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it will improve, even if it seems like it's not. I was diagnosed a year and a half ago at the age of 38. I, too, knew something wasn't quite right, but never could pinpoint it. My wife's aws devastated when the diagnosis came, as she, being an educational diagnostician, didn't recognize it and she's trained to see that in students. That was the last time showed ANY compassion or concern about me and this disorder.
Im still trying to warp my head around it, find ways to compensate, try not to feel like a failure, and find the right "supplement, " as you called it in order to deal with this. My wife doesn't think I'm doing anything, but I've tried so hard, I'm just not succeeding very well.
Your boyfriend probably pushed you away because you found his issue. You shed light on years of confusion, and now he's recalling every problem, relationship, setback, and even success, and playing the "what if" game. I'm still doing it. It's hard not to. I'm hoping that I can figure some of this out soon, as my wife and I are at the end of our respective ropes. Neither one of us is happy with the relationship, and we are each blaming each other. I can see my part in it more clearly than before, but I still play the victim too much.
I truly hope that your fella comes back to reality long enough to realize that you were the one who helped him discover how he can change his patterns and issues, just by leaving books and giving space.
Thanks for the input, LateDiagnosis! What a trooper you are for sticking with all of that. I don't know how long I'll leave that up though, I'm super uncomfortable putting myself out there like this. Anyhoo...
I'm terrified that this man may have shut the door on us, but I have to work that out somehow. He has to work it out too. The ball's in his court and there's not a damned thing I can do about it. As people who come from crappy childhoods do, we each developed our own survival tools, put ADHD on top of that and you get some adults with some faulty tools in the toolbox. Every human has a lot to learn but not everyone sees that. He certainly did push me away because I found his issue, actually "our" issue. To me the discovery was a Godsend, but for him it was something different. He doesn't speak when he's upset, he shuts down and detaches. I'm not a religious lass but all I can do now is pray that he processes this whole thing in the best way possible.
Thanks for sharing your story also. It's nice to have male input on this. If you don't mind some feedback here I'll tell you what I see in your words. In your first paragraph I completely understand your wife's disappointment in herself for not seeing it. It probably made her feel like a failure. And in feeling that and letting you know it (because you live together, you're going to see all the stuff, like it or not) she made it about herself. I'm sure she didn't do that consciously. And yes, you have challenges that she may never fully understand. Diagnosing a thing and understanding it are two different things. Not everyone is capable of the deep empathy of "getting" it. And she should cut herself some slack in not seeing it in you simply because she's trained to see it in children, not adults. It hasn't even been looked at as an adult condition for long, so she absolutely didn't fail either her or yourself. As a matter of fact, knowing that this is the way you're wired is a benefit in her profession! She now has first-hand knowledge that she can apply in her work. That's an upper hand if ever I saw one. So...may I suggest that you talk with her with this approach if you haven't already?
We humans tend to make everything about ourselves. We're all guilty of it. It's a thing we have to unlearn and it's not easy! We come into adulthood and into relationships with set ways of thinking. Like you, and like many wired ADHD, I feel like a failure. A lot. I beat myself up more than anyone and it's a constant challenge trying to change that. You said your wife doesn't think you're "doing" anything. What is it she would like to see you do? What is it you're "trying so hard" to do? Because I can tell you, supplements aren't going to change who you are and how you think. You have to do that yourself. You said that your wife doesn't show you "ANY" compassion and right after that you said that you play the victim too much. Those two things fit together perfectly. =)
I'm not judging and I hope it doesn't come across as that. I only speak from experience on both sides, one being ADHD and another being a woman. I can promise you that no woman wants to be her husband's mommy. What I mean by that is if she falls into a role of having to console you because you pity yourself because of the "what if" of the past or "poor me", that doesn't make her feel like your wife, it makes her feel like a mom. When I fall into self pity because of how I'm programmed, I do my best to be aware of it and I take time to myself to work myself out of it. I'm a freakin' messy work in progress for sure, but I don't need to spread the misery around when it hits me. It's up to me to work myself out of it and if I can't then I'll seek a good therapist to help me.
