Family holidays as an autistic adult - argh.

[TheWayTheLightFalls]

I’m mainly writing to get things off my chest, but any advice would be welcome too.

I’m autistic, level 2 so moderate needs. There are many aspects of my life in which I function very well and I expect most people would be surprised at my diagnosis, but I have broadly arranged my life in a way that makes things better for me and minimises stress. I have three children (shouldn’t have, but they are here and the back story is long and irrelevant). On a daily basis I am just holding it together and trying to do my best by them.

DH fancied a holiday this school break. I really didn’t want the kind of holiday he proposed but he whined and beat me down with how lovely it would be and how much he would be doing and how he would plan everything. We are one day in, in Europe. So far:

I don’t cope well with changes in routine, which is basically holidays in a nutshell. I knew this, and here it is happening. It’s a bit better for me in places we have been before, because it’s more familiar, but that didn’t happen this time.

Airports/public transport etc - loud, crowded. Arrived late and needed to sprint through the terminal.

The accommodation is smaller than our home so I’m constantly surrounded by other people’s chewing, tv, chairs scraping etc.

I am uncomfortable in unfamiliar environments, and can’t shake that I am using someone else’s bed / towels / cutlery. Should have brought my own, forgot. I’m like this at home too - I don’t eat in other people’s home etc. “Uncomfortable” sounds mild but in practice it’s closer to disgust, so I am not eating much or able to be comfortable anywhere.

I’m just unsettled and sad, and then beating myself up for not enjoying things.

If we were at home one child would be at a holiday club that she loves, younger two would be in nursery. I’d be in my own home. Then in the afternoon I would pick them up and we’d get an ice cream, maybe go to the park - they’d be equally happy and I wouldn’t be on the edge of a meltdown.

DH is also pushing all the usual domestic crap onto me, which doesn’t help. And in a day or so will get pissy and angry at me because I am spoiling his holiday. And then will get a migraine which will push yet more childcare and domestic crap onto me.

The evening before flying I ended up taking visiting family to a West End show, ie staying up late and being tired, spending 2+ hours in a loud and crowded theatre, and coming home with a cracking headache. So that didn’t help. Again, very much “everyone else seems to enjoy this so why can’t I?”

Then we will come home and everyone will assume that I am rested and refreshed after my lovely holiday. I feel like DH knows that I am autistic, except when he fancies a picture perfect holiday and then I need to magically just snap out of it and facilitate things.

So you do have a chip on your shoulder then. Not everyone's life experience will be the same as yours.

I'm loving the phrase "lasagne of weaponised incompetence ".

I'm also understanding your frustration at your DH being so damn....inefficient. And they say that we're the disabled ones! How can people not see that if you don't do A, then inevitably B and C won't happen, or not unless you faff around doing D, which would be a massively inefficient use of time! Honestly, we could run the world so well- if the sheer effort and overthinking didn't tip us over the edge into burnout!

I love the Internet meme : "Oh, everybody's autistic nowadays!" (Looks around at planes falling out of the sky, delayed trains, traffic gridlock).........."I think not" 😆

There's another possibility though, which is that autistic and ADHD people are often attracted to each other....have you ever suspected a touch of ADHD in him? (Not excusing his hopelessness at all).

I think my (almost certainly) AuDHD husband (our daughter is diagnosed) feels similar to you about holidays so I work round it.

However! You don't need to be autistic to experience weaponised incompetence from a partner, as Mumsnet demonstrates daily.

I think you should encourage him to take the kids alone next time or at least have a lot more say in what's organised.

We would for e.g. do something cheaper where we can have more than the minimum number of bedrooms.

Have you ever sat back and sort of internally analysed your husband’s behaviours/traits to see if actually there could be more to this?

Reading some of the things you’ve written, he’s either a thoughtless arsehole or perhaps has something like ADHD. My husband is the kindest, most devoted husband and father but dear god above he does things like this. It used to drive me INSANE until I realised he genuinely can’t help it - anyway it turns out he has ADHD. I’ve had to recognise and work with his limitations in the way he’s always had to with mine. I wouldn’t ‘let’ him book a holiday, for example, because he isn’t capable of really digesting all of the information. He gets blinded by certain parts and really believes he’s nailed it (and FWIW there’s a huge difference between this and weaponised incompetence). We now have ‘him jobs’ and ‘me jobs’. He definitely more than pulls his own weight but we have got really good at playing to our own strengths.

Neurodivergent people do tend to gravitate towards each other. Reasonably high achieving people tend to go undiagnosed for a long time.

Also this - I have a friend who is VERY rigid in her AuDHD thinking and have really struggled to holiday with her because X isn’t working - she is miserable because it isn’t working, she is frustrated because it isn’t working - but it can’t be done Y way (which would solve all the issues she’s struggling with) because X is the way it’s done on holiday. She, when she’s less triggered, openly says she just cannot move past this being the right way to do things. Even when it’s wrong.

Get in a taxi and do a weekly shop. Reframe your thinking. ‘It would be nice to wander to the shop every day if we were staying in a village’ rather than ‘we need to go to the shop every day irrespective of that meaning we need to negotiate 3 young children into a taxi or onto public transport because this is what we always do and we enjoy going to the shop daily’.

Just as we cannot expect an autistic person to put on their big girl pants and get on with it, I do get frustrated with the flip side as not all NT people are the same, and shouldn’t be expected to be perfect at organisation. Maybe that’s why some of the NT people are getting so angry about it I don’t know.

I am NT I think, but I know that I need to build in down time if I am busy, neither DH, DS or I like noisy busy parades. I think just about everyone has personal foibles that need to be worked around, it’s just that an autistic person’s may be more pronounced and if they aren’t accommodated the impact is more severe.

I have probably managed to insult everyone here and as I say I am beginning to wonder if I am NT myself.

What’s b coming clear is that unless the OP absorbs a shitload of the mental and physical and emotional effort required to “holiday” well, the family holidays “badly” (high stress all round). He’s simply not provided anything like the input and forethought needed, regadless of neurodiversity. Any NT wife would be furious too imo. (Excepting saints).