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’d like to join in, I’ve lurked for a while and so much that I’ve read resonates. I think my DH could possible have ASD. He says he has done online tests and thinks he is not but I am not so sure. Here is a list of some of the things that perplex me.
• When he considers a conversation finished he leaves the room, whether I’m talking or not. He also denies he’s done this
• He has little awareness of personal space and often barges past me through doors
• He seems to be unaware when I’m struggling with heavy things and claims he hasn’t seen me struggle- even if he’s looking at me
• He interrupts me and then claims I’ve interrupted him
• Sometimes when I ask a question he does not reply then claims he has replied and I must not have heard him. But this has happened often enough for me to have watched him and he definitely hasn’t.
• He tells me how I’m feeling
• He explodes with anger if he thinks I’m angry/annoyed with him
• He didn’t tell me he loved me until he was diagnosed with cancer and thought he was going to die
• He is quick to anger and says very hurtful things using personal information I’ve previously told him. He never retracts or apologises for this.
• Last outburst was to call me abusive and that I abuse him every day
• When I argued back about something he came out with how dare I speak to him like that as he has cancer. When I tried to discuss this afterwards he said it was a perfectly acceptable thing to say and wasn’t a threat.
• Has also said I do nothing for him when I try and think up things he can eat, cook for him and go to work full time. He is not working right now as he’s going through chemo.
• He has very fixed ideas about things and will argue vehemently in favour only to completely changing his mind. For example I wanted to paint the house white and he argued aggressively against that. Then a few months later said he was going to paint a room white.
• For this reason he ends up making all the decisions- I’ve found it’s much easier just letting him have his way.
It's been over 20 years and I'm out of patience, I'm in the position where I could move out but have tried one last time to communicate how I feel. So if I say you hurt me when you said ..... he will say yeah but you hurt me when you said .... These would be things I have fully acknowledged and sincerely apologised for. His apologies consist of a grudging sorry. Then he'll say something else! He constantly diminishes me and my feelings.

Really I just feel like an idiot for putting up with this for so long. He does have some redeeming qualities but I don’t think they outweigh the above.

Please be kind I’m feeling quite fragile.

This is exactly how my dad is. He isn’t capable of love. And frankly he will info dump on anyone who’ll listen. He doesn’t do things for love. He isn’t interested in me and knows next to nothing about me. He wants me to spend time with him because he wants someone to talk at and because he wants company and because my presence will make him feel loved. But he will happily emotionally blackmail me into spending time with him so he doesn’t really care why I’m there. Doesn’t care that I’m there because it’s my duty and he’s made me do it, or because I love him. I am there = tick in the box = he is cared about.
It sucks that your DH is like this too. And yes it does make you feel like a service animal and nothing more. And no, that doesn’t feel like an honour!!

@thisisit24 know you are not alone and this is a safe place. So sorry you are feeling fragile. I have been where you are, probably many of us have. So many of your descriptions are very like my ex as well- like exactly the same! Feeling for you!

@nl55 thank you. I just feel such overwhelming sadness at the moment. My closest friend has just been diagnosed with a potentially life limiting illness. They won't know exactly what it is until she's been operated on. And I'm on the 2 week cancer pathway, but I'm fairly confident it's nothing and the doctor is just being cautious.

Apart from the cancer and the not helping me with heavy things, I could have written your post.

I don’t know if your DP is ASD. He sounds v much like mine. The altered reality. Telling you he’s said or done things which he absolutely has not but instead blaming you for not hearing/listening (but seemingly to believe himself). Telling you how you feel. Talking over you but having a go at you for interrupting him (are we married to the same person?!). Reacting with anger when you have an emotion yourself, like annoyance or upset. Using personal things (mine likes to go on about my childhood or my ADHD or my ex husband). Walking out of a room when I’m still talking. Apologies often being a begrudging “sorry about that” and then moving on quickly as if nothing has happened. (I am also not allowed to continue to show upset in any way once he has apologised. Because he said sorry, so that’s alright then! Whereas if I need to apologise then it will mean I have to repeat my apology several times over and wait for him to thaw before he can bring himself to forgive me!)

But then my DP doesn’t have a diagnosis and I’ve been told by some ASD posters that maybe he is just a horrible person! So I don’t know. I think it sounds me to me like your partner could well be.

Question: if your partner had a diagnosis, would you feel differently about anything? Would it change what you wanted or intended to do?

Also sending hugs as this sounds very hard and I am right here with you. It’s so so hard. Xx

@BustyLaRoux and @nl55 I'm crying tears of relief. For so long I've felt as if I was going mad.
It wouldn't make any difference if he had a diagnosis I just want him to care about how I feel and listen to me. I asked a friend what the 'secret' of their successful relationship was she she said he just wants to make me happy and I want to make him happy. And I realised my relationship just doesn't have that.
I think I just have to leave. I don't think he could ever see things from anyone's else's perspective.

