Married to someone with Asperger's/ASD: support thread 9

[Daftasabroom]

New thread.

This thread is for those of us seeking to understand the dynamics of long term relationships with our ND partners. It is a support thread, and a safe space, it does get emotional at times. Avoid sweeping generalisations if possible, try and keep it specific to you and your partner.

Link to old thread

Dh father was also autistic, I’m pretty sure. And I know that my MIL has struggled a lot with her own dh too. Many comments from where I empathically nodded whilst thinking ‘yep and dh is exactly the same’.

I think her way of coping and ‘guiding’ her dh was born out of experience. With some good reasons too.
And yes dh having grown up in that environment will have had an impact on him too.

I'm pretty sure H's Dad is autistic, thought that for a long time. He and MIL have a very different relationship to H and I, though, she's kind of the boss of him and he does as he's told. I can't imagine him doing any of the things H did, he's too scared of MIL.

I guess I should have been more badass 😂

I’ve followed these threads but never posted.

I made my Asperger husband leave following a conversation that I found extremely disturbing. In the conversation he admitted he had deliberately shut down and withheld things out of spite for a petty reason from years ago. He had known all along what he had been doing and the effect it had had on me. I was disgusted and told him to leave immediately.

I realise now I had never stopped being his special interest. By his own admission his special interest became abusing me, controlling me and depriving me in every way. I tolerated his refusal to communicate, his moods, his alleged lack of understanding and many other things that I should not. Because I wanted to believe he didn’t know what he was doing. It seems preposterous now that I ever thought that. Because he knew enough to only do these things in secret. He didn’t treat anyone else this way and like most of these men could be engaging and appropriate with others. He never subjected others to his warped logic. Because he knew they wouldn’t tolerate it.

If you’re on the fence about leaving, consider the possibility that you are very much still his special interest in a sick way. Consider also the amount of covering up you do so he gets to enjoy nice status and reputation while he systematically abuses you and deprives you in secret in your home.

So many of these men use emotional deprivation as their own special brand of abuse. Considering how miserable and unhappy they claim to be its amazing they stay in these miserable marriages isnt it. It’s quite obvious some of them are more than happy to stay and ensure you are miserable.

I'm so sorry @CrochetQueen12 that's just awful.

Interesting. Actually both DP’s parents died a long time ago but I do often wonder about them. He speaks about them in such high regard. But perhaps this is because they died when he was so young. I wonder how much is learned behaviour and how much is ASC related. He has sisters and they’re all a bit….scared is the wrong word. They all seem to be in awe of him. A little afraid of upsetting him. I wonder what their parenting style was like. DP and I both have DC but we don’t share children. Mine are here sometimes and his are here sometimes. They cross over a bit but we try to keep them separate during the school week. His parenting style is authoritarian. His DC seem a bit scared of him though they also revere him. It’s really quite strange. He is a wonderful dad in many ways. He does loads with them, is very interested in their interests and hobbies, talks to them all the time and is very very affectionate. But they worry about upsetting him I think. They don’t dare back chat him. They do as they’re told. I find it quite odd as my DC are not like that at all! They need to be nagged into doing chores, they can be rude to me at times, though they will apologise afterward, they are lazy and whiny and the two of them bicker all the time. To me this is more how I would expect children to behave!! I don’t always like their behaviour but having worked with children for most of my life, they seem very normal to me! My DP’s DC don’t dare argue and would not dream of answering him back. Whilst he is a better parent than me in many ways, his authoritarian style is not appropriate in my view and I hate to see how his DD cowers when he shouts at her. He tries to parent my DC and goads my DS into arguments and shouts at them. I step in and say this is not appropriate. Do not do that. I will handle this. My DC are not scared of him at all and think he’s a knob! I mean they like him. He does loads for them. Takes them out, gives them lifts, cooks with them and they appreciate that. But when he starts trying to use his “authority” to parent in the way he parents his own DC they just look at him with contempt. I am the only one allowed to shout at my DC (usually when they’re being lazy and ignoring me!) but I will not accept my DP doing it and neither will they. Good for them I say!!!

CrochetQueen12 gosh that sounds like true narcissism. Glad you got away. I’m sorry you went through that. Fancy a human being deliberately causing suffering with every intention of doing so!

