Life on the Autism Spectrum

Richard: It never occurred to me. I suppose like most people I was the way I was and that was all I knew. And perhaps I hadn’t really considered what was portrayed in films and plays where obviously you do see a lot of emotion portrayed. That is what it is about. I just hadn’t, hadn’t considered it, as applying to myself. As a child I was very solitary. But I didn’t have friends and at the time I think my understanding of that was, I don’t have an interest in football, that loses me most of my friends, I still don’t have an interest in football which means I am not going to make friends at work. But that doesn’t bother me. And at the time, when I was a child I don’t think I ever thought what was cause and what was effect. You know, I was different from most of my age group in that I was a lot more interested in maths and physics and not at all interested in football and that made me different. I would rather sit and read then go and play a sport. That made me different. So if I didn’t have any friends, it might have just been because of that.

 

What about other family members did they view you as different do you think?

 

Richard: My father was almost certainly aspie as well. Too late to say now, but….

Sue: I think, too, Richard is very intelligent and he comes from a family that have regarded intelligence and educational attainment as very important. So in that respect he fulfilled their expectations of him. And they also were quite independently minded sort of people, so any idiosyncrasies wouldn’t necessarily be seen as such. They were quite acceptable, so you know the fact that…. I know from what his sister said, you know, that his mother did try to invite children into the home but would find that the children that were invited in would be downstairs playing with his toys and he would be upstairs in his bedroom reading. That sort of thing happened when he was a child.

 

But they didn’t seem to see that as a problem, in any way. Well I think they felt that as long as he was doing well, educationally, then socially there wasn’t going to necessarily be a problem. I mean his father as he says, we think looking back that his father certainly almost definitely had Asperger's as well. And he was very focused within his career and had got on quite well in many respects, but socially he was very lacking, and his mother tended to fill the gap really, which is then what I found I was doing in our relationship. I was trying to make up for the inadequacies socially which again was stressful. But we never actually got to the point when his parents were alive of ever being able to talk about these sorts of things with them.

Richard: I think that they came from a generation and a background where you don’t talk about that sort of thing.

 

Tim: It’s difficult. I mean, without wanting to sound too arrogant, my usual problem, I was pretty much top of the class all the way through juniors and into comprehensive. So I realised I was fairly intelligent. 

 

Julie: That’s without any effort as well. You know, because I was at school with Tim and I was above average shall we say, but I had to fight achieve everything whereas he’d do his homework over breakfast, on his way up to school and get top marks you know, just one of them people that you hated [laugh]. Because I’d been at mine for weeks and I’d get an average mark [laugh].

 

Tim: I managed to work out I were fairly intelligent… and I was very, I think diffident is probably the best way to describe it. Maybe because of that you realise that you know, you’re intelligent, you feel that you stood off from people a bit, and they just felt there had to be that, that distance. And it was difficult for me to, to read people. So people might have been having a joke and I could be, you know, a bit snappish. Like Julie says, there was no understanding that it might be a joke.

 

Julie: Or the other way they could be taking the mickey and you wouldn’t realise either?

 

Tim: So you could have someone being a bit unpleasant and not realise it. And because of that there’s always that, that distance. It’s difficult to break through it. And even as a child I would avoid social situations. So things like parties or group events. I’d be more inclined to avoid them, and again never really realised why. But, it was difficult to get past that… it was difficult to get into that social interaction. I could cope with a small group of friends quite easily and that works very well. But as soon as you started talking about into a more social situation it really was very, very difficult really. And I think I realised there was that distance and I that was finding it really difficult to break through to people. And I don’t know really.

He is very intelligent, he can give you a dictionary definition of a word but he himself, can’t define, can’t identify with that definition. So, for example, at one time I tried to talk to him, I said, “Do you understand what enthusiasm is?” So he can give a dictionary definition of enthusiasm and I said, “Well what does it mean for you?” And he would just go blank. So I tried to describe what it would mean for me, you know, enthusiasm you know, for example a child is enthusiastic when you say, and “We are going to the zoo tomorrow.” And difficult to settle the night before because they know they have got a trip the next day and they are very eager to get out the house into the car because they know that they are going to something that they enjoy. They are asking all the way there, “are we nearly there yet?” That is a bit silly, a bit of a silly phrase, because you know kids ask that all the time anyway. But you know what I mean? And you get there and one of them wants to go and see the monkeys first, and another one wants to go and see the tigers, and they are all means of expression enthusiasm for what you are doing. And when I explained this to Richard, I said but what about you, he said, “I have never felt that, I don’t know what that is.”