To wonder what our life as a future couple will look like when he is so independent?

[FaithD]

Partner is an academic at an English uni and the position is permanent. I will also say he is on the spectrum and has an autism diagnosis which may explain the bluntness I'm about describe.

We've been together for nearly a year and we're early 30s. For the first 6 months we lived near each other, now we live 3 hours apart. I miss him but we meet frequently and so far it works. But I am starting to think - are we ever going to bridge the gap? What about kids?

Partner has just returned from the US visiting family (I couldn't go due to important work commitment) and casually said he wants to do a professorship there for 3-6 months if he can manage it. I said really, you'd leave for 6 months? He then said 'well, ok, hypothetically speaking only 3'!! He then said there are other places where he'd like to do this.

I said I sometimes wonder where I feature in his life and he said I could come (I can work remotely often) - to which I said it might be possible but I have my own life to live.

I have been under the impression we plan to be each other long term and I worry that even if we do have kids he expects me to be a single mother for all intents and purposes. Or that he doesn't consider me at all.

We have both lived in different countries and were attracted to each others independent streak. But it is causing tension for the future. Any advice on how to have this conversation?

There's you answer then! Don't date academics though, they're not on the same time scale

@FaithD

A wise woman once said to me "A woman marries a man expecting him to change. A man marries a woman expecting her to stay the same. Both are disappointed".

I think it's sort of 'societally built in' to women to acknowledge and adapt to the changes that come with motherhood and marriage/partnership. And we do so happily for the most part. The same cannot be said for most men, they expect their lives to continue as before but with added 'home comforts' provided by their wife/partner. Some do adapt willingly after the shock wears off, but more of them either seem to do so grudgingly (and think they're heroes for doing so) or not at all and they continue to live their lives without a whole lot of regard for the needs of their family.

I'm old, been married for 35+ years (luckily to a good 'un), and I've seen a LOT when it comes to relationships. You seem to know 'how he is' so I wouldn't bank on this man changing. Nor should he if he really doesn't want to, but he needs to be clear about that beforehand. It will be your decision to accept him as he is and recognize that you'll probably be taking the lion's share of the home/child duties and will end up adapting your life to his goals and desires in order to 'keep' the marriage/relationship.

I don't mean to become his doormat or a 'surrendered/trad wife' or whatever they're calling them these days, but just that if he decides that he wants to <insert goal>, he probably will and will be puzzled as to why you aren't happy about it. Is that something you'll be happy to deal with in order to 'keep him'? Or would you rather cut your losses now and either go parenthood alone or try and find someone who 'gets it' when it comes to what marriage and parenthood really means.

DH was 100% into getting married and having a family. He was set good examples by his own parents so wasn't walking into it blindly. Marriage wasn't a big 'life changer' for either of us as we were able to balance 'coupledom' with our need for 'me time'. But he had a bit of 'culture shock' after we had our first child and he realized how much both our lives needed to change. I had a better handle on that aspect as I started having Niblings when I was around 10 and saw a good deal of the changes that motherhood brings. DH, not so much. But he adapted quickly and happily. If he hadn't, it would have been a dealbreaker for me.

So think carefully about what you want for YOUR future and whether or not HE fits into it. Not whether or not you can fit into his.

OP, I think you fundamentally misunderstand autistic people. Here is the deal for the vast majority of us. When we say something, we only mean what we say. We, on a whole do not imply any long-term planning by saying we are going to do something right now. Where NT people often get things wrong is to start extrapolating a single action to what life is going to look like for the rest of your life. We, ASD folks, also don't guess very well what other person may feel about our actions unless they tell us.
So if you want to have discussion about children, then you need to be very clear about what you want. I will hazard a guess that if you bring up your fears about being a married single parent just because your partner wants to go abroad for 3 months, he will be genuinely surprised. Because as far as he can see it, what he is planning to do makes perfect sense in the circumstances you are in today. He is unlikely to be considering hypothetical children because they are... hypothetical

But why would he think that? You’re not that invested in the idea of children and you’re a touring comedian, so it’s not as if he’s thinking about setting up home with Mrs Mop…?

I’m an academic, and I used to work in a different country to DH for years. I moved jobs when we had DS, but I absolutely still travel for conferences or extended research trips to archives etc. I know dual-academic career couples commuting internationally with babies for post docs.