I don’t think (though I did wonder for a while) that my DP is a narcissist. He doesn’t enjoy making me suffer. He wants me to be happy and expends quite a lot of energy trying to make me happy in the best ways that he knows. It’s lovely to be truly cared for and be with someone who really does want me to be happy.

The issues I have are around his manner (brusque, shitty), lack of self awareness (is the worst hypocrite I have ever met! But he doesn’t see it!), his quick temper (which he knows needs work and has attended therapy and takes anti depressants to try and help manage it better), and his obsession with fault and blame (always thinks he is being criticised and blamed and yet is one of the most critical people of others I know and jumps to blame everyone and everything rather than himself. Even when something is his mistake he will find a way to insist it’s someone else’s).

He lost something the other day. He was the only person who had been in the house for a week as I was away and the kids weren’t here. He insisted he left it in a certain place. Was certain he had. Normally he would be blaming my DS or me for moving it. But he had to admit the only explanation was that he had wandered off and put it somewhere else. I could see how much he wanted to try and blame someone else. I knew if anyone else had been in the house in the last couple of days he would have categorically insisted it was them. In his head there is ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBILITY that he is mistaken. None. Zero. It isn’t possible. He has to be presented with absolute proof. And he’ll blame people and insist it was them and be quite horrible about it when they say it wasn’t. He just can’t entertain the possibility of being mistaken. This is what I wonder about. Is it ASC which dictates his rigid thinking (ie he can’t even entertain an alternative scenario. It simply is not possible that things happened other than his recollection)? Was he blamed as a child and simply cannot cope with the idea of being blamed? From my work with ASC children in the past I see that blame is something they are often highly sensitive to. It would be very interesting to have met his parents. I suspect he was the golden boy allowed to dictate to everyone how things were going to be and was the man of the family when his dad was away. I think he was probably given special status and thinks he still ought to be. Who knows!

@CrochetQueen12 i do think dh has done hurtful stuff out of spite too.

But it has never been a normal position for him. More a reaction like many NT have too. ‘Well if she has done X, then I’ll do A and B.’

And you’re right, it’s very hard to know whether this is the case or if we should give them some slack because autism is still a disability.

The issues I have are around his manner (brusque, shitty), lack of self awareness (is the worst hypocrite I have ever met!

Yes my exh was a hypocrite too. He felt he had a right to hold me to a standard he didn’t meet himself. Any emotions I had were to be ridiculed whilst his emotions were to be treated with utmost importance. He would sneer at me regularly for being emotional, regarding himself as highly logical, when in fact he was highly emotional himself.

I wouldn’t say mine had no self awareness. I’d say he pretended to have no self awareness when we were alone in our house. Although he was socially awkward, he did not display those ridiculous traits with his work mates or people we socialised with. What sort of disability can be turned on and off at will?

I actually don’t know how on earth I even tolerated the beginnings of this, how I didn’t run a mile when he started being an arsehole and pretending to be baffled and to not understand basic interactions. He knew exactly what he was doing. And even if he didn’t, what good can come from having a man in your home who is so compromised he isn’t able to realise he is being abusive?

Sorry. I’m just not buying the baffled confused looks no more or the warped logic. I’ve had enough of the thick act that disappears when they go to work everyday, the low emotional intelligence that only appears in private. No to all of that.

@BustyLaRoux have you considered he may have ADHD as well as ASD, or perhaps a "spiky" profile with a bit of both?

He appears to have the emotional disregulation and poor working memory if he's always forgetting and losing things.

CrochetQueen12 your ex sounds awful. Manipulative and very intentionally so. Calculated and conniving. Very different to my DP. My DP is the opposite. He thinks he has amazing insight and is always psychoanalysing people. But he gets it sooooo wrong!!! He actually IS clueless but thinks he is Sigmund Freud!!! I have a little chuckle to myself as it’s not kind to point out that he’s talking a load of ass!!!!

