Married to someone with Asperger's/ASD/ND: support thread 13

[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.

This is how I feel. I’m not a robot, I can’t sustain myself completely on my own. My god have I tried. I’ve convinced myself, pushed it all down and stomped up and down on the box and taped it up but eventually it split and everything came out b at once (I suffered a breakdown). I need to be filled in order to fill others. It is supposed to be a give and take when needed (in my eyes). I’ve tried so hard to have relationships based on other people’s views and I end up feeling dead. Im only alive when I’m fulfilled in all aspects that I need. I used to be such a giver and I think I’ve become much more selfish because if someone has nothing to offer I see no point in having a reciprocal relationship, apart from with my kids.

I should add I feel such a push and pull sometimes with my own family. I so desperately want to feel connected, especially with my ASD mum but in order to do this I need to be part of the group, which I’m not. I think someone mentioned it before that if you are not part of it then you are out and it’s cut and shut. She wont/cant adapt to any of my needs at all. I feel this with my partner. I want to be part of the don’t get too emotional and don’t react too much to stuff group as it seems easier but I’m not either. These groups have such impenetrable walls and they don’t care much that you are on the outside also.

I think maybe the best approach to getting our needs met would be 1. changing our expectations as @SpecialMangeTout mentioned. If we could accept our dp as they are and stop expecting our dp to meet all of our needs it won't hurt so much. 2. If we could look elsewhere to have our needs met through family, friends, social activities, church, art, sports etc .
Expecting all our needs to be met by one person is just not possible.

@DucklingSwimmingInstructress explains it better than I can. We are social tribal animals and need others to thrive. The healthiest happiest people have relationships with lots of different people with lots of different kinds of emotional giving and receiving going on.

I would just like to add that this thread has been very meaningful to me and I feel enriched by all the different contributions , the openness and sharing feels so good. This has been a really difficult year for me and I am so grateful to you Mumsnetters for making it bearable. Sorry for going off subject OP.

I want to be part of the don’t get too emotional and don’t react too much to stuff group as it seems easier but I’m not either.

@Rainbow03 if you managed to become part of of one of those groups, you wouldn’t be true to yourself. And that, in itself, would be very damaging to you.
You shouldn’t have to change yourself into something that you’re not to be accepted.

Deep down I know this. I’m very stubborn so I probably couldn’t. My whole life has contained people who’ve always said “I’m too……” it is hard to not take it personally. But I do have a couple of people in my life who are open minded and I’d say intelligent enough to be able to expand their boxes to fit others, to see the good in people. I guess when you are raised by ND people you tend to gravitate to them and then wonder why you don’t fit and they can’t see you. I think that is the one thing I find difficult. They don’t expand their world to include others, they expect you to fit into their world entirely. Perhaps it’s my stubbornness but I’m not willing to do that. In my eyes we both expand to include each other.

In the end stubbornness can be like drinking poison and expecting it to have a salutary effect on the person next to you.

This is a really interesting discussion and I can relate a lot to what @Rainbow03 is saying as my life story has some similarities.

What @DucklingSwimmingInstructress and @Whataretalkingabout are saying about having several people to meet our needs make perfect sense and a healthier way to live. Yet, for me who sits on the periphery of society in a way with no real 'village' to rely on, is where it becomes tricky.

My ND makes it hard to make real friends (have some true friends in my home country but they can't help me here) and being at home with DD as her full-time carer means no colleagues as not working or people who I come into contact with to widen my circle. With DD out of school I don't belong to the school mums circle, nor do we do any groups or activities in our village and our lives are quite isolated, comparatively. If I detangle myself from H (as of current we live together in some sort of half separation although I now have my own room, which is proving quite liberating!) I will have few people to turn to whether it's in a practical or emotional sense. With all his flaws H can be very supportive, when regulated and receptive to me having needs.

Yeah I guess so. But then if I do all the work then the relationship isn’t a real relationship. In the past I’ve done this and I end up getting annoyed. I feel like some people keep me on the books for the potential benefits. Like they feel they want to do something one day so they give me a call. But other than that there’s nothing and I find that I feel used. If people aren’t around for all the ups and downs then what’s the point. I’ve cut back an awful lot on people who don’t reciprocate and it’s amazing how many people just disappear. I guess taking the poison is like expecting that people care I back off, when they don’t really.

