Edited to add: apologies for massive post!
I’m looking for advice from PDA and/or autistic people, or people in relationships with PDA / autistic people. Please don’t comment if you have no understanding of PDA, or have strong ideas about people using autism as an ‘excuse’.
I need help communicating something important in our relationship to my DH who is extremely sensitive to perceived criticism. I want him to stop offering to do things he will not do.
Background: my DH and DC are PDA. I didn’t realise DH was PDA until our DC was diagnosed. There was a lot that puzzled me about his behaviour but I could see that he had good intentions. Seeing what our DC has struggled with since birth, and his huge distress and frustration when he can’t do things he wants to be able to do, helps me understand what is going on fundamentally with my DH that he has been trying to work around for 40-odd years.
Life is extremely complex at home (to say the least) and I bear all the mental and practical load for everything. DH works at a job he dislikes to support us financially, as I can only work very limited hours around DC’s needs. Work takes all of his spoons. He needs to recharge in the evenings with his special interests, and often comes to bed late and sleeps late in the mornings.
The issue troubling me today is that DH said last night, ‘please don’t do any cleaning up, I’ll do it before I go to bed.’ I expressed thanks for this, though I knew he would not do it, and I’d come down in the morning to a mess. Which is exactly what happened. It happens a lot.
This gets to the core of an issue that is causing a lot of resentment for me.
There is seemingly no gentle enough way of saying, ‘thank you for offering to clean up - it means a lot to me that you recognise it needs doing, and that you don’t expect me to do it all myself. But I am going to do it, because it’s important to me that it gets done in a particular timeframe.’ Even this feels to him like an attack and makes him angry and defensive.
I have tried saying, ‘oh don’t worry, I’ll do it, it’s no trouble,’ but that doesn’t sit well with me and feels dishonest. I don’t want to give the impression that I want to do all of everything in the house single-handedly, that I somehow enjoy it. I don’t.
I have tried waiting until he gets up in the morning (invariably 2 hours after DC and I do) and saying, in the warmest tone I can muster, hey thanks for volunteering to clean up last night - it would be great if you could sort the kitchen. But this is both a demand and a reminder of something he hasn’t done, which can feel to him like a violent character assassination.
If he sees or hears me doing the washing up and remembers that he’d offered to do it, even THAT feels like an attack to him and he’ll have a go at me for not trusting him to do it when he’d said he would.
All I want is for him not to offer.
I want him to be able to sit with whatever discomfort it causes him that he can’t do this stuff, rather than making it my issue to manage, or requiring me to collude in the pretence that he can.
I don’t want to sneak around quietly doing the dishes and letting him take credit, like he’s Santa Claus. I want us to be able to be clear and honest about who does what and why. With no judgement! But with due acknowledgement and appreciation for what each of us does.
I have tried and tried for years, since learning about PDA, to say, I get it that you have executive function issues. I get it that you literally cannot do something if it feels like a demand or an expectation. What bothers me is not so much that you don’t do the thing, but that you insist that you will, and often insist that I don’t crack on and do it myself (presumably because seeing me do something you know you should be doing feels like a criticism / indirect demand?) - and then become extremely indignant and offended if I remind you even in the gentlest manner.
He is 100% not doing this on purpose. He wants to be able to do the things. But he can’t. And he can’t accept this about himself.
But I just want the fucking dishes done. I don’t want the extra emotional labour of relieving him of his guilt about not doing the dishes.
Can anyone suggest to me how I might communicate this to him in a way that won’t get his hackles up? Or do I just need to accept that this is another thing he can’t do, and work on letting it go?
It doesn’t come across in this post but we have a good relationship in so many ways. He supports me to pursue my interests and friendships and is loyal to a fault and extremely funny and an enormously loving and dedicated father. But daily life is a massive struggle and we are all on our knees with exhaustion.