My DP doesn’t seem to have ADHD as he doesn’t actually lose or forget a lot of things that often. He is quite meticulous. I think this might be why he cannot accept he could ever misplace something or do anything absent mindedly. It doesn’t fit his idea of himself and he cannot entertain a “reduced” version of himself (ie someone who occasionally forgets things or loses things). He never doubts himself. And it’s this rigid behaviour and inflated sense of self which means he gets angry if I suggest he could be mistaken. If someone asks if I moved something I’ll say “oh maybe. I don’t think so but I could have” But if he is asked it’s “absolutely not! 100% not. I don’t do things like that. Ever!” There cannot be any fault or misunderstanding on his part. It’s not meant to be abusive but the aggressively shutting me down is hard to live with sometimes.

Interesting that we are talking about hereditary traits as his DS (also ASC) is exactly the same. He can never be blamed for anything. He is very quick to blame others and will categorically deny any fault on his part. I know all children do this to some extent. My own DS will deny knowledge of stuff which quite clearly he has done. This is usually because his ADHd means he doesn’t know he’s done it. So you ask why has this been left here? And he’ll say “errrr, I dunno. It wasn’t me”. i don’t think he knows it actually was him. My DP’s DS will loudly announce that one of the other DC has done something to get himself out of trouble. He likes to get the others into trouble. He denies things which we know he has done and which he also knows full well he has done. My DP will unfortunately always side with him though. It’s like they are bullish, righteous, self important peas in a pod!

I think the rigidity is ASD.

But the ‘im never wrong even it’s blatantly not the case and everyone, incl me, knows it’ is something learnt.
@BustyLaRoux and in the case if your dss, it’s his dad who taught him that by the way he has been parenting him (and still is)

This rings so true! For years I was able to just keep going, but I was shouting in to the wind about being exhausted and ill.

I now know that he would have picked up more of the domestic grunt if I had specifically asked him to do x, y and z. And maybe that would have helped. But I also wanted him to notice me! To hear that I was struggling, show understanding of why, and help us find a way out of it together. Asking him to cook 3 dinners and unload the dishwasher may have been the practical manifestation of "help", but mostly I just wanted someone to care.

I hear people saying that it's my responsibility to ask for what I need. But actually I don't really NEED anything. I just want to feel a bit of care sometimes. And I don't want to have to identify when that care is needed, work out what he could "do" to help me feel cared for, work out a way of communicating it so that he doesn't feel criticised in any way, pick the timing of the conversation, hold the conversation and then manage the 700% response I'll get. I just want someone to put their arms round me at night and tell me they're with me and we're a team.

Practical help, financial contribution, co-parenting. To me that's not a relationship; it's a coparent and a housemate in one!

Oh sorry for this but I hear you! I don’t live with my partner because it’s not practical atm but also I’m not sure if I will in the future because doing I might slip into doing at least 1.5 parts of two people’s stuff and then I might fall apart. Well done you but also has DH tried therapy or coaching to learn some skillz? TBF mine does both of these and the skills are not really growing yet but I think he’s got a lot more autistic traits than I have so that makes understanding the world possibly harder. Or he is just a man who grew up rich and had an infantilising and enabling ex wife who did everything for him until she fell apart and ran off. 🤷‍♀️

@organictomatoes tbh i’m past the point of trying to support him, i dont have the energy and nothing has worked in 25yrs so i cant see anything working now. I took his mood, health, issues etc off my responsibility list a few years ago. If he asks for help or advice i am here but i’m not bring pro active on his behalf anymore.

we would have an infinitely better relationship if we didnt live together.

I think it was @bunhead1979 who said that a few posts ago - I’m pretty sure it is linked with our sexist society that simply doesn’t expect the same from men and women.
Hence the fact autism doesn’t show up in the same way in boys and girls.
Also for example, I’m coming across many women on SM talking about what it means to be autistic, offering insights on what triggers they have, how they cope etc… Men? It’s very rare.

Now ofc, autism doesn’t resent the same way in every autistic person, regardless of the gender. And some autistic characteristics will make it harder for some people to learn and gain insight.

But I’m quite convinced gender agd gender expectations have a big play there.

That’s a DH problem. Not an autism problem

@SpecialMangeTout , absolutely. Socialisation does completely come into it.

I absolutely relate to this. It's like you become enmeshed with his problems and they become your own.

