Neurodivergent husband has brought me to my knees, am I unreasonable to leave him ?

[MyNextSteps]

This is my first Mumsnet post so I'm sorry but this will be a long rant. But I have really lost my way and would appreciate everyone's thoughts.

My husband and I are in our late 50s and have been married for 25 years and have 5 kids who are late teens/20s.

The marriage has always had something "not quite right", something missing which I couldn't explain. DH didn't have many girlfriends I thought he was just shy. Once married I always felt he was avoidant, pulling away, preoccupied, unavailable, never initiated sex. If I ever tried to raise it, even gently, he was irritable and defensive, saying my "constant criticism and oversensitivity" was the problem and then he'd try to run away or hang up the phone or get busy or fall asleep or get one of the kids to interrupt us to shut me down. He is also very interested in facts not feelings and tends to disconnect from conversations once he's satisfied himself of the facts.

Eventually I dragged DH to therapy wondering if he was a covert narcissist but this year he's been diagnosed with High Functioning Autism Level 1 (Aspergers) which explains everything. I feel I'm in a nightmare as our story started out as a fairytale with our beautiful kids but now I'm acceptingw nothing will change with DH.

We both had good careers but I stayed at home to raise the kids. He worked hard to provide for us all but had a long commute. We moved out to the coast and bought a rambling old house with land, did it up and we have a small holding with animals. DH seemed to avoid intimacy but I didn't question it as he was tired and working so hard and so was I. He never took me out in the evening or hired a babysitter or took me away for a few nights. We only ever went away with the kids but I was so in the tunnel of parenthood and we didn't have much money to spare so I didn't really stop to question it.

Gradually the kids grew up and then DH stopped work and I thought we would spend more time together but I gradually realized he wasn't interested. Once he stopped work and was around 24/7 and the kids were grown up, it dawned on me that he was just making excuses to avoid time with me and avoid intimacy.

We did years of marriage therapy but he could neither express his feelings at all (alexithymia) or understand mine. He just cannot hear me - all he can hear is that he's being criticized and then he becomes a professional victim. I have given him a million chances to sort himself out, so many times we have fought and he always comes back, says sorry but nothing changes. Our therapist said he wouldn't change and to leave him as he wasn't able or interested in meeting my needs.

Some of the worst family fights have been when I have been angry with DH and then he goes to the kids and portrays himself as a victim and me as the perpetrator. Then the kids (who are angry he's so weak) stand up for him. So I'm then fighting my own kids and he sits there with his head in his hands not speaking while it all kicks off between me and the kids.

So there have been times when the kids have seen me as the aggressive bad cop whilst he is good cop being their friend as he does everything for them, drives them around, gives them money and never sets rules or boundaries. Mum "wears the trousers" and keeps it all fair and accountable. Although the kids hate on me for being bad cop I notice when life gets tricky they all come running to me for guidance because I'm actually the only real parent.

Every time the whole family gets together which is now only about twice a year I work hard to cook food and make it nice but either my husband or one of the ND kids has a meltdown or shutdown which ruins the occasion and the family doesn't speak for months, I am beginning to dread get togethers.

Now his daily routine is to get up feeling anxious and then just drift around for the rest of the day, no plan, no goals, achieving not much, never gets together with friends, sometimes hangs with his family (many of them have the same issues as him) low functioning, wears same clothes for days. If I ask him to do something he'll do it eventually but then says I'm bossy and that he feels "controlled" and then makes sure the kids know it.

Some of our kids have various neurodiverse traits/issues and DH and I clashed seriously about how to raise them because as a ND himself his first instinct was to deny their problems and help them to mask whereas I as an NT wanted to get them diagnosed and get them help. DH also insisted that we don't mention anyone's diagnosis in the family (shame) so when several of the kids have huge meltdowns we are not allowed to address it with the other kids and I can see that they feel guilty and responsible when it's not their fault.

Things have come to a head in the last few months. DH was being assessed for suspected cancer. He wasn't able to process many feelings about that beyond being sure he didn't want the kids to know. I did all the worrying and supporting whilst he looked blank and numb all through Christmas. Finally this week he got the "all clear", he did express some relief but I was hugely emotional after the hospital.

