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[MamaRuga]

Originally Posted by Lovemy3babies 

That is sooo interesting! I didnt realize that either. That is my husband though, he always pays such close attention to details because he HAS to in order to do it right. Things we just take for granted! 

My husband is hoping to be a Pastor of a church. He teaches sunday school, preaches at the nursing home we go to on thursdays and preaches at our church on the days when my pastor is gone or sick and sometimes just because lol. He says he is still scared everytime he does it lol. But I dont think you can tell, because he is an over achiever so he is always very very well prepared and studied. He studies A LOT. 

Being the special interest of an aspie can be .... challenging. Its kinda crazy really. LIke, I think, I cant imagine someone loving another person as much as my husband loves me. He has this love for me that goes beyond normal love. And I do love it because I am a very insecure person, but at times it is hard. I am a  more leave me alone, not wanting to be touched kinda person. But even though I want the attention, at the same time I dont, and as I am sure you know, someone with aspergers needs a CLEAR MESSAGE, not hints or signs. You need to spell it out. I cant hint around, he doesnt get it. It used to upset me before I knew what this was, now its soo much easier to deal with because he cant help it. 

With the kids he is pretty good. I would say he has a little less empathy then I do, and maybe expects a little more out of them, but over all he is pretty good. He isnt athletic or into anything really. Before me it was video games, but alas, that has passed :D Although now, if I am just really not wanting to be touched or am gone, he turns to video games to keep his mind occupied until I am there lol. 

Your DH sounds a lot like mine when it comes to being an over achiever in public speaking.  I think that is so awesome that your DH wants to be a pastor.  I can imagine he must be really good at it with the amount of preparation and study and detail he probably puts into preaching.  My DH teaches adult classes and is really amazing at it.  People just love him because he is so clear and is able to take really huge concepts and make them easy to understand.  But the personal side is so draining for him.  Because he is so good at it (and no one knows he has aspergers) they flock to him after seminars wanting a lot of one on one attention.  This is the most challenging part for him.  I would imagine there would be a lot of that as a pastor too.  My DH can be wonderful here too, but it takes so much more work for him than it might for someone without AS.  He is drained for days afterwards and has little left for me or the family.  That is the challenging part.  But, now that I understand it better I'm able to give him more space.  I used to get really frustrated about it.  

[amberskyfire]

Wow, that is so neat that your husbands both want to be pastors! With DH's Asperger, he actually can't even conceive of religion or a god. He just does not understand it. He doesn't have the mental tools to grasp the concept at all. He told me a story about how he tried for a long time to be Christian and was super into it, but just stopped after a while because though he had gone through the motions for a long time, he didn't feel anything and didn't understand any of it. I always thought that all other Aspies were like this too, but now I see that I was wrong.

That must be incredible being your husband's special interest! When I read it out loud to DH he said "wow, that must be annoying!" LOL! They are so blunt with the truth of what they think, aren't they? :)

[amandark]

This is so fascinating.  I'm really excited to be part of this group.

I'm relatively new to my relationship.  My girlfriend and I just celebrated the first anniversary of our first date.

I think I've been a special interest for her since before we met.  (We met through match.com so we emailed for a while before we decided to meet.)  At first we lived about 45 minutes apart, and I wouldn't be able to see her more than one or two days a week, and it was so frustrating for her that she would occasionally tell me she didn't want to see me at all for a while.  This was always hard for me to hear and understand, and led to very long discussions.  I eventually would accept what she was saying and we might take a short break, but it never really changed things very much.  We spent more and more time together.  Just a couple months ago, we decided to move in together, mostly for financial reasons.  Ideally we would have moved into a new home for both of us to set up together, but in reality my son and I moved into her place, which is a studio.  The living situation has been a bit of a struggle.  It's traumatic for her to allow me to change things in her space.  Deciding just how involved she wants to be in raising my DS (who just turned three) has also been tough, but I'll go into that more in the discipline thread.

Reading through this thread, I can see I'm really lucky.  She is very physically affectionate, I would say more than I am, with people she loves.  She showed me how she likes to be hugged, nice long hugs, which I love, much better than the quick polite hugs in my family.  She likes to cuddle at night, although she didn't prior to her last relationship.  She was diagnosed with AS well before our relationship and she told me about it in her first email to me so from the beginning, I was aware and able to take it into consideration when her behavior just didn't make sense to me.  She also spent a lot of time studying relationships and psychology after her last relationship ended very badly, and I think that has helped us.  And like I mentioned, she focuses her attention on me a lot of the time.

[MamaRuga]

Welcome!  You have a great advantage, I think, knowing that AS is part of the relationship dynamics right from the start.  I knew my DH for 10 years before we got married, and then it was another 8 years after that before we figured it out.  I think it helped a lot that we had such a long friendship first.  I knew him really well.  We even wrote something into our wedding vows about "honoring each others funny little ways" as an way of understanding that we (mostly he) had quirks that we were going to be living with.  But knowing right up front in the relationship can save so much heartache.  

Change is hard for any of us, both aspies and not.  I can imagine it is tough for her to adjust to having the two of you in what used to be her space.  Luckily when my partner and I moved in together he moved into my space, so it was a bit easier.  But he still really struggled to live just the two of us in a small apartment.  Today we have a 4 bedroom house and he still doesn't feel he has enough space to himself.  I have to keep reminding him of how we used to get along fine in a one bedroom apartment.  

Glad you found our group!