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Scrambled brains and exhaustion on your part has to do with Executive Function (EF) deficits on his part.​ 

If  you read the section called Accidental Narcissist which has to do with  Mind Blindness and Alexithymia, that part dealt with why your heart has  taken such a beating.  This is the other half of the problems you're  having.

​​Are  you dumbfounded when your husband with Asperger's who has a really good  job is so rigid about his daily life that nothing, no holiday, no  guest, no emergency is allowed to disrupt it?  Can’t run his own  calendar at home?  Can’t plan anything?  Or can’t hold his part of an  argument with you that makes any sense? 

Never  senses any danger to you or the kids?  Can’t handle change?  Blows up  over nothing?  Executive Function (EF) dysfunction is the part that  explains why so many discussions with him end up scrambling your  brains. 

Just so you know, problems in Executive Function have nothing to do with intelligence.  Nothing.

​Theoretically  this should make it somewhat simple to bring up the subject with him,  and not emotionally loaded, but unfortunately not for everyone. 

For  some reason pride gets involved with some Aspies.  I wish it were not  so. We have to approach each Aspie as an individual when we work on  these issues. 

It’s easy to tell when you’re seeing him or her  having a problem in this area.  When you see them not being able to  cope, manage, monitor, plan, remember, control themselves or resist  shifting gears, you’re dealing with Executive Function disorders. 

A man with Asperger’s told me how Executive Function was described to him and we both like that version for a summary.

Let’s  say you want to go shopping at the supermarket.  You are lying in your  pajamas in bed when you decide to do this.  What if there are ten steps  that you must take in order to go there and come home successfully with  the groceries you want.

Any failure of those ten steps along the  way might end up with you at your chosen grocery store without your hair  being combed, or at a hardware store, or at the right grocery but no  list to remind you which products you wanted, or with no wallet to pay  for them.  You have to figure out the right actions to take in the  proper sequence in order to pull this off. 

Not getting that trip  done right means you have to sort out what steps were missing, which  ones were done ineffectively and then set up ways to support yourself to  make it happen properly next time. 

Autism has so many variables  that you must keep in mind as we go over the EF list below, that every  person will have their own personal manifestation of some of these  problems.  Some parts of EF will function very well for some folks and  others can have more serious deficits.

As usual most of the  research is with children and little done with adults.  Instead of just  listing the scientific categories with overtones alluding to children  and leaving you to extrapolate that list to adults, I’ve described some  of the behaviors you might see with your adult partner in the major  categories and what the results are that you’re stuck with.

Which ones are you dealing with?  And to what degree? 

Planning issues are going to look like Calamity Jane time to you.  This Aspie will not  show up to an event with the appropriate clothing for that event, or no  notebook. Maybe he will wear the right clothing every time, but will not  write down the date or time of the event, or not plan his use of time  and show up late everywhere. 

You  will be stuck managing all planning, calling him ahead of time to  remind him, monitoring his use of time before you go, making sure he has  everything in addition to doing this all for yourself too. And the  kids.

Lack of self-management will appear as not  asking himself to use deodorant every day.  He will stink and you’ll  have to tell him about it which may cause an argument right there.  You  may discover this too late at a social function and have to keep him  away from everybody. 

He may never hang his clothes up as soon as  they come out of the dryer.  He will look like he slept in wadded up  clothes when he puts them on the morning and is perfectly willing to go  off to work in them.  When questioned, he’ll reply that they’re clean  and that he’s clothed, he’s not naked; what’s the big deal? 

You  will be stuck arguing with him about being fired for looking disheveled,  or being an embarrassment when you go to PTA meetings or get together  with friends, and yet this does not override his refusal to take care of  his laundry properly. 

Maybe  you’ll end up doing all his laundry so that you don’t have to worry  about him being on the boss’s short-list for people to get rid of should  there be a clear-out at work.  He will not thank you for this, he may  even glare when you tell him this is the way it’s going to be but he’ll  let you do it.​

Impulse control challenges will have him interrupting you all the time.  He might interrupt the  kids or your friends too.  You shudder to think of what he’s doing at  work.  When you complain or discuss this you might be attacked for  speaking too long, or that you had passed your main point long ago. 

