On holiday with DH who doesn't do change well and has social and communication difficulties. Can anyone give me tips as I am finding it very stressful?

[tinseloatcake]

I had some useful tips on a previous thread but I didn't manage to read them in time. I'm finding things really difficult as I'm on holiday with my husband who is proving very difficult to have a nice time with .

He pulls his weight at home because we have worked out a system where he has some very regimented jobs but it just falls apart when we are away. We end up in an argument every 10 seconds.

He cannot keep the children safe while cycling, let alone pack a picnic or jolly them along when some one falls off etc. He cannot read a map on the go.

He gets really annoyed by me if I ask him to do things but says he is willing to help, and I generally think he is. But I find it baffling. My latest example is we got back from aforementioned long bike ride and everyone is hot and sweaty. He said I might go and fix the fridge. I said can you get everyone a big drink first, he started to re arrange all the chairs. I was can you get everyone a drink - and he says I am, I'm just making the chairs all nice ... So I get the drinks and he is annoyed with me.

Please give me tips. I am genuinely thinking about getting stuck into the booze to dull my frustration with it. But it is not constructive. If you offered something on the previous thread I didn't get to read and digest so I would be grateful for more help.

Thank you

He appears to just be finding something to do to pass his time, then found something else to pass his time with instead.
Getting thirsty kids a drink isn't just something you do to aimlessly pass the time! Comparing it to doing laundry is weird.

As I mentioned it is our caravan fridge. It might be that he can fix it with his tool box. O said anything about renting a cottage?

I also didn't say he required a lot of managing at work. I said it is directed work, not autonomous.

Would it be easier to go on the same holiday every year to build a routine? Or would leaving him behind actually be kinder?
Can i ask how you ended up together?

Some really great advice here. I think you are all right,I do need to lower my expectations a bit.

He does struggle with the kids though, he can't really manage their behaviour so I often go to the loo and come back and someone is crying etc. Which really pisses me off. He similarly doesn't read mood well with board games etc so takes the Mick too much and pushes one to tears or rides over and wins instead of teaching them techniques. Etc etc. So that ends up exhausting too. Tb fair he is now willingly walking them round the campsite, but that I partly because he knows I am pissed off.

He always says he doesn't have enough time to relax on holiday, but that is because he is enormously faffy.

[quote tinseloatcake]@margoskaftan - I have asked him and he says I need to communicate more clearly...[/quote]
One of the times when I break with tradition and say Yeah, he's Autistic because it isn't being used to excuse abusive arseholish behaviour .

Either that or you're on holiday with my DP or have raised my Late DB from the grave.

If you've got either of them, please feel free to keep them. I particularly need a break from DP telling me I haven't communicated effectively by saying 'Can you make Chilli for dinner, please?' instead of ordering him to make chilli with a particular tin of beans in chilli sauce out of the two tins in the cupboard, which meat, which vegetables to add out of the five types in the fridge (two of which are not chilli ingredients) and which rice to get out. And refusing point blank to tell him for the third time what tin of chilli beans to use because he wasn't listening the first time or second time when I foolishly answered, so therefore validated his insistence upon speaking to him like a particularly dim three year old - knowing that the next question will be 'You haven't told me what meat to use'.

[qualifier: I'm Autistic, too. I just FUCKING LISTEN THE FIRST TIME.]

Interesting questions @whattodo2019 the caravan generated basically the same holiday every year I guess, the difference is maybe the kids growing up.

We met at work. Of course these sorts of threads are very one sided - he is kind and committed and all the rest of it but sometimes we seem to be on different planets.

I think the children have made him less selfish, but he doesn't seem to bridge the gap into engaging positively.

What I do in the situation is let him do what he wants (which is nothing as he cannot organise anything), and me and the kids do our own thing. Or even better, leave him at home and you get a proper break

@Neverdropyourmooncup - I'd like to go on holiday with you please. although you might not let me as I have dropped my mooncup once, on a poo

Exactly that. I remember watching my bil make everyone toasties for lunch once without asking any advice at all on anything. I was astounded and my sister was - "this is normal..."

