There is something just not right with my partner!?

[Paddingtonbear83]

We’ve been together around 5 years. In the beginning I put it down to it being his first proper relationship. He was 30 when we met. As time has gone on it’s become more and more of an issue for me.

He is completely emotionally disconnected. He can hide it, he tends to people please but when it’s a real situation with added pressure he completely avoids. He has no ability to understand or have compassion. His go to is to literally avoid it’s happening. He also can’t make decisions about anything and seems very agitated when put under the pressure of just making one. Hoards rubbish that has no value but can’t seem to throw it away.

His mum is the same. She is avoidant of any issues that involve emotion. She won’t visit sick people, avoided us when our baby was born. Avoids all conversations that she hasn’t decided is safe to talk about. If you bring something up she doesn’t like will derail the conversation completely. Sometimes making fun of you. sometimes my partner has made fun of emotional people and of me, it’s not nice, I’m not a robot.

What is going on?

My main encouragement to you is to think about yourself and children. I spent far too long trying to work out what the cause was in the hope that would lead to a solution. The reality was that whatever the cause, I wasn't getting my needs met, that caused me a lot unhappiness and made parenting harder as I became depressed.

What I had to do was leave and I regret I didn't do it sooner. My son has been less affected as he doesnt remember us being together.

He has had a couple of short relationships since, those women have realised quite quickly that they won't get what they're looking for. He would ideally like a casual relationship with sex and companionship that requires no emotional needs meeting though he's struggled to find it.

@Cornishclio yeah it’s better to know and to deal with it rather then us all walk around on eggshells around him knowing something is up but him not accepting it. If he was then that’s ok with me, I’m not judgmental, I have my own issues and I’m not perfect. It’s the not knowing that is bothering me. I just want to shout at him that he isn’t quite seeing things the way they maybe should ( I don’t mean that in a bad way). It’s much better to know yourself, the good and the not so good.

If the mum is autistic and I suspect the 2 sons are also. Why isn’t anyone doing anything or talking about it?

Loads of people are autistic, nothing needs doing unless they are struggling, otherwise its more about educating neurotypical people about autism and autistic people about neurotypical people.

Look up double empathy, communication issues are generally between the 2. Autistic people will generally communicate with other autistic people fine but there is a difference in communication style which makes it hard to communicate effectively with and from neurotypical people.

@SummerSnowstorm nothing needs doing unless your behaviour causes issues in your relationship. It’s the not knowing that’s causing issues. If he is and the way he talks about his childhood I’ve no idea why nothing has been done for him. I’m not saying anything is wrong with him but if I knew I could look at learning his language and visa versa. He has many good qualities. But he has to stop looking at emotions like they are forbidden and bad and manipulative. It’s ok to not understand but not ok to do what he’s doing.

People with this cannot see mental images in their mind. So if you say, ‘dog’ they do not picture a dog in their mind.

They also have poor empathy and poor autobiographical memory.

It’s a poorly researched condition though and many people don’t realise they have it ( they assume no one sees mental images)

It’s highly correlated with autism and some people have suggested that the lack of empathy commonly seen in people with autism may actually be caused by alexithymia.

You will drive yourself mad trying to solve this by talking.

Whatever causes your H’s issues is deeply ingrained and not likely to be within his control. It’s who he is at a very fundamental level.

You can’t talk him round, or talk a solution, or talk him into being something he’s not. However reasonable or obvious what you are saying is.

You either accept him or leave ( or don’t accept him and stay and go mad)

’He has good qualities’ does not cut it when the other qualities cause such distress.

Read ‘7 principles of a successful marriage’ by Gorman ( all research based). I found it really helpful to understand why and how my relationship was bad ( and unfixable) and also why it had seemed good and I’d stayed so long.

The discussion of alexithymia is super interesting.

