Us on Gareth's birthday, the first year we were together. He even scrubbed up okay for once!

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm" To wit, I retain enough function not to hurt anyone, but objects are fair game.





Ruth: Ah, so it isn't the wall you care about, you just don't want to hurt me!





Gareth: Got it, see, communication! Also, I had to get the I, Robot quote in there! The ability to stim, even if it looks painful, is good, but the fact Ruth watches out and makes sure I don't cause any damage is long term good, even if I don't like it at the time. Important bit here, I DO NOT advocate Ruth's approach if your partner isn't capable of not hurting you. Your safety has to come first, and also, when they calm down, they're going to feel guilty as hell and that could trigger another episode. Instead, work with them when they are calm on how they would like you to handle the behaviour, such as calm voices, environmental change, medication if necessary, but don't put yourself at risk. For me, if it's bad, before restraining me, Ruth will turn the lights down and TV off/put music on if noisy outside and turn the heat off, and let the dog in if she's outside (Scarlett is AMAZING with meltdowns, I mean, Ruth's okay, but that dog...(I'm joking darling, you're awesome too.)) Look at what precedes the self injurious behaviour and try and manage that before it becomes too much.





The beach, our go to place when Gaz needs some space from life.

Look, he dragged me to cricket! Fortunately, I like T20. Also, this was the Notts - Yorkshire game, and he supports Yorkshire, I'm a Nottingham lass, and Notts won. So he had to buy me Thai! Winner!

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So there we have it. Funnily enough, Gareth normally edits and cuts my articles down, yet this time he was the wordy one. Ha! Take that Gareth! If you like this article, please share it, and you can follow us on Twitter Facebook or By Email . With E-mail, we promise never to sell your data or use it for anything other than delivering you fresh content from The Rolling Twenties. We hate spam with a passion so would never clog your inbox with it!





Any other questions, or anything you want to say? Let us know in the comments or on social media, we love communicating with our readers!



Disclaimer: We do not ever recommend restraining a person without proper training and explicit permission.





Some great Autism resources:

I was brainstorming some ideas with Gareth about what else he would like to discuss in connection with Autism, following on from our previous article . Simultaneously, we both said "relationships." So here we are. We have asked for your questions on Twitter, and Gareth and I are going to discuss them.We got slightly distracted talking about whether you can take a dog on rollercoasters... so, back to the matter at hand. (In case you are interested, we are going to Alton Towers. Gareth has an obsession with Parks. Gareth made the good point if you can take a dog sky-diving, then why can't you take them on a rollercoaster. You can see how easily distracted he is!)Ruth: Well for me the key is BELIEF. At the beginning of the relationship Gareth was going through an unstable period in his life, with a very low opinion of himself! Gareth was very withdrawn and unhappy, with an unhealthy does of pessimism and zero confidence in himself or his abilities. Communication from Gareth about his issues was really like getting blood out of a stone. In a desert. There is absolutely no quick fix for this. You are in for the long run! For a lot of people this can be exhausting, and you can feel like you are getting nowhere. Something inside me said to stick at this. My big influence in my life was my Nan who used to say "stick at it girl. Don't give up, because giving up means running away." Well I wasn't going to give up on Gareth. He needed someone, and at first, I won't lie, I didn't know if we were going to be 'together forever,' but I knew he needed a companion and some stability. I gave him space when he needed it, and we talked into the middle of the night if he needed to. Over time him he opened up about his self-loathing and this only made me love him more. He was showing his human side. This is the really important thing, and the thing I think helped massively, persistence. I believed that Gareth was a wonderful person. He is kind, considerate, intelligent and funny. I needed Gareth to see this, and over time he started to see the qualities I see in him. It's constant presence and reassurance that can slowly build up someone's image of themselves again.Ruth: Gareth is right, overstimulation causes him to come across as condescending and aggressive. There have been a few instances where he has been horrible and it has really upset me. At first I didn't understand what I had done to deserve this condescending tone off Gareth. I used to feel guilty for getting upset at him being unpleasant. Then I realised that, even though I am his carer, I am allowed to get upset. It's a natural reaction. I try to wait for Gareth to calm down a bit. Sometimes he rocks, and sometimes he tells me he needs space, so I go off and cry, or write my feelings down until he is ready to talk. I would get annoyed that I had to wait for when he is ready, but I understand now there is no point trying to communicate with him when he is rocking or needing space because it will go in one ear and out the other, and only frustrate him more. So I just wait, and then we discuss what he has done to upset me, or I have done to upset him. It really is patience and communication that get you through the difficult moments.Ruth: At first I had no idea whether I should stop Gareth hitting himself or tapping his foot. I used to stop him hitting himself, until I realised this is a response to be overstimulated. I now allow Gareth to hit his head with hand, however, if it gets too hard, I do grab his wrists and say "Stop it." Usually the hitting of himself isn't that hard. There has been a few times where I have intervened. Once he was on the floor, hitting and banging his head on the floor, hitting himself, and flailing his arms and legs about. So I straddled him and grabbed his wrists to stop any continuous violence to himself. I stop the punching of walls as well, by putting my hands in front of where he is going to punch. The punching of walls has now stopped, as if he puts a hole in the wall, he has to fix it, so he knows there are consequence to his actions.Ruth: I disagree with you Gareth. Yes we think differently, and feel emotions differently. In my eyes, there is no right or wrong way to feel emotions. There is no book out there explaining when you should be happy, when you should be sad. Yes I feel emotions differently, but I don't feel disconnected from Gareth. I feel like we have our own special connection. That connection means a lot to me. I also don't feel estranged. Actually scrap that, I feel estranged when you watch a One Day International Cricket game, so that is my complaint. We are estranged over cricket. And even more so over test matches. Five days. Really GARETH!Ruth: Well that is a good answer Gareth, and no I am not being sarcastic. That really touched me! When we first met I treated our dates like any other, they were dates, and I would see how things go. It turned out things went very well, and we ended up together. I already sort of knew about the moving thing. I couldn't tell if he meant it, or was seeing my reaction. I treated it as if it was genuine, and I grabbed hold of his hand and said "You can't go" since then we have been together.The massive learning curve for me was understanding what was going on. I had worked with children with autism, but never adults. Yet I recognised some of Gareth's autistic traits. I had to LEARN. I treated the whole learning thing as if I was getting to know someone which I was. I was just learning how his brain worked! With teamwork and talking to his occupational therapist I learned how to live with Autism. I am not going to sit here and say all that learning was easy, it wasn't. I am still learning to this day. By working together through situations we become stronger. As Gareth said TOGETHERNESS is the key. And I wouldn't have him any other way now!