I’m 44F with an autistic 12 year daughter. It’s really hard and she’s been self harming but thankfully that seems to have stopped/is under control. She sees a psychologist. My boyfriend of 6 years doesn’t live with us. He has two children, 13M and 8F. We’ve been talking on/off about buying a house together in the future. His kids are not SEN, they’re loud and when they’re here, my daughter just retreats to her room. My daughter takes up so much of my time and energy. She doesn’t see her own father and she’s with me all day. She has no friends. She attends mainstream and the EHCP application is in process, ideally I’d like her to go to as ASD school, but that’s another post. She’s completely overwhelmed by mainstream and she hasn’t been able to attend since February. I work full time from home. It’s hard trying to educate her in the day and catch up on my work in the evening.
My daughter comes first and if she’s overwhelmed or overstimulated, we’ll leave whatever it is we’re doing. BF makes his disappointment known. He’ll audibly sigh and ‘deflate’ and sort of look away to show indifference and say “fine” in a petulant way in the moment. For example, we went to the beach on holiday, daughter was really struggling with the sensory overload and I said I’d take her back, no problem, he can stay with his kids. He sighs and says fine/OK. But clearly he felt hard done by as we didn’t have the perfect family day out. A bit later on he tells me he does understand and he sighs because he cares and is disappointed. But in that moment I don’t feel supported, I feel like it’s me and my daughter against the world and he’s not on the team. His kids eat with their mouths open and that’s horrible anyway but it’s a huge sensory trigger for my daughter, all the wet squelchy eating noises. I’ve asked time and time again for him to speak to his kids, I’ve asked his kids to please stop it. They don’t, so we end up leaving the dining table even in our own house. She has to wear noise cancelling headphones when they’re with us. He sighs when I bring it up. These are just little examples but they, plus more things, happen a lot. Post annoyance, when I’ve spoken to him, he just says he can’t control it in the moment, he doesn’t know he does it so how can he stop. I always speak to him when he comes across as being annoyed or disappointed and it bothers him that I pull him up on it but I can’t not say something as I’m not a walk over and no one gets to eye roll me at a situation that I can’t control. This is where alot of our tension is: I won’t let issues/being sighed at/eye rolled go, to him it’s not a big deal, and me bringing it up makes it a big deal. Can he ever understand having an ASD daughter with poor mental health issues unless he has one. He is a weekend ‘fun dad’ to his kids, none of the gritty day to day.
BF wants sex more than I do. I’m absolutely mentally and physically exhausted and I don’t know if it’s peri but I’ve had zero sex drive for a couple of years. He says he shows love through sex. He’s a very huggy and tactile person but my affection is spent on my daughter and I don’t have much left. I’d probably have maintenance sex once a month just to keep him ‘happy’ but then when he asks for it it gives me the ick and I think “why should I, you’d been eye rolling me all day”. He’ll walk up to me in the kitchen and just randomly hug me, no matter if I am busy. It just irritates me as he can see I am busy. Why is it that women feel like that have to take pills to improve their sex drive to please men, and not men take a pill to decrease theirs. Why is it not acceptable to just not want sex any more.
I feel like maintaining a relationship is like a pension for the future. I worry about it just being me and my daughter and something happening to me and she is left alone.
My daughter loves him like a father. I love him but I don’t know if that is because we’ve been together a while. But I constantly feel like I’m letting him down and I’m not a good enough partner and he needs more than someone who has no sex drive and he gets the scraps of my attention/energy. He’s around right now and I feel under pressure to sit with him and chat/watch tv but I’ve got lots to do, a daughter to see to (she’s having an autistic burnout) and I can’t split myself in two - which is the reasoning for the potential ‘buying a house together’; so he’s not a guest in this house and I can just crack on with my own stuff and not have to pause my day when he visits.
Do I stay with him for the father-like presence that he provides and one day, he might develop more of an outwardly-showing understanding of the situation, and I might develop a sex drive. Or just cut my losses and call it a day and enjoy no disappointed sighs, no pressure to have sex, and not feel like I’m torn in two having to give equal attention to my daughter and BF.