I went through the whole discovery, diagnosis, supplement process VERY quickly, and the crazy rollercoaster of emotions along with it. You can't undo your past, so tell yourself that firmly and move forward from it. If you "what if" the past you're going to miss out on the now and on the future. Your starting point is now. Your chance to learn and make changes and grow is now. And it's hard. If you want your wife to be supportive...be your friend and your lover -- your partner, then be that for her. Be the person you want to attract. Be the person you want to be. So much easier said than done, but doable nonetheless. One of you guys has to take a step towards change without pride or pity getting in the way.
I don't know if you or your wife have done and self-educating since your diagnosis but there's a whole lot to learn. The first book I got that made me realize what my problem was is Is It You, Me, or Adult ADD by Gina Pera. After I consumed that I immediately started Driven To Distraction by Ned Hallowell (a founder of this site). I'm currently pecking at Delivered From Distraction by Dr. Hallowell. If you've read none of these I strongly suggest Gina Pera's book and Delivered From Distraction for both you and your wife. They will give you both insight and understanding of each other, and from your own words it appears to me that understanding one another would be a good place to start.
One more word on medication. I doesn't change you. It doesn't "fix" you. It won't change your personality or your character. I'm in emotional hell right now. I'm stuck in a hurt place because of an emotional blow. I've felt it longer and deeper than "normal" people do. And doing things like coming here and writing is a way I'm trying to work out of it. I'm hyper-sensitive, no doubt. But now I know why. The medication doesn't change that. However, it helps me streamline my thoughts. I'm absolutely depressed, but unlike the entire lifetime before now, the feeling of being in a fog isn't involved. What that tells me is that whatever chemicals are being triggered by the medication is keeping me at a less-deep level than I would have been in the past. Make sense? I'm still exactly the same person, I just have a little more control now and rather than shut off the lights and lay in bed, I can work and pay the bills and have conversations with my clients with a smile. And I can write annoyingly long posts! Ha! I just realized that, and that's because of the "supplements". There is magic in the medication for me, but it's very subtle. Your moods are still your moods and your choices are your choices. Most importantly, the past is exactly what the past is and we can't change it. Do whatever you have to do to make peace with that and leave it there. Count on the medication to streamline your thoughts, and then choose those thoughts carefully. I will if you will!
I read your post through a couple times just now, I had remembered it wrong,thinking that you thought he had ADHD too. Maybe I went down that wrong memory path from the passage in which you told about laying the cards on the table, every time you said something about yourself, he said he was that way, too.
This time reading, I see that you discovered from reading, that what you're more certain of is that you match ADHD. What a tremendous discovery.I do think people if they open up their attention, and put previous self understanding aside for awhile, can self discover something as big as what you're onto. There is authenticity in ourselves that it seems we all have, if we give it a chance, and look and listen without forcing ourselves to cling to our old understanding. So I read you as having very recently entered lifechanging new understanding about yourself. I hope you keep reading books and online about ADHD, and hope you follow through with a good, thorough diagnosis, the consideration of meds, since they help so many people with ADHD (say people with ADHD) and tet a counseling talking partner as you relearn some things about yourself and ways of doing. They say, every person with ADHD has her own particular collection of gifts and challenges. I wish you well in your learning and life changes
But back to my too quick generalization in memory that you were convinced he had ADHD, too. ..whatever you think is of course what you think, and you know more details about him than can ever get described online, but its just that I dont think I did a really good job of reading what you wrote about him, without my mind being colored by the presumption that he had ADHD, although neither of you have that formal diagnosis. I didnt just simply attend to your descriptions of what you said about actions that he initiated, and look at them as a whole.
I've had extended contact with Asperger's in my past life. There's a decent chance, that it is in my family of origin. I don't have it, but my family contains a couple candidates. More certainly, I've had extended relations with people who have been formally diagnosed with it.
