NBC's "Parenthood" - The Big O

Hey guys, check out the latest episode of NBC's "Parenthood." In this episode, Max's parents hire a behavioral therapist to help Max (and his parents) deal with his Asperger's.

To boot, the behavioral therapist is hot.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/140104/parenthood-the-big-o

OBSESSIVE HOBBYING

ASPIE CHARACTERISTIC: HOARDING (a by-product of repetitive interests and behavior)

This is probably one of my favorite of Grace's aspie moves. When having an aspie partner, the unraveling period can be especially fun because when they're ready to bring their obsessive hobbying out of the woodwork, you're bombarded with an awe-inspiring amount of ...stuff. Lucky for me, I actually find Grace's hobbies genuinely interesting. Imagine if she collected used paper cups (I spoke with a mother whose aspie son did this. True story).

From the top image and down, Grace's very enthusiastic interests include (but are not limited to):

Film Cameras + Film: This was the first hobby that I became acquainted with. I initially didn't think anything strange about it; in fact, I myself took a liking to this interest and added four of my own cameras to her collection. She has over twenty cameras and is basically an encyclopedia for film cameras.

Sticker Collection: This picture does not do her sticker collection justice. This one awards her the most geek points. She has probably over three-hundred individual stickers. Just a guess.

Skateboard Decks: These made their debut while Grace was completely drunk and hosting her birthday party. It was also the first time I had ever seen them. She just kept pulling them out of these boxes and stacking them on my friend's lap and then passed out 10 minutes later. She has around 30 decks? And I think some are hidden away at her parents' house?

Yo-Yos: Her current love. She practices at least one hour per day (and is getting very good if I might add) and has become an enclopedic resource on all things yo-yo. The above picture is only around half of her collection. She has around 80 in total.

Tell me, whose partner is as fantastically unique and quirky as mine?!

Grace has made this compulsion very easy on me because she's incredibly considerate. She hides things. She has only a few yo-yos out at a time and I never see the rest of her collection as they're neatly stored away in cases and boxes. But if Grace's hoarding ever began to irk me, I'd just politely suggest that she store her stuff in a safe place that wasn't in immediate view. Aspies can be socially retarded, but not socially stupid and selfish, so I think sometimes they just need cues. Whatever friction Grace and I may have is usually reconciled through straight-forward and polite discourse. Remember, aspies aren't the best at guessing what you're grumbling about, so get a clear dialogue going. Like any rational human being, they'll be willing to accommodate or compromise. Unless your aspie so happens to be a dick.

I would also suggest establishing a real and honest interest in your aspie's hobbies.

Note to self/To come: I want to discuss the importance of manners. Also, NT partners taking on aspie characteristics, erroneously attributing other quirks to aspiness, childhood awkwardness, poor communication (ESL, ceiling eyes), AFFD,,

ASPERGERS IN THE MEDIA

BONES, Fox, Thursdays @ 8pm

I love this show. Agent Bones (Emily Deschanel) is a brilliant aspie FBI agent. She awkwardly (and oh so charmingly) is learning how to properly socialize with the help of her partner Agent Booth, played by David Boreanaz. Their sexual/romantic chemistry is sheepishly adorable.

PARENTHOOD, NBC, Tuesdays @ 10pm (but I think they've yet to find a permanent time slot)

Eight-year-old kid named Max is an aspie. I haven't seen too many episodes, but Grace has already admitted that the show has depicted one of her childhood aspie moments.

I will amend this list as I get more information.

TOUGH LOVE

When dating a closet aspie trying to pass as an NT, there will come a point in your courtship when you will realize that the more you've gotten to know your partner, the more she's distanced herself.

Now I am sure there are plenty of aspies on the market who are aware of and willing to talk (on and on and on and on) about their diagnosis, but Grace hadn't ever heard of Asperger's during the infancy of our courtship. She just felt like an alien (and sometimes acted like one) and wanted to keep these feelings and behaviors hushed.

The closer Grace and I became, the more I realized how aloof and private she was. There is always a shadow of mystery surrounding someone new you're dating... but after six months of dating, it isn't mysterious. It's just odd.