The same night one of our kids rang up and shouted at me because she'd given a message to DH for me to do something but he hadn't passed it on to me so I hadn't done what she needed me to do. I was still emotional from the hospital so after she'd put the phone down I was angry with DH that he hadn't passed on the message. He denied this so we started to argue. DH then portrayed himself a a victim in front of one of our sons who got aggressive with me and goaded and shoved me (he's 6 ft) and started being verbally abusive and telling me I was crazy (he didn't know about the hospital or cancer scare at all so didn't know why I was so emotional). I said to DH "tell him to stop" but DH said "why should he stop abusing you when you abuse me ?" (professional victim).

In that moment after 25 years something snapped in me. I did something I've never done before. I calmly put together a small bag of clothes and walked out. I drove off and checked into a local B&B where I am sitting now with no idea about my next move.

DH has brought me to my knees. It's not what he does, it's what he DOESN'T do, he's just absent from our marriage. He doesn't want me to leave but he doesn't want to have a relationship with me either. He just wants a housekeeper/secretary/organizer/mother not a wife. I want to leave him but then I break up the family, we lose our lovely home and I get blamed for that by him and the kids, I lose my smallholding and animals and will have to give up my dream part time job that I have taken up in the last few years too, so essentially I lose my entire life as it is currently.

I rang DH from the B&B to discuss the issues. He said "all you do is criticize me, I'm a victim" and hung up. He didn't want to discuss the issues because he can't summarize or express his feelings. He says he can't change and I am persecuting him to do things he can't do. He then said by the way if I was moving out then he'd sell our home and small holding because he wasn't interested in it anyway he only bought it for me (first I heard about that, he was the one that insisted we buy it when I wanted to stay in the city !). I went back briefly to our home to collect clothes etc and he was just lying flat on the sofa staring into space, washing left in the machine overnight, last night's dinner still on the table untouched, curtains not drawn, animals not fed, plants not watered, post not opened etc.

AIBU to leave and break up the family and sell our family home and smallholding and rehome the animals ? Or am I overreacting and should I accept he can't change, stop asking him to and just suck it up for the sake of the family ? DH is not a bad person, we have a lot in common with our joint kids, life and animals. He worked hard to support us all, he's never been unfaithful or had addictions or been abusive (contrast I've been a drunk and screaming harridan more than once when pushed beyond human limits by rigid and goading ND family members). I am also nearly 60 and have let myself go with all the stress. Dating now fills me with horror, what are my chances anyway and my friends are having horror stories on Bumble.... I would also have to go back to full time work at 60 to support myself and the children would be hostile to a new partner as they feel responsible for their victim dad. But he is not my husband or lover and he's more friends with the kids than a father to them. He is a professional victim and he has no capacity for a marriage or partnership with me. I would be happy to live alone but I keep having the sad thought that I don't want to get to the end of my life without having experienced a true and loving partnership.

If I could find a way to stay with DH I would but I have tried to compromise a million times. I don't want to have an affair either but it seems that if I stay I would have to completely deny my own needs for love, support, intimacy, boundaries, joint parenting, joy etc and life is too short for that. Advice please.

This is definitely not all ASD… if it’s ASD at all.

My covert narcissist ex convinced multiple therapists he had acute PTSD to get himself out of some trouble he was in at work. He was extremely manipulative and a great actor.

Do not underestimate the lengths narcissists will go to in order to maintain their victim status and exert control over those around them.

He sounds like a toxic bully who has groomed your children into continuing his abuse. He has no interest in intimacy because he’s not attracted to you and can’t be bothered to fake it any more.

Please don’t waste any more of your life on him.

@Thepossibility

how so?

Your husband and your kids are treating you appallingly OP. You deserve so much better 💐
Time to start putting YOU first!
@MyNextSteps

Stop trying to have these discussions with him in front of your children!! Of course your DS is avoiding you when there's constant rowing and tension and such raw emotion.

Stop trying to tell him to change - he isn't going to change.
Stop trying to analyse him - you're only heating yourself with the exhaustion, frustration and effort.

Go and see a solicitor to initiate divorce.

You keep engaging with him and expecting a different outcome.

You won't get it.

OP, whatever has gone on in the past and whatever the state of your marriage, you keep recounting incidents when you have behaved really badly.

You've made a decision to end your marriage, but you can't let it lie. It feels like you are being unnecessarily antagonistic and I don't think the psycho-babble is helping.

Take a step back, work on how you want your life to be and stop involving your children.