Once I just read what you wrote about the man you love, pieces of his behavior fit with behavior in the usual Asperger's cluster, that I've seen in action in my past relationships. Although J on this site has just written a post about how important it is to accurately separate other kinds of problems from ADHD or as I'm suggesting here, possible AS.
It could be that neither AS nor ADHD is motivating the actions that he's taken that you describe. You're in the quandary, since some of his most upsetting behavior, is to make himself unavailable, of not knowing where his separating actions are coming from.
I'm going to list to you some things that struck me in what you said he had done, that for me track better on possible AS, than on ADHD that I know about live, which is at home, but I'll make the main point right now, that you'll get faster and more solid relief from offline professional help, sorting out what might be going on with him, than you will reading the rest of my post, or any book that might potentially match him.
Your heart is on the line. You've just discovered something huge about yourself. About the same time, the person who you love has done some changes and breaking off contact.
You need to get some understanding of why he's acting the way he is, to move forward in your still somewhat new relation.
You're wellmeaning and want to do right by him. You really, really need to know more certainly when he is NOT like you. If it is true that no two people with ADHD carbon copies of each other (people with ADD and ADHD insist on this; it's of course true of people who don't have ADHD), some of him is not a perfect duplication of what you're going through. Good offline professional talk about you and about the impact of his behavior on you could be a real help to you, right now
ok.what led me to wondering about his behavior patterning on Aspergers, which I find to be light years away from ADHD in my partner
1 quirky, smart, not homogenized into standard social behaviors. My partner is smart, old enough to have developed his own quirks, thank you, and is not blindly obedient to conventional social behavior, but his lack of using standard social cues, patterns, courtesies, etc is nowhere near the absence of it that I've seen in people with AS.
2 40, never married, no kids. So are you, so are a lot of people. But as a group, people with AS leave the nest of the family home with more difficulty, and leave being taken care of by parents later, than people in the population as a whole. Navigating past the initial stages of courtship into long term relation can be very difficult for them. If you wanted to follow up on this and see what the professionals say about this topic of AS and dating and marriage relations, there are online introductions to AS and social relations, or go to Tony Attwood's site to see what he presents by way of information about it. So this may or may not matter in thinking about the person you love. How much experience in post courtship relations, in which he got into the messier and more demanding aspects of long term relation did he have, before he began with you?
3 Everything you said you were, he said he was, too. I've been through this, in the first part of a relation. It was AS courtship phase mimicry. This is not ADHD, as it appears in my relation. My partner never went through a phase of trying to act like me or to show me that we were the same
4 after the 3 month mark in the relation, he was suddenly different. Sure, that could be ADHD hyperfocus ending, but it could also be classic Aspergers. People with AS do courtshio better than the uncharted terrain of real relation, because it can be learned, and the relation is limited in contacts still.
The last two or three in my list were the ones that really got my attention because they dont have a match at all, with my partner with ADHD, but do with.people with AS or possibly with AS whom I've known at any depth
5 Communication getting funneled through online. Abandonment or inability to do face to face very well. Online, texts, dating sites, even the telephone, though the telephone can be very scary to them, is all controllable, it isnt demanding like being in a live conversation is. The person with AS can take his time and plan his answers before he writes them. He can also decide when he wants to respond or if he wants to respond, if it comes via text or email, or whatever, somebody's blog post. I have a family member who will not deal with telephone conversations.
Professionals have measured the time on the clock in a live conversation that someone with AS needs to hear something, construct a response, and respond, and it's twice as long as people without AS need, they cant read tone, faces or body cues, so they soon lose the plot in an intense extended conversation. No fault of theirs. So they prefer online, texts, emails. As for speed of response, my very darling to me partner responds to me at warp speed, often so fast that he hasn't taken in half of what I was saying. So certainly in my house we're not communicating with that very slow conversational processing time of AS. This has nothing to do with intelligence, by the way.
