Married to ASD partner - so lonely

[whenoneoneknows]

As the title says.
Married 20 years; ASD 'D'H makes for a very lonely life for me. He's not interested in hearing my thoughts/ideas/how my day has been or making idle/passing chat with me. The condition means he is totally thoughtless and selfish and prefers to be left alone most of the time. He is happy for me not to talk to him and wouldn't see that as odd or perceive me to be in a mood/purposely ignoring him.

I remember years ago - before Mdcs took pymt by card - we'd be out in the car and he would ask me to drive past Mcds as he fancied some food. I'd ask him to get me something too and his response would be 'but Ive only got enough money for me'.

There are no thoughts of him doing something nice for me or to save me the burden of a specific chore, even something little like saying I can have a lie in while he sorts the school run out ONE morning. I always take the day off work for my birthday, he never asks if he should too so we can do something together, he just wouldn't think to do it. This year for my bday I brought my own cards for the children to write for me/brought my own gift and cake and wrapping paper. The only surprise from him was the cake candles. Everything has to literally be spelt out for him. There is no reading of body language; he is a very literal person. I have to ask him on whatsapp about any decisions he needs to agree to - that way I have it on record when he later disputes what he said, if I dont ask him in writing then I never get an answer from him. He cannot make a decision, I have to do it all - even choosing what he wants for dinner. I refuse to make his decisions now.

There is no option to leave due to the children.

Its just a sad lonely life. If I won a luxury holiday of my dreams for 2 then I'd take my bestie over H.

Anyone want to hear about my week ?!

I also get it culturallyappropiate. I would have felt the same. It's not about that one incident. It's about a whole lifetime of seeking a connection and feeling like you don't matter enough. Even though you undoubtedly do but he can't show you that in the way you need. My dad was much the same.

He's not being an arse or rude. He simply feels 9pm is his bedtime so we should all go home and go to bed or be on our way.

This is why my autistic colleague quite vociferously tells me to go home if I stay past 5. To the point that it was making me anxious as my work load has been huge (new job) and around 5 I knew she would start what felt like having a go at me.

She does it less now as I said something one day, but yesterday for example, at around home time, she announced to the room (I was the only other person there) - “right can everyone go now” - and this is because she wanted to stay a bit longer to study for her course, and wanted the official working day to be over.

((((Culturallyappropiate))))) It really is hard isnt3it.

Pineapple
Most of the time it's fine. I don't usually resent. It's just what it is, no one's fault. I just object to being called a twat who can't see beyond their own nose when I spend my entire bloody life accommodating happily to my father and son's needs precisely because I do get it.

So don't tell me I can't see past the end of my nose. My life has been minimising my expectations.

I was only responding to one incident, with no background. My judgement was wrong and I'm sorry for that, I made it without a clear picture.

decoraters
Thankyou for that, it's very gracious.

Honestly my life is very happy as long as I don't wish that they were NT (and mostly I don't). They are good people, not even slightly nasty or aggressive or abusive. I could have had a far, far worse father.

@CulturallyAppropriatedName He was absolutely in the wrong! It is basic manners not to bugger off to bed when someone who is coming to see you hasn’t arrived yet. He could have hung on, said Hello, then apologised and gone to bed at that point. His behaviour was rude and ill mannered.

@decoraters If you cannot see how rude this behaviour was, then I am concerned as to what you think is acceptable behaviour when your family are visiting?

Even as a child if a family member was arriving for a visit, we would wait be expected to wait up to say hello before going to bed. Possibly dressed in pyjamas but not going to bed before they got there, particularly if they have travelled for hours! Only possible exception would be if they were going to be arriving in the small hours.

As an adult of course you wait up, irrespective of how tired you are! It is the height of rudeness and disrespect not to do so!

I am very surprised your Mum didn’t tell him to wait up, I absolutely would have told DH to if he had been so rude as to say he was going to bed before you arrived.

