, lack of social understanding, lack of empathy and inability to read his own emotions.

  • Use humor and laughter to keep things in perspective and to avoid boredom and isolation. Kirsten describes how she began researching ASD and found some answers for herself. She accurately describes the lack of growth and change which is healthy and necessary for a mature relationship.

“In one chapter about the repetitive behavior and thought-process “ruts” that are common among autistic people, she saw her own difficulty climbing out of her black moods.” It is very difficult for neurotypicals to live with the routines and black moods of those with ASD.

  • Provide nurturance and comfort to each other, satisfying each partner's need for dependency and offer continuing encouragement and support. David describes how he became “A husband who couldn't show her the kind of support she needed,” because of his lack of social understanding. Kirsten, who discovers she is also on the spectrum, notes that a former non-AS boyfriend had become her “social coach”. She had come to rely on him for prompts and their relationship eventually broke down because there was no mutual satisfying of each other’s needs. It was too much a one-sided relationship for the neurotypical boyfriend.

  • Keep alive the romantic, idealized images of falling in love, while facing the sober realities of the changes wrought by time. Kirsten describes the longing and sadness of those who have an intimate relationship with someone with autism spectrum:

Still, Kirsten’s wish for more physical affection from Jack was proving harder to manage. Once, during a family gathering at his father’s house, she saw Mr Robison put his arms around the woman he had been dating and would soon marry. That, she thought with a pang, was more than Jack would do unprompted even if there was no one around.”

While giving a seminar presentation one day, Jack was asked “Where do you guys see your relationship going in the future?” He responded with “I see it going along the way it is for the foreseeable future.” Jack does not present a picture of growth and change, but routine only.

Dr Wallerstein's tasks are not easy. To accomplish them requires that each spouse be committed to enhancing their marriage and making it work. In addition, they require that each spouse be equally committed to their own personal growth as well as the growth of their partner. The preservation and enhancement of the marriage partnership must be a top priority.

The difficulties in accomplishing this are obvious in the story of the purchase of the cat for Kirsten with Jack placing many conditions on the purchase as he really wants all the attention from Kirsten focussed on him. There is no agreement about petrol purchase and the cat finally chosen is conditional upon it liking to play with Jack’s laser pointer.
Ironically the cat hides when taken home and none of them seem inclined to play with the laser pointer anymore:

“A cat, she thought, would help more. In recent weeks, she had been showing him irresistibly cute pictures of kittens … But she did not mention the cat that night. Instead, she asked if he would come to bed with her rather than staying up to play Eve.
“Will you pet me if I come to bed?” he asked. She agreed.

Around Thanksgiving, Jack began to think that he should let Kirsten get a cat. Maybe he would keep the idea a secret, he thought, and make it a Christmas gift. He wasn’t sure.
But Kirsten, taking matters into her own hands, stopped by the animal shelter one day to see if it was possible to get a hypoallergenic cat.
There is no such thing, she told him on arriving home, but females, the shelter staff had told her, are less allergenic — so perhaps that was an option.
“Forget it, then,” Jack said absently.” He cruelly dismisses her needs.

“He had not meant it as a final word. But Kirsten, feeling tears welling up, employed one of the new strategies she had discussed in therapy: going out for a drive, rather than wallowing.
Jack called on her cell phone almost as soon as she pulled out of their street.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Are you — leaving?”
Trying to control her voice, she said nothing. And then, she managed, “No.”
She was driving into Amherst, hoping to see a friend.
In the apartment alone, he paced, the phone to his ear.
“Kirsten,” he said. “Just come back. We’ll get the cat.”
He did have one requirement: it had to be able to chase a laser pointer.


The next morning, Kirsten woke up from a nightmare: they were late to get the cat, and she couldn’t reach Jack. She was riding a motorbike with pedals in weird places, and she couldn’t find the animal shelter.
In fact, they would have just enough time to reach the shelter before it closed after getting breakfast and buying a laser pointer with a lower-intensity red beam than his green one to test the prospective adoptees.