5a. Emotional talk doesn't work with people with AS. As the literature and they say, they process life through their mind, not their feelings. I've had people with AS seek to shut me down entirely if they pick up I'm having any strong feelings at all.
6 Walking out on a social situation with no warning. Just disappearing from it. I have seen this and read this described over and over again. Family gathering at Christmas? The person with AS disappears from the room. Or can't easily make it through a conversation among several couples, just up an goes somehow. Calls time and has to leave. Paces around in the parking lot or in the back yard until the event is over. I'm not describing a moral failure, just an initiated behavior.
7 long interludes of contact being broken, again with no warning. This is really not my partner and is really classic AS social behavior. One person with AS in my past said that he just maxes out and has to get away. There's a therapeutic rule of thumb that for every two hours of contact, the Aspie needs an hour by himself, I think I remember that. A really large amount of time, every day, of non communication. They need serious recuperation time after a social event or exchange. But these complete disappearances, for relatively long periods, either just taken with no warning, or engineered by doing something like telling the other person to get lost or by picking a fight are pretty often reported in relations in which AS is involved. I've been through these. It really is a complete black out of contact when it happens. So much a black out that you're left without a glimmer of whether or not they'll ever be back. Sorry you're going through this.
Just for you, for your own heart, you have to find out more about these disappearances he's been doing on you.
That is, if he still wants contact with you. That's hard to write, but he may not be up to having a relation. I know that you love him and want the relation. I want you to be with the love of your life.
But/and, as J wrote elsewhere in the last day or so, not everything is attributable to ADHD. Or AS. There are plenty of people in the world, plenty, who don't have AS or ADHD and are apparently completely incompetent at knowing how to do long term relation in a settled way, or bringing a relationship to an end truthfully, with some care for the other person.
His behavior has put you in a jam that I wish you weren't in.
You need to find out, to know what of what he is doing comes from his feelings for you and what of it comes from something other than his feelings.
Keep Your Head Up!
Submitted by LateDiagnosis on
it will improve, even if it seems like it's not. I was diagnosed a year and a half ago at the age of 38. I, too, knew something wasn't quite right, but never could pinpoint it. My wife's aws devastated when the diagnosis came, as she, being an educational diagnostician, didn't recognize it and she's trained to see that in students. That was the last time showed ANY compassion or concern about me and this disorder.
Im still trying to warp my head around it, find ways to compensate, try not to feel like a failure, and find the right "supplement, " as you called it in order to deal with this. My wife doesn't think I'm doing anything, but I've tried so hard, I'm just not succeeding very well.
Your boyfriend probably pushed you away because you found his issue. You shed light on years of confusion, and now he's recalling every problem, relationship, setback, and even success, and playing the "what if" game. I'm still doing it. It's hard not to. I'm hoping that I can figure some of this out soon, as my wife and I are at the end of our respective ropes. Neither one of us is happy with the relationship, and we are each blaming each other. I can see my part in it more clearly than before, but I still play the victim too much.
I truly hope that your fella comes back to reality long enough to realize that you were the one who helped him discover how he can change his patterns and issues, just by leaving books and giving space.
Thanks for reading all that!
Submitted by AbbyNormal on
Thanks for the input, LateDiagnosis! What a trooper you are for sticking with all of that. I don't know how long I'll leave that up though, I'm super uncomfortable putting myself out there like this. Anyhoo...
I'm terrified that this man may have shut the door on us, but I have to work that out somehow. He has to work it out too. The ball's in his court and there's not a damned thing I can do about it. As people who come from crappy childhoods do, we each developed our own survival tools, put ADHD on top of that and you get some adults with some faulty tools in the toolbox. Every human has a lot to learn but not everyone sees that. He certainly did push me away because I found his issue, actually "our" issue. To me the discovery was a Godsend, but for him it was something different. He doesn't speak when he's upset, he shuts down and detaches. I'm not a religious lass but all I can do now is pray that he processes this whole thing in the best way possible.