So difficult OP but please try not to involve your DC anymore or have confrontations in front of them. All they need to know is your haven't been happy and the marriage not working for a while now and you are going to split up. Oh and all DC need to know about DH's diagnosis. But apart from that, find friends/therapist to talk to about it, it's not fair to burden DC with the ins and outs of the marriage breakdown. I can tell you as a child of divorce who both parents used to offload on me about their marital problems through my late teens and twenties, I took it all on myself and carried the weight of it for years and it caused me a lot of problems.
Best wishes to you for the next stage and this difficult process of untangling your lives. I hope you find a way to do it as peacefully as possible.

I honestly don't understand why you're still hanging around, trying to talk to him?! This is as good as your life gets with him. Just get the divorce started and put the house up for sale.

It sounds like you are both caught up in a war which neither of you can win but you are not looking for solutions because that would mean the end of the war.
My parents are caught up in that exact same situation so I must be projecting to a certain extent but, having read all your updates, it does sound to me exactly that. I suspect you are not able to recognise that description of your toxic relationship and I quite sure your husband would be utterly flummoxed by it.
And until you start trying to find solutions - and that means more than moving out physically, although that is a good start, separating, divorcing and so on - nothing will really change.
But I hope it does. For both of you. And especially for your children.

So what would have happened if you had initiated hugs and intimacy? If he rejects you, which I am sure you wouldn't want to put yourself in that position anyway, would he still play the victim? If you emulated the same behaviours as him, being poor me, playing the victim I can imagine it would become like a sad comedy sitcom... which it most certainly isnt. Sorry OP it seems none of your DC will see any other side but his (for now) all the time the cycle continues.

You need to leave this horrible man. Change is not coming. He may be autistic but that's not the whole story. He's just a horrible human being too. You will always be the 'crazy wife' if you stay. Go and find your peace.

@MyNextSteps Why, just why are you doing this? Why can’t you accept what’s in front of you?

When you hear hooves, think horses not zebras.

Apply the KISS theory as hard as your heart may want to rule. Right now, your heart is treacherous. It’s not your friend. Later, sure. But now, no.

Honestly, there is nothing insightful left to say as it’s all been said already.

To go back to this question:

What should I have expected on my return to our home ? What would a normal DH do in that situation ? Apology? soul searching on why I left for 2 weeks and their contribution to it? declaration of love ? and vision for new way forward ? Help with the dinner ? Being begged to share a bed ? Passionate makeup sex? Eventual new understanding of joint way forward ?

The answer is unfortunately you should have expected what you got.

To hope for apologies, soul searching, help with dinner, makeup sex, new understanding - is really to hope that he was a completely different person to the one you actually married.

I understand that while he infuriates you you are nonetheless attached and invested and would love things to be different and salvageable. But they’re not. And continuing to hope he will change and say and do the right things now after 25 years of this and being furious when he does not, is not only doomed but will fracture the family further apart.

Very true.

Accept the final diagnosis of the therapist and the super insightful posts of some of the contributors to this thread, particularly the person who acknowledged that your husband truly sees himself as a victim of your emotion (emotions he cannot understand).

You are beating your head against a brick wall and forcing the family to watch. It might be kinder to drop the rope. The neverending efforts to mould the relationship into something it cannot be are exhausting for everyone.

Your blindspot appears to be your tenacity, which is veering on an obstinate resistance to change and it appears to be draining the entire family.

There is no point in slaving over a family meal if you know it will end up being a battle of will against a wall of neuro divergence.

OP, let it go, just let it go.

You are a survivor. Most mortals would have given up by now, but you soldiered on over 25 years and 5 kids. I think you are so used to fixing things for other people that there is a disbelief you cannot fix this one.

I agree with @CreationNat1on that tenacity is your enemy here. I recognise it in myself and as a result have stayed too long in futile situations which I would have been better served by a change of tack earlier on. Your dh will always blame you but even your dc are now blaming you for forcing your dh and them to dance this grim and dysfunctional dance that only ends one way.

I understand the sunk cost fallacy. Now is the time to cut your losses and move on. It is not too late to build the life and freedom that you want for yourself and a different dynamic with your dcs.

I’m following other posters you need to let it go. The logic you’re applying for the situation doesn’t make sense to the other participants. find your own life and enjoy it.

OP, having read your updates I'm really not sure what you're expecting to get from this thread.

Every post you make is crammed with therapy-speak and explaining who is neurotypical and who isn't and whether your husband might be a narcissist and whether things are down to his alexithymia etc and pointing which of his traits are autism-related and when he's practising DARVO and... honestly, you need to JUST FUCKING STOP ANALYSING THIS SHIT and leave him.

