Gosh, thank you all so much for your lovely messages. ( and I acknowledge the not so nice ones but I’m not going to thank you even if you are autistic)
I have been busy today so this is my first look on here. There’s some wonderful messages and to those of you who have given support and kind words I think you very much.
So, just to clarify.......neither DH or myself knew he had autism when we met. I don’t know if we had even heard the word. I think not. He had been diagnosed with social phobia and agoraphobia years before. We were 8ntroduced by mutual friends and we fell in love sat holding hands over a kitchen table talking non stop and listening to music. I was sick of clubbing and living in hotels due to my job so I was ready for a change and it just felt right. He wasn’t as ( bad? Extreme? I don’t know what word to put here) as he is now. He never had a proper ‘ meltdown ‘ until well after we were married.
I admit I knew nothing of social phobia or agoraphobia but I learned to ensure he always knew where we we going if he had to leave the house, that he knew the route and where we would park. I knew to sit him with his back to a wall - preferably in a corner near an emergency exit. I knew never to shout his name in a shop or draw attention to him. I always answer the phone and the door. I stopped going to party’s etc because I got sick of trying to explain why I was on my own yet again. And of course the invites stopped coming. I stopped having dinner/supper party’s after the 4th? 5th? 6th? time ( i forget which) time an argument occurred ten minutes before everybody was due to arrive and 8 had to greet and host our guests on my own. I got sick of lying to them that he had a sudden illness - “ what? Again?” - and getting pitiful looks and seeing the knowing glances between couples. It just all became no fun and too embarrassing..... so friends were quietly dropped from our lives.
I greatly resent Bishops comment about having no understanding and not wanting to either. If i didn’t want to help and understand more then I would have posted this bloody thread would I? I wouldn’t have spend hours desperately writing letters, emails , phone calls to getnhim the funding for some treatment. I wouldn’t have spent hours reading as much as I could on autism, how it affects you etc, etc etc. I would nt have gone to every appointment he has ever had with him! I have loved him, protected him, fielded every phone call with every body/ company/institution going, tried my best to help him wherever I can and encouraged him to try and get a bit of confidence. I haven’t screamed at him when he has forgotten something I carefully explained to him four times the day before, or when I ask him to take something out of the oven at a certain time and write him a note telling h8m in great detail what he needs to do and yet 8 still come home to something black and inedible. I try not to show upset when he has had zero empathy for me but expects attention showered on him when he is ill or feeling out of sorts. I didn’t fly at him when he told me to ‘ stop indulging myself and pull myself together’ after I had a miscarriage. I didn’t punch him in the mouth when he asked me if I was ‘ really going to cry every year on our sons birthday. Our son who died and whose death i still haven’t fully processed as I wasn’t really able to as I had to put his feelings first. If I didn’t want to help and understand him better then I would have left him a long time ago wouldn’t I???
I will give you the benefit of the doubt bishop since you are - you say- autistic. But I have asked you to stop posting on this thread as I really don’t need or want your nasty comments. Do you not understand the simplicity of go away?
I think from what a lot of you say, and what I have long suspected , is that his behaviour is a seperate thing to his autism. Although, I have on other threads seen women posting about their own abusive autistic husbands so I’m not too sure. I need to find out if it is a trait of autistic people to be abusive and how to make them see that their behaviour is. Because he doesn’t see this a lot of the time. When he does calm down and release that he has gone too far he is contrite and apologetic and makes assurances that he will really really try not to do it again.
But I do feel like I have two children, just a few decades between them. I’m not a wife in the traditional sense. I’m a half wife half carer.