Happily Ever After Aspergers?

I've added a subtitle to my blog to reflect the thunderbolt realization that I came to last February that my husband, the one I've been struggling to understand for the past 7 and a half years, is actually a man with Aspergers. I know that label is one that he resists and that most people shy away from, but having it in place has changed my world and made me realize that all of the most troubling aspects of our married life finally had an explanation that made sense. The label of Aspergers made everything clear. Reading about the "condition" and how having it affected relationships and marriage shocked me to my core. All of the problems that I attributed to our stepfamily condition were really facets of dealing with an Aspergers' spouse and his offspring. In fact, I came to the realization that he had Aspergers after learning about his son's Tourette's, ADHD, and LD diagnoses the previous spring. The counsellor who spoke to him about his son's condition noted that my spouse had Tourette's symptoms as well. That became something we were able to talk about thereafter. Then, in February, after reading an article about an adult who realized that they had Aspergers, I realized that my spouse not only had Tourette's, but it was co-morbid with his Aspergers.

This has been a long, hard year. 2016 has been tough for many of us; for me it was the year of the hard truths. I am married to a man who will likely never change his odd and frustrating habits and rigid and perplexing routines. His condition makes him unable to truly appreciate and empathize with my feelings. Certainly, he is unable to actively engage with me in a way that I have always expected of an intimate partner. I have no sense of him being present or even truly intimate with me. I am often terribly lonely and fear that I am losing hope. I want to use this blog to try to recover and restore some sense of order and understanding to my experiences. I am hoping that 2017 will be a better, more fulfilling, more uplifting year, not only for me, but for all of us. We could all use a little more hope.