I’m glad you’ve come to a plan for now BUT I think you really need to consider what’s best when you get home because as crazy and unhealthy as this situation sounds right now I personally don’t think it sounds like an unfixable or an abusive situation, I think it sounds like 2 likely undiagnosed autistic adults who don’t know enough about their own difficulties to be able to manage them properly while trying to parent children including one who is autistic.
i recognise so much here from my early experience of raising my autistic children, of the misunderstandings and ‘abuse’ that led to the ending of my marriage, and I can honestly say that I think this is fixable together or apart, whichever path you chose to take, but only if you BOTH approach it in the right way and with understanding of each others specific struggles. (My relationship with my ex works just fine now that we both approach the situation from the right angle.)
You are raising an autistic child and you will be doing that by learning about his needs, learning to recognise what is autism and what is misbehaviour, developing strategies to accommodate his needs so that he can engage with education, family life, fun and his own special interests, and because you know that he’s autistic now he will grow up with support that helps him grown into an autistic adult who knows how to accommodate himself without harming others and who doesn’t feel shame for being a broken neurotypical person because he understands that he’s actually an awesome autistic person.
Many parents of autistic kids are autistic themselves, we are ‘high functioning’ or ‘high masking’ or we simply grew up able to ‘fit’ enough that no one noticed we were struggling but eventually it becomes too much and often that’s when we become parents and all our quiet time (the times we didn’t understand were self regulation because we didn’t have the words for it) disappears because we have our awesome tiny humans to care for.
Being autistic isn’t an excuse for hurtful behaviours towards other people, the fundamental role of parents of autistic kids is to bring them up to understand their responsibility to do no harm to others while knowing how to meet their own needs and how to self-advocate effectively, but when you don’t know you’re autistic until you’re an adult you sometimes find yourself engaging in behaviours that upset others without really understanding what you’re doing or feeling like you have control over what you’re doing.
As late diagnosed(or self recognised) autistic adults it’s our personal responsibility to do the research, to seek out support to understand ourselves, to apologise for our harmful behaviours and to work hard not to repeat behaviours that are harmful to others but it is possible to do that together if both people are committed to it and that may well be more beneficial to your whole family than simply splitting up and increasing the amount of ‘change’ that you all have to deal with on a regular basis as the children move between houses.
It’s not easy, it’s not quick, and it takes commitment from both adults to make it work, but it is possible.