Complaining  does no good because he gets indignant when he can’t say everything  that pops into his head the minute he thinks of it.  You have to step in  at social events by bringing a subject back around that he cut off so  that friends don’t get too aggravated.

Memory issues can be observed where you ask him to do three things for you for  example.  You might want him to defrost some chicken, water a plant out  on the back patio and bring in the cat litter from the trunk of the  car. 

Once you get past the resistance of asking him to do  something for you, he might eventually go out for the cat litter, but  you’ll be lucky if he does anything else. 

When you go to fix  dinner you’ll discover the chicken is still frozen in the freezer.  That  means that at all times you’ll have to hold your requests in your head  to ask him later, or know you'll have to nag him until he tells you it’s  done and be resented for that, or be stuck just doing it all yourself. 

By  the way, stop asking them three things to do for you as you walk down  the hall.  Just ask for one at a time.  Saves a lot of grief.

​

Rigidity or inflexibility problems can be seen in his fanatical adherence to his daily routine. Whether  you’re at home, or away on vacation, don’t even think about asking him  to change the time he gets up or to hurry with his morning routine.  In  Aspie Land, there is no “hurry.”  There is no divergence from routine  either. 

If he always has his coffee with hazelnut creamer you  are stuck either having to remember to buy it and bring it along on  holiday or be prepared to be in a car zipping around wherever you are  tracking some down.  He won’t remember to buy it and pack it but he will  expect you to drop everything if it isn’t there to go get it. 

Rigidity  may manifest another way entirely.  You may be dealing with someone who  insists on living in a home where everything has a place, it’s always  clean and organized to the point where it looks like photographers are  going to come and do a session for a home and garden magazine on every  room in your house including your closets. 

Every  hanger will be paced visually equally from the next one, desks will be  Spartan, shoes will be orderly and shined and so on. 

It’s nice  to look at, but when your Aspie insists on maintaining this compulsive  level of perfection at the expense of balance of life and demand that  you do it too, it becomes a dominating issue. 

You’ll  be accused of being a slob even though you may be nowhere close to that  and feel oppressed to attain those high standards with everything else  on your task list.   

Trouble finishing things?   Are there many projects all over the house and yard that he really  enjoys doing or wants to do but none of them ever cross the finish  line?  Are you stumbling over his piles of uncompleted projects  listening to him complaining about not finishing? Perhaps instead he  avoids the subject altogether.  

If these projects have to do  with something functionally pressing around the house like cleaning out a  room to convert it to an office, then you often have to add completing  his projects to the list of your own.

Lack of motivation to be involved often adds to your burden.  As the years go by it often comes to mind  that certain things need to be tackled and it’s always easier if the two  of you contribute to this. 

If there is not an on-going or apparent reward involved, sometimes your  Aspie just doesn’t have anything to do with those projects even though  he agrees it would be nice to have them done.  

Some things that  can get abandoned are making out a will, changing a room over to another  use, planning a trip to another country, calling and supervising  repairs, financial planning and much more. 

Frequently they’ll  put you on notice that if you want a certain thing, you’re on your own  regardless of the fairness of the situation.  You want pets?  “Fine.   Just don’t get me involved in their care.” 

Those  animals that he grows to love so much can be starving if you’re caught  getting home several hours late, but will he help?  Sometimes no.  The  critters can be begging and frantic but “you’re the one who wanted  pets,” so not his problem.  It’s yours.

​Is there a hard time knowing what to focus on at home?  You may know he has a list of things he has agreed to do.  He may even  want to do them. But there he sits, fooling around with something  trivial for hours every weekend instead of getting down to anything on  his list.  That leaves you to nag, remind, or do some of those things  for him “in your spare time.” 