Thanks for sharing your story also. It's nice to have male input on this. If you don't mind some feedback here I'll tell you what I see in your words. In your first paragraph I completely understand your wife's disappointment in herself for not seeing it. It probably made her feel like a failure. And in feeling that and letting you know it (because you live together, you're going to see all the stuff, like it or not) she made it about herself. I'm sure she didn't do that consciously. And yes, you have challenges that she may never fully understand. Diagnosing a thing and understanding it are two different things. Not everyone is capable of the deep empathy of "getting" it. And she should cut herself some slack in not seeing it in you simply because she's trained to see it in children, not adults. It hasn't even been looked at as an adult condition for long, so she absolutely didn't fail either her or yourself. As a matter of fact, knowing that this is the way you're wired is a benefit in her profession! She now has first-hand knowledge that she can apply in her work. That's an upper hand if ever I saw one. So...may I suggest that you talk with her with this approach if you haven't already?
We humans tend to make everything about ourselves. We're all guilty of it. It's a thing we have to unlearn and it's not easy! We come into adulthood and into relationships with set ways of thinking. Like you, and like many wired ADHD, I feel like a failure. A lot. I beat myself up more than anyone and it's a constant challenge trying to change that. You said your wife doesn't think you're "doing" anything. What is it she would like to see you do? What is it you're "trying so hard" to do? Because I can tell you, supplements aren't going to change who you are and how you think. You have to do that yourself. You said that your wife doesn't show you "ANY" compassion and right after that you said that you play the victim too much. Those two things fit together perfectly. =)
I'm not judging and I hope it doesn't come across as that. I only speak from experience on both sides, one being ADHD and another being a woman. I can promise you that no woman wants to be her husband's mommy. What I mean by that is if she falls into a role of having to console you because you pity yourself because of the "what if" of the past or "poor me", that doesn't make her feel like your wife, it makes her feel like a mom. When I fall into self pity because of how I'm programmed, I do my best to be aware of it and I take time to myself to work myself out of it. I'm a freakin' messy work in progress for sure, but I don't need to spread the misery around when it hits me. It's up to me to work myself out of it and if I can't then I'll seek a good therapist to help me.
I went through the whole discovery, diagnosis, supplement process VERY quickly, and the crazy rollercoaster of emotions along with it. You can't undo your past, so tell yourself that firmly and move forward from it. If you "what if" the past you're going to miss out on the now and on the future. Your starting point is now. Your chance to learn and make changes and grow is now. And it's hard. If you want your wife to be supportive...be your friend and your lover -- your partner, then be that for her. Be the person you want to attract. Be the person you want to be. So much easier said than done, but doable nonetheless. One of you guys has to take a step towards change without pride or pity getting in the way.
I don't know if you or your wife have done and self-educating since your diagnosis but there's a whole lot to learn. The first book I got that made me realize what my problem was is Is It You, Me, or Adult ADD by Gina Pera. After I consumed that I immediately started Driven To Distraction by Ned Hallowell (a founder of this site). I'm currently pecking at Delivered From Distraction by Dr. Hallowell. If you've read none of these I strongly suggest Gina Pera's book and Delivered From Distraction for both you and your wife. They will give you both insight and understanding of each other, and from your own words it appears to me that understanding one another would be a good place to start.
One more word on medication. I doesn't change you. It doesn't "fix" you. It won't change your personality or your character. I'm in emotional hell right now. I'm stuck in a hurt place because of an emotional blow. I've felt it longer and deeper than "normal" people do. And doing things like coming here and writing is a way I'm trying to work out of it. I'm hyper-sensitive, no doubt. But now I know why. The medication doesn't change that. However, it helps me streamline my thoughts. I'm absolutely depressed, but unlike the entire lifetime before now, the feeling of being in a fog isn't involved. What that tells me is that whatever chemicals are being triggered by the medication is keeping me at a less-deep level than I would have been in the past. Make sense? I'm still exactly the same person, I just have a little more control now and rather than shut off the lights and lay in bed, I can work and pay the bills and have conversations with my clients with a smile. And I can write annoyingly long posts! Ha! I just realized that, and that's because of the "supplements". There is magic in the medication for me, but it's very subtle. Your moods are still your moods and your choices are your choices. Most importantly, the past is exactly what the past is and we can't change it. Do whatever you have to do to make peace with that and leave it there. Count on the medication to streamline your thoughts, and then choose those thoughts carefully. I will if you will!