My DH has not been diagnosed but we have a daughter (22) with autism together. The more I learn, the more I think he is. So hard coping with an autistic DD and a maybe autistic DH plus 20 year old twins. Will post more later

I’ve had a chat last night about the weekend away with his parents and how they ignore me and made me feel unwelcome and an outsider. (I’ve struggled with them since we got together years ago, they’ve just never liked me). He seemed to get angry that I expressed how I felt and quite angrily said “oh ffs it seems you want me to have a word with them for you”….uh no I want you to give me a hug and say I’m sorry you feel like that. I’ve told him he can’t make someone like another but to just acknowledge I feel shit and no longer will be accepting invites (he is free to go). I bloody hate expressing feelings because it always seems like I’m having a go when I’m not. He doesn’t need to fix it. I then asked him if he’d ever felt like that and he just shrugs, he only feels nothing or angry. It’s so hard to relate, I feel loads and it can change throughout the day.

I did say I was sad that he never notices and he never sticks up for me because he never notices. I mean it’s so obvious when everyone is offered drinks and the MIL “accidentally” forgets to offer me each and every time. He can’t help it, I understand that. I feel a little alone on my feelings.

I know this will probably make me come across as an asshole, but I'd like to try ask this question genuinely. To those who say their partners don't meet their needs, don't love them/tell them that they love them etc, what attracted you to these partners in the first place? Again, I'm not asking to judge anyone, I just wonder how it ends up this way. I'm the ASD partner (female) and I posted in this thread the other day about an issue I have with my maybe also but different ND partner in how he is in a specific circumstance.

I've not posted here before but have read the thread for a few days and quite a few posts speak about issues in a more general sense, such as they never talk to me or they never say they love me. I'm just trying to understand whether these partners met your needs initially and have now 'changed' or 'relaxed', or they were always like this and it didn't bother you until further along into the relationship?

In my case, DH masked heavily. He came across as totally emotionally regulated. However he has alexithymia, and emotions are either 0 or 100%. When we met he was in 0% but I didn’t really understand alexithymia then.

He met my emotional needs partly because there were few other demands, his job was junior and he didn’t have illness to handle, ageing parents etc. kids changed everything. Now his emotional regulation is shot since likely ASD kids are highly demanding, his emotions are either off or 100% intensity. All is chaos - there are not enough resources in the family to meet everyone’s needs.

Without blaming him for masking, it’s clear that if we had met unmasked we would not have lasted since the major incompatibilities would have been obvious. (I have anxiety and struggle w my own emotions as well).

Late diagnosis sucks for everyone imho.

A specific example would be shutdowns, which looking back my partner would occasionally display but this could be brushed off at the time.

Later, DH would experience them all the time, and as NT I would read them as stonewalling, which is an effective way to destroy emotional intimacy for NTs. Now I see them as shutdowns it’s easier to navigate, but still takes a toll since emotional intimacy is suspended. Removing triggers eg ASD kids isn’t really an option, so it’s hard all round.

@thisisit24 I think we have the same DH. I’m so sorry. I can relate to everything you’ve said and it’s miserable.

@thisisit24 this all sounds very familiar. I am so sorry that you’ve been made to feel mad for so long. And it must be extremely hard caring for your DH during his illness in the face of such persistent lack of consideration and aggression towards you. We get it. ❤️

In my case my DH was very attentive and loving in the first instance, because he was hyperfocusssed on our relationship as his special interest. Once the project of our relationship was ‘complete’ (I.e. we were living together and married) it was like a switch flipped off and he had zero interest in me whatsoever.

Many of us have had this experience of a short and intense courtship, with our partners appearing genuinely interested in us and able to sustain and enjoy social interactions with us - and also very keen on commitment and moving the relationship on quickly. This is the sort of thing I would always now point out as a major red flag for anyone in a new relationship. Why the hurry? It’s clear that for my DH his interests burn very brightly and then extinguish completely. And in my case I was keen to have a family, so I had my own hurry on.

There were a couple of periods when his special interest was some sort of sexual fetish thing for which he required my participation - and by that point I was so starved of affection and any sense of being desired that I went along with it, thinking maybe we could rekindle some sort of connection. But there was no connection - he just needed me to act out the things he was obsessed with. And I never did it perfectly right and he would become frustrated and disappointed. And then he’d find another special interest, and I disappeared from his mind, and his sex drive vanished, and all his energies went into refurbishing old electronics or learning a new programming language or whatever.

I think a lot of us waste years trying to get back to that initial connection - thinking there’s something we can do to recapture our partners’ interest or even be remotely relevant to their lives anymore. Because it’s not like this for NT people - they’re generally more consistent, without these spurts of massive enthusiasm followed by total indifference. We don’t have a mental model for it until we recognise that ASD is a factor and learn more about all or nothing attention and interest.0

Where I can facilitate the experience of a special interest for him, I become relevant to his life. But otherwise I’m just a sort of robot in the background washing his clothes and making his food.

@thisisit24 I’m glad you’ve found some solace in the feeling of solidarity this forum can bring. It’s been a very supportive place for me too. Sometimes it’s nice to come here and vent and have people validate your feelings. Sometimes it’s nice to come for advice. Sometimes people do challenge and it’s good that they do as it gives another perspective. But yes, I remember arriving here and feeling I’d found a safe space and wanting to cry with relief that I wasn’t mad.