Verbal Reasoning problems are most evident when you want to shoot your own brains out during discussions with him.  

There  comes a point where you are mentally shut down and stunned into silence  because there is so much illogic spewing out in front of you that you  don’t know where to start.  At times like these it’s not worth your  trying to untangle things with him. 

Your partner may be at least  as smart as you are if not more.  Yet there he stands, snorting with  aggravation, with a point in mind that he thinks he has conveyed with  complete clarity, yet you know his points as expressed are garbled.   Scrambled brains time. 

He may indeed have a good point to make, but you know it’s still in there somewhere because he hasn’t make it yet!

Meltdowns and Blind Rages are the most extreme version of the inability to self-inhibit or self-control.   These are also tied in with Alexithymia which I cover in "Accidental  Narcissist."  The Aspie blows up in general exasperation or directly at  you from one second to the next over nothing that you can detect.  They  can be white-faced, yelling and intimidating all the way up to when you  fear for your safety. 

You  are stuck trying to get out of these situations while trying to calm  down your partner.  Then you have to spend the next few weeks trying to  calm down your shredded nerves using every technique you can think of. 

Error over-reaction.  What if your Aspie cannot accept errors that anyone else makes, or  flips out when they make them themselves?  This has to do with  self-regulation. 

Actually  this also has to do with the fact that their brains are highly capable  of finding any irregularity or error in anything, but I probably don't  need to tell you about that.  Ahem.  Anyway, you spend a lot of time  defending yourself when they find one of your imperfections.   

If  they freak out their own lack of perfection you are dragged into  endless conversations about the same thing telling him how good they are  at things in general, that he’s a good person and it’s really okay.

The inability to evaluate what they do and who they are shows up when the Aspie is constantly under-valuing themselves. 

It's  especially aggravating when it shows as they use their own high  intelligence as the only thing worth measuring against the rest of  humanity and decide they are better than everyone else. Condescension  and arrogance; ah the joys.  

Anyone tired yet?

This  list was not complete either but it hits the main points.  We NTs  (neurotypicals) know we are far from perfect but this list is helpful if  you are trying to get clear about what kind of problems you are having  with your Aspie mate.  If you know where the problems lie, there are  ideas and tools available to improve some of these categories. 

So what do we do with this?

I  know that whether you are a brain surgeon or a stay-at-home mom, if you  try telling your husband who makes $150,000 a year at work, or he’s a  terrific car mechanic, “hey, honey, let’s get out a timer, some yellow  stickies and a calendar to work on your Executive Function deficits,"  he’ll look at you as though you had lost your mind.  Insulted?  Oh  yeah.  Not gonna work.

There are ways to suggest to your Aspie  that there are solutions that would make him feel a lot better about  certain areas of his life and give him a lot more control about the  outcomes of things important to him. 

He  may listen, he may not.  There are a number of ways to let him know  about this, but you have to tailor it to what he knows about himself and  be wary of his ego. 

One problem we have in helping them with  Executive Function problems is that they often tell you they don’t have  any problems, but they suggest that you do.  They’re fine with things.  They probably aren’t but that’s what they might say because of pride or in some cases, arrogance. 

Even if you get graphic about it to get his attention he may fall back  on his intellect while asking you why you want to talk about this. 

If  you’re fed up by this time you might end up replying to him by yelling  at the top of your lungs, “because you can’t remember more than one  thing that I ask you to do, you freak out every time I change plans for  the weekend, you blow up a couple of times a year at me over nothing and  I can’t take it anymore!!!”  

Don’t do this.  Nobody can hear what you're saying when they’re being yelled at.  

There  isn’t a pill for overall Executive Function deficits.  Even if your  partner doesn’t want to hear about EF and will do nothing, with love and  kindness in your heart there are all kinds of things you can do  yourself to get him set up with solutions without alerting him to the  point where he gets defensive. 

It all starts with sorting out what’s hard for him and what’s easy for him, then making a priority list.

Come home to yourself~~~