Some professional help might help
Submitted by NowOrNever (not verified) on
Hi Abby,
I read your post through a couple times just now, I had remembered it wrong,thinking that you thought he had ADHD too. Maybe I went down that wrong memory path from the passage in which you told about laying the cards on the table, every time you said something about yourself, he said he was that way, too.
This time reading, I see that you discovered from reading, that what you're more certain of is that you match ADHD. What a tremendous discovery.I do think people if they open up their attention, and put previous self understanding aside for awhile, can self discover something as big as what you're onto. There is authenticity in ourselves that it seems we all have, if we give it a chance, and look and listen without forcing ourselves to cling to our old understanding. So I read you as having very recently entered lifechanging new understanding about yourself. I hope you keep reading books and online about ADHD, and hope you follow through with a good, thorough diagnosis, the consideration of meds, since they help so many people with ADHD (say people with ADHD) and tet a counseling talking partner as you relearn some things about yourself and ways of doing. They say, every person with ADHD has her own particular collection of gifts and challenges. I wish you well in your learning and life changes
But back to my too quick generalization in memory that you were convinced he had ADHD, too. ..whatever you think is of course what you think, and you know more details about him than can ever get described online, but its just that I dont think I did a really good job of reading what you wrote about him, without my mind being colored by the presumption that he had ADHD, although neither of you have that formal diagnosis. I didnt just simply attend to your descriptions of what you said about actions that he initiated, and look at them as a whole.
I've had extended contact with Asperger's in my past life. There's a decent chance, that it is in my family of origin. I don't have it, but my family contains a couple candidates. More certainly, I've had extended relations with people who have been formally diagnosed with it.
Once I just read what you wrote about the man you love, pieces of his behavior fit with behavior in the usual Asperger's cluster, that I've seen in action in my past relationships. Although J on this site has just written a post about how important it is to accurately separate other kinds of problems from ADHD or as I'm suggesting here, possible AS.
It could be that neither AS nor ADHD is motivating the actions that he's taken that you describe. You're in the quandary, since some of his most upsetting behavior, is to make himself unavailable, of not knowing where his separating actions are coming from.
I'm going to list to you some things that struck me in what you said he had done, that for me track better on possible AS, than on ADHD that I know about live, which is at home, but I'll make the main point right now, that you'll get faster and more solid relief from offline professional help, sorting out what might be going on with him, than you will reading the rest of my post, or any book that might potentially match him.
Your heart is on the line. You've just discovered something huge about yourself. About the same time, the person who you love has done some changes and breaking off contact.
You need to get some understanding of why he's acting the way he is, to move forward in your still somewhat new relation.
You're wellmeaning and want to do right by him. You really, really need to know more certainly when he is NOT like you. If it is true that no two people with ADHD carbon copies of each other (people with ADD and ADHD insist on this; it's of course true of people who don't have ADHD), some of him is not a perfect duplication of what you're going through. Good offline professional talk about you and about the impact of his behavior on you could be a real help to you, right now
ok.what led me to wondering about his behavior patterning on Aspergers, which I find to be light years away from ADHD in my partner
1 quirky, smart, not homogenized into standard social behaviors. My partner is smart, old enough to have developed his own quirks, thank you, and is not blindly obedient to conventional social behavior, but his lack of using standard social cues, patterns, courtesies, etc is nowhere near the absence of it that I've seen in people with AS.
