Married to someone with Asperger's/ASD: support thread 11

[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.

I was thinking of chengeing the thread Aspergers/ASD to ND, which I think might be more appropriate and inculsive, but I've left it as it is as I suspect many people find us by searching for Aspergers and/or ASD.

It's complicated and it's emotional.

The old thread is here

I think there are 2 separate issues here. One is that the aggression - when gaming and when driving - are intolerable and upsetting to you. Absolutely fair enough!

The other is that your DP does not experience himself as having conscious control over this. Which means that nothing you do or ask him to do is likely to change it.

So ultimately, you face a decision about how to protect yourself from this behaviour if he is not able to moderate it. If you wait for him to be able to change something he firmly believes he can’t, you are living at his mercy.

So you can not share space with him when he is gaming and not get in a car with him when he’s driving. (And not let him use your car!) That’s pretty much the extent of what you can control.

It sucks. But this is the reality when we’re living with people with impulsive / compulsive behaviours

Yep, there is that risk. I try to only help when there is a need rather than it being taken for granted, and having a chat around how to develop skills, deal with difference etc. My older kids needs have dropped away to nearly nothing now after being helped a lot for many years.

I’d prefer the kids had the insight and language to advocate for themselves in relationships, than to feel shame though, equally i (and i hope they) would not compare the responsibility a mother has to their child and a wife has to their husband for example. Autism and ADHD are challenging disabilities with hefty mental health problems attached so there’s never going to be an ideal scenario for all involved.

Ok well you can’t change him. If you don’t like the way he is you should dump him. You don’t have to defend that decision. It doesn’t have to meet his standards or anyone’s for reasonableness. It is just how you feel about his demeanour and comportment.

@NDornotND i found that dh is always much clearer when we are out with professionals vs at home.
I think it’s because he is masking when he is out so he comes out as he handles things well and you get an answer from it.
At home, when he isn’t masking, he is getting overwhelmed, doesn’t know the answer and shuts down.

Maybe this is what happened with your dh??

@SpecialMangeTout I really don't know.... its possible, I suppose. He certainly masks, he's incredibly good at it. The whole thing clearly made him extremely anxious anyway. He couldn't sleep last night and is exhausted now. I think maybe he was anticipating a huge row? He is very conflict avoidant - with me, particularly, less so with other people (whatever that means?) Anyway, there has been no row, and I am hoping to keep it that way.

Every morning as I get ready for work I have to search the house for my laptop power lead and extension cord, which DH just fucking takes, and secretes in the shed or the loft or somewhere under the avalanche of hoardy shite in his man cave.

Nothing of mine ever stays where it lives. Nothing gets to be just mine and off-limits to others. He just takes anything he sees and then leaves it wherever he drops it, and all memory of his ever having had it vanishes from his mind, so he angrily denies having taken it, and can give me no clues about where it might be.

DH also announced about 2 minutes before he was meant to do the school run that I would have to do it today, as he has LOST ALL HIS TROUSERS.

He just stood there in his pants and socks and told me this nonchalantly as though it was the most normal thing in the world to misplace literally every item of clothing you might decently wear on your bottom half.

It would be funny if it weren’t my life. As it is, I just want to lie down and die when I contemplate having to spend every moment of the next 40 years trying to contain the bottomless chaos of my DH, and my DC with increasingly violent and challenging behaviours, and my aging parents. I don’t know how I will cope.

@Bunnyhair i can’t relate to the loosing trousers but my partner doesn’t own a pair of trousers that don’t need work done on them. He refuses to buy new trousers so he picks the pair each time which needs the least amount of work. Some have holes in the bum, others the pocket ripped or the zips broken. He never fixes them and I won’t because they are gross and old and all he needs to do is buy some more and bin them! Some are 15+ years old and he’s 34!

Before be moved into mine he’d saved every pair of shoes he’d ever owned since leaving home. All flapping and torn. Apparently they might have been useful for garden shoes!!!!! All 20 pairs. The only way he would throw them away (and he was very distressed) was to keep all the shoes laces as they were useful!!!!

@Simplefoke I relate to this. Also my DH never does up his flies. It’s a ‘waste of time’ apparently. It’s the one bright side of his never leaving the house I guess - he’s that much less likely to be arrested for indecent exposure.

I’d just lock it away. Or tape it securely to your laptop.

My Dh does things like this. Then denies ever having used them. Then we find things in the wrong place 2 years later. His favourite place for putting this is on top of the kitchen cupboards. Which only he can reach…z

@Bunnyhair I can well believe an ND PDAer loosing all his trousers, it's exactly the sort of thing my late FIL would have done! Re the charger, can you buy an extra one (I often have to as keep breaking them) that you keep hidden in a sock drawer or something? For emergencies? I know it sounds like madness to have to do these things but if it means maintaining some level of sanity it might be worth it. It might feel bleak today but things will not always be chaotic, your DC will get older and although they will still need you, you will be able to carve out time and find balance. Sending you a big, strong Swedish coffee!!

