# ...looking for perspective



## argyle (May 27, 2011)

I'm looking for some female perspectives and advice.
My wife often complains about not feeling protected.
Bear in mind that my wife has a Bpd diagnosis and self-diagnosed with aspergers --she is probably right.

Two recent incidents: 
1. Preschool: she volunteers at a local preschool and has been having trouble with a teacher. First problem, the teacher told her to interact with students - and was sharp with her when my wife told her that she'd been trained to stand by the ramp.
The teacher probably figured that my wife was malingering, but she's really that literal-minded.
Second problem, the teacher pinched our child on the cheek. Not hard.
Third problem, when new parents visited, the teacher asked my wife to do several tasks that required multitasking. My wife figures that the teacher is trying to mess her up, because she really could not multitask.

Now, the teacher seems to be a mildly unpleasant person(I've met her)-but her behavior seems to be within normal bounds considering she does not know about my wife's condition. I'm not sure what to do. My inclination would be to talk to the head teacher and ask for some accommodation...but I suspect my wife would be shamed by that.

2. Neighbors. My wife yelled on the phone about a neighbor's daughter hitting on her husband. A few days later, our next door neighbor showed us pictures of a flock of migrating birds that'd roosted on our roof. Then the daughter invited us both to dinner. Some of the conversation was mildly odd. There was the long explanation to the children in the apartment that the walls were paper thin, the description of the daughter's new beau, the reference to having crushes on men of my nationality and religion, another friend's questioning of my wife's statements-particularly the recommendation to pick up men at an aspergers group, and that other friends recommendation to play dumb next time.

My wife feels threatened by the behavior of the mother and the friend and perfectly comfortable with the daughter. Kind of an I'm watching you vibe from the mom and a are you crazy vibe from the friend - combined with a warning. My perspective is that the mom is a chatty woman, that the friends behavior was pretty normal, all things considered, and that the daughter's behavior was odd but probably basically harmless.

Now, I can see that my wife feels threatened - based on her perceptions - and there are some real threats here. The problem is that she needs to feel protected. And she feels protected when I trash talk women she's having issues with or agree with her concerns and huff and puff and suggest me intervening. She'd rather I not actually do anything. Except deliver highly veiled threats at the party. My problem is how to do that without lying through my teeth - as the problems I see are fairly different from the ones she sees and I'm not comfortable trash talking fairly blameless women. Also, I prefer direct communication and ignoring minor conversational oddities.

Options: 
1. Acting class
2. I don't see things your way.
3. I'm not wasting my time with this.
4. Oops, maybe she's right.

--Argyle


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## Anon Pink (Jan 17, 2013)

I love how insightful you are to your wife's peculiarities and needs!

Don't have an answer for you. Just had to tell you that.


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## BarelyThere (Dec 31, 2012)

Well, you can't invalidate her feelings, even if you don't share them. Can you approach it from the angle of acknowledging how she feels and saying you're there for her without compromising on your beliefs of the situation?


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## argyle (May 27, 2011)

@Barely
Ideally, yes. In practice - no. The problem is that she doesn't need acknowledgement of her feelings or assertion of the fact I'm there with her. She needs to feel that we agree on her perception of reality and that I'm on her side. At some point, the conversation always meanders to 'don't you agree that...?' 'I can definitely see how you'd feel that way.' just triggers her - as she understands that as 'but I don't.'

I suspect that the underlying issue is that she has a lot of trouble understanding people - so she has a tendency to spend a lot of time trying to figure them out - and a tendency to avoid attributing negative outcomes to her limitations - so she tends to attribute negative outcomes to 'bad' choices by outside individuals. (jealousy, envy) She understands that she's not good with people and that her explanations are mostly BS - she has terrible insecurity over that... She even accepts that I'm mostly giving advice that'd make her life easier, but hearing that from me really hurts her - and makes her feel like I prefer another woman to her. That doesn't go over well.

For now, I'm inclined towards...

This is just venting - blathering on helps her process. So, I'll make sure to agree 3 times, without engaging any critical facilities, before disagreeing with even obvious crazy talk. I'll also make one offer, preferably over the top, to intervene that she's expected to decline. If she accepts the offer, I'll continue the conversation, but inform her at the end that the offer wasn't sincere. So far, 3/4 of the time, she's figured out a reasonable approximation to reality unassisted and also declined silly offers of intervention. For time #4, she accepted that my offer was an incredibly bad idea. So, um, ok. She's agreed that, if she wants an honest opinion, she'll ask for one and accept what she gets. She did once, and accepted what she got.*

It is a bit dishonest, but she already knows that she's mentally ill and mildly autistic - so there's no point in grinding that in her face. I figure that a lot of husbands have eventually learned that being absolutely honest with their wives isn't necessarily a good choice. I worry about the way she thinks - pretty conflict-prone and stressful for her - but there's not really much I can do for her besides encouraging her to spend time with more people and learn from experience. Besides, being unable to reliably understand humor and sarcasm mean that some part of human interaction aren't going to be easy. I worry about enabling unhealthy defenses, but, eh, probably the decrease in conflict is worth it.

I'll also experiment a bit with 'not wasting my time on this.' She's from a fairly violent, aggressive culture - so harshness is far less likely to provoke rages than gentleness and understanding.

--Argyle
*She's actually pretty good at sensing when people dislike her, although she reads far too much into minor gestures. OTOH, her grasp of human motivation is lacking.


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## BarelyThere (Dec 31, 2012)

If agreeing will soothe tension and doesn't actually result in any issues with the people in question, it makes sense to me I guess. I'm all for avoiding conflict, which seems to be your ultimate goal.

You're right about the rest though - experience will help her learn to gauge people better and hopefully relieve some of her stress.


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## argyle (May 27, 2011)

Kind of a tradeoff...agreeing usually results in her processing and figuring out a reasonable response. F'r instance, she ended up bringing the daughter a gift - which weirded her out - and telling her she loved her... So, not likely to increase conflict.

OTOH, every once in a while she'll go off the rails. But, eh, it seems easier to talk her down when she's not triggered.

I'm not so much for avoiding conflict as living in a reasonably healthy R/S and modeling healthy behavior for our children. I'm concerned about agreeing with pure tosh, but our children already know that mom's 'different', so that may not be a big concern. I'll probably explain when they ask that 'mommy's mentally ill and needs to talk a lot to understand things...and daddy's just helping her figure stuff out by listening to her.'

--Argyle


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