I hope this doesn’t sound too awful. But do you think ND people could potentially see you more as a use role. So they see you as of some use instead of how you make them feel? If you aren’t much use then they just aren’t interested?

I'd love to hear more @cloverleafy. On what way has it helped?

@LoveFoolMe she just gets it. There's still challenge, but I'm not explaining it all. She works predominantly with people living in ND families. I've seen other people in the past who don't have a clue what an EHCP is, or know what interoception is. Their understanding of autism might be based on outdated (non-neuroaffirming) models. I'm not saying it's helped my relationship directly, but having a therapist who understands the life I'm living and the challenges of my family structure definitely has benefitted the therapy.

It’s so draining. Life is so draining.

DP tells me I live in a bubble, how he can’t cope with me as I seem to live in an alternate reality. I want to scream!!! It’s him! He’s the one who lives in an alternate reality. He doesn’t see it. He thinks therefore it must be me.

He has zero introspection skills, but thinks he is highly reflective

He constantly criticises people for things he does all the time.

He asserts his view about other people’s motivations for their behaviour (the childhood, their job…) but is usually way off the mark and I have no idea why he thinks he is some kind of psychological genius when it comes to other people. It is astounding how badly he understands people.

He doesn’t see that people cringe at his boasting and constant relating of every conversation to himself. To him he thinks they’re super impressed.

He lies constantly.

He may not actually realise he is lying half the time because he struggles to understand the difference between action and intention. If I ask if he has booked something he will say yes. But this is not true. In his head the intention to book it is the same as having done it. He is lying insofar as he hasn’t actually booked it (which is what the question was asking) but because he has issues around how he perceives incoming information the problem isn’t that he is deliberately being untruthful, but that he has understood the question in a different way to the actual words!! He struggles with perception of incoming information in a big way!

But then when it transpires that he hasn’t booked the thing he said he booked and I say “but you said you booked it!”, he then gets defensive end lies and swears blind he didn’t say that. Even though me and other people say they heard him. We are all lying apparently. All mistaken. Picking on him. He can’t accept he gave false information.

He can’t conceive of being wrong. Ever. It’s ALWAYS everyone else.

He imagines criticism all the time. Thinks things are being said and gets very angry. But these sleights are imagined. Shouts that I’m calling him thick because I repeated myself from the day before. Shouts that I’m calling him a slob because I asked if he would fetch the dustpan. Really weird stuff that doesn’t make sense.

He lies about what other people have said even though he can be proved wrong.

He enjoys the role of victim and enjoys conflict, though criticises others for seeking conflict!

He blames people for his mistakes.

He has told me so many things about his ex which I now know are probably mostly made up, completely misrepresented, imagined or exaggerated. I think he probably believes himself though.

He exaggerates everything to the point where it’s so far from the reality it isn’t actually true.

He thinks he has friends but they’re just people who serve him in shops, or who he sees in the pub and talks at. They’re not his friends and half of them probably can’t remember anything about him.

He is delusional in so many ways. But he tells me I live in my little alternate reality where nothing can touch me….. my life fucking sucks!

I don’t want advice to leave. I think sometimes just writing it all down and sharing it helps. I would scream but what’s the point. I wonder if anyone else has a similar experience….

I'm so sorry @BustyLaRoux it's so hard isn't it. It's things like this that makes me wonder if sometimes undiagnosed ND really does lead to some almost bordering on psychotic behaviors. I've seen it in my H too. The defensiveness might be some form of RSD but it's highly unfair to make you out to be the one living in a bubble. Which reminds me of similar words coming from H, making me question my own mind and sanity. Hopefully you can see through it and not stray into self-doubt, like I have. Big hugs xx

Thanks @ItReallyDoesntMatterAnymore I do see it for what it is. I’m not going to doubt my own sanity. I can see perfectly well what’s happening. It is highly infuriating. I get that his version of reality is just so skewed that he is genuine when he thinks it’s me who has issues with delusion. It’s interesting how many people he thinks are deluded. I don’t think the penny is going to drop with him though. How can it? It’s like asking a blind person to see. It isn’t possible. I just wish he didn’t lash out and blame all the time. It’s like the delusion in itself is bad enough, but to go around calling out other people for being delusional, liars, mistaken all the time…. It’s him!!!! I am at the point where I just cannot believe a word he says any more.

