This explains me!

by Robert
(Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada)

As long as I can remember, I have felt different from "normal" people. For the last five or six years I've been trying to put a name to what makes me different. I was finally diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, ADD, Depression and anger management issues a few years ago, but I've never felt that I "fit" any one or all of them. I spent countless hours researching my diagnosed issues, never feeling that they truly defined what I was going through.
One thing that kept coming up (because of my daughter, who is dealing with similar issues at home and school that I faced as a child) was Asperger's. I had no idea what was other than it was a form of Autism. Autism, in my mind, was the disease of "Rainman" - that was definitely not ME. So I never looked into it - until now.
My daughter has been having more and more issues at school and home in the past few months. We've been dealing with massive temper tantrums (a lifelong issue actually), rigid behavior, questioning of school rules and policies, problems with a bully, lose of friends, etc... So I finally decided to look into Asperger's and see if it could explain my daughter's behavior.
Well not only does it help to explain her, but it goes a long way into giving me answers to my lifelong issues as well. After taking the AQ test and coming up with a score of over 30, I decided to do some more research and found this, and other sites. Reading the list of symptoms for both children and adults was a revelation. For the most part, they were talking about me!
I only hope that it's not too late. The sections on marriage and relationships unfortunately fit me to a "T". I'm not sure what do next - as far as my wife is concerned. According to her, I'm "...a lazy, uncaring, selfish loner, who doesn't do enough...and has no common sense, etc, etc, etc..." I have two university degrees, yet I'm not smart enough to figure out how to keep the best thing that ever happened to me...
So, what's so positive about my story? I feel I now have some answers to some long standing questions for myself and possibly some new ones for my daughter. Will they help my save my marriage? I can only hope the answer is "Yes".