In the car, Kirsten noticed a blinking “E” on the gas gauge, and the couple had the following exchange:
Kirsten: Oh, we need to get gas. Do you want to stop at the 7-Eleven?
Jack: No, we’ll stop on the way back.
Kirsten: How can you not get stressed when that thing is blinking?
Jack: I’m not intimidated by liquid crystal displays.

Kirsten: You know what I mean, you get anxious about everything.
Jack: I know we have at least 20 miles of gas.
Kirsten: We have to drive seven miles there, and then seven back.
Jack: No, we have three miles back.
Kirsten: Should we just stop at 7-Eleven?” This is another of the pointless semantic arguments which are so emotionally draining for all concerned.

Both of them breathed a sigh of relief when the only female kitten at the shelter pounced without hesitation on the red laser beam Jack shined into her cage. At home, however, she ran straight under the old-fashioned bathtub. Jack bent down and scooped up the kitten, holding her up to the mirror above the sink. Kirsten stroked her black fur in his arms, their hands touching briefly across the kitten’s back, and in the reflection.
“Are you looking at yourself in the mirror?” Jack asked the kitten. “Are you smart enough to recognize yourself?”

They stood for a moment together, awaiting the reaction.” Non-AS ironically, can wait forever for a reaction from their spouses with ASD.

Psychologist Dr Howard Markman at the University of Denver believes that "Love and commitment to the relationship are necessary for a good marriage, but they are not enough. What are needed, on top of that, are skills in effective communication and how to handle conflict." David describes how his roleplaying and inability to know what to do in a relationship resulted in unintentional deception.

We got engaged, and still I did everything I could to impress her, because, as I understood it, that's what a person did when they landed themselves a fiancée. I showered Kristen with affection and praise, went out of my way to act supportive, and never once voiced a negative thought or feeling. What was not to love about that guy?” There was no chance for Kristen, his future wife, to see the real David before the marriage took place.

Dr Markman, along with Dr Clifford Notarius of Catholic University of America, studied 135 about-to-be-married couples. "How you handle conflict is the single most important predictor of whether your marriage will survive," according to Dr Markman.

These researchers found that certain behavior patterns usually signaled an impending collapse in the marriage:

  • When either partner withdraws from conflict.
    Jack hovered when Kirsten was crying unable to know what to do to console her.

  • The tendency to escalate conflict in the face of disagreement and the inability to stop fights before they get ugly.
    The language processing difficulties of ASD present major obstacles to resolving arguments.

“And then there was the characteristic of autism — focusing on a detail rather than the whole —that seemed to define the nit-picky arguments she and Jack had daily, even hourly, it sometimes seemed. There was the one, for example, when they were trying to recount something that had happened at a particular hotel, but could not advance past the semantics of its size.
“The hotel was miles wide,” Kirsten had started. “And — ”
“It was not ‘miles’ wide,” Jack had broken in. “It was maybe an acre, but not a mile wide, I can guarantee it.”
“I don’t think you can guarantee it,” she had retorted — and so on.

These fights, which Jack had dubbed “Aspie arguments,” were not soul-sapping, like the ones where he could not comprehend her need for a certain kind of comfort and she could not abide his inability to give it. But the cumulative effect was exhausting.”
It must also be noted there is no resolution to what should not have been an argument in the first place.

“It had been Jack’s similar escalation of arguments with his father that had prompted John Robison to send him to the therapist who gave him the Asperger’s diagnosis at age 15.”

  • The tendency to invalidate the relationship by hurling insults at each other. Dr Markman says, "One 'zinger' counteracts 20 positive acts of kindness."

It should be noted that neither Wallerstein nor Markman say that we should avoid conflict. Conflict in marriage is inevitable. How we deal with conflict is the important issue.

