to ask if you've gone through your autistic DH's unmasking process...

[WetBBQPants]

and if so, what behaviours, attitudes, narratives did you notice? Did it change things for you, as in feeling you hadn't married the person you thought you had?

Yes! I think he was the last person to realise he's probably autistic (he doesn't feel the need to pursue a diagnosis), but going through the process with our son made the penny drop. I'm not sure if it's an unmasking thing, or just a being together for almost 20 years thing, or just an im noticing them more thing, but there are certainly things going on that irritate me enough that I wouldn't have tolerated them in the earlier days. Not bad things, but persistent, low level annoyances.

It's the other way round for us. I am the autistic one, but didn't know until about 2 years ago. Obviously I can't tell you exactly how he feels, but he does say it explains a lot.

Yes but I was young and had no idea what was going on. Took years to work it out. The main thing was, it’s hard to describe, it became clear that he saw himself as a separate entity and me (and now our kids) as kind of the background to our his life. Except of course when it suits him to join in.

Ooh, interesting. I'm not sure. For me it's been more like, waiting for him to grow into certain behaviours that never did develop. To become more confident about certain things, more skilled with practice.

Relationships- we expect to get to know each other better with time.
I know him inside out. He hasn't learned anything about me, understood my priorities, compromised. And he's grown ever more cemented in his ways!

Though he's less restrictive in his eating at home these days.

Oh good god you are all describing my DH here…

I know him inside out. He hasn't learned anything about me, understood my priorities, compromised. And he's grown ever more cemented in his ways!

This really hits home;you're describing my DH

My DH has long suspected ADHD but I didn’t understand enough about it and didn’t believe him. As he’s learned more, and we’ve discovered our child is ND, he’s letting me see more of his struggles and ‘true self’. I’m glad of this, and were able to be honest with each other in a new way. He began spiralling a bit recently on holiday, which isn’t usual for him, and I was able to rationalise it and not see it as grumpiness etc. Hard to explain, but I’m so glad I know now and that he can stop trying to pretend that he’s coping all the time.

Oh my god that is the best description I’ve EVER read. This, 100%

And no malice but also no comprehension whatsoever of the impact of this. No understanding of the part he’s meant to play other than resentment at having to do any of it and expecting accolades if he did the bare minimum as a family.

What do you mean by spiralling?

I don't think my husband has ASD but this description of how your family life feels hits the nail on the head about my family. I generally feel my husband tries to not be so wrapped up in himself but it's more of an an allocation of time rather than feeling integrated. Interesting

I have described it as kayaking down a river, him enjoying the scenery paddling cheerfully along, me in a kayak behind with kids, dog, all the baggage, desperately trying to keep up and warning him about white water ahead.

The sad thing for me is that I married him thinking that his ‘shyness’ and ‘naivety’ were because he hadn’t been in many relationships but twenty years later none of that stuff has improved. He’s in his fifties and I’m like his mother rather than his wife with a lot of things. Now that we know he’s autistic, if I get frustrated or lonely then he says I’m disablist so it’s an isolating place to be in.

Yeah, the shyness and naivety is something I found very attractive on a young man that was extremely good looking and intelligent. Three decades on, I feel I am the one on burnout.

Yep.

I've been happy to see him unmask. The masking process made him deeply unhappy. He can be himself now he doesn't have to force himself to stare people in the eyes or have social interactions that make him feel unhappy- like being forced to talk football with men.
He's always been himself with me but I'm pleased to see how not forcing himself to conform to certain unnecessary social rules has made him much more free.

A lot of what people are saying here aren't autistic traits they are selfish man traits. Being autistic doesn't mean being a shit dad and partner. You just have to read Mumsnet relationships to know that.

I am also happy that DH has stopped forcing himself to socialise after work and I no longer bother with dinner parties together, I socialise on my own. I am happy that he feels he can stim and have fidget items around the house, really not an issue. Him prefering no eye contact doesn't bother me in the slightest. Others thinking he's a bit weird or antisocial also doesn't bother me. But I guess I struggle more with the constant sour expression on his face and monosyllabic answers. And I constantly wonder if he sees me as an object, as something that performs necessary functions.

Yes. But I don’t really find much in common with most of the posts above. DH now accepts he has ADHD, it has made him a lot more kind to himself about some of his “flaws” - time blindness and procrastination, for example. And it’s a lot easier now we can frame some of his key drivers in terms of looking for a dopamine hit. Now that he’s not constantly fighting these aspects of himself that he thought were “useless” but is utilising them/finding better ways to manage he feels so much less shame and it’s lovely to see.

The fact that he's autistic doesn't give him a right to use it as a way to make you feel you're in the wrong. You're allowed to voice your feelings, give criticism and if you're not happy you are allowed to leave the relationship. Your needs also matter.

Yes and I will be honest in our case it eventually lead to the end of our relationship.

