Married to someone with Asperger's/ASD: support thread 10

[Daftasabroom]

New thread.

This thread is for those of us seeking to explore 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.

ND people are more than welcome, some of us are in ND:ND relationships.

It's complicated and it's emotional.

Isn’t that just projection though as he is unlikely to feel any of that. You feel sorry for yourself because you’ve not been able to do those things. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I feel like that about my first relationship but I put up with it for so long when I didn’t need to. I think it depends on whether the good outweighs the bad as we aren’t here to be another persons parent or therapist. If you took the ND out of it would we/you put up with it from another partner. Perhaps it’s just an incompatibility in partner. My partner is ND but I love him to bits because of all of his parts make a nice man who I can see tries his best.

Hence why I said ‘I feel…’

Could he be picking up on that feeling. I know personally I’ve felt shame my whole life for not living up to others views of my potential. I’ve pushed myself to the point of freeze and depression for my previous husband. I knew he wanted more and I wasn’t capable of being more. Neither in that sense were at fault. I would hate and feel more shame if I knew my partner felt the way you do because of me. I don’t know it’s difficult. You shouldn’t be in a relationship where you feel like that because it’s sad. You want more and he can’t give it and it’s no one’s fault it seems.

@CherryPickle I get it. I get how impossible it is to live when you can’t have feelings of your own, on your own account, about your own life, in case it causes feelings of shame for your partner. Who then needs you to comfort him in his distressing feelings about the fact that you have your own distressing feelings.

I’m ADHD, and it has taken me years (and, frankly, the mirror of my DH’s ADHD traits held up to me) to recognise my own rejection sensitivity, and to recognise that it’s not based in fact; that it’s a misfortune of my nervous system like my arthritis is a misfortune of my joints - it means some things are painful for me that aren’t by their nature inherently painful. And it’s ultimately up to me to manage my pain. I can’t expect the pavement or the stairs to take responsibility for hurting my knees. I can choose better shoes, I can take the lift, I can take ibuprofen and glucosamine and look after myself. But expecting the mechanics of walking to change itself to spare my discomfort isn’t going to get me anywhere.

There will be some friction and conflict in every relationship. Expecting your partner never to voice - or even accidentally, unconsciously express - any dissatisfaction because that feels painful and attacking does not make for a mutual, reciprocal, relationship in which both people matter equally.

One of the best things we have managed in our relationship is to acknowledge the ways in which we can both be desperately annoying and tedious. And to understand that we can also care about each other and respect each other. While sometimes being driven absolutely up the wall.

This has taken years, and all sorts of heartache, and has involved crafting a very, very low demand life, that doesn’t look much like other people’s, and we don’t do anything together and DH hardly leaves the house. And I do really mourn all the things we can’t do, all the ways in which my own life is limited. The enormity of my caring responsibilities, which are for the most part unacknowledged by my DH. And I can’t dwell too much on that or I can get a bit despairing.

But if my DH hadn’t had a bit of capacity to self-reflect (which he does, a bit) and if I hadn’t ’gone first’ in admitting all the ways in which I’m flawed and impaired, and let him really go to town on all my faults so that he could then (eventually) feel (marginally) OK to concede that he’s not always entirely perfect, things would be unbearable.

it took having a PDA child to understand that I will always have to go first. I will always have to absolutely denigrate myself and submit to and prostrate myself before my DH and DC before they will be able to collaborate worth me. And I can do it because I have seen it does eventually get us somewhere better. But fuck me ot smarts sometimes.

@Bunnyhair Thank you. I’m sorry you get it, but I’m also glad. It’s such an isolating situation to be in.

Unfortunately I have tried that with him, a few times. I’ve sat him down and told him all the ways in which I feel I could be better, and all the ways in which I am flawed. I have opened myself and asked him to tell me what he doesn’t like about what I do and I have worked on improving those things. When I’ve asked him why he hasn’t done the same, he tells me he works on them internally. What he means by that is he thinks about them, but he doesn’t act. He has good intentions, but they don’t manifest.

I have read all the books because he won’t, and tried to make suggestions practically. He doesn’t follow them. He refused to take any meds because he didn’t like one that he took, and won’t try another. He refused to go to counselling. There is nothing I can do. I make myself as small as I possibly can, but I can’t exist in a relationship without support. If I don’t remind him to do things they never get done (and half the time when I remind him they don’t either). If I don’t voice complaints he still does things that impact me terribly.

He is unhappy with his life, with himself, but I can’t fix that for him.

And while I understand @Rainbow03 and what they are saying, it just feels like yet another place where I have to be the one to do everything while he gets to do nothing and just feels sorry for himself. I have nothing left to give.

@CherryPickle you can’t fix another person and you don’t have to give your life trying. When I left my ex I was in pieces, I had a nervous breakdown. He begged and begged me to stay but I couldn’t be the person he wanted and I broke myself trying. I used to wake up in the morning wishing I just had not woke up. He said he felt like taking his life it was so awful. But here we are 5 years later and I’ve met someone else. It’s no life to live. 🤗

@CherryPickle I totally get it.

I have the same issue with my DH of having to kind of drag him kicking and screaming through the most basic rudiments of life and being wildly resented for it. But if I don’t do it our lives go into utter free fall. He doesn’t just magically take responsibility when I don’t, because he can’t. It’s really not strategic / weaponised incompetence. It’s just inability. And inability to recognise the inability. And inability to recognise the huge amount of support and scaffolding I provide, and how much this takes out of me.