Don't waste another hour with him.

I'm an academic. Pre kids, I probably spent 4-8 weeks of the year away at conferences/research trips. I absolutely would have applied for 3 month fellowships. It didn't mean I didn't love my DH or want to spend time with him. But that time researching is the thing I love most about my job. DH was also fine with it (he's autistic, FWIW). Ive cut back while kids are small but I did an trip off several weeks this summer and we worked together to make it work.

What your boyfriend is proposing is totally normal for his career and I think pretty normal for people in a LDR who are only just moving into long term status. It sounds like you're at about the point to have the big conversations about how you might make moving in together, having kids, careers that you sound like you both love etc work together.

There's been a lot of academic bashing on this thread. Some male academics are as bad as all that. But most I know in their 30s really aren't - probably because it isn't the cushy, stable, well paid, job-for-life it once was. There's less room for arseholes now.

20 years ago I was a householder TV name, higher tax payer married to a starting (autistic but lovely) academic.

We had kids, his career started to build. Three months in Vancouver, multiple three week trips to far east. I stayed home. He wasn't keen, it's a work trip, needed to concentrate.

Even when in London, his phone couldn't get reception, he needed to concentrate. Very lonely emotionally.

I think I knew my career had finally collapsed when I couldn't even meet a BBC exec, five miles away from his uni unless I arranged child care with my (ab-fab style) agent. (DH wasn't teaching and can't remember what was so important)

My oldest DD (19) has high functioning autism. I've done an ace job but she last had a meltdown last weekend and had to be talked through life by me. DH was on leave but has an absorbing hobby project. The weekend before we celebrated our silver wedding, no nostalgia, no emotional talk but we went away for exactly 36 hours which meant he could get a full morning and afternoon in on the hobby.

I sacrificed my career for my kids and it was a bloody good fun one. Even resurrecting it five years ago, DH & high needs kids sabotaged that.
The saddest bit is he never, ever appreciates what I gave up and is quite likely to trade me in for a younger, richer academic model who he's off to conferences with.

RUNAWAY NOW!

Exactly this. Something OP has not factored in, is that if you have kids with someone ND you are almost certainly going to have kids with ND too.

No one can prepare you for this. Like this poster I have given up everything to look after my two ND children. DH never ever available to help. Work always more important.

The difficulty of navigating life as an autistic child cannot be underestimated. It’s like death by a thousand papers cuts as you discover just how different you are to everyone else. As a parent it’s heartbreaking, emotionally extremely heavy burden, especially if you’re NT, which I am. You never stop grieving the gap between your DC and the NT DC you see around you. This is what hurts the most. They will never experience life with the ease that you do.

I have spent literally thousands of hours putting my kids back together again day in day out, as best I can as they understand how the world rejects them, even though it’s not their fault. They’re beautiful people but socially it’s so hard.

i don’t think you get it OP. You’re going to give up your entire world, your entire sense of who you are. As a mum also on the other side of this, 17 years in, RUN. Do not break your heart every day like I did and will continue to do for the rest of my life. This never ever resolves and they will always need support.

Exactly what @Blackthorne above says.

Easing them into nursery takes longer than anyone else.
They don't want to do sleepovers or stay with relatives without you, the premier parent.

You think you can do tough love, farm them out, but it doesn't work like that.

They can't cope with noisy after school clubs.

DH now has an amazing academic career and two functioning kids because of me.

Other couples, her family often pick up the slack or they use a lot of paid childcare and the kids get additional mental health support or lurch from crisis to crisis.

DH is an academic. If he wanted to do this length of sabbatical I would try and be supportive but I wouldn't love it because of the kids. And I think probably he would not do it. He's away a lot but normally not more than 2 weeks at a time.

We changed continents following his job and I became a SAHM and then freelance. (Totally happy with this, I wasn't that much in love with my crazy hours job anyway, but it obviously wouldn't work for everyone).

Academia can be very mobile and international. Even if he is happy in his current job he will do better research and become more widely recognized if he's exposed to richer contact with others in his field.

Academic couples often spend years living hundreds of miles from each other as both have to go where they must in order to succeed. They can also often have kids quite late for this reason.

