Married to someone with Asperger's/ASD/ND: support thread 12

[Daftasabroom]

New thread.

This thread is for those of us seeking to explore the dynamics of long term relationships with our ND partners. Some of us are ND ourselves, very many of us have ND children. 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.

It's complicated and it's emotional.

The old thread is here.

Love to all the parents of PDAers here. It is very, very hard.

I sometimes find it too painful to be around families with NT children because I can’t bear to see how easy it is for them to feel happy and enthusiastic about things, to enjoy the give and take of play, to sit at a dinner table with family or enjoy a cozy bedtime story. To say please and thank you and sorry - just automatically, because it’s an ice thing to do - without seeming to feel like it’s some sort of unbearable form of self-abasement and humiliation. To do something independently and feel proud of themselves, or go to their parents for comfort or reassurance when they’re worried. it’s just a million miles away from DCs experience of needing everything done for him, and finding any kind of routine an unbearable attempt to control him that must be violently resisted at all costs, yet also hating any new experience and finding everything boring and stupid, and kicking and biting when he feels anxious or sad, and controlling everything we say because he can’t stand to hear certain words (like ‘breakfast’ 🤷‍♀️) and will attack us if we use them.

Even when things are going well for us I’m hit and kicked and headbutted all the time and told I’m the worst mum in the world and he wishes I would die. And he’s only 8. I’m terrified of what adolescence holds in store. I can imagine accidentally saying ‘breakfast’ one day and DS chopping me up with an axe in my sleep. Joking not joking.

And yes, ‘low demand’ parenting my arse.

Hear hear! Yes to all of that. We have absolutely no please or thanks you-s in this house and praise will often be met with a scowl or soft toy being hurled! We have our own language in a way to avoid certain words or demands. Few people know that I often have to feed DD (she's nearly 10), help with dressing/toileting and she's only very recently started to wash/shower without assistance.

I also find it incredibly hard to be around certain families. I hate the school pick up because I’m avoided like the plague. She has stopped getting invited to parties now and you can hear the whispers. I hate to think it but this is not the kind of life I thought I would have. Nothing is much fun, holidays are awful. I have another child and the bond is just easy with her. My daughter wants me to be a better proper mum but she doesn’t understand that these other mums and kids act differently because they have a two and fro we don’t have. I walk on eggs shells with my daughter afraid to say something that’s just descends to all out war.

All I hear from family is you’ve been weak and given her too much control and you need to take it back….yeah we’ll see how well that goes!

Thanks for sharing. Sending one million hugs.

My DH has spent the day crying in bed due to sheer overwhelm.

No solutions here, just recognition 💐💐💐.

I wish I could join him but the whole house would crumble if I behaved like this despite really wanting to give up!

Yes, both with my exH and current H I was very vulnerable and got in way too deep too soon. I'm going to have to make myself stay single for a good while now! Weird typing that as although I have told H I wantnto separate we haven't told people and still wearing my rings. Don't think my dentist has any intentions with me, he's quite a bit older and mostly interested in my teeth!

I think that’s the difference between my first and my second. The first partner I needed saving and the second time I’d saved myself so he needed to add to this. I have kept hold of my control. He is ASD but he is a good guy.

I liked how you put that, that you saved yourself first. And yes, it's right that they should add something, not 'save' you. There are lots of good ASD guys out there, I just picked one who was also abusive, less than the first but still not ok.

Sorry to hear your DH is so overwhelmed, hope you are ok x

@MySocksAreDotty I so sorry. I hope things start to feel a bit better and more manageable. 💐

I’m so sorry @SquirrelSoShiny

Ive often read that people with autism don’t lie. That They just can’t.

Dh does. Lots of small white lies too.

And there is the expectation I’m not supposed to make a big fuss of it because it’s bad - aka he can’t cope with my expressing strong emotions.

Do you have support in RL? 🫂🫂

I call it co-regulation parenting.

Just catching up and send strength and solidarity to you courageous mums struggling to balance everything and everyone's needs above your own.

The lying must be so painful. It feels so disrespectful really. Crossing a line. My husband doesn't lie but only because his defence is attack, turn it around to somehow change the story to one where I'm at fault. Lying is just an alternative strategy for people who are black and white thinkers and see the world as in every interaction there is the good/bad or right/wrong.

Yes it's such bullshit that people with autism can't lie. I think with DH he just gaslights himself into believing that he's being truthful. So by that measure he isn't lying!

As ever, you get it @SpecialMangeTout Thank you. How are things with you? I'm in and out of the thread at the minute. Things have generally been better here this whole lying just threw me backwards. It's the ghost of Christmas Past.