The reason these threads get 'hijacked' by autistic people claiming they aren't selfish is due to the implications the OP's post raises. Ultimately the assumption is that someone with autism is incapable, through their own disability, of being a kind and thoughtful person and sustaining any relationships. A moral judgement is implied that they are 'wrong' and therefore worthless. They cannot be fixed. My take home from reading threads is that I'd be a lot better off leaving my family to get on with it without me because my existence causes damage. THAT is why they get hijacked. It is awful to read it and I probably shouldn't have done it. Yes the OP needs her experience validating but it is the follow up of everyone claiming the autism causes it that is so devastating to read. It is ableism. If you swapped out autism with another minority group everyone would be up in arms.

@decoraters - sorry - I hadn’t seen your following posts - sometimes it takes me so long to type things that by the time I post my reply things have moved on!

My mum didn't tell him to wait up because of the same thing: we all accommodate to him. If she would have said "you should wait half an hour, Culturally and grandson will be here by then" he would have got huffy because he would have felt like he was being called out for doing something wrong when in his mind, he wasn't.
She always says that it is totally futile. And they have been married more than 50 years so I guess she knows. She manages by compensating.

*If you cannot see how rude this behaviour was, then I am concerned as to what you think is acceptable behaviour when your family are visiting?
**
*I don't think it's rude as a one off incident to go to bed. The poster was going for the whole weekend. As an isolated incident if I visited family and my Dad had gone to bed became he was knackered I would be fine with it.

That said I have actually since apologised because it is not a one off and I was completely wrong.

Even as a child if a family member was arriving for a visit, we would wait be expected to wait up to say hello before going to bed.

This isn't an example of manners though and if you had been put to bed it would be as fine as it was that you stayed up.

Possibly dressed in pyjamas but not going to bed before they got there, particularly if they have travelled for hours!

I would just put my kids to bed, and I would fully expect others to do the same.

@Oddgirlout

The reason these threads get 'hijacked' by autistic people claiming they aren't selfish is due to the implications the OP's post raises. Ultimately the assumption is that someone with autism is incapable, through their own disability, of being a kind and thoughtful person and sustaining any relationships. A moral judgement is implied that they are 'wrong' and therefore worthless. They cannot be fixed. My take home from reading threads is that I'd be a lot better off leaving my family to get on with it without me because my existence causes damage. THAT is why they get hijacked. It is awful to read it and I probably shouldn't have done it. Yes the OP needs her experience validating but it is the follow up of everyone claiming the autism causes it that is so devastating to read. It is ableism. If you swapped out autism with another minority group everyone would be up in arms.

My life would be very much infinitely poorer without my dad and son. I love them very much. They are never intentionally hurtful.

I understand it's just a clash of brain types. Mine isn't better than theirs in any way, but it is different. NT people often expect autistics to learn to be more NT but I don't get why that should be. Very occasionally something happens (like the example I gave) that I find upsetting, but I still get that it wasn't purposeful. I guess I would say that much of my life I have been learning to be less NT and not place unreal expectations on the good people I have in my life whose brains work in somewhat different ways. Yes I can't hug my boy - but I know he loves me.

And decoraters, yes if it had been a one off incident (say, if my husband did this) I would have assumed exceptional circumstances and probably been worried about him.

The biggest issue for NT partners is the amount of masking that happens early in the relationship. This is why when people ask couldn't you see all this before you had kids the honest answer is absolutely not. It took the kids to stress him to the point where the mask fell. It can be very alarming to watch that mask fall and realise how the ASD partner really feels or fails to more to the point.

@ChaChaCha2012 Why is it that you differentiate between women and individuals with ASD? We're women too, do we not have the same value as you, do our voices not count?

Of course. People did not all specify whether they were men or women, so I didn't assume.

