AS and Their Partners

At 50 I finally found out why I had felt “different” for half a century. My wife and I were in the car listening to an NPR interview with Dawn Prince-Huges in 2004 and as she talked about her life, how she saw the world around her and many of her feelings, I thought “that sounds just like me!” My wife—an NT—said it out loud. We both recognized almost immediately that this AS thing “fit.” I had never heard of Aspergers, but listening to Prince-Huges was all the incentive I needed to learn more, so that evening I started a search, in typical aspie style, to learn everything I could on the subject.

The more I read the more it explained. It was in that early search that I found the forum and Diane—the forum’s founder—and she welcomed me and almost immediately I felt like I had found “my” people.

I’ve been fortunate, as I’ve continued to discover more about AS my NT partner has been nearly as interested as I and we’ve spent some long hours reading and discussing, including a two-day trip to and from our grandson’s birthday celebration during which she read aloud—part of the time by flashlight—while I drove. The book on that trip was Diagnosing Jefferson and it was a wonderful chance for us to learn through a “safe” shared experience.

I’m now 53, my wife is 50, and between us we have five children from our first marriages—within the last four years, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge about AS and a lot of grandchildren, too. We have six, three girls and three boys, and two more on the way. Yes, we’ve recognized traits in our children (we strongly suspect that my wife’s father is AS) and now in our grandchildren.

I’ve worked in engineering positions in electrical, instrumentation and control systems, and computer programming for various companies, including 19 years for an international energy corporation, seven years for a fortune 100 company and currently for a small leading international lab quality control company. My NT wife and I are both very interested in a lot of different things, including all kinds of creative work (she is a designer and marketing director) and home projects. Our “toys” include a stained glass studio area, a candle making workroom, a print shop, a loom, pottery corner with wheel and kiln, photography and darkroom, and woodworking shop.