Dr John Gottman has also found that successful couples all do the following things:

  • Show interest in one another. When one partner is speaking, whether arguing or not, the other partner is interested in what’s being said. Their minds are not wandering, thinking up the next arguing point or watching TV. They are paying attention. There is too much effort involved for those with AS to engage in the daily sharing and showing interest in each other. Lindsay and Dave say: “Both (of us) often come home exhausted, like actors who’ve been on stage all day. That’s one reason (we) need so much time alone after work, and why (we) rarely call each other to check in and chat.”

“Every day, we put out so much effort to speak properly in the workplace and other social settings,” says Lindsey. “When we talk on the telephone, our conversations normally don’t last long because we get uneasy when the small-talk script runs out.”

  • They are affectionate with each other in little ways such as touching, holding hands and expressing their affection for their partner. The difficulties of Jack and Kirsten in their ability to show affection in a physical sense are obvious:

“So far they had only cuddled; Jack, who had dropped out of high school but was acing organic chemistry in continuing education classes, had hopes for something more. Yet when she smiled at him the next morning, her lips seeking his, he turned away.” Jack doesn’t like kissing. “‘I don’t really like kissing,’ he said. Kirsten, 18, a college freshman, drew back. If he knew she was disappointed, he showed no sign.”

Jack’s inability to read Kirsten’s body language when she “drew back” is a result of the deficits of ASD. He does not acknowledge her disappointment and non-understanding as a result. There is no opportunity for her feelings to be acknowledged.
There is further evidence of the reasons why a non-AS cannot have a physical relationship with someone with ASD described by Jack and Kirsten:

He tried to kiss her, but it was hard for her to enjoy it, so obvious was his aversion. To him, kissing felt like what it was, he told her: mashing your face against someone else’s. Neither did he like the sweaty feeling of hand-holding, a sensation that seemed to dominate all others whenever they tried it.”

  • Show they care by small acts of kindness and thoughtfulness, such as bringing flowers or a gift without a particular occasion or making phone calls to say, “Thinking of you”. Non-AS are able to use non-verbal communication and observation to discover what their beloved may like for a present. Jack is unable to do this, so he does nothing. He could also have asked Kirsten what she might like. They later come to this solution:

“For his part, Jack rejoiced to find that Kirsten did not hold certain social expectations that had caused him anxiety with a high school girlfriend. He apologized, for instance, that he failed to get her a Christmas present because he had not been able to think of what she would like.”

  • Showing appreciation by thinking, remembering and saying positive things about each other. Stephen Shore, author, and a man diagnosed with autism spectrum says that “without a natural understanding of communication it’s much more difficult for people with autism to find and sustain an intimate relationship.”

  • Show concern by paying attention to things that are bothering their partner and being supportive without trying to fix things. Jack’s attempts at comforting Kirsten are begrudging and conditional: “stiffly wrapping his arms around her, against all that seemed natural to him.” He couldn’t bring himself to comfort or touch Kirsten when he had unwittingly hurt her feelings with his bluntness of speech.

  • They are empathic and show they really understand what their partner is going through. David has great difficulty with Kristen getting close to him and being understood himself. “So, how could Kristen have known what it was like to be me? I barely knew what it was like to be me”. His lack of Theory of Mind and a lack of Theory of his own Mind have crippled his efforts at being empathic and relating to his spouse’s and his own needs.

  • They are accepting, even when they disagree. They let their spouse know they understand and respect their point of view. Jack is unable to do any of this to resolve a dispute. He won’t accept responsibility that if Kirsten feels slighted, she may have been and that should be acknowledged. He simply wanted to be alone and to leave Kirsten alone. He doesn’t try after a while to even find out what the problem is with Kirsten. Kirsten suffers through Jack’s lack of empathy and mind blindness. He has no idea how to comfort her.

“Jack, believing himself accused of a slight he had not made, could not bring himself to touch her. He’s unable to see that he hurt her with his bluntness and took offence
He needed to be apart, to cool down.

