Partner with autism lacks empathy: what is a good response?

[CallyT]

Overall he is very sweet and generous but sometimes I feel I can't really speak to him about my feelings.

Recently I thought a long term friend had ghosted me. I told him it had upset me and he said 'yeah but you can choose how you react to it'. Which upset me more!

This is like saying anyone can 'choose' to react to break ups, a bereavement, etc. What is a good response to this?

Would it work to say 'Can I have a hug, I'm so upset about my mum/friend/work and a hug from you would make me feel better'. DH might be stymied what he can do about it unless you help him out.

No, actually i didnt.

What i did do, however, was attempt to assure the OP that her DP's irritating response was actually a cack-handed and socially inept attempt to be helpful, and explaining why.

Then you presented yourself with "just change the way you respond to things" which i rolled straight back to you with "just change the way YOU respond to things" in order to illustrate that concept isnt quite that easy in practice as it is to trot out on the internet.

The substance to "your argument" appears to be the fact that you've managed to ensure that your autistic partner mimics the behaviour least likely to end in earache in response to situations and warned that should I not mask in the same way then my relationships will suffer.
Well, jolly good. Maybe if i work hard enough on myself i'll be able to perform the same tricks.
Alternatively I could have a partner who understands that analysis and strategy are my strong points while emotions and coping with feelings are not, and each of us play to our skill sets.

I just disagree with you. Ironically you do seem to be getting a bit over emotional in your response to my disagreement. I think the strongest argument you could make would be that you have experienced/ are experiencing an intimate relationship despite not doing this work of emotional connection. Perhaps you’ve found a partner who thinks the same way you do and you’re happy together. This would give me pause. Alternatively that you don’t have this but you’re happy enough without such an intimate relationship as it doesn’t suit your personality.

I disagree that my partner is mimicking and masking when he responds to me with active listening and empathy. FWIW I’m also autistic and have also learned this skill. I know he isn’t mimicking and masking because I can see the emotional interchange. He feels the emotions I do, and vice versa when he’s feeling an emotion, telling me about it and I pick up on that.

And yet you haven't answered my question. What have you changed to accommodate your partner's emotional life?

Yes to all of this

Can we just STOP with the tropes about autistic people being unempathetic, lacking emotional depth, blah blah blah? Just because it doesn't look like you expect it to look doesn't mean it isn't there. Also this:

I sometimes say this kind of thing if my DP is crapping on at me again about some work issue I just cannot stand to hear him moan about anymore. As a way of signalling that I’ve heard it all before and am done listening and will no longer collude in his victimhood if he isn’t going to do something to change the situation or reflect a bit on why he lets it get to him so much.

I think sometimes, even in the best of relationships, people make a choice not to indulge certain of their partner’s complaints. I’ll absolutely empathise with my DH if he’s lost a loved one or is worried about a health issue etc, but there’s only so much I can empathise if I think he’s being a bit unreasonable or has become really tiresomely fixated on a situation.

Also I agree with @DrRuthGalloway - I am very careful about engaging with the hurt feelings of people who routinely believe they have been ghosted (or abandoned or betrayed or any of those anxious attachment buzzwords) for fear of being sucked into the vacuum of their endless need.

Of course OP gets to judge how she wants her experience to be understood. But she also seems to expect her partner to be a mind reader.

The answer was a completely reasonable answer, just not the one she wanted and somehow that's her partner's fault for being autistic and 'not having empathy'. She didn't want a solution, she wanted a hug. Fine but then she needs to communicate that.

There is absolutely nothing in the OP's post to suggest that her partner doesn't have empathy (which is NOT an autistic thing and I am sick of this rhetoric). What her partner will struggle with is identifying the socially acceptable response when he is being empathetic (that IS an autistic thing). Maybe to someone NT it would have been completely obvious that the OP wanted a hug not a solution, but her partner isn't NT. I'm really really sick of autistic people being presented as narcissists because NT people don't actually know what empathy is.

OP you don't have to live with this. If it's a problem for you that your partner struggles with social communication and he isn't giving you what you need emotionally, then for all means leave him - you should be in a relationship that works for you. But from your post it reads as if there is a lot of good in this relationship, and so if you want to try then I suggest communicating more clearly what you need and stop with the assumption that he doesn't empathy just because he doesn't show that empathy the way an NT person would.

I've been giving it some thought. I think we've been growing equally in response to each others needs and the challenges that come up. I've learned to express how I'm feeling calmly and state my needs rather than get annoyed when he hasn't noticed, for example if I am really stressed about something, and he is being jokey it previously annoyed me that he didn't pick up on the vibe and it seemed really insensitive, whereas now I know that he genuinely is a bit crap at noticing that, I need to explain how I'm feeling so he can adjust and give me (for example) the peace I need to process whatever is going on in my head. Related to this, learning to have conversations when both feeling calm, to discuss feelings and needs when not in the heat of the moment. As I alluded to earlier he is quite avoidant so isn't great at noticing and expressing his own feelings, so I ask him and draw that out of him. I need to ask him specific questions, how he is thinking and feeling, for example what he is thinking and feeling in response to what I just said, otherwise I wouldn't know. We looked into the love languages thing and I know he gets a lot from words of affirmation, so I consciously look for opportunities to do that.

For us, day to day, we do have lots of shared needs/interests, so we both prefer going on walks in nature for example vs spending time in busy, crowded places, so we align in lots of ways. We both enjoy being affectionate and playful with each other. I would probably prefer that we spend our evenings watching tv/playing games together but he often wants to do his gaming especially after a busy day/week at work, so we balance that so we're both getting what we need at different times. There are lots of little sort of 'rules' that he has that I don't, that I follow for his peace of mind, like always eating together at the table, where certain things are kept, certain routines in daily life that I know he likes. We fell into the routine of him doing the cooking, and me the cleaning as he's a much better cook, but that was too much for him, so I do the cooking on two set days a week to give him a break. I'm sure there are more but that's what springs to mind. He's not great at expressing so I have to do a lot of figuring things out. Oh it also turned out he had a drinking problem he was hiding from me whilst we were still living apart, and now we are living together he is sober and I drive him to an AA meeting once a week, and support him with whatever he needs in that area.