I’m backwards and forwards on this with H. Currently, I think he actually believes what he is saying. So whilst what he is saying is not true, it’s also not a lie.

He gave me his assessment form for the support from the autism service. It’s astonishing. Really astonishing for how he sees things, and also for my complete and utter absence to him. I mean he mentions me, but me as a person with my own thoughts and feelings and views, just isn’t there. It’s a stark insight into how I don’t exist to him.

My daughter is going through her ASD diagnosis, we at the start practically. My ex husband who has no diagnosis is now saying that he has this and this is why he behaved how he did towards me and is woe him. He probably does have some undiagnosed ASD but he shouldn’t be using it as an excuse. It’s getting him sympathy and he likes it. Arghhhhh I can’t work with this man because it’s about teaching our daughter empathy not twisting it so that we gain attention.

@MetooOP sending solidarity. I found the whole diagnosis process so upsetting for this reason. 💐

@MetooOP it sounds so stark when written down. But it’s exactly how they make us feel and feelings respond to experience so it’s not a lie I suppose. We just hope that maybe we are feeling wrong and they do feel differently deep down but we just aren’t that important.

There is stuff that isn’t the truth but DH clearly believes they are (and there is no discussion around it).
And then there are lies that are lies because he knows I’m not going to be happy with the ‘truth’
So like @SquirrelSoShiny saying he has done something when he hasn’t.
And then we have the Yes. Yes given in any situation, regardless of how he actually feels, so he can avoid confrontation/me saying I dint agree. And then I’m left with guessing if his Yes means Yes or actually it means No. A guess where I’m often wrong 😂😂
That for me is akin to a small white lie (or at least it has the same impact on me).

@MetooOP thats a hell of a big awakening.
It must be so unsettling to see how your dh sees you and how little insight he has on who you are.

I have to say it would make me question what is the point of the relationship.
How are you coping with it all?

It is!

Despite after his diagnosis me actually begging, really begging, him to use this to acknowledge that he does have behaviours that are causing difficulties and to seek support with finding strategies to help, he said in the assessment that after his diagnosis it was a relief as it helped him to understand why he had always felt a bit disconnected from other people and that is all he needed it to do so he didn't both to seek any additional support! What about Me?! What the the kids?! What about Us?!

And this is where you see the collision of narcissism and autism. I think this particular comorbidity is vastly under-diagnosed particularly in men (since women are socialised from birth to prioritise the needs of men to their own detriment).

Yeah, its not like narcissism in terms of wanting to hurt us, but I do think he has a profound disability in terms of being able to see other people as other people who have a separate existence from him. I think we just exist to him in terms of the feelings he has about us, and his ability to understand any other about us is extremely, extremely impaired, maybe even non-existent. I've heard others describe autism as a developmental disorder and I think there is a lot of truth in that. Having kids has been illuminating in terms of realising how like a young child many of his ways of thinking and being and behaving are. And seeing the kids slowing developing out of these stages whilst he remains in them.

He also in the assessment had a bit which was basically saying his opinions are right and mine and wrong and this causes rows that he does not want to happen and he asks if normal people just ' suck it up' and do something they know is wrong to keep the peace, as he doesn't feel able to do that.

So there we go, that is how he sees it. In all these years I am just wrong, all the time. In his world there is no sense of listening or accommodating or compromising or learning from me. I am just wrong. He has no understanding that 'normal people' do listen to partners and form a view together. There's just this blankness in him where this understanding should be. That makes sense of the time that he asked me to get out and help him drive the car into a tight parking space in a car park and I kept telling him he was heading to hit a car and he just kept telling me I was wrong and coming forward, and I was more and more frantically saying ' stop you are going to hit the car!' and he was saying, ' not I am not, you need to look on the other side' and there was bags of room on the other side but now only a bloody knife blade between our bumper and the other car, and a group of people gathered to watch this spectacle and finally a man stepped forward and said ' excuse me sir, you are going to hit that car' and my H said ' Oh am I? Thanks for letting me know' and reversed out of the space. Because I am always wrong, obviously.

Its even worse than that with him. He has no sense that 'normal' people take into account a whole range of information when deciding the best course of action. For him there is his view and that's it. Which is why the course he wants to take often is terrible, because he hasn't taken anything (or anyone) into account other than what he wants.

Despite that profound relational disability, he is in his own way, really trying. He is actually doing the things I ask him to each day, which is unusual. He clearly thought that bit about him being right and me wrong was really good of him as it showed he didn't want the rows. He has not idea how insulting and invisible it makes me. Because he has no insight into the fact that I am invisible to him.