"Modern Love: Somewhere Inside, a Path to Empathy," is a great article about aspies and their partners (thanks to M. Chu for sending it to me), and it offers insight from the aspie point of view. David Finch is the fellow aspie; Kristen is his distraught wife, searching for reasons to understand why her husband has begun to feel like a stranger after two years of marriage:

“I don’t know when things got bad,” Kristen said, wiping away tears. “I feel like I’ve lost you and I don’t know what will bring you back.”

In reality she hadn’t lost me. She’d found me. The facade of semi-normalcy I’d struggled to maintain was falling away, revealing the person I’d been since childhood... During the years Kristen and I dated, I was on my best behavior. When I slipped, she seemed to find my eccentricity endearing... On a friendly level, and for short periods of time, I was able to sustain a wonderful version of myself... But Kristen was living with me [now, and] there was no longer anywhere ... to hide. [Read the entire article at here.]

Grace has restless leg syndrome (a condition where those suffering from it feel tingling sensations in their legs and incidentally need to jolt to shake out the tingling), and initially she would refuse to sleep next to me whenever she had really bad bouts of it. Sometimes she would just get up in the middle of the night to sleep on the couch. One night while grumbling and gathering her pillow to sleep outside, I told her, "Grace, if you need to kick it out, just kick it out!" And to this day I'll get startled awake to her rapid, Chun-Li kicks in bed.

And this is also how I approached her Asperger's. When I first became suspicious, I attempted to really embrace all of her odd behavior so that she didn't feel that she needed to hide away or be alone to be comfortable. And once you establish that trust (I won't get irritated when you start kicking your legs into the night. I won't make fun of your obsession with yo-yos. I will listen intently to your fun aspie fact of the day), she will gladly share her entire life with you.

My apologies for the infrequent updates.

I've become acquainted with a woman who married an aspie and bore an aspie son. My interview with her to come in the next few weeks!

PILLOW TALK

When Grace and I first started dating, it was immediately clear that she wasn't like most girls. My exgirlfriend cursed out strangers, mailed trash to litterbugs, swung from trees. Grace was polite, very carefully collected, and incredibly agreeable.

"ON OUR FIRST DATE"

INT. HAMA SUSHI, LITTLE TOKYO

CINDY

...yeah, and I don't necessarily even think pedophilia is disgusting. It's just a social construct...

GRACE

... yeah, totally. To each his own, y'know?

END FLASHBACK

Wait, what just happened here? Did you even hear what I said?

So in the first few months of our courtship, I just thought Grace was really-- and I regret to say this now-- fake. Phony. A caricature of one of those bubbly "nice girls" on TV that would say anything to be liked.

Even when I started sleeping over, I thought that surely being soggy with sleep would disarm her, but she kept with that exact one-dimensional, poised, smiling stiffness. Surely she isn't stupid or simple-- not Grace with her "I have to read exactly one book per month" regimen, with her endless recitation of trivia about old movies, cameras, and fun food facts...

She was such a mystery to me, so I pressed on. One night, I asked her to tell me one of her deep, dark secrets. I told her I liked Michael Bolton. And then she turns to me and tells me, with absolutely no hesitation or syncopation, something so inappropriate and so heavy that even to this day, I can barely repeat the words in my head without revisting that shock. And the entire time, she's got that really sweet smile.

Then she started to unravel, and that's when things got bad.

PUBLIC FACE

me: i think i'm gonna start a blog about asperger's syndrome

me: and how to live with and love someone who has asperger's.

victoria: oh, interesting!

victoria: do you know someone who has it?

me: i think Grace does.. i thought i told you

victoria: oh really? no, you didn't.

victoria: but she seems normal to me..

Right. Because those with A.S. are high-functioning and incredibly adaptive, by the time aspies are adults, they become really good at mimicking normal social interactions.

Ok, let me backtrack a bit-- Aspies (and I am generalizing here) don't experience and learn social interactions as intuitively as you and I do. And I think this is because aspies are empathically BANKRUPT. When I say an aspie is completely void of empathy, I don't mean they don't feel sad when fluffy puppies die. I mean they do not intuitively sense what another human being is feeling.