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow haha mine puts his snacks stash up on the kitchen cupboard for when he feels like eating it. He never does and it’s always out of date. I can’t understand why you buy something to eat for when you feel like it another time. I buy food that I want and eat it.

@Simplefoke MY DH is nearly 51 and was recently showing off a pair of rugby shorts he'd kept from 6th Form, because he can't just throw them away. We have many Chandler Bing style waistcoats and ties from the 90's that might just ocme back into style now...

@LittleSwede mines still got and uses his bed pillow from when he was a child. It’s bloody disgusting and smells!!!! 🤢

@bunhead1979 We do a lot of scaffolding for DD too, in a way that she doesn't feel embarrassed or infantalised by. When she hit burnout after Christmas she regressed a lot in what she was able to do herself and I have acted like a 'body double' (came across that concept on the ADHD Love Instagram by Rich and Rox who were in that article yesterday) a lot over the last few months. She is showing signs of recovery but I am 'aiding' her a lot with everyday things when it's too demanding.

I buy new chargers every few weeks. They just fucking disappear. 😭

Could you not leave it in your car?

You have to get crafty with these types l find.

Get a safe or one of those make up type vanity boxes. My daughter has one and it’s pretty big and has a set of keys and a lock.

That sounds quite sensible, particularly as I can't move out easily anyway. It depends on how he takes it, if he's ok with some sort of 'getting used to it' period where we live together until living arrangements can be found. We have days when he is fairly 'easy' to live with (when he is regulated in other words) and I think this is absolutely possible, then there are times like at the weekend, when I go into flight mode and just want out! He's such a Jekyll and Hyde! Therapy helped a bit yesterday.

Hope you can find a way yo talk to your DP about it and find a way forward. As you say, getting it out there might reduce anxiety and mean less ruminating over it.

Oh gosh sending a hug Bunnyhair! I lose most things but never my trousers! I can hear how maddening all these little things are adding up to be for you.

I think the thing is I just get so burned out from doing everything and thinking about everything and scaffolding everyone and making sure to always use the right language so DC doesn’t explode and having to prepare dinner 4 times because each time some tiny element of about it is wrong for DC with ARFID and then trying to defend myself physically from his meltdowns and trying to make sure DH is getting his repeat prescription for his heart meds so he doesn’t keel over and die, because even that is something he can’t seem to prioritise…

I just can’t find preemptive solutions for everything. Ideally I’d have my own lockable underground bunker that I could just retreat to where nobody could take my stuff and nobody could hit me or spit at me or shout in my face or wipe their snot on me or all talk at me simultaneously.

@Bunnyhair Oooo I’d like one of those bunkers too! Can’t even bath without someone coming in and taking a shit when we’ve two bathrooms!!!!!

It does feel relentless at times so get where you are coming from @Bunnyhair always having to make adjustments and ensure everyone else's needs are met. Sometimes it just feels too much! Do you get any time when DC are at school or do you work? Underground bunker sounds like a wonderful thing!

What makes it harder for some of us, I'm sure I'm not alone here in this, is that the usual support network/village just isn't there to take the load off or offer respite. I don't begrudge anyone for being lucky enough to have fit, healthy parents who can help with their DC, or friends with the energy and ability to babysit ND kids for them but this is not the case for us unfortunately. No magical offers of respite from Social services either or payable babysitting services that I feel could cope with DD's needs. Now she is older I probably could look into paying a local trustworthy teen to play/game/do crafts with DD for a couple of hours but up until now that's not felt possible. The responsibility is quite overwhelming at times!

I also feel so envious sometimes of those ND families where they’re all ND in roughly the same way, and everyone just likes a bit of peace and quiet and they spend their time enjoying nature or reading books or playing board games or doing crafts. And that’s what so much of the world assumes ND family life is - just a kind of introverted, nerdy flavour of NT, where the DC are all exceptionally gifted and homeschooled.

It makes me feel like I must be some massive fuck up or extreme ND outlier to have a home life where nobody will eat literally anything or wash their bodies and it’s a constant battle not to have Stanley knives and power tools everywhere, and a person’s entire collection of trousers can just disappear, and there’s constant 1000 decibel vocal stimming going on - and every day at the school gate my DC will kick me in the shins or head butt me in the teeth because this is the only way PDA allows them to greet me without their perceiving a loss of autonomy. And any boundary I try to set around this just escalates the situation unmanageably in the moment and makes for a completely unendurable evening of violent meltdowns at home. So I just have to take it.

And take it and take it and take it. And calmly co-regulate, and scaffold, etc. One day I worry I will just break.

And @LittleSwede you are right, there is just no support or respite.