@Oddgirlout

The reason these threads get 'hijacked' by autistic people claiming they aren't selfish is due to the implications the OP's post raises. Ultimately the assumption is that someone with autism is incapable, through their own disability, of being a kind and thoughtful person and sustaining any relationships. A moral judgement is implied that they are 'wrong' and therefore worthless. They cannot be fixed. My take home from reading threads is that I'd be a lot better off leaving my family to get on with it without me because my existence causes damage. THAT is why they get hijacked. It is awful to read it and I probably shouldn't have done it. Yes the OP needs her experience validating but it is the follow up of everyone claiming the autism causes it that is so devastating to read. It is ableism. If you swapped out autism with another minority group everyone would be up in arms.

How dare us selfish autistics stand up for ourselves? Were supposed to be emotionless robots making NT people's lives harder, haven't you heard?

How dare us selfish autistics stand up for ourselves? Were supposed to be emotionless robots making NT people's lives harder, haven't you heard?

But it's not about you. It's about how certain characteristics of autism can, combined with different personalities or circumstances, make life as a neurodiverse couple very hard.

If there was a thread on an autism forum about how people are struggling with, say, the emotional demands of NT partners, it wouldn't be my place to jump in and say that "I'm NT and I'm not like that" because (a) my own characteristics don't negate the basic fact that many NT partners willl have expectations that make life challenging for many autistic partners, it doesn't make any of the people involved horrible, and (b) I wouldn't want to jump into a thread that was about somebody needing help with a specific life circumstances to shout at them about the definition of neurotypical.

The example of the driving Vs flying is a classic example. Most NT grandfathers would expect that someone who has driven 5.5 hours with a young baby would be exhausted on arrival and likely need a hand, they would be excited to meet the baby, and they would have a sense that waiting up for the daughter would send a signal to the daughter that she and her baby are important.

My autistic DH or DD and (undiagnosed but virtually certainly) autistic father would feel just the same love as my NT family, but would have 100% have also gone to bed, on the basis that it was their routine, that they were also tired and that the baby would still be there the next day. They would feel exactly the same love, but the ultimate result for the daughter who drove is less physical and emotional support. It isn't selfishness, but it is self-focussed and when this happens again and again, it is incredibly hard.

Sure, not all people with ASD would act this way (and some nt people would), but even here, a number of autistic posters such as @decoraters don't see or acknowledge the issue (or someone even said that the daughter is the twat). It's not a divide in love or in being a better or worse person. But it can be incredibly upsetting to navigate.
Failing to acknowledge the validity of the emotions of an NT partner is what many of us feel every single day. Yes, there is still a lot of prejudice about autistic people, and for the sake of my DD as well as others I do strongly believe in and support causes to address this. But seriously, choose your time and place.

Sure, not all people with ASD would act this way (and some nt people would), but even here, a number of autistic posters such as @decoraters don't see or acknowledge the issue (or someone even said that the daughter is the twat).

I APOLOGISED - can we stop bringing this back?

Hi OP, I once asked ASC DS1 how his week had been. His reply says so much about him, it was: "weakish". One word said so much, not just that he had a poor to average week but so much about him.

How was your week?

I have had two ASD partners.

One was empathic, sensitive to a fault, understanding and communicative. He left me for someone else.

The other was unable to empathise, communicate, imagine anything outside his own experience, cuddle, hug or have sex that wasn't a porn film. He is now a dear and longstanding friend.

It's not the autism. It's him, sadly. Autism is as individual as a person is. Don't stay 'for the children'. No one ever grew up and said, 'thanks for staying with Dad, Mum. We may have had a miserable childhood but at least we had a house.'

@OverTheRubicon

How dare us selfish autistics stand up for ourselves? Were supposed to be emotionless robots making NT people's lives harder, haven't you heard?

But it's not about you. It's about how certain characteristics of autism can, combined with different personalities or circumstances, make life as a neurodiverse couple very hard.

If there was a thread on an autism forum about how people are struggling with, say, the emotional demands of NT partners, it wouldn't be my place to jump in and say that "I'm NT and I'm not like that" because (a) my own characteristics don't negate the basic fact that many NT partners willl have expectations that make life challenging for many autistic partners, it doesn't make any of the people involved horrible, and (b) I wouldn't want to jump into a thread that was about somebody needing help with a specific life circumstances to shout at them about the definition of neurotypical.