When we met I found him to be ‘quirky’ but absolutely suited my personality. We shared a lot in common and he was more flexible to try new things - I did find him to be very anxious doing something out of routine though. We both struggled with executive functioning skills (I’m 99% sure I have adhd with ASD traits myself) but we muddled through. I did quietly think that he was autistic and when our eldest child was flagged for ASD for being his personality twin, it pretty much cemented it.

Having children with additional needs (especially one having high needs) is what had the mask fully drop for him, whilst mine is exhaustingly constantly up. He changed jobs for a better wage, but the more responsibility he held there, the less he could function at home. I don’t mean just the usual ‘man doesn’t see housework’, he wouldn’t take care of his basic hygiene unless told to. Ignored key bills that needed paying/setting up a DD for. Quite frankly he couldn’t do anything at home unless given specific information, would never fore plan anything. I ended up feeling like I was his carer.

Once he accepted he was probably autistic, he became incredibly ridged, conversation died because he just talked at me, if we were having a disagreement he would start talking in tv quotes (which drove me absolutely barmy I won’t lie). He also lost all sense of personal boundaries around me and couldn’t grasp why it was inappropriate. There were a million little things that I could give examples of - he wouldn’t find a nice shirt for a job interview, just wanted to wear his comfortable every day one, wore shoes with holes because he didn’t want to go through the whole thing of buying new ones, once had a meltdown during lockdown because I said he needed brush his hair and ‘he didn’t know how’….

As I said, I’ve had to up how much I hold it together since having children, I couldn’t support him through finding his true self as well. He also tried to blame me, saying we’d be fine if I just fully accepted him as he is. But I think my experience may be a bit more ‘extreme’ - I truly believe with compromise of understanding someone is ND but that some things are not acceptable despite this, a relationship can absolutely work.

I'm probably going to hide this after I post because ND and NT-partner-of-ND support should not mix, but I will just leave it here in case it is helpful (but won't see any replies).

I have ADHD and in my experience, the diagnosis has a process similar to this:

I had been reading about ADHD and learning stuff for months leading up to the diagnosis, but it never felt quite legitimate, I had this idea "Oh, I'll just try the ADHD strategies and see if they help!" but I could not realistically do that without the validation of the diagnosis because I kept flip flopping back into a kind of imposter syndrome, feeling like a fraud, feeling I wasn't "entitled" to whatever it was.

Then the diagnosis. Huge catharsis for me. Allowed me to go all in on the strategies where I somehow had not before. I don't really know why. For me it was a 7 year gap between diagnosis and starting proper medication, which is unusual (long story).

When you've been undiagnosed with an ND condition right into adulthood, you have developed all kinds of coping strategies and masking, most of which are actually stressful and/or maladaptive. In order to create new, functional coping strategies, the old, maladaptive ones need to be unbuilt and unlearned. I've highlighted it because it seems like sometimes there's a perception that people should just be able to instantly swap from one coping strategy to another but it doesn't work like that. In the meantime, while the old strategies are being disassembled, things get worse, because now you have no coping strategy. Everyone is an individual, and ASD will be different to ADHD, but honestly, although I had some improvements immediately to my own mood, I would say it probably took 3-4 years before I got out of the kind of "building site stage" and actually had solid foundations to build my new coping strategies on. During this I thought that my DH might leave me because I felt at several points that it would NEVER get better and maybe this was the best I could ever be, probably because I didn't directly recognise that I was going through a process of unlearning old, unhelpful coping mechanisms or that I was then struggling through without any mechanisms. When waiting for assessment it can feel like after I get that answer everything will magically be easy and it is not. Nobody really offers you a plan of what to do next. However, now I have got out of that kind of "building site" I can see improvements and it really does make a difference. I don't feel like I'm a different person to who I was initially, though I have no idea truly what that is like for someone outside of me. I'm sure that I went through some over-defensiveness during the "demolition phase". I know that I linked EVERYTHING back to ADHD which frustrated DH. It was just something that I needed to go through to get here which is a much better place than I was previously. The obsession was actually helpful, and some wallowing was necessary processing.

Anyway, that is my (one person's) experience of the process from the other side, in case it's helpful to anyone.

Expect to be eroded over time. I would have left but I waited and hoped too long until my health failed catastrophically. Now I'm trapped till I die.

Don't be me.

They are autistic traits and many women will have some of them too.There is a reason autism is a protected disability and impacts relationships.

Just read back and found this. Absolute truth here - what I actually described as us all being ‘side characters in his life’. Because learning to be social did seem to come from observation from the media and such, so everything seemed to be an ‘act’ if that makes sense?

It's not a protected characteristic to be a bad father and husband..
As we can see many (most) men have these traits and most men aren't autistic.
One can attribute them to autism but that doesn't mean it's the autism.
There are an autistic men that are decent. There are NT men that are decent.

The part of autism that impacts relationships is misunderstandings between NT and ND people in how they show emotion. And having different expectations based on societal rules that NT people want to adhere to.