2 40, never married, no kids. So are you, so are a lot of people. But as a group, people with AS leave the nest of the family home with more difficulty, and leave being taken care of by parents later, than people in the population as a whole. Navigating past the initial stages of courtship into long term relation can be very difficult for them. If you wanted to follow up on this and see what the professionals say about this topic of AS and dating and marriage relations, there are online introductions to AS and social relations, or go to Tony Attwood's site to see what he presents by way of information about it. So this may or may not matter in thinking about the person you love. How much experience in post courtship relations, in which he got into the messier and more demanding aspects of long term relation did he have, before he began with you?
3 Everything you said you were, he said he was, too. I've been through this, in the first part of a relation. It was AS courtship phase mimicry. This is not ADHD, as it appears in my relation. My partner never went through a phase of trying to act like me or to show me that we were the same
4 after the 3 month mark in the relation, he was suddenly different. Sure, that could be ADHD hyperfocus ending, but it could also be classic Aspergers. People with AS do courtshio better than the uncharted terrain of real relation, because it can be learned, and the relation is limited in contacts still.
The last two or three in my list were the ones that really got my attention because they dont have a match at all, with my partner with ADHD, but do with.people with AS or possibly with AS whom I've known at any depth
5 Communication getting funneled through online. Abandonment or inability to do face to face very well. Online, texts, dating sites, even the telephone, though the telephone can be very scary to them, is all controllable, it isnt demanding like being in a live conversation is. The person with AS can take his time and plan his answers before he writes them. He can also decide when he wants to respond or if he wants to respond, if it comes via text or email, or whatever, somebody's blog post. I have a family member who will not deal with telephone conversations.
Professionals have measured the time on the clock in a live conversation that someone with AS needs to hear something, construct a response, and respond, and it's twice as long as people without AS need, they cant read tone, faces or body cues, so they soon lose the plot in an intense extended conversation. No fault of theirs. So they prefer online, texts, emails. As for speed of response, my very darling to me partner responds to me at warp speed, often so fast that he hasn't taken in half of what I was saying. So certainly in my house we're not communicating with that very slow conversational processing time of AS. This has nothing to do with intelligence, by the way.
5a. Emotional talk doesn't work with people with AS. As the literature and they say, they process life through their mind, not their feelings. I've had people with AS seek to shut me down entirely if they pick up I'm having any strong feelings at all.
6 Walking out on a social situation with no warning. Just disappearing from it. I have seen this and read this described over and over again. Family gathering at Christmas? The person with AS disappears from the room. Or can't easily make it through a conversation among several couples, just up an goes somehow. Calls time and has to leave. Paces around in the parking lot or in the back yard until the event is over. I'm not describing a moral failure, just an initiated behavior.
7 long interludes of contact being broken, again with no warning. This is really not my partner and is really classic AS social behavior. One person with AS in my past said that he just maxes out and has to get away. There's a therapeutic rule of thumb that for every two hours of contact, the Aspie needs an hour by himself, I think I remember that. A really large amount of time, every day, of non communication. They need serious recuperation time after a social event or exchange. But these complete disappearances, for relatively long periods, either just taken with no warning, or engineered by doing something like telling the other person to get lost or by picking a fight are pretty often reported in relations in which AS is involved. I've been through these. It really is a complete black out of contact when it happens. So much a black out that you're left without a glimmer of whether or not they'll ever be back. Sorry you're going through this.
Just for you, for your own heart, you have to find out more about these disappearances he's been doing on you.
That is, if he still wants contact with you. That's hard to write, but he may not be up to having a relation. I know that you love him and want the relation. I want you to be with the love of your life.
But/and, as J wrote elsewhere in the last day or so, not everything is attributable to ADHD. Or AS. There are plenty of people in the world, plenty, who don't have AS or ADHD and are apparently completely incompetent at knowing how to do long term relation in a settled way, or bringing a relationship to an end truthfully, with some care for the other person.
His behavior has put you in a jam that I wish you weren't in.
You need to find out, to know what of what he is doing comes from his feelings for you and what of it comes from something other than his feelings.