Rudy Simone's 22 Things a Woman with Asperger's Syndrome Wants Her Partner to Know

hi I'm Rudy Simone and I am the author of a number of books on Asperger's syndrome including ask for girls empowering females with Asperger's syndrome and my latest book 22 things a woman with Asperger's syndrome wants her partner to know the reason that I wrote this book is because well first of all a lot of people asked me to write it a lot of women on the spectrum wanted their partners and their families and loved ones to understand them better women have long been overlooked as being members of the spectrum community indeed when I first started in this business I was told by professionals that there were no women on the spectrum and of course now we know that that's not true but it's much it presents differently in females but more so than that is perceived differently in females and there's definite reasons why we are the fascinating creatures that we are and it's it's much easier to understand someone and to love them if you understand the reasons behind the behavior the reasons behind the trait traits such as and just to give you an example from my own relationship I need ritual and routine I don't like surprises for example so if my boyfriend if Christmas or birthday is coming up I'll say to my boyfriend what are you getting me I need to know what you're getting me because I'm afraid that it'll be a surprise that I won't like and of course being on the spectrum I won't be able to hide my disappointment and I don't want to hurt his feelings so to the uninitiated this could look really bizarre and like some sort of control freak but really I just don't want him to waste his time and money shopping for something that I don't like so these kinds of things are explained another characteristic about women on the spectrum I think even more so than our male counterparts is that we can be sort of social chameleons because we are very very good at mimicking social behavior were almost like social detectives so for example when I was a youngster if I made a new friend and if she was from somewhere else I would pick up her accent when I moved to Britain I developed an English accent within about three days and and this will happen wherever I go I almost take on the characteristics of the culture that I'm in because I don't intrinsically have a social language of my own really my social language is actually very quite Spock like it's just exchanging information other than that being quiet so when I'm around other people I know that they expect me to be to converse and so I will converse in a way that I think appropriate for the situation but that's what I've learned by mimicking other people you would never know that unless you read some books and researched it or or live with someone for a very long time when I was writing this book I solicited interviews with not only women on the spectrum but obviously their partners as well and this applied to both heterosexual and gay couples as well and it was interesting to me to see the reactions and the words from the partners it seemed to me that that those who took responsibility for trying to understand their partner were much more likely to be having a successful relationship I talked to some ex partners and they they seem to blame rather than understand they would blame behaviors on on the asper girl rather than understanding the reason behind the behavior and I think that that's really key I could almost tell who who hadn't made it who was going to make it you know who wasn't going to make it by by the reactions of the partners you really have to have an open mind you can't just say well I live with her I live with her so therefore I know all about Asperger's absolutely not there's a lot more to it than that what's yours if you're living with someone you're seeing things through your own lens but if you're reading the words of other people in a similar situation you're seeing things through a much broader lens and you're benefiting from the wisdom of other people who've experienced these things my own partner does not like to read books he likes to listen to things on you know BBC in CNN and he likes to listen to news things in podcasts and stuff so I told him you have to at my books but he just reads so slow so in order to get him to read my books I had to read them aloud to him every night and it actually took us only about three nights and as he was hearing the words of other partners he would be like oh I hadn't thought of that or now I get it so I could see where he was in his process of beginning to understand me getting my diagnosis and first like a lot of adult women I had to self-diagnose has been the start of an absolutely amazing journey I look back now in my life and all my past relationships and I can see where they went wrong and I can prevent things going wrong in my current relationship and in the future and it's just it's just been such an eye-opener it's just been so validating and I think that's what other people don't have and I want to provide that that validation there's been a lot of suffering because of being misunderstood misdiagnosed miss made miss medicated you know families have broken up people have gotten divorced people that truly loved each other gave up because they weren't speaking the same language it's not just couples of course that will be affected by having knowledge and not having knowledge those children involved there's brothers sisters parents grandparents etc etc so it's it's really important that the entire family takes this information onboard and where there's one person on the spectrum in a family of course is going to be more than one so there should be a lot of aha moments for other people in the family as well but if you yourself are in the spectrum you'll find more understanding of yourself because there's definitely more things in common between men and women than there are differences and if you're not in the spectrum you can then become sort of a translator for other people who aren't on the spectrum and you can explain why and this this can help keep families from falling apart due to misunderstandings so even though it's a light read and it's a fun read and it's a short read to me it's still very important you

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Length: 6min 44sec (404 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 28 2012