Letters to the Editor
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Why would your friend want to do this?
What a perfect answer from Cary. To stay in a relationship with your friend and to develop one with her husband, you will probably need to think carefully about the setting. People on the autism spectrum are exquisitely sensitive to their environments. At least for the folks I know, the less loud chatter with strangers on a porch, the better.
The fact that your friend is this clueless about her spouse and his needs, not to mention yours, gives me pause. I would proceed with caution and be generous with direct language.
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And why would you bring unfamiliar friends to your in-laws house?
It just seems strange to me to bring adult* friends who don't have a relationship with rest of the family to a multiple overnight gathering. Especially when its the in-laws. Personalities could blow up no matter what conditions guests have. Is it worth causing issues with your in-laws over a cross-country friend? Start with a dinner party.
Unless the "lake house" is one of those gilded age mansions in the Adirondacks where nobody would actually see each other.
*as adults couldn't they stay at a cheap nearby motel if they have to visit?
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Does the new bride have an ulterior motive?
I am always suspicious of friends trying to do things like this after big events ... the paranoid cynic in me wonders if she is pushy about this because she wants to (a) show off her new husband, a seemingly unusual character who can put up with her, or (b) she thinks she can push her new husband into becoming more social and thus "cure" him.
I am just speculating. I don't know the the people or the circumstances. This is my brainstorming contribution which may be wildly off the mark.
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One friend sensitive, the other insensitive and selfish
Maybe I'm the contrarian here, but today I disagree with everyone.
The LW writes: "She (the friend) has been pressing me to meet up at my in-laws' vacation home, something that had been discussed before her wedding."
Who discussed it; who brought it up? The LW writer does not say. Perhaps the LW invited the friend and then thought better of it? Especially after meeting the new husband. And that is okay with all of you???
First of all, can't we give the in-laws a little more credit? In addition to being fun loving individuals maybe they could also be tolerant and accepting too? Instead of assuming this vacation will be disastrous, maybe it might be interesting, fun even? Maybe everyone could discover that it is possible to enjoy people who aren't just like us.
As a parent of a child on the Autistic spectrum I am no stranger to exclusion. I have experienced friends drifting away because my child doesn't play well with theirs. Other parents of children on the spectrum tell me similar tales. Sadly, it is not just friends that leave; sometimes it is family members too.
Are you Cary, and the other writers who share your views that this couple should be excluded, that closed-minded and intolerant? You completely left the insecure, insensitive LW off the hook when she admitted she didn't want to be the one who invited the strange couple that didn't fit it.
Please enjoy your superior day with your perfectly normal friends. I'll hang out with the freaks and the weirdoes, thank you.
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dcnoble
"Please enjoy your superior day with your perfectly normal friends. I'll hang out with the freaks and the weirdoes, thank you."
...k, cya.
Are you sure your kids are the reason people drift away from you? I felt like drifting away in the middle of your post.
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Asperger's
I have an Asperger's story. On another forum where I hang out, one of my friends is a kid with Asperger's. The regulars on the forum know him, know he has Asperger's, and have some understanding of what he's like, but there are a lot of semi-regulars and drop-ins who don't know him. The median age on this forum is maybe 20-something; a lot of teens, but also quite a few older folks. Although it's a gaming forum, there's also a community board where people hang out and discuss their lives.
So, hot topic of the day: a young boy writes seeking emergency advice. He's at home alone, with no car, and a bird has flown into his window, injuring itself severely. He can see it outside, flopping around in evident distress. He wants to know, should he attempt to put it out of its misery, or should he leave it to die naturally, or should he wait several hours for his mom to return and try to take it to a vet? Is there maybe something he can do by way of first aid?
Several dozen people offer several suggestions, some more useful than others. Then my friend with Asperger's posts. I don't get the question, he says. Is there some reason you can't just draw the blinds on the window?
You see, he assumes the problem is an aesthetic one: the sight of the bird flopping around is distracting and unattractive. It doesn't occur to him that there's a moral issue involved, and he feels no empathy for the bird. This isn't surprising; it's just one of the ways in which some autistic people can be blind to the emotional spectrum.
Instantly, several people who don't know him jump into a flame war. He's evil. How could he say such a thing? He should burn in hell. He should be tortured by being rammed into a glass wall and having his back broken, so he knows what it feels like. Fortunately, several people are present to explain that he's not evil, he just sees things a little differently; there's even someone on hand to explain to him that the original poster wasn't asking for advice on how to avoid seeing the bird, but on how to best deal with its suffering. Also fortunately, he's pretty much immune to having his feelings hurt - he mostly doesn't care what other people think of him. At the end of the day, everyone understands everyone else a little better (and by the way, the bird died of natural causes shortly after the original post). Happy ending.
Which leads me to why I'm not 100% behind Cary's advice. People with Asperger's take a little getting used to, it's true, but... so what? The kid in the story above may not be the right person to go to about ethical conundrums, but if you want numbers crunched, he's your man. And he does reach out to people, albeit in his own odd way. He likes it when I joke about him being my spare brain. We're buds. One of my bosses has Asperger's too. He's a programmer, a good one. He hasn't said more than four words to me in a ten-year acquaintance, but I'm very grateful to him for earning the company lots and lots of money. Assuming he could work himself up to attending a social event, I'd be honored to include him. What I'm saying, in short, is that it's not all that hard to get over feeling uncomfortable around someone with a disability once you know they have it. I think you can do it, and if your in-laws are as charming as you say they are, I'm sure they can do it. The guy with Asperger's doesn't have to participate in the porch talk. Can't he just sit on the porch, or whatever he feels like doing, while the rest of you talk? Would that be any skin off your nose?
The pushy friend is a different matter. Personally I don't much care for pushy friends, which is why I don't have any... pushy people tend to get tossed off my friends list. It does sound like you don't really want to spend a vacation with your friend, much less her husband. That's fine; if you don't want to invite her, you don't have to invite her. All I'm saying is, don't fail to invite her just because her husband has Asperger syndrome.