I am a bit baffled really. You've married him and got children with him. I presume he hasn't changed overnight into this annoying person. That aside, holidays with partners and children often don't live up to expectation I am afraid .

[quote tinseloatcake]@margoskaftan - I have asked him and he says I need to communicate more clearly...[/quote]
I think you'll be damned if you do and damned if you don't.
About the drinks earlier, if you had said "Get me and the kids a drink we're too hot", you could have been called demanding or controlling. However, the way that you asked for the drinks and he went off organising the chairs, that would drive me potty too. It's like he was a cat chasing a light on the floor, so easily distracted.
Have you asked why he got distracted when you asked for drinks and he decided to sort out chairs? It's the way that his mind works and why he felt the need to sort seating out before getting you drinks.

Also, why was he asking your advice 3 times when he was doing the washing up?? It's washing up

See, you didn't explain you own the caravan. You presumed i understood the problem with the fridge.

Do you do that with him? Presume because something is obvious to you that its obvious and you don't think "what information do I need to provide to make sure they understand?". Did he understand you wanted the dcs to have drinks immediately? Not at some point when you got in? (Did they not have drinks with them on their rides? If do it might not have occurred to him they needed a drink straight away. )

Stuff that's obvious to you isn't obvious to him. It does sound like he doesn't cope well with working out basics compared to the average person, but you chose to marry him and have dcs, so you must have decided to overlook this.

The caravaning holidays, can you go alone? It sounds like you are both having a shit time.

He should have understood the kids needed a drink as we had just been for a very hot cycle and everyone had been complaining how hot and thirsty they were because they had finished their drinks....

I did mention the caravan, it may have crossed post with yours of course.

I do wonder what has changed. I guess

1. I am less tolerant after 10 years.
2. 3 kids who are not babies
3. I have given up full time doing everything for the kids so it is more obvious when I am doing everything for him.

Reflecting on that question I now recall that we do often build up to a fight in the first few days of holiday and that seems to change things. I don't know whether he ups his game, I down mine or we meet in the middle. He is not a terrible communicator it just doesn't come naturally to him. He is not great is a party for eg and I sometimes pre brief him on suitable behaviours.

I do suspect Margot that I am not perfect, but I don't think my communication style is desperately unclear. I don't have this problem with my children or my team at work and I am a linguist by degree. In any event, I don't expect to have to spoon feed him getting drinks, washing up or any other of life's daily tasks. I'd quite like to not have to speak sometimes.

We might be able to go on our own,I do dream of it, but need to pluck up the courage to be able to reverse and hook up etc on my own.

[quote Librariesmakeshhhhappen]@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

Would you say that you would go and get your tired, hot and thirsty kids a drink but then go and rearrange furniture instead?[/quote]
My kids and my other half are perfectly capable of getting themselves a drink. Especially if I've already taken myself off to do something and they appear to be doing nothing.

@GreyhoundG1rl

He appears to just be finding something to do to pass his time, then found something else to pass his time with instead. Getting thirsty kids a drink isn't just something you do to aimlessly pass the time! Comparing it to doing laundry is weird.

Fixing the fridge was the time passing activity. Which, it now appears, was a thing his wife asked him to do. Then when he said he was going to do it she instead asks him to do something else.

Well I asked him to do it on Tuesday. Not immediately on a return from a bike ride on Thursday when all the kids needed attention. Wife work isn't it.

I'd leave him at home (but he would have to fend for himself).

@tinseloatcake

Some really great advice here. I think you are all right,I do need to lower my expectations a bit.

He does struggle with the kids though, he can't really manage their behaviour so I often go to the loo and come back and someone is crying etc. Which really pisses me off. He similarly doesn't read mood well with board games etc so takes the Mick too much and pushes one to tears or rides over and wins instead of teaching them techniques. Etc etc. So that ends up exhausting too. Tb fair he is now willingly walking them round the campsite, but that I partly because he knows I am pissed off.

He always says he doesn't have enough time to relax on holiday, but that is because he is enormously faffy.

How many hours does it take yours to leave the house?