And I absolutely understand the feeling of being unable to make yourself any smaller than you already have. Particularly when it hasn’t even resulted in increased happiness for your DH.

And this is not what it was like at the beginning, when the special interest energy was at its peak. And this is not what we chose. And it’s not something we’ve created through enabling our partners to slack off (as the world of NT Mumsnet relationships would have us believe) and it’s not because we’ve surrendered to the patriarchy or are making excuses for a shitty man. It’s different. And hardly anyone can understand.

Thank you all for these courageous posts.

@Bunnyhair but why do you stay and make yourself smaller and smaller. Just asking out of interest.

Because we have a child with complex SEN and we can’t make it work financially in 2 households. And DH would not be capable on his own to work / pay child maintenance / look after our child during his contact time.

That’s difficult, it’s more necessity than because you still love him. Are there any places to get some support around this? I’m not sure if it’s your responsibility to think about your DH’s needs, that’s his. I’ve got 2 children with ND and it’s hard. Life isn’t fair sometimes.

I think people with low support needs in daily life can’t really understand how much we are carers, in every practical sense, for our ND partners with very severely impaired executive function. I need to remind my DH to bathe and brush his teeth. I need to remind him to eat. He has never been able to pay a bill or open his post. I do all the invoicing for his work. I set up his internet banking. He was in huge debt (unbeknownst to me) before we got together because he can’t sort out the basics of paying his bills.

(He is highly educated and employed in a skilled technical job but daily life is impossible for him)

So much of what you said resonates, thank you. So few people understand. They see him being brilliant at work. They assume he’s brilliant elsewhere. We don’t have sex because I don’t initiate any longer. We have no romantic or emotional connection.

There is such a conflict when you know he can’t help it, and you try a million different things in the hope that something will happen and there will be a break through. You think ‘if I’m just good enough, we will be okay.’ You blame yourself.

My own mother says ‘poor DH, you must be so tough on him’ if I voice any tiny little indication of unhappiness. The reality is that I am parenting an adult who will never learn and who wildly resists all possibilities that there is something wrong with him (even though he’s diagnosed).

For my own answer, it’s currently financial. And guilt. And a childhood of being taught to put everyone else first.

I have worked hard on the latter. I am working towards the former.

We have power in our lives to stay or go. Nobody makes us stay with partners. Children are different. Probably sounds awful.

Sure, nobody makes us stay with them. But if we know that leaving will have adverse impacts on our already vulnerable children - and that we will still end up suffering the effects of our ex partner’s executive dysfunction with even less ability to mitigate it - it’s not so easy to just up and go, and it won’t necessarily result in greater happiness or freedom. That’s the reality.

that’s why sometimes we need to vent. Because there is no solution that doesn’t risk making things a whole lot worse.

@Bunnyhair I understand I’ve been there. I was the second member in a co-dependant relationship with no RL support. It took a nervous breakdown on my behalf to leave. The resentment was unbearable, I hated my life I no longer wanted to be part of life. I’m sorry you feel stuck, I remember that feeling.

For someone who says they understand, I think you are making a lot of judgments about lives here that you don’t know. It isn’t helping.

I’m just saying for those who feel trapped with guilt that it’s ok not to stay with someone ND or not.

DH and I joked about having a massive house with a 'wing' each and some communal family areas in the middle. I do like spending some time with him as we share many interests and he can be good company. He knows I'm struggling now though and he is trying, in his own ways, but I'm finding it hard to forgive and move past some of his behaviours. It's not fair on either of us as we are both lonely and I am stuck in detachment due to past hurt by him.

At the same time I feel ridiculously anxious about not having him around to tag-team with DD or like yesterday, to talk me down and help me regulate when I was heading towards meltdown due to a letter from inflexible Head Teacher at DD'S school. Each situation is unique I guess and as mentioned before maybe it's about weighing up the good and bad.

Curious... For those of you who did leave with children.. how much victim hood and vitriol did you end up on the receiving end of, if any?

The housing crisis has a lot to answer for. I wonder if many of us could be productively living near but apart.

This thread is so helpful. Thank you everyone for your posts which are so insightful and helpful. On the question a few pages back about childhood family dynamics, my background is that my parents each had a lot of childhood trauma and I suspect are each ND. They split when I was very young and haven’t spoken to each other since. The absolute control and autonomy they each had in their entirely separate orbits was terrifying to me as a child who didn’t understand (still working on understanding the dynamics as an adult) and I just thought I had to be really good in all senses to still be included in their lives and not left too. My main job was having no needs of my own and being entirely practical self sufficient and ideally not cost any money and endlessly making myself pleasant to be around. I loved school it was a refuge from home. I’m sure it primed me to feel very familiar and initially feel very happy with unwittingly having a ND partner. I still feel very uncomfortable with concepts like ‘taking up space’ and asserting my own needs. Decisions are hard because I never got to make any. I have no idea what I like or want to do. My ASD DC’s obstinacy and refusal blows my mind. I’m really impressed and try to be respectful of it because I simply could never have asserted and centred my needs like that as a child. I’d have been, I don’t know, cast out somehow. I can’t bear being around conflict though so it’s hard.

I know the thread is about support for partners of ND partners. But it appears that a lot of us have previous trauma unrelated to our partners.

It does look like it and it's probably linked somehow. I've read so many books (hyperfocus and special interest in Trauma/Narcissistic Abuse/Autism etc) and trauma (with or without ND) seems to lead to lowered boundaries and putting own needs last Much like @ThischarmingHam describes too about not taking up 'space' and placating others.