@BustyLaRoux I hear you. It’s not my partner but I’m really struggling to relate to my daughter’s world. I’m sick to death of the constant arguments. She can only seem to communicate this way. She’s ADHD. My partner is ASD. He is rigid and like your partner in many ways just not argumentative. But then I’m very Rejection sensitive so I struggle with my own world half the time. It’s all so challenging. I never know what is real and what is perceived. I wish I could have someone chaperone me.

@BustyLaRoux EVERYTHING you said!! EVERYTHING! Totally!! I think we are the same person!! Our relationship is non existent but we're trapped together in a horror show due to his lying (and total mismanagement of money). I don't believe a word he says anymore.

I'm struggling a bit coming into Christmas. For the past decade DH has spent the Christmas period in misery. Usually he delivers a project due the day before Christmas, obsessing about it until utterly burned out. This means I do all the work in the run up to Christmas because he drops everything and then he completely withdraws socially, doing none of the emotional labour of Christmas. He takes at least the whole holidays to recover.

Well it's happening again. I feel so triggered by this cycle. Sometimes it's not even the behaviours that are the problem but the act of being trapped inside someone else's dominating pattern for so very long. I've tried so many times to alter things but nothing works.

I realise it's accept it or leave, and at the moment I'm choosing to stay. But it's hard. I don't know how to manage my own emotions about the relentlessness of repeating these patterns. I feel like I'm over reacting because I'm resisting the pattern.

I'm not even nice to him anymore - there's no point - he perceived everything as a criticism anyway and over the years his barrage of abuse because he believes he's been criticised has destroyed me.

Thanks people. I feel better knowing I’m not mad, not alone. But it is bitter sweet as that means that other people are having to deal with this shit as well. The irony of trying to explain to a deluded person that they are wrong about me living in a bubble of delusion. All I get is “well you would say that as you’re deluded!” It just goes round and round with him convinced he is completely sane and has a perfect grip on reality. I sometimes wonder if he losing it…, maybe he never “had it”….

@BustyLaRoux I find it hard not to normalise the behaviour and almost drive myself mad trying to adapt to it sometimes. Other times I literally just stand and say out loud “this is just not normal”. But then I suppose to them it’s absolutely normal and we are the problem. My partner can’t understand my concerns with his hoarding, drives me mad.

Now see @Rainbow03 i KNOW it’s not normal. I see perfectly well. I no longer doubt my own sanity. But in some ways that makes it no better. I often think of his ex. I wonder how she didn’t see him for what he was.

As my young daughter said to me, his current partner manages him better. I think that’s what we end up being, managers of behaviour. My ex loves money so if you manage him well you will get lots of nice things. Not my bag but his current partner likes the situation.

Maybe that’s it then. She got nice things and it made up for it all. DP is broke now. So I don’t even get the nice things 😂
I jest a bit. He is very generous when he has money. And perhaps a nice life takes away some of the other stresses so there is more left in the stress tank reserve to deal with him. I dunno. They did have a very nice life when they were together. Maybe in turn he was less stressed about work and money and behaved better. He has been through a very rough ride lately. Court cases, extremely acrimonious break up, periods of unemployment, debts. He started drinking fairly heavily. Put on a couple of stone. Got quite depressed. So none of that has helped.

I don’t think so re the money. We had money and we had nice holidays etc but I had to behave and accept behaviour from him that was really unacceptable. I was also made sure to understand the money would stop at any point if I didn’t keep up my side. He had terrible rejection sensitivity to absolutely everything. I couldn’t handle this, it wasn’t worth all the money in the world to take the blame for absolutely everything. Really I have no idea how she puts up with him other than he is keeping a lid on it really well. She is in my daughter’s words really mothering him, talking to him gently etc etc. I could not be doing that, I have children, I don’t need another child. I’m also quite sarcastic and dry sometimes and he did not get this humour at all!! 😂 My parents would also make dry jokes and he used to take it all so personal and went on the attack.

Omg I don't know how many times I've said to him "I feel like I managed you like you're one of the children. I have to manage your behaviour!" It's good to know I'm not the only one...only I try not to do it now. I try not to "rescue", to try "being him round" unfortunately I often just go to war...otherwise I just ignore it and get on with my own life. Let him have his meltdown.