I plan. My clothes are ready. My snack/drinks are ready. My sunglasses are in my bag, mask and keys hanging where I put them when I come in the house. I get up, bathroom, get dressed, downstairs, coffee, check for last minute transport issues.

He decides to download things to listen to on his phone for a ten minute bus trip. Which invariably takes about 2 hours as something goes wrong with the download or he sees something on YouTube that he's put on to accompany the downloading. Or he can't find a lead for a powerbank because his phone might run out of charge if you hadn't used half the battery watching TV shows whilst you had your morning dump it wouldn't be a problem. And then he decides to attempt the washing up whilst I'm standing by the door, ready to go. Or decides he needs two, not one, layers more than he needs, so he's too hot to speak and starts looking for a bag to bring in case he needs it. I've binned the IKEA bags, but he still manages to find a sodding bag for life from somewhere. He never uses it to put one of the two too many layers in, they're permanently attached to him even if he's melting.

I've sorted it now. No hurrying him up, as that sends him into a terminal flat spin. I just open the front door. As soon as he thinks I'm going without him, he's there. I suspect people have left without him on more than one occasion in his life.

I do really like him as well as love him, but JFC, I could cheerfully murder him at any point when I'm waiting to go somewhere and he's on a major procrastination; early is too early, midday is too hot, later is too late. All a smokescreen for him to spend 4 hours from waking up before leaving the fucking house (other than work, where he will leave it until the very last second before getting out of bed).

Gosh, apart from the caravan this sounds like my life growing up.

My dad isn't diagnosed as autistic, but has significant traits. I don't think he's ever made my sandwich for a picnic. He will now make a cup of tea now I'm a grown up but when I was at school I was really pretty unwell (hardly able to lever myself upright) and he took the day off work to look after me and I didn't get any food or drink all day. He just fixed things round the house.

In my house he would be good at specified tasks: picking up a takeaway, packing the car for a day at the beach. We'd plan the holiday to minimise what fell to other people: m and s ready meals, a supermarket delivery when we arrived etc. Mum had holiday lists which were comprehensive enough that we could do most of our own packing from maybe 7 or 8.

If it helps, life has got a lot easier for my mum now we're all grown up. Their kids, now adults, have practical problems like taps that need mending or broken lawnmowers and my dad is very happy to deal with practical stuff like that. As we grew up we picked up more of the load so mum wasn't doing everything herself. I know that's not a solution but I do expect things might get better over time.

Can you trade jobs you know he can do with the wife work?

I have to do all the planning in my house, I'm a planner and my husband just isn't. On holiday I trade all the wife work, planning, organisation, meals, for my husband doing most of the bedtimes and taking the kids off for 20 mins during the day. It gives me a couple of windows of time during each day where I get some peace to recharge and relax

Shouldn't you get him to explore a diagnosis before lowering your expectations?

I understand how frustrating this must be for you but, from what you have written - likes routine, doesn't cope with change, finds communication difficult, doesn't read cues well, can't read the feeling in the room when playing a game with the kids, likes arranging chairs, the need to tell him how to behave at a party - it's textbook autism. And he will not suddenly have become autistic and therefore, as frustrating as it may be, it is unreasonable to expect him to just 'get it' and change. That is not possible...you cannot tell a person who cannot swim to jump into the deep end of a swimming pool and just swim...so therefore you may need to adapt your approach. Write him a list of what to prepare for the picnic, for example. Give him a checklist for swimming that you can keep on the fridge and it can be a go-to so that you don't have to write it each time. The world needs to become more neurodiverse friendly. Good luck.

My dh is autistic (recently diagnosed) as is my 13 year old who also has sever learning disabilities.
I sometimes feel like I have an extra child in dh.... his priorities are often very different to mine! He would need to straighten up the chairs (or any number of things) on his way to make the drinks!!!
Dh can't change who he is but we have learned ways to co exist without wanting to kill each other 😂😂

PS also meant to say maybe take a moment to look at the things he IS good at...you've said he's kind and committed. I expect he is also honest and rule abiding. Perhaps he is good at problem solving and maths? Perhaps he can help out in other ways such as helping the kids with homework or fixing things like you mentioned..I know it's exhausting for you but try and play to his strengths if possible.