It doesn't matter why he behaves the way he does and what your respective psychological issues are. He doesn't make you happy, and he CANNOT make you happy. Stop being a martyr and do something about by leaving instead of making this into a overwrought melodrama and constantly trying to analyse and explain everyone's every move.

Also, stop dragging your adult children into this. They must be fed up to the back teeth with the pair of you, frankly. You and your husband sound like co-dependent nightmare addicted to each other's drama.

You're all playing a role in this shitshow and it needs to stop. If you don't feel that DH is capable of behaving "normally" or reasonably, then you're in the chair. You need to manage this out, keeping your DC at the forefront. Which means not communicating with them through him, they are all more than old enough for you to have your own relationship with him, don't use him as messanger.

You need to save your energy for what lies ahead and that means not churning over in your head the make up sex you're not having, the happy family reunion that didn't take place, there is a certain amount of delusion going on there.

DH is going to DH. Always was, always will be. To expect anything else is just fooling yourself. Take control of the situation and put the wheels in motion.

Engage x 3 estate agents to value the property, see a solicitor with all of your financial info to find out where you stand. You know this, you're far from daft, but you are willingly perpetuating this situation until you actively remove yourself from it.

Your DH is a professional victim OP. Everything you’re saying is just what they do!!

That bloke Reiss on Eastenders is currently playing it to absolute perfection. Infuriating as he is!!

Get wise, listen and really listen to the other posters. He’s got you right where he wants you, in circles, crying, questioning everything. I mean your poor bloody kids!! Get some strength, the sooner you get the ick and don’t give a toss about him the better. Put on an act for now if you have to. Don’t engage with him atall, don’t let him know what you’re thinking or feeling, he’ll use every little snippet of info against you.
Your Children will react to you far better once you are calm and get some inner strength. It could take years but you will feel a lot better when you see him for what he is and detach and then in time you’ll be able to see what he does and just not care.
I feel all this is falling on deaf ears though tbh, I hope not.

Do you actually want your life to be enmeshed with this awful man for decades and decades where all you do is try and manage his dysfunction? This is not a life of any kind. You will severely regret it if you do. Even worse, you will know what a terrible mistake you have made.

Get absolutely surgical about it. It is the only way you have a chance, frankly

Time to have a family sit down together and stop the lying

Everyone needs to know what is going on

I will give you a warning that if you leave it too late to divorce or you dont explain to your dc dh’s way of needing to be told to do everything you could end up in my situation and putting your dc in the situation my own dc are in

I divorced dh 3 years ago. It didn’t make a difference to now exh how many times I explained it to him that he needed to leave. He just didn’t. He blew through his half of the money and he is still living with me. He now isn’t able to live on his own and adult dc who also live with me don’t want him in a care home. They have both stepped up to look after him but I can see the strain is starting to show.
No agency will take him and so he sits in a room of the house watching game shows all day. He hasn’t left the house in over a year. He doesn’t pay any bills. He showers rarely. It truly is horrible.

I am drowning because I feel like I am the verbal punching bag for everyone. Even though exh and I rarely speak. The dc are getting the brunt of his helplessness and are taking it out on me because I refuse to do anything for him after spending years trying to stop him abusing his body and telling him I wouldn’t be there for him when he got ill. Only to be met with the reply that no one was going to tell him what to do or what to eat and drink and that I was a nagging wife.

I think if I called the police to remove him from the property and they took him outside he would just sit on the pavement and not move and await someone to come along to provide a roof over his head and do his shopping and pay his bills

Ehat goid does a family sit fiwn do? It didn’t do you any good!

OP needs to end the marriage snd sell the property and walk away to rebuild. Her children will morevor kess take on the father as s project snd reject her because she couldn’t fix the family and that was her role in their eyes.

OP you seem to think you can have a divorce from someone like this and it hurts no one. That is not true. The only person that gets hurt is you.

Your children are adults. They will cope. You are wrong to involve them, wrong to imagine they can see what you now see in your husband, and if you are waiting for their blessing it will never happen.

Nor will your husband ever ever acknowledge what he has done, and furthermore he will enjoy your suffering as you try to get others to see what he is like. He enjoys you explaining yourself. He is not unaware. He is just very selfish and would rather put it on you.

Do not, repeat, do not shy away from what awaits you if you don't do this. It's being a hollowed out carer to a man that hates you with adult children who see you as weak and won't lift a finger.

You must see that now. Because it is waiting for you

Too late for sit downs.
Its over.