@Bunnyhair and @MySocksAreDotty thank you for answering, I was a bit worried about asking this question. I can definitely see how the addition of kids and life stress would make a masking DH no longer able to and everything would tumble over, because I think that would be the case for me as well. It's not just ASD that has made me decide not to have children, but it is something that plays a part. I find it barely manageable between the house and working FT, and also have a degree of alexithymia. In my case I do not struggle with emotional intimacy as such, but I have issues identifying my own beyond the basics. I'm better with positive emotions such as happiness and excitement, but negative emotions just become a jumble I can only label as 'anxiety' or 'overwhelm' half the time. I've gotten better with that since looking at an emotion wheel, as childish as this sounds, realising that I find it easier to identify a more nuanced emotion if I can see them written out for me. I have the same issue when someone asks me to describe pain, and DH always says that I'm extremely hard to read when in distress.

It was interesting to me on reading the whole info dump as love language thing because that sounds a bit off to me. I see it as an act of love, but on the way that I'm the recipient of my DHs love for indulging me in monologuing about my special interest. DH could bring me flowers or take me somewhere or tell me he loves me 1000x, but it's never gonna feel as warm and fuzzy to me as when he asks me a question about my thing, because I know it's not his thing and he's asking because he loves me. I don't consider the reverse a love language though. I would literally talk about my special interest to anyone who would listen if I didn't know better, so this idea that it's a showcase of ASD affection is...well it's something. I've always worried I'd lose interest in my DH as I do have a tendency to hyper fixate on things and get engrossed in something new, but in my case I am lucky that this doesn't extend to people. It's something me and my best friend who is also on the spectrum have had quite a few conversations about, because for both of us it has been a genuine consideration that we would just get bored of the friendship after a while and would need to navigate this.

@Mistresstotheworkwife this is very interesting to hear your perspective, thank you so much for sharing. Can I ask how you demonstrate love to your DH - you totally don’t need to answer!

@Mistresstotheworkwife oh wow, your explanation of love languages makes total sense. I must have got it the wrong way round.

and it so so so helpful to hear frank and open perspectives from autistic people here. Thank you for your generosity.

I think what often feels most difficult in our own relationships is our partners’ inability (or conditioned resistance) to reflect on how they experience the world and conceive of the possibility that people’s experiences vary a lot.

@Bunnyhair I think there are definitely people who feel the love language thing is as you describe. I read some opinions online that seem to be about validating every non-violent behaviour of someone ND as acceptable, welcome and meaningful, and it just isn't how I subscribe to the world. I can find myself plenty annoying and unreasonable.

@CinnamonTart I think my way of showing love is fairly conventional as I like touch and hugs and will readily tell DH I love him and hug him etc. I'm not ok with tongue kissing though so that's a much more rare thing. I think my own way of showing love is that I really enjoy getting him rare items I know he'll love but are hard to get. Like a limited edition Whiskey, or some special version of a tech gadget that you can only buy on the second Monday in June or whatever. He would have never gone out of the way to get the item for himself, but he loves whiskey and tech for example so I can get him stuff that's a bit out-of-the-ordinary to enjoy using my obsessive rabbit holeing.

My major weakness is compliments. I'm so bad at it both romantically and platonically, it always makes me feel guilty. I don't really know what to say other than 'that's nice', even if I completely love it or think it's amazing. I also just forget to do it? At work I can end up writing feedback on something and be so focused on the things to be improved that I forget to mention the things I liked! Nowadays I never send feedback without reading it over first, because I know I unwittingly do this and that it's not nice to read/hear. Sometimes I do perform to confirm, but it is not necessarily because I don't care. I ask my DH how his day went because I love him and care to listen to him and know he wants to be listened to. I mostly don't actually care about his day, in a way that I could ask him something else instead to listen to him, but that is not conventional. That doesn't mean I hate listening to his day, but I wouldn't miss it either. I would however miss him talking and being happy that I am interested in his life. I know that sounds a bit callous, but I'm not sure how to word it better.

I think you'll probably find it's different for each of us. In many cases our DPs masked or role erplayed. I think in almost all our DPs they are not bad people in any way. I suspect many people and relationships of all descriptions evolve and change. Some of us in ND/ND relationships and maybe codependent. Each is unique despite the similarities.

These threads raise a lot of questions that don't have simple, if any, answers.

@Mistresstotheworkwife its very valuable to hear your experiences, thanks.

Hi @Mistresstotheworkwife I'm autistic as well and I really appreciate your contribution to the thread especially as I know it can sometimes feel like posts here (including my own!!) where people are blowing off steam can feel critical of autistic people. My DH is autistic and ADHD so I can see both sides too

I think a few people have also said that neurodivergent men can seem very charismatic to start with and you can put quite a lot of your own needs aside when you are young and just want to be with someone who is kind of enigmatic and mysterious. I found it quite easy to be with my DH when it was just the two of us as we were still pretty independent, its only when we had the huge joint responsibility of kids that he really struggled and I ended up having to do everything to compensate, thats where things became really strained. Looking back I take some of the blame there, I feel I could have pushed back earlier on but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

What? I'm NT and I’ve read every post?