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.

It does beg the question that if we are so awful why do they stay? Or is that kettle and black and they have a thread running about their awful NT/ASD partners as well :)

@working4ever its a good question and I think dh reasons are a mix of sense of duty + you dint get divorced, it’s bad + struggling to decide what’s the best course of action.

Im not going to judge that because I’ve had my own crappy reasons to stay for years. So e of which were actually similar (like you don’t divorce because it will be awful for the dcs - a very French perspective that says it’s better to be together even if it’s not great than be separated)

I believe they actually do

???
Why on Earth have I been deleted?

Oh well…..

A few things have happened recently that have shown me that dh is simply just a twat sometimes.
im growing a backbone again (or maybe I’m getting a bit better health wise so I feel like fighting back)
Or maybe I’m getting more clarity/understanding.

Im not sure.
But the lack of support re my own health isn’t going down well with me atm.

@Flittingaboutagain · 20/05/2024 22:27
Congratulations to the PP in her 60s who has moved closer to her son's. Sorry I can't remember your MN name from the previous page.

that’s me! Thank you for your congratulations. It’s been difficult to say the least, so much misunderstanding, and misinterpretation. He has no idea what I’m saying so he makes up his own version, which is usually nowhere near what I actually said.

After a week of this wittering miscommunication I’d had enough, so today I went shopping, spent an obscene amount of money on bedding, bins, towels, went for a quick cuppa with nearest son, then more shopping at M&S food.

As I expected, on my return home his first comment was “how much have you spent?”
My reply: it was my money. I spent as much as I wanted to. It was a pleasure to spend the money without having to pass it by you.
He’s sulky now, because he’s lost control. Hey ho.

Namechanged to jump on this thread because I'm at the end of my rope and need to know if anyone else has experienced something like this. Been married to DH for 6 years, together for over a decade. He told me he had Asperger's fairly early on and I figured we'd give it a try. We have always worked great together. There weren't really any issues. Yes he is quite rigid and rants at me about his interests but I didn't (and still don't) mind. But for the past year or so, it seems like he is losing abilities. He leaves stuff all over the house that he used to put away. He forgets so much. He can't process simple written information anymore when he used to read Kafka. He also doesn't understand half of what I'm saying and I keep having to repeat myself. E.g., this morning we got into a fight because he just couldn't understand a sentence where I used the phrase "it tends to...". He just kept saying "Tends to? Tends to? Tends to? What's that? Tends to?". This must sound horrible but I'm losing respect for him because I feel like I'm living with someone who is profoundly intellectually disabled. And that isn't how he used to be at all. I have begged him to go to the GP but he refuses to. He says this is just what autism is and he's always been like that (not true!). He also still gets excellent feedback at work, so it seems like he's able to manage there. I don't know what to do because this is killing our relationship and he knows it.

That’s very worrying Earlycats. I’d keep working on him to go to the GP. Could he have tipped over into autistic burnout? Any stresses in his life? I can understand why he’s very frustrating to live with.

@earlycats I was just about to mention Autistic Burnout but Drawers beat me to it! But yes, it does sound like a trip to the GP might be good to rule other things out. As an autistic myself i do know that i loose a lot of my executive function skills when near burnout or when overwhelmed by changes/life events. Is there anything going on that might have triggered overwhelm?

Thank you @DrawersOnTheDoors and @LittleSwede. Yes, we've had an extremely stressful and challenging year. I hadn't heard of autistic burnout before but what I read does seem to fit. I will gently approach this with him. His self-care and ability to recognise when he's struggling can be quite limited, so maybe he wasn't coping as well as I (we?) thought. And obviously this is just adding a whole other layer of stress because it's affecting our relationship so much.

I found this website a really clear resource: https://neurodivergentinsights.com/autism-infographics/autism-and-burnout

That is a great resource @DrawersOnTheDoors !

I've just read the resource and it seems that to recover my husband has to check out of family life basically. Doesn't really seem realistic?

It doesn't have to be that extreme, it's more a matter of how to best use the 'spoons' (if you are familiar with spoon theory) so that there's enough 'spoons' for the absolute necessary like work (if not signed off) and some aspects of family life. Yet at the same time finding ways and time to recover by doing the things that help to regulate and think of ways to reduce demands in everyday life. If he really is burnt out then yes he will need time to recover, as if from an illness, and some adjustments will be needed. Do you have children?

