The situation between us

In case you haven't read the bios yet, here's the breakdown: I'm the autistic spouse and Mike is the Aspie. I'm quiet, withdrawn, obsessive, and lack understanding (and even at times a want to understand) emotions and the world. I am more content to sit and read or write ignoring everything around me. Mike, on the other hand, is talkative, has a need to figure everything out, repetitive, and has problems reading people and fully understanding motives.

Individual issues are much more complicated than that, but there's the basic breakdown. In a "normal" relationship Mike would fare well as his problems are more socially oriented and it is in this where our balance comes into play. Since the beginning, Mike and I have had a pretty steady balance. Where he understands emotions, I can read many social behaviors. When I become withdrawn and moody, he tries to figure out what's wrong so we can fix it. There's noting to balance our equally obsessive behaviors and those often clash in rather interesting ways.

Many of the problems in our relationship come from emotional understanding. Mike can get very emotional about issues between us where I often don't see the point in having emotion about some things. Emotions are difficult for anyone on the spectrum and in a relationship with these two extremes, emotions can be downright hell to get through.

But...But once they've been figured out and once Mike and I reach an understanding about the emotions involved in a particular issue, it becomes much easier for a little while or at least until the next issue pops up. I'm not trying to say that our relationship is battle after battle, but more like rough, rocky terrain that tends to change from day to day and for which we lost the map 500 miles behind us. We figure out each step as we go and make note of those techniques which work and ignore those that don't. We move forward with love and understanding that we both have issues.