The example of the driving Vs flying is a classic example. Most NT grandfathers would expect that someone who has driven 5.5 hours with a young baby would be exhausted on arrival and likely need a hand, they would be excited to meet the baby, and they would have a sense that waiting up for the daughter would send a signal to the daughter that she and her baby are important.

My autistic DH or DD and (undiagnosed but virtually certainly) autistic father would feel just the same love as my NT family, but would have 100% have also gone to bed, on the basis that it was their routine, that they were also tired and that the baby would still be there the next day. They would feel exactly the same love, but the ultimate result for the daughter who drove is less physical and emotional support. It isn't selfishness, but it is self-focussed and when this happens again and again, it is incredibly hard.

Sure, not all people with ASD would act this way (and some nt people would), but even here, a number of autistic posters such as @decoraters don't see or acknowledge the issue (or someone even said that the daughter is the twat). It's not a divide in love or in being a better or worse person. But it can be incredibly upsetting to navigate.
Failing to acknowledge the validity of the emotions of an NT partner is what many of us feel every single day. Yes, there is still a lot of prejudice about autistic people, and for the sake of my DD as well as others I do strongly believe in and support causes to address this. But seriously, choose your time and place.

Sorry for defending myself, I'll let you get back to bitching about autistic people in peace.

I'm autistic, diagnosed, and I would never treat my partner like that. DP is about to go through the process for being diagnosed and he wouldn't do most of that. I admit I don't feel I get a lot of emotional support, which I don't think he would agree with, and he certainly doesn't seem to always notice when I'm going downhill mentally, although this depends on what stresses he has. If he doesn't then he's pretty good with it. If he has stresses then I may as well forget it as he won't notice and won't respond to it being pointed out. Otherwise though he's a brilliant and supportive partner and we feel like a real team most of the time. He is also very receptive to being told something and changing his ways, or doing his best to. I just need to know when to pick my moment with that.

So OP, your H, sounds like he's a selfish twat and using the ASD to mask that. He can learn. He just doesn't want to because it suits him to only think about himself.

How dare us selfish autistics stand up for ourselves? Were supposed to be emotionless robots making NT people's lives harder, haven't you heard?

Turning a thread that has nothing to do with you about you is selfish and it happens every single time. Calling people that are speaking about their relationship problems 'bitching' is rude and unempathetic. Not a single person has said 'all people with autism are xyz or my husband/father/son represents all people with autism. Quite why there is this insistence that if you say something that isn't positive about one person with ASD you are talking about every single person out there with ASD is baffling. It isn't about you.

@Daftasabroom

Hi OP, I once asked ASC DS1 how his week had been. His reply says so much about him, it was: "weakish". One word said so much, not just that he had a poor to average week but so much about him.

How was your week?

i read his reply as , weekish. are you sure that's not what he meant ? makes perfect sense to me.

i think a lot of these expectations are culturally conditioned.
what is wrong with saying 9pm, my bedtime, time for visitors to leave. really they should leave without being asked.
it is clear communication.
it is as if being oblique is more acceptable. and then talk about someone in disparaging or superior tones behind their back.
most teenagers, esp boys hate being fussed over, kissed, hugged esp by their mothers. i think there is a lot of projection going on. if someone does not submit to these expectations/ actions and pretend they are welcomed or mutually enjoyed, then there is something wrong with them.
at best they are cold or autistic. or rude.
so the one wanting to impose these things keeps the upper hand. and looks down patronisingly.
i still think the journey example could be seen as princess behaviour: no one must go to bed before i arrive.
he probably could not see any advantage in delaying a small child getting fed and bed, nor to you, tired after driving, busy with child, nor to him; all staying in the same house, meet in the morning. total non issue to most people.
a rural croft in remote ireland, i was a visitor, eating at table.
host had eaten earlier, so he announced, eat away now, i won't be looking on you. and with that he took his chair, turned it around and sat with his back to the table. that was him being considerate.
there is a lot of egocentrism dressed up as manners, i think.