I'm in the same place @organictomatoes. A MH crisis of DH forced that in the end. I'm much happier for it, and tbf DH no longer expects so much support and has a therapist now. But I find myself struggling to reconnect the closeness and intimacy that I thought was there before, or maybe it wasn't and I mistook enmeshment for that?

@BustyLaRoux
Same here. I have wondered if H is a narc. too and a psychologist who works with narcs and ASD has told me some of the behaviours I describe are narc. and not ASD. However, H does not I think have a desire to cause me pain. He'd like me to be happy, (albeit probably only because that would make his life better 😞) . He just won't do the things I tell him would make me happy, unless they are in his pre-existing internal list of things a 'good husband' should do (largely cooking me dinner at the weekend and coming back from work in time to let me go out of an evening).

H can also accept no blame, and looks to blame others. He has in the past blamed his 4 and 7 year old children for the fact they are eating sugary crap like waffles and mars bars before dinner as 'Its not his fault, they they asked for them'. 🙄

Nine months ago thick mould appeared over a large patch in the corner of our living room. I told him that a broken gutter was causing this. His brother, who is a handy man, happened to be visiting and pressed home the importance of getting it fixed and how houses quickly degenerate if not maintained., He never, and now that corner of the room is soaking wet. H now says it is MY fault he never fixed it as I gave him 'other stuff' to do.
This is not actually true. But him being busy is always my fault (not the fault of us being a working family with no support or cleaner) as I ' make him do things' ( so its not that there is just stuff to be done when you work and have a family, its my fault). And anything he doesn't do is my fault as I ' made him do things, so he never had time.'

This is quite remarkable as my ability to 'make him do things' is very poor, as he just ignores me, and is evidence by our run down, not very clean, house. The only time I succeed is when I finally lose my shit after he has caused a massive problem for us ( see exhibit A, the soaking wet internal walls that the wall paper has peeled off) and frankly I have to shout repeatedly at him until the discomfort this causes him over-rides the pain in the arse of actually fixing said thing.

Its horrible and exhausting.

And @BustyLaRoux Yes, to the aggressive apology and then attacking you.

I get that too. If I really, really push my point I occasionally get an ' I'm sorry but..' and after the but is the explanation of how he never did anything wrong at all, followed by how its all my fault anyway.

I'm not sure about this.

In my H's case I suspect it is the ASD. Its so extreme that I don't think it can be learnt, and anyway, he has two siblings who are not like this.

If you have very poor self awareness, which I think is quite typical of ASD, coupled with very poor understanding of other people, plus very rigid in your thinking - which means you will often get things wrong when you think you are doing the right thing, its easier to see how this person would have barriers to understanding they got something wrong and are responsible for that.

My H has almost no learning curve. In 11 years of parenting, he has not really learnt simple strategies of how to parent. His latest thing when the kids don't do things he tells them to, is to stand there and yell at them ' What can I do? tell me, what can I do?'
Which is pretty much telling them, ' I have not control over you , so just crack doing what you like.'
I've told him over and over that if he wants them to do something, when they are occupied doing something else, he needs to stay in the room with them until they do it. Yelling at them from another room to do something, means they will ignore you and not do it. Yet he keeps on with his way that never works, and then feels hopeless and confused that it is not working.

@YesThis I have similar with concerns with my DH. I’m sure he has ASD and ADHD but he also does have an awareness there are thinks I will not like or be unhappy with and still does them (like going to the cinema when our child came out of hospital. He even said to my friend, “Ice won’t like this”, but he wanted to go and nothing could distract him from that). There’s been times he’s in a real grump and I’ve explained how much it’s not helping me or upsetting me and he will continue - he can never be the bigger person or defuse a situation.

I then wonder how much is how he was brought up (very strict parents I suspect both ND) or does he have narc traits - or is it being undiagnosed and or permanently being in trouble/getting things wrong and so this became his coping strategy?

Blaming everyone/victim mentality is my DH’s speciality, exactly the same as yours - children regularly get blamed for things. His whole family is the same though- nothing is their fault.

It’s like he’s on high alert the entire time and sees most things as a personal attack and gets defensive. I have to be really careful how I speak to him - utterly draining.