I used to have this. I grew up in an abusive household with a mentally ill mother, who had a lot of emotional issues herself. She could be nice but also controlling or explosive at other times. I learnt that to stay safe and get love I must only express positive emotions (or occassionally a negative emotion would be acceptable if there was a clear specific reason). I believed for example that feeling anger made you a bad person, or that "I shouldn't be sad" about a particular thing because it was "pathetic". All this came from my parents, particularly my mother, who presumably learnt it growing up herself and was never able to examine those beliefs. Obviously I was never taught how to identify my emotions, accept them, and regulate them.

If this happened to you as an adult, you'd learn to hide your emotions from the abuser. But if it happens from birth, you end up denying/ not aware that you have emotions in the first place. Emotions seem a very dangerous thing to you, and you learn to avoid or ridicule them in the way your abuser did.

I had severe somatic symptoms, because my body would still feel strong emotions but I didn't understand they were emotions, I thought I was ill.

I also at times felt a lot of jealousy that other people were "allowed" to feel emotions and I wasn't.

It is possible to untangle all this, and I have done, but it took years of skilled therapy. I still struggle with showing negative emotions to other people as I fear they will reject me.

No it doesn’t.

Look up "right to choose" via the nhs if he will agree to diagnosis. It may take some time for him to agree to though as a lot of people from our generation have been brought up with a misunderstanding of what autism is.

In our generation it was rarely diagnosed unless accompanied by learning difficulties or extreme communication difficulties rather than moderate so he may associate it with that and need to look into it more in his own time.

When broaching it I would focus on the positives (logical thinking, attention to detail, heightened senses, intense focus on topics of interest, to the point communication) etc.

If you go at it from a viewpoint of "there's something wrong with you, these things are a problem" he'll likely avoid it or get defensive, but if you go at if from an "I think this is why we both struggle to understand eachother at times" and focus first on the positives elements then he'll likely be more on board.

Whatever the reason for him being that way, it could be damaging to your children. You say you feel sorry for him growing up with his mum - the same will happen to your children, growing up around him.

If you think he is a basically decent person who has issues (for whatever reason) that make him like this, then could you suggest some counselling, explaining that if the issue isn't resolved you can't see your marriage surviving?

If he refuses, then I think you have your answer - he isn't will to listen or to make changes in order to save your marriage. You'll have done all you reasonably can. If he agrees and it doesn't help - again, you've at least tried. If he agrees and it works - happy days.

@Paddingtonbear83 I’m really sorry you’re in this situation. Personally, I would get out. This thread has been an eye-opener for me as well. I have long been puzzled why people who seem emotionless and robotic get married and have children. That doesn’t affect me as a single childfree woman. But some of the comments on here explain a couple of family members - and more importantly, why a lot of friendships seem to start and end the way they do for me.

If you are okay with me asking question on your thread OP, one of my other puzzling things which might apply to your partner, is why these people get upset when their behaviour is mirrored back to them. In theory they should be happier if I suddenly seem to be less emotional. But they are not and they expect me to do all the work and all the running in the friendship/family relationship. I can’t understand why that is.

And is there a way to approach an avoidant person like this? Someone who runs because you enjoy their company, as mentioned upthread?

If they think their way of behaviour is the only way to behave why would they be upset when I start to behave that way too?

Anyway, this sounds like a terrible environment for someone who doesn’t fit in and I’m guessing not a good environment for a child to grow up in. I am sure you will be better on your own.

btw if anyone replies, I can barely get this site to function, so apologies if I don’t reply back. (Have reported, been about a week now).

Really looking at this thread just makes me want to scream. It’s been said on friendship threads “I’m an avoidant but so is my husband so it’s fine”.

Oh, you’re a fucking avoidant - well WHY DIDN’T YOU AVOID ME? Why did you try and start a friendship? Just fuck off and don’t come back.

How are people meant to know your communication style/level of intensity expected in a friendship before attempting that friendship?
It would be a bit weird to start out with a questionnaire 😂

@EmeraldRoulette
why these people get upset when their behaviour is mirrored back to them

I'm still trying to work this one out. Maybe it's lack of theory of mind. My DH thinks he's very self-aware and yet he criticises our oldest DD for the same response he has. E.g. If she gets upset when plans change. To me it looks the same as when he gets upset at change. If I point this out and ask him to be sympathetic he says it's different.

