Asperger man married to manic-depressive wife

[Guest guest]

To all:

I am a 56 year old man who hasn't been diagnosed with aspergers, but

was diagnosed as a child with " infantile autistic psychosis " and had

to go to a special school for 3 years, and then had to go to a

(substandard) " mental health clinic " once a week as an older child.

I've read about aspergers' and believe I have a mild form.

My wife has been diagnosed as manic depressive, is taking pills and

is no longer to work on a full-time basis, although she continues to

work part-time. Because of some pill she took in the past that had an

adverse reaction, she has akathisia, and for the first two hours or

so in the morning she can't do much of anything except read or watch

TV or go on the computer, is super-sensitive and is quick to get

angry. I, on the other hand, when I wake up in the morning am very

anxious, and feel that whatever pressing problems I have left over

from the previous day have to be solved NOW!!! So I tell my wife, in

an anxious voice, and she can't tolerate any disturbance becuase of

her akathisia, and that leads to fights.

Another thing is that I love order and stick-to-itiveness (at least

to some degree--I'm not a militarist) so it makes me angry when she,

because of her depression, has tasks or chores for the day and can't

do any of them--even if they don't involve me per se.

Third, I often feel frustrated by her mood swings. When she says that

she can't do anything (i.e. cleaning the house, making phone calls)

because she's depressed, I tell her to take a walk around the block,

go to the garden, watch TV, go to the restaurant -- and when she says

she's too depressed to do even that, I feel even more frustrated and

angry.

Fourth, and this is my fault, my pride (which she calls " false

pride " ) often leads to fights. For example, someone we knew died and

we got into many arguments. I finally told her that this person's

death was upsetting me, but I hadn't mentioned it earlier because of

my (false?) masculine pride that " I can deal with it. " Same thing

when my computer broke down.

Finally, it makes me upset that even when she's arguing with me, a

female friend of hers will call and she's very polite with them. She

says they're very supportive and know how to give support. When I try

to do that, and try as hard as I can to come up with a solution to

her problem of the moment, she often says that she doesn't want

advice per se but wants empathy. I can't say, " oh, I feel your pain, "

because, frankly, I can't really feel for another person to any

strong degree (which doesn't mean that I'm a bad person--recently,

I've been able a little bit to imagine how painful her akathisia

might be, but it took me 10 years to get to that point).

Any comments, solutions?

Raanan G.