Once, he had tried to do as she requested, stiffly wrapping his arms around her, against all that seemed natural to him. But when it only seemed to elicit more tears, he did not try again. Instead, he hovered near her. “Stop crying,” he would say, pacing the perimeter of the small apartment and returning to where she sat.”

  • Good marriage partners use humour, silliness and teasing in a loving way; never a hostile or sarcastic manner. The stories display an absence of humor or obvious easy spontaneous, reciprocal affection. Kirsten says that her visit to Jack’s mother’s place was unsuccessful because the mother didn’t even notice that they weren’t just platonic friends.

  • Sharing their joy when they are delighted or excited about something or having fun they let each other know. The stories show very little joy and delight because their lives are a self-confessed struggle to navigate daily interactions.

After studying couples who wound up divorced, Gottman found their arguments and conflicts had four things in common which guaranteed a marriage would fail.

Using criticism which is an attack on the very nature of the person in question: The blunt language of ASD is shown when Kirsten is cooking. Even though Jack is simply trying to “educate” in his didactic way, it is still perceived as criticism by Kirsten, who is doing her best. Jack comes across as very unkind and ends up insulting Kirsten who is very hurt by his comments.

One night as Kirsten cooked dinner, he peered into the pan where she was sautéing vegetables to comment on the way she had cut the cauliflower.
“It’s too big,” he explained. “It won’t cook through.”

“It’s better when it’s not all mushy,” she insisted.
“No,” he said. “You’re just doing it wrong.”

Eventually, Kirsten, unable to contain her tears, fled to the living room.”

Contempt is the deliberate intention to insult and psychologically abuse your partner by: insults and name calling, hostile humour with contemptuous jokes or stories, mockery and subtle put-down; negative body language such as sneering and rolling your eyes only serves to escalate the conflict.

Defensiveness is evident when our automatic response to thinking we are being attacked and to avoid any responsibility is to react defensively by: denying responsibility; making excuses such as “I couldn’t help it”, I didn’t mean it”, “It was beyond my control”; negative mind-reading by one person saying they know what the other is thinking and the whole thing spirals out of control. The quoted conversations show these are features of Aspie fights.
    
Negative Rubber man/Rubber Woman/“Tit for Tat” is when couples up the ante by ever expanding accusations and put downs. The disagreements and misunderstandings between Jack and Kirsten, along with their lack of ability to resolve arguments caused them both great distress. Their mind-blindness compounds the escalation of what would not even be an issue for a neurotypical. The nit-picking described by Kirsten becomes “tit for tat”. A neurotypical feels that same distress, being unable to stop or resolve what is really a non-argument.

“It was the disagreements that spiralled into serious conflicts when they could not understand and, then, find a way to comfort each other that threatened to break them apart. One might start over Kirsten’s request that Jack hug her when she came home from school, or his perception that she was already angry at him when she came through the door.
“The more we argue, the worse it gets,” Jack said once, close to despair.”
The outlook for these couples is not good. They are trapped in a negative cycle.

Suggestions from Eugene Kayser, (3) marriage and family therapist, for making a marriage work:

Be Realistic. Couples often go into marriage with idealistic notions of what marriage is all about. Each individual should make clear what their explicit and implicit expectations are and clarify these expectations such that they are clearly understood by one another. Where there are discrepancies, a mutually satisfying compromise must be reached. The belief by David that he had to always be what he believed to be “perfect”, before marriage, in order to impress Kristen, could not be sustained after marriage. It was too difficult to maintain the façade and he describes:

“By our third anniversary, the illusion I'd created had been shattered, and Kristen found herself married not to the husband she'd always wanted, but to a husband who had no idea how to go with the flow.”

Do Not Take One another For Granted. This can be a killer for a relationship. It usually occurs sometime after the honeymoon period. When our partner feels taken for granted, not respected or acknowledged, and feels that others are a higher priority than him/herself, resentment brews. A regular "state of the union" check-in with your spouse as to how s/he is feeling about the relationship can help avert resentment build-up.

