Marriage and Lasting Relationships with Asperger's Syndrome by Eva A. Mendes

Author:Eva A. Mendes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857009814
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2015-07-20T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

BRIDGING PARALLEL PLAY

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

LAO TZU

♥ NICO AND ZOEY’S STORY ♥

Nico, an electrician and Zoey, an art-school professor had been married for 11 months. When they came to see me, Zoey said, “The moment we got married, everything changed! Nico used to write me poems and plan these wonderful romantic dates for us. Practically the day after we got married, he stopped everything. We were basically fighting on our honeymoon because he wanted to play video games in the hotel room instead of spending time with me. Ever since, it’s only gotten worse. Every evening, he comes home and either goes straight to his computer, or works on his lamps…he restores antique lamps on the side… He won’t even say hello to me.”

“Well, she’s always complaining, so now I just try to avoid her. It’s true that we used to spend more time together doing fun things, but then we didn’t live together, so I could go home after and relax. In fact, I used to play a lot more video games and have a bigger lamp business. It’s just that she wasn’t there to see me.”

“I admit that it might feel like I’m nagging him, but the truth is,” she turned to look at Nico, “you just sit there and ignore me if I don’t say anything. If it were up to you, we wouldn’t spend any time together at all, nor would you talk to me. What am I to do? I feel so lonely.”

“But we do spend time together. I like it when you’re painting and I’m fixing my lamps…”

“That’s not us spending time together; that’s us working in parallel!”

Even though many married NS couples struggle to spend quality time together, in a neurodiverse marriage, being together can be a real challenge. The partner with ASD often struggles with initiating and sustaining social-emotional reciprocity. She or he can also have a preoccupation with a special interest, and challenges with Theory of Mind, alexithymia and executive functioning—all ASD traits that can lead to spending a lot of time alone—or engaged in parallel play.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.