Example? Ok, story time!

I was talking to my officemate Tony about John Stuart Mill's feminist ideology once (jealous?), and when he started "uh huh"ing at regular intervals and typing away at his computer, I got it-- he just wasn't interested (no one is). This realization was instant and intuitive. Aspies, on the other hand, don't feel that burning shame that we all choke down once we've realized we are utterly uninteresting. Tony's body language would not intuitively mean anything to them.

This picture pretty much sums up what I mean:

"La la la la... wait, is something going on?"

So an aspie's social survival depends on how well she can memorize and improvise social scripts, and I will elaborate on this in my next update. By the time aspies are adults, their social interactions are as natural as... a veteran closet gay making love to his wife.

INTRODUCTION

Let me quickly introduce myself-- my name is Cindy (pictured left), I am 25, I live in Los Angeles, and I am in a line of work that goes after Big Oil. Yes, I am being vague.

My girlfriend-- who is the subject of this blog-- is "Grace," 29, works in the toy industry, is one of the smartest people I know, is infinitely fascinating, and... is an aspie. Grace is well aware of this blog; she has given me her blessing and support.

A great fault of mine is that I have amazing (though admittedly selective) memory. Unfortunately, this generally applies to offbeat experiences and exchanges. In other words, if an experience is incongruous to an expected social script, I will obsess over it forever. Remember that time you asked me for a cigarette without saying "Hi" first? Yeah, that was rude. I am going to obsess over it for the next six months now, mulling over every single detail of the exchange, fabricating thousands of scenarios in an attempt to make sense of whatever transpired.

This compulsion has benefited me in slowly realizing Grace's disorder*. She was always such a mystery to me (or just a hipster) until I suspected that she had Asperger's Syndrome, about eight months into our relationship. And suddenly it felt like a really bad gimmick in a really trite movie-- suddenly all the bizarre behavior and exchanges made perfect sense, suddenly you breathe a knowing and assured sigh, suddenly you forgive her for all of her misperceived wrongdoings.

(I will attempt to stay very true to the timeline of events thanks to googlechat and flickr logs.)

*Disorder is such a dirty word. Let's divorce it from all of its negative connotations. I mean no insult.

OBJECTIVE

There is such little space on the Internet dedicated to Asperger's Syndrome, and this already limited space caters overwhelmingly to a) those who have Asperger's Syndrome or b) parents caring for their children with Asperger's Syndrome.

Where is all the space for partners of aspies? Where are the resources on Asperger dating, relationship counseling, sexuality? We need support and solidarity, too! Well, there is so little of it because there is so little awareness of adult Asperger's (as symptoms become increasingly latent in adulthood). And let's face it-- most aspies just can't score dates. Just kidding.

The objective of this blog is to document my life with my partner, whom I have discovered to have Asperger's Syndrome. It has been incredibly difficult but even more rewarding.

WHAT IS ASPERGER'S SYNDROME?

In my own words: A.S. is a form of *gasp!* autism. It is a social learning disability that falls on the "high-functioning" end of the autism spectrum. Most individuals who have asperger's are high functioning, blend in seamlessly with the general population (who aspies call "NT's," or neuro-typicals. NERD ALERT!), and typically have higher IQ's than the median individual. The most interesting people I've met have been aspies. In other words, if you *had* to be a retard, Asperger's Syndrome is the type of retard you want to be.

Typical symptoms include but are not limited to: Lack of empathy (not to be mistaken with lack of kindness or compassion), having unflinching devotion to routines, obsessive hobbying and hoarding, prefers being alone over socializing, has difficulty forming relationships that are more than superficial.

(I want to disclose here that I am going to create a pseudonym for every single individual that I will mention in this blog because I want to respect everyone's privacy. Additionally, this blog was created in good faith. It is absolutely not my intention to make fun of, denigrate, or ostracize those with Asperger's. In fact, it is my intention to create awareness and a space for aspie lovers in an accessible way. Also, this blog will consist of my personal opinions and observations only; I fully recognize that I am not a figure of authority in diagnosing or recommending treatment or counselling for Asperger's Syndrome.)