Communication Skills. Being able to communicate is one of the greatest assets in any relationship. Being able to articulate our thoughts and being certain that the listener understands what you wish to say take considerable practice. Often we believe we are saying one thing, while the listener is hearing something entirely different. The listener often is responding to either what they believed you to say or their own interpretation.

Communication requires both good transmission skills (articulation) and good receptive skills (listening). Without both, communication will be at best difficult. Jack describes part of his attraction to Kirsten involved a distinctly one-sided didactic conversation pattern.
“She was the only girl to have ever asked questions about his obsessive interests —chemistry, libertarian politics, the small drone aircraft he was building in his kitchen — as though she actually cared to hear his answer.” Joint attention is a wish to share with others. Jack wants to “educate”, not share.

The approach, often referred to as "active listening," once learned can prevent misunderstandings and serve to keep emotions under control. It is difficult to react emotionally if you are truly listening and have to communicate understanding before you get a chance to react.

David honestly describes how his need to concentrate on one thing at a time and reluctance to be interrupted by his loved one resulted in a form of abuse: “A husband who lost his temper whenever his concentration was disrupted-even when it was disrupted by an act of affection, such as a kiss or a simple hello.”

Jack and Kirsten also had great difficulty with communication:
On that fall day in 2009, Kirsten did not know that someone as intelligent and articulate as Jack might be unable to read the feelings of others, or gauge the impact of his words.”

Keep the Romance Alive. Maintaining the romance in a relationship is vital to the vibrancy of the relationship

Develop Sexual Skills One of the most common problems that couples have is the lack of innovation. Sex becomes boring. Such predictability can lead to staleness and apathy. Communication about sexuality and the willingness to experiment will keep the bedroom activities exciting, interesting and fun.

Be Complimentary. It costs nothing to compliment your partner and it sure feels good to receive them. We are often tardy about paying compliments to our mates, letting them know that we think they are pretty/handsome, smart, clever, well-dressed, kind, a good parent, etc. We do not have to wait until some occasion when we purchase a greeting card to let our mates know that we think they are special.

Show Appreciation. Another small thing that feels good. Thanking your partner for making dinner or taking out the trash, picking up clothes from the dry-cleaners, and in general letting him/her know that s/he is appreciated can go a long way in creating a caring environment. Couples are very quick to criticize one another when chores do not get done, but they are very remiss when it comes to showing appreciation.

Honesty with kindness and consideration is the corner stone of building and maintaining trust. Without trust there is no hope of the marriage surviving.

David describes how “I could possibly elude a diagnosis if I assumed the right character while talking to a psychologist for an hour or two”. He is desperately trying to “act normal” and “look normal” and describes how “we dated for a year, a period of time that, in some ways, felt like a twelve-month-long audition.” … “After we were married, and we were living together around the clock, Kristen began to understand exactly what was hard to love about that guy: he wasn't entirely real.”

The subterfuge begins to unravel after marriage. David is unable to tell how he feels about himself and thus unwittingly brings dishonesty to the marriage.

Kirsten’s boyfriend has difficulty with the perceived rudeness and disrespect shown by Kirsten towards his mother:
“And sometimes, he was plainly upset by what he perceived as her rudeness. ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he huffed when his mother asked Kirsten how she was and she did not reciprocate.”

Every non-AS has the same reaction to the perceived disrespect shown sometimes by those on the spectrum.

Non-AS will continue to have an optimistic view that the relationship will grow and improve, which simply compounds their distress when the person with ASD finds it extremely difficult and almost impossible to change. Kirsten’s boyfriend describes it thus:
He “was convinced that with some effort she could become as socially adept as he was.”
The truth of the situation is that the person with ASD cannot make any real significant change because of the way their brain is wired.