@LoveFoolMe perhaps it’s because they don’t recognise how they have behaved so can’t recognise the behaviour in others. Perhaps if they had that little bit of self awareness they could transfer it to others.

Also wondering if people get more avoidant as they get older…

@SummerSnowstorm How would they know - well after being friends for a while, you can see what someone is like.

For the people who seem to have made a beeline for me in group settings, is it the case an avoidant type might be bad at reading people?

But I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m not the robotic type.

Maybe that’s the catch 22. If you meet me in a group setting , you would be more likely to approach me because you think she’s obviously approachable and friendly.

So somebody who is more nervous of social interaction might think I’m the safest person in the room to approach. new friendships do tend to fall off when they realise I actually like friendship…

Apologies, OP this thread is, very interestingly timed because I have been saying to myself - because I ain’t got no one else to talk to - that I am probably too much for most people these days.

Just displaying any level of good manners and friendliness is now considered over the top, isn’t it? I used to think that Mumsnet didn’t reflect real life but now I think perhaps it does. Even just remembering somebody’s birthday and buying them a card seems borderline abnormal these days.

@EmeraldRoulette I have to agree that the world feels very avoidant at times, quite fake.

@Paddingtonbear83 Just out of interest, do you have problems with him understanding general medical things? Or even just practical things that seem incredibly obvious to you because they’re rooted in humanity?

Best example I can give, some people find it strange that I didn’t want to have children but I have some basic common sense around looking after them.

I just think it’s basic common sense!

but the person I’m picturing in my family doesn’t possess it.

I really hate that sense of being the only adult in the room. In terms of societal changes, became an advantage in the last 10 years or so, because the number of people in a workplace who are completely lacking in common sense is extraordinary. I think these are the people who get off the bus and immediately consult Google Maps - following an arrow to tell them where they’re going.

I apologise if it’s totally irrelevant to what you’re saying. But I think as people get more tech dependent some common sense is being lost and generally some humanity is being lost. I am aware that some people thrive in this environment or at least mum‘s net has taught me that.

But I still feel it’s not a great example for children, sorry.

also, do you get these occasional flashes of humanity from them, and then months with just robot mode?

@EmeraldRoulette he is a brilliant practical problem solver. He can solve disputes at work by using practical methods for example. He can’t understand why people behave emotionally and get into the arguments. Why did the girls at work fight because 2 went out and didn’t include the 3rd. He can’t see why the 3rd was feeling sad. He can solve it though by moving them away from each other. The other he eye rolls at. Anything that involves another’s feeling or interpretation he can’t get.

@Paddingtonbear83 oh well - at least he’s practical.

It's worth talking to him about counselling I think, going together and seeing if you can work things through. He will always be your child's dad so even if you leave, there is a tie there and I presume that you'd want your child to have some sort of relationship with him.

Yes, theory of mind, being able to 'put yourself in someone else's shoes,' can be an autistic trait. Simon Baron Cohen investigated this with children by hiding a doll in sight of a child and when someone else came in the room the child presumed that the other person knew that the doll was hidden under a cushion because they knew it was. Quite interesting.
As others have said, he may have a completely different diagnosable condition- some people have sociopathic traits which mean that they are less empathetic for instance, however although we are not clinical psychologists on here, discussing it all can be helpful and some of the most useful advice I got for my diagnosed autistic son was from others with lived experience of the condition rather than professional qualifications.

I don’t think he is a sociopath, well I bloody hope not. From speaking to a family member she did say that the mum infantilised the two kids. She had an awful lot of control and did not encourage them to be independent people. They both still ask her opinions on absolutely everything like her opinion is gods. One of the boys calls her every evening and chat all day long on phone msgs and involved will all aspects of his life. That’s not my partner thankfully because I wouldn’t put up with that (probably why she won’t talk to me). Although without his mums presence my partner seems lost. He’s never certain of any decision he makes. He always says I’ll just ask my mum…:ummm No!