Oh my goodness ladies ....
Reading your stories has turned on so many light bulbs in my head. I am ASD ADHD BPD 😅 a whole load of fun for me. I suspect partner is severely ASD but undiagnosed and reading your stories has really highlighted

1. That he most definitely is ASD!
2. Women with ASD are so much more compassionate and able to understand work and make comprise compared to males and it really shows how so many females are missed due to impeccable masking and the differences!

It’s a shame they have no self awareness at all. I’m autistic and I have awareness that I can feel I’m becoming overwhelmed. Do they know and understand that they are ND and what they can do to help themselves and others around them. They have a responsibility as much as anyone else with a mental health problem or any health issue.

Hey hope you don't mind me replying.
I get the brain fog thing so badly that I cannot understand what people say sometimes as well. You hear what they are saying but your brain cannot make you understand the words. It's ALWAYS from over stimulation and burn out. Sometimes it can be as simple as there is too many sounds happening at once. I am a scientist and my colleagues have got used to me sometimes seeming like I am thick as shhhh because I will always be back to my usual brain capacity after some rest and quiet time.

Get him to Try the loop ear plug things. It really
Helps with the over stimulating noises.

X

I’ve come to understand I don’t think the same as others and don’t deal with things the same way as others and that’s my responsibility to accept and to challenge and work through. It’s not for everyone else to change and tip toe around me for me. I expect the people around me to be supportive but it’s not my rules end of discussion.

I think it’s a really tricky one when your partner doesn’t know he’‘S autistic. Or, like my DH, sometimes tacitly acknowledges it (the good bits - the high fluid intelligence, for example) and other times insists he’s as NT as they come and I’m a gaslighting hypochondriac by proxy with extravagantly OTT expectations (like, some sort of response when I speak to him - even if it’s just a grunt, or blinking twice to show he’s aware I exist)

My DH doesn’t consider that he has particular needs or preferences or sensitivities. What he likes is what anyone in their right mind would like. What he finds aversive is what anyone with half a brain would find aversive. People who like football have something fundamentally wrong with them, for example, and are, across the board, twats. No exceptions.

I think the big issue really is theory of mind. If you can work out that people are different from one another without that making either party ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, you’ve got enough theory of mind to allow for some self-awareness and collaboration in relationships. If your default understanding of the world is that you are perceiving things and conducting yourself entirely correctly and everyone else is wildly fucking unreasonable and probably stupid, it makes relationships harder. 😂

I think we are married to the same guy, @Bunnyhair

I think the big issue really is theory of mind. If you can work out that people are different from one another without that making either party ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, you’ve got enough theory of mind to allow for some self-awareness and collaboration in relationships. If your default understanding of the world is that you are perceiving things and conducting yourself entirely correctly and everyone else is wildly fucking unreasonable and probably stupid, it makes relationships harder. 😂

One sure fire way to piss off my ex was when I changed my mind about something no matter how small or unimportant the thing was. He wouldn’t be able to move past it because he would need to know exactly how and why I changed my mind. ‘I just felt like it’ was not considered an acceptable answer 😂😂

Looking back now from his perspective changing my mind was more about things being right or wrong and so changing one’s mind doesn’t make sense to him.

It be great if we were - I’d have someone to chat to! We could have our own little harem sitting room where we could watch TV programmes that we chose ourselves. Bliss!

Or changing your mind turns you into an entirely different person.

Like my getting a haircut seems to turn me into a terrifying stranger he suddenly has to share his life with without having been consulted. It was only when I read Temple Grandin’s stuff about a man on a horse seeming like an entirely different kind of entity from a man not in a horse that I began to have a glimpse into how the world might feel to my DH. That any change in a person or object annihilates it, and replaces it with something scary and unknown.

@Bunnyhair thats kind of where I draw a line between being ND and abusive.
Most people do not want to hurt people they
love ND or not. Most people with mental health conditions I believe will rather turn the hurt around onto themselves and self sabotage. They know that there behaviour is hurting others, most people will seek help rather then hurt people they love, they’ll try anything. I think others are suffering something else, some other cluster B personality disorder and using the ND as way to get away with it.