As can be seen from the foregoing, maintaining a contemporary marriage is no easy task. It requires hard work. To think that a successful marriage -- that is a relationship between two people that is fulfilling, enhancing of one's sense of self-esteem, emotionally gratifying, nurturing, and supportive -- can be achieved by merely living under the same roof without investing effort and time, would be naive thinking. Some individuals believe that marriage should be easy, and if it is not, they think something is wrong.

Marriage, like any other worthwhile endeavor, requires patience and practice. Today's marriages are more than just two people living under the same roof. They are complex and dynamic entities that become even more complex as children enter the picture. For then there are additional dynamics that must be incorporated into the mix.

Maintaining a marriage is one of our most significant challenges. David describes the impossibility of a non-AS/AS intimate relationship working:
“That's how Asperger syndrome can so thoroughly destroy a relationship that at one time seemed (to me) invulnerable. If it's well-hidden, and you're not specifically looking for it, the condition can reveal itself slowly, one misunderstanding and baffling meltdown at a time.”
He laments a heartbreakingly slow decline in the marriage coupled with intermittent reward and abuse, due to the inconsistency of positive behaviours; only negative responses.

Lindsey and Dave realise their relationship will be a “lifelong struggle”.

Stephen Shore, (7) author of “Beyond the Wall” and international expert on autism, has said of relationship possibilities; those with AS “have hearts that feel; it’s the funky wiring in their brains that makes things so challenging.”

It is a truly, almost impossible, challenge for partners with ASD and their partners who are non-Asperger’s, to maintain and nurture a healthy, satisfying mature marriage relationship.

References:

  1. Making Your Marriage Work by Dr Edward A. Dreyfus Dr Edward A. Dreyfus is in private practice in Santa Monica, California where he practices as a clinical psychologist, divorce mediator and life coach. He offers individual and group psychotherapy as well as couples therapy and sex therapy. In his coaching practice he works with individuals seeking to enhance and balance their professional, career and personal life.

    Dr Dreyfus is a Licensed Psychologist and a Licensed Marriage, Family, & Child Therapist. He is also a Certified Sex Therapist of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a Diplomate and Fellow of the American Board of Sexology, a Fellow of the Academy of Clinical Sexologists, a Diplomate in Professional Psychotherapy of the International Academy of Behavioral Medicine, Counseling, and Psychotherapy, Inc., and a Diplomate of the American College of Forensic Examiners. Dr Dreyfus is a Registrant in the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology and is a Registrant in the National Register of Certified Group Psychotherapists.

    In 1996, he was the recipient of the prestigious Distinguished Psychologist Award given by the Los Angeles County Psychological Association. Dr Dreyfus has written three books, several book chapters, over two dozen professional articles, and has presented at many professional meetings.

  2. What makes marriage work? It's how you resolve conflict that matters most.
    By Dr John Gottman and Nan Silver published on March 01, 1994. Reviewed October 01, 2009

  3. Good Marriage or Failed Marriage? What Works & What Won't!
    Eugene Kayser MA, MFT Lic Marriage & Family Therapist

  4. How to live a high-functioning life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison
    Love Is Blind, Marriage Is the Eye-opener. What's it like, being married with Asperger's?
    December 13, 2011 by John Elder Robison
    David Finch is an author and lecturer. His debut memoir, THE JOURNAL OF BEST PRACTICES (Scribner; January 3, 2012) is available for pre-order now. David lives in Illinois with his wife and their two children. http://www.psychology...

  5. My Life With Asperger's New York Times Navigating Love and Autism By AMY HARMON
    Published: December 26, 2011 GREENFIELD, Mass.
    http://www.nytimes.com/...

  6. They’re Autistic—and they’re in Love. Lindsey Nebeker and Dave Hamrick each used to wonder if they’d ever find lasting love. Here’s how they came together—and how, side by side, they face the world.  February 2, 2009 by Lynn Harris
    Writer Lynn Harris is a contributing editor at Glamour. http://www.glamour.com/magaz...

  7. Stephen Shore, author of Beyond the Wall is an internationally recognized expert on autism who has the disorder himself. www.autismasperger.net/