It’s this, everything you thought would happen, doesn’t.

you don’t get asked for play dates, your child never has a best friend, they don’t do sleepovers, nor do the get invited. They reach the stage where they don’t have birthday parties anymore because no one is their friend. Invites to parties wane. They go to secondary, still no friends, spending time alone at breaktime, feeling awkward, wishing they fitted in. Maybe the hint of some friends appearing in sixth form but no one close. They can’t make the bonds needed to sustain close friendships. Holidays grind on, they spend all their time alone. No jaunts out fellow teens for something fun.

and all the many many tears that are cried night after night as they wonder why they get bullied, why no one will talk to them, why no one accepts them as they are.

Are you ready for decades of grief and endless coaching to help your child somehow make it in a world that’s not built for them?

If I had known, I would have done things differently. I adore my kids but if I had a chance to have them but no autism, well you can imagine my answer.

I appreciate the responses from people with autism and will come back to address that separately.

Yes @Aria999 it is understandable about profs settling down later for that reason. So that is a concern.

I'm 32 and I don't want to wait 6 to 7 years to start trying. He might well be surprised to find out I feel this way (or not). But I mean women have a bio clock so it shouldn't be that surprising.

Clearly we need to have that talk. Hardly going to be able to conceive if he's off doing professorships for years are we?

I think you need to have an honest conversation about what you both want out of this relationship and what is daily life is going to look like.

It’s a bit of a red flag for me, as I had a situationship when I was very young and the guy talked about going away to work for a year without even me being factored in, whereas I was considering not going to uni for this guy. It was a massive wake up call for me as it made me realise that we were totally different things to each other and it was never going to pan out the way i wanted it to. He never ended going away anyway but I ended it there and then.

However your situation is different, maybe it would be one off once in a lifetime experience for him and he’ll come back and settle. But as you say, he could have kids with you and expect to carry on doing this once every couple of years.

My husband will literally walk past me into the kitchen and make a drink and food some days and I joke we need a sign by the kettle that says "ask wife if she wants one too"! It's not on purpose. I'm invisible unless his special interest or right in front of him.

How does that make you feel, @Stanleycupsarecool?

Except that those threads are full of people trying to blame appalling behaviour from their partners on autism. Many of the partners in question have not been diagnosed with autism, the posters just want to believe they have it largely due to prejudiced and factually disproved prejudices about autism that those posters believe. And even if some of those partners do have autism, the nasty behaviours described largely have nothing to do with being autistic. Some people are just unpleasant people or not good relationship material whether autistic or not. One thing has nothing to do with the other.

To see those horrendous threads now posted to try to tell someone that they shouldn't have a relationship with someone because they are autistic is disgusting. The level of disability discrimination that Mumsnet allows to go on here is vile.

In relation to your actual thread before the hateful posters chipped in, @FaithD, to me it doesn't sound like you are very compatible.

You say you're not sure if you want children but then say you feel time is running out so it seems like on some level you feel you do. If this is the case then you need to have an honest conversation with him about what you both want and timeframes. If he's just being vague and saying "maybe, someday..." then that is a "no" in effect, given your age, and it is time to move on if living together and children is what you want.

It may be that he has felt he has mixed signals from you if you've told him you're very independent and fine with living hours apart and seeing each other sporadically and then are talking about children etc and he may think you are not serious about it. You need to be clear and open and discuss it properly then you'll both know where you stand. Based on what you have written, however, it does not seem like you're on the same page about things.

@MidnightLibraryCard yes I really wish I knew the definitive answer myself to the having children question. As a woman I feel like I 'should' know.

I could be making assumptions because any time the conversation if babies or kids has come up he has been the one raising it:

• being happy having kids or child free
• best types of kindergarten (he's from a country known for its amazing childcare)
• maintaining a life balance after kids
• 'if I had kids...bla bla' mand mentioning his parents have said they'd be happy to help out as grandparents

I will speak to him about this next week. I agree that if he goes down the 'someday' route I will have valuable information to act on.

Well, a word of warning. My exH used to 'muse' about things like that, including baby names. And he certainly never shut me down if I brought up something to do with 'when we have kids'. But when the time came to actually TTC he announced suddenly that not only did he NOT want children, he'd never wanted them in the first place! I kicked him out shortly afterwards.

That wasn't the only issue in our marriage, but it was certainly the straw that broke the camel's back! In retrospect, I'm glad I never got pregnant by him. Once he was gone he was gone for good and I never had to see him ever again.