Book on Dating a Man with Aspergers - Your Opinion Requested
Thursday June 18, 2009
Bonny Albo, the About.com Guide to Dating, just alerted me a review she's written about a book called 22 Things a Woman Should Know if She Loves a Man with Asperger Syndrome.
Bonny gave the book four stars, though she notes that it's written entirely from the point of view of just one woman (author Rudy Simone).
Not having seen the book myself, I can't venture an opinion (except to agree with Bonny that a few words from an actual man with Asperger Syndrome would be a plus!).
Have you read the book? What's your opinion?
Comments
As a female with Asperger’s who knows a lot of people with Asperger’s due to the nature of my work as autistic rights campaigner and co-founder of autistic culture movement, UK, I can’t help but be a little cautious as to the accuracy of perceptions and advice in this book.
Simply because from personal experience and from what I’ve heard from others with Asperger’s, we get misunderstood a great deal and things just snowball from there from bad to worse.
I suspect the book is aimed at ‘helping’ those who ‘have some difficulties’ having a relationship with men with Asperger’s and probably claims it has the answers?
Well, there are plenty of books on the market already that ‘teach’ how to ‘manage’ men, play ‘hard to get’, use tricks and techniques and even ‘train the man as you would train a dog’ as apparently, the same rules ‘apply’….. (Honestly! are these ‘authors’ serious? or is it all about shock value to get noticed by the media - the great free advertiser! - and making a quick buck?)
Men are already blamed for a lot of things (sometimes, justly, sometimes not).
But I think it would be far more revealing and useful and not to mention accurate to read a book from a perspective of a male with Asperger’s (or several) to really understand instead of relying on ‘hear-say’.
People have written about dogs and other animals and how to ‘treat’ them and manage a ‘relationship’ with their pets but that’s because animals don’t speak or write and don’t care.
Men with Asperger’s do. So why don’t someone ask them?
Despite the autism specialists claiming that the majority of Asperger’s cases are men, I’ve always wondered, why there are far more books written by females with Asperger’s than males.
If we’re striving for equality here, maybe someone ought to ask them that or at least interview the men and get a more accurate picture.
with best wishes,
Roza
(artist name Rozagy)
I should have added some notes that, because of brevity sake, I couldn’t in the review.
1- The author is a diagnosed woman with AS.
2- There are small tidbits in each ‘chapter’ (called things in the book) towards the end that include quotes from AS men who share their views on that particular subject. However, they are no more than a sentence or two.
3- There is no trying to teach a woman how to train a man with AS in this book, and that’s a HUGE plus. Its more of a, “You love a man with AS? Great! Let’s explain why he does what he does, and give you some coping mechanisms because you can’t change who he is, AS included.”
4- My biggest beef with the book was the lack of solid, factual information, and (what seemed to me) overkill with mentioning Cassandra Affective Disorder (CAD). Although the cover of the book suggests its use in therapy for AS/NT relationships, I can’t see a lot of folks using it for this purpose. The DSM isn’t mentioned other than to explain CAD, and the reference list at the back of the book tells readers to look at the DSM on Wikipedia, not the actual book.
Rudi Simone has NOT been diagnosed with an ASC.
When she was ‘researching’ this book, she initially claimed her boyfriend had AS. When this didn’t give her the traction she hope for with the autistic community, she started claiming to be on the spectrum but ‘couldn’t afford a diagnosis’.
This book is a cynical money making exercise, by someone who’s sole motivation is financial gain.
hi, me again,
My intention was NOT to attack the author in any shape or form - far from it. And I think it would be wrong to speculate if the book’s purpose was for financial gain or not as we simply don’t know the facts (if anything, that’s publisher’s aim as otherwise they’ll go out of business or risk loosing credibility which for JKP would be a disaster since they are unofficial ‘kings’ of ‘everything autism’ publishing world).
Anyway, regardless of whether the author has autism herself (which she most likely does as she talks a lot, it’s a bit longwinded - very female Aspie, lol
I recognise me in here! and I’m well and truly diagnosed by a top autism expert in UK)… And, like she said it is extremely difficult to get diagnosed as a female with Asperger’s because the so-called ‘experts’ - unless they are world’s top autism experts like the one I was lucky to be diagnosed by - simply don’t have enough knowledge to recognise the traits and symptoms, e.t.c…. which are differently manifested than in children with AS or even adult males.
I can sympathise with the author there quite well - my own GP doubted my suspicions that I may have AS and even said that he would be I do not have it and it took me 5 years before I even persuaded any of the doctors to refer me to a specialist (which in UK cost £ 1,000 - double the amount that they charge in US). I was accused of being a drama queen, oversensitive, self-centred, attention seeking, hypochondriac, depressed - you name it! I was told that I didn’t ‘look autistic’ because I went to University and could speak. Because I looked and dressed presentable and used make-up…. and could smile and look people in the eye (they should have seen me prior to my 24th birthday after which I started to be able to look people in the eye - before that it was so painful, I just looked away and stared at my feet and had no idea, why that was the way it was).
Anyway, what I was trying to say but didn’t manage to very well, is that the best advice on how to understand men - any men - with or without AS is to hear it from a man or at least interview a lot of them and make it a larger proportion of the book. Snippets and bits and sentence here and sentence there is just not enough.
To me, this book lacks research, it may be not bad or even good but it’s not excellent. It’s not something I’d treasure because it may not be enough and doesn’t explore the issues enough to make any difference to your relationship with men with AS.
And being an Aspie, I’m meticulous in all I do, always striving for perfection and anything else would just be disappointing.
I may as well then go back to reading my James Patterson novels lol
(well, at least they leave no stone unturned and are gripping from the start, although they don’t change my life either hahahaha)
Good luck to the author and all that. But next time she wants to put a book together, perhaps she should write what she does know at an expert level which is a life of an undiagnosed woman with AS and how she coped and not coped. And maybe also team up with a few other females with AS, to gain a broader perspective. Would be interesting to see if their life stories had similarities. If so, the logical statistician in my autistic mind tells me it would be a great basis to ignite an interest in a controlled scientific research on that subject (and maybe my wonderful diagnosing professor could lead the research team. I’d even ask him for her as he’s my mentor).
best regards,
Roza,
the autistic woman who talks A LOT!
(but never chats about nothing)
Roza– Glad to see I am not the only long winded female Aspie up here
I have not read the book and so cannot venture a guess as to its helpfulness to women who date males with AS. I have seen (based on multiple reviews of the book) similar books that deal with dating men with _____ fill in the blank disorder. These books rarely have much beyond a sentence or two from the men they are written about.
If this book is the same, I am not likely to read it and will join Roza in reading James Patterson novels–again. I have them all both in hardcover and paperback. That’s not cause it’s an obsession though- he’s just good
Anyway–back to using my words for my job
I am with Socrates….I havent read it and am not likely to as I find it hard to imagine it to be anything particularly valid. All the understanding women and how to make a man fall in love with you books arent particularly insightful anyway.
I forsee many women who cant understand their man, arm-chair diagnosing their partners disinterest in their something or lack of attention to their something else as AS without truly understanding the disorder. This is much worse that then the sexy tv ads as this is have people throwing the term around to explain a range of thngs that equate to “he just isnt that in to you” and then we will all have to listen to the crap about how everyone is just trying to cheat the system and doctors are overdiagnosing ASD and nothing will get done.
I have 3 males with AS in my house - and each is very different and has different issues. There is no way, even if her boyfriend does have AS, that one woman can write a blanket cover all advice book for dating someone with AS. It’s a spectrum - how many colours of the rainbow are there truly? 7 maybe in primary school but millions when placed under a microscope!