From the moment I met Tom, I sensed he was a great deal like me. He had an interest in virtually all of my favorite activities, even my favorite pastime that no one else had ever expressed an interest in. Tom was just as enthralled as I was by university campuses… their architecture and structure, their quaint museums and galleries, their landscape and athletic stadiums, and their research libraries and bookstores. Later, it came as no surprise to me when he expressed an interest in becoming a college professor. The university environment is the perfect backdrop for his personality and mine. Many things caught our mutual interest, but virtually every one was linked by a common tie to solitude. Like me, Tom dislikes crowds and social gatherings. He does not care for environments that are charged with emotion or chaos, and he does not care how he fits in with the rest of the world. Like me, he is a loner. Quiet and calm became our glue. Now, I know that sounds simplistic and maybe even too subdued to act as a catalyst for togetherness, but in our case it provided a strong bond. To this day, it is the very element that draws us together even when we are at our worst.
When I try to list all the cracks in our communication, I immediately focus on how hard it is for me to follow Tom’s logic. He is a man of few words and I require grand elaborations, well calculated metaphors and strong visual images to understand language. For instance, if Tom were to tell me he was disappointed he had missed me at lunch, I would wonder if he meant to say he was sad — which is simply regretfully sorry; unhappy — which is somewhere between mad and sad; disheartened — which is a lonely sad; mad — which makes you want to argue with someone over what they had done; angry — which makes you want to ignore the person you are feeling this way towards; furious — which makes you want to spit; or none of the above. In order for me really to understand what people are saying I need much more than a few words mechanically placed together. A succinct speaking and writing style is not nearly enough for me. Words by themselves are too vague. Rich elaborations sitting along side colorful words come to life in my mind drawing pictures as they pull my thoughts together. But sometimes, even the most telling and detailed sentences are not enough to help me comprehend what is being said to me.
For the first several years of our marriage, Tom had no idea I was misconstruing his thoughts because, from his perspective, he had been clear and articulate. He was left to think I had just failed to listen to him while I was left wondering why he did not care that he had confused me so. My friends tell me their conversations with their spouse can also become confused and exasperating, particularly when they are engaged in discussions that require any intellectualizing or philosophizing, maybe something to do with their morals or ethics or religion or their ethereal ideals and values. But our communication discrepancies came more frequently than once in a while. Even when we spun words around the mundane and the routine — movies we had seen, books we had read, chores we had to do and trips we planned to take — even this kind of small talk, anchored in passing a few ideas or a bit of time, could send my thoughts and contemplations into a swirl of disarray.
I cannot adequately describe how convoluted our discussions became, back before we knew each other’s style of communicating was wreaking havoc on the messages we were meaning to convey. Suffice to say we would both argue for hours, all the while thinking to ourselves that nothing we were hearing was making any sense. I know that from my perspective it was almost as if my husband would begin to speak a foreign language. I would hear the words that came out of his mouth, but I simply could not attach any meaning to them. It was if they were random words pulled from a dictionary, placed in a sentence and then set before me as a complex and unsolvable word puzzle. I vividly recall many times when I would see my thoughts swirling in a tide, trying desperately to grab onto something familiar and safe. For years I thought this was the way it was for everyone. After all, isn’t this what popular culture and the mass media tell us, that men and women are unable to communicate, that they are wired too differently to ever connect? I came to believe our inability to communicate was the norm. I convinced myself every woman felt like each word from their husband’s mouth ran backwards, slipped through thresholds and hid under the surface never intending to be found. I even knew, was just positive, that wives across the world reacted like I did when their ears and mind were deceived. I believed each of them fought with their breathing for control of their speaking voice and their consciousness. Yet when I would ask other women if they could relate to my experiences, they would tell me they could barely even understand what I was trying to describe to them, much less relate to me. Of course they had arguments, they would tell me, but not like that. They never felt they were losing sight of the real world or that their husband was speaking in tongues. They simply reported that they and their spouse disagreed on an issue, told one another so, had their discussion and then either went their separate ways or got over the discrepancies. It did not take long for me to realize that once again, I was not following a normal path. Once again, I found myself face to face with my Asperger traits.
Nowadays I try very hard to gauge whether or not my reactions are being manifested by AS or by something more discrete. For instance, if I find myself in the middle of an argument with Tom, I will consciously stop speaking and run the specifics of the conversation through my mind as if it was a computer that could seek, find, and sort out all the extraneous variables that I relate to AS. I then imagine in my thoughts, two stacks of index cards — one that contains commonplace variables like stress and sleep deprivation and hormones, and one that contains AS traits like my rigid thinking or literal mindedness. Piece by piece, I then analyze a few sentences at a time, methodically analyzing which category of variables influenced each verbal exchange. For example, I typically ask myself questions like: could my understanding of this statement have been influenced by my rigid thinking; am I just under too much stress right now to hear anything properly; did I take his comment too literally; or am I misconstruing the implication of his word or words. Once I decide which influences are at play, I can then sift through the exchange again, this time throwing out the pieces that I think my AS has affected. At that point, I can finally reevaluate the conversation and determine where things began to fall off track.
Sometimes, I will be able to fix things up by asking Tom to redefine or elaborate a specific point or I might choose to ignore an entire passage or two deciding it is just too convoluted to sort out, or I might come to the conclusion that my husband himself made a comment that was just plain rude, wrong or misguided. When I have an inkling the crux of my confusion and my inability to follow his thoughts is more influenced by my AS than anything else, I will directly say to Tom — I think my AS is confusing me. Please start over and tell me again what you are trying to tell me. This confession of mine has never failed to help both of us stop the arguing immediately, whereupon Tom can begin his point all over again, but this time with a great deal more care and precision behind his words. However, if I come to believe one of the non-AS variables is at play, I will usually do what my friends are able to do, state my argument and go on my way. More often than not, I tend to believe it is my AS that is interfering with the moment.
Most of the time Tom can restructure his conversations until I can decode what he is telling me. On other occasions there is nothing he can do to forestall my rigid thinking — nothing. Typically I am inflexible in my understanding of words that convey time or order or specific action. For instance, if Tom told me he was going to leave his office in a few minutes, run by the bank, stop by the store and then pick me up from the library, I would expect him to do exactly those things, in exactly that order, in exactly that time frame. It would not do at all if he changed his mind and left the office an hour later than he had planned, ran by the bank, came to pick me up and then suggested we run by the store. Something as seemingly innocuous as this will send me over the wall each and every time. I would have been terribly shaken because he did not leave the office when he told me he would, and also because his actions did not follow the sequential order he told me he would follow. Even if I had been enjoying my time in the library and were anxious to get to the store myself, I would still be unable to tolerate this breach in time and sequence. These episodes become lost in my perseverations. Times when I cannot, despite all attempts toward the opposite, let go of a train of thought. It is as if my mind has trapped the contents of everything that has been said or shown me, far beyond the walls of a house of mirrors. When this happens, my husband has learned that the only thing he can do is ride time until I can settle my dizzying thoughts onto something untouched by my panic and my confusion.