Married to someone with Asperger's/ASD/ND: support thread 14

[Daftasabroom]

New thread.
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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.
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It's complicated and it's emotional.
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The old thread is here.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5183563-married-to-someone-with-aspergersasdnd-support-thread-13?page=1

@KnottyAuty sounds so scary but it’s sounds like the right thing to do. Abuse is not the actions or intentions, it’s the behaviour and the feelings and consequences on the ear and the person on the other side. It’s still abuse even if you bring it up and the other person isn’t capable of behaving any differently.

Do we respect ourselves so little that we allow ourselves to be talked to coldly, or ignored or shouted at because the other person is ND so they can’t help it. It’s often an us problem.

It works both ways but a relationship where you have to manage your own behaviours or that of the other in order to keep the peace is not healthy. One where you have to numb yours down in order to cope is very unhealthy.

In a relationship is the one place where in life you should be able to be your whole self and safe and fulfilled. This also works both ways, for the ND person also.

@Neurospice I really relate to your experiences of having to deal with your partner’s upset when you express your own upset feelings. This is a central issue in my own marriage where I used to simply not express feelings (leading to massive resentment) then I tried to express them but support him (still massive resentment) then I became transactional. But transactional doesn’t really work for me either. So now I express my own upset, upsetting him, leave and try to comfort myself. It’s excruciating and makes me just want to end the relationship.

This whole pattern has led to massive issues in the relationship not being dealt with. I’m trying to deal with them now, really reach down to heal some of the wounds so that both of us can trust each other again. But it’s so hard, excruciating and painful. And I’m not even sure it will work! But I don’t think I can stay without saying some of the things I actually feel.

This sounds familiar. It is about an inability to co-regulate I think. You seem to be still hoping that your DP will be able to change and compromise. What change will meet your need? Again sorry to be gloomy but it is unlikely to happen. In my experience it's a brain thing and like asking a dyslexic to sort out their spelling. If there are other benefits to the relationship for you and you can find other support for your feelings then great. If not then can you go on if it will all be the same? I've now been waiting about 10 years while my DH has tried therapy and DBT and now ADHD meds but in the end he can't alter his neurobiology. I feel sorry for him as it makes him miserable too. I have to keep reminding myself that I deserve a peaceful life and I'll need to make some radical changes to get that. I have put it all off and tried to pretend it will change for a long time. How many years would you waste like me?

Perhaps unlike others on the thread @KnottyAuty my DH has managed to change, grow and increase his capacities for emotion recognition and response, which has been great. So I do think it’s worth keeping on, and dealing with the fallout of both of our maladaptive responses to the tough things we’ve faced this ten years.

Hope

Sunk cost fallacy.

Out of the fear of the unknown people prefer suffering that feels familiar.

The only time we know whether the sacrifice was worth it is when we are sat as an old person with grown up kids and if we are happy with the choices we have made. If we can sit and say I’m genuinely happy with all my choices or we sit in regret and disappointment. How many years is a good number of years to sacrifice to hope and how many years do we have left?!

I love Rainbow3’s emphasis on “being really happy.” That seems like a state that us long lost for so many here. But wouldn’t it be nice to have it? The embattled state so many describe sounds so wearying.

I think people have happy and surviving mixed up. It’s just not meant to be this hard.

Just thinking out loud, but perhaps there is also a fear that what is actually making us unhappy is not the person and their behaviours, but rather our inability to be happy despite them. I left my first husband (complete Volvo, utterly reliable) because I felt unhappy and very, very bored with him. Married current DH (definitely more Ferrari and much higher maintenance) and have, at times, felt unhappy and like I wanted to leave. But I have started to feel that my happiness is not his responsibility and to understand that he can't and won't change those aspects of himself that are ND-related. From that perspective, I think I can be as happy with him as I would be with anyone. At least he doesn't bore me to tears. He's not abusive though, that's different. If you are being subjected to abuse, it's hard to acknowledge, I think. And even if you do acknowledge it, that doesn't mean you necessarily have the physical and mental resources to extract yourself from the situation. It's easy to judge other people's choices when you haven't lived their lives.

I think we end up fighting with our inner programming and our human nature and instinct. We need a partner who we connect to and that is just plain old part of our humanness. It doesn’t matter how we word it, what allowances we make if we don’t connect then we don’t. I do believe our happiness is directly dependent on the environment we are in and the connections we have to the people within it. We spend so much time with one person. I guess they can’t fulfil all our needs but this person is integral to the space we occupy physically and emotionally.

Yes but happiness isn’t something linked to outside circumstances. It’s something you find within.
(Unless you’re in a situation where let’s say there is abuse etc….)

Ive had that discussion with my therapist.
If I was single, would all my problems disappear? Would I be happy? Would my needs be met when they aren’t now?
I feel there is a high risk of falling for ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’.

For me, happiness is something you seek yourself, within yourself and you can’t ask someone else to be at the root of it, and certainly not a partner. It’s a different quest altogether than finding a partner/marriage that works for you. I think that changing partner to be happy is as futile as moving to another country. You can change your external environment but if you don’t change within too, the problems stay the same.

There is however a question on what you expect from a partnership and what are your boundaries. What you feel is non negotiable and what is.
I would not be able to live in a partnership where someone shouts and screams at me. It’s just too stressful for me (childhood trauma there). So that’s my boundary.
Id love to feel seen and connected to DH, to have a proper intimacy. However, I’m realistic enough to know it’s unlikely I’d get that being single either so that’s more of a negotiable for me - I need to find a way to get that feeling of connexion in a different way.

We need a partner who we connect to and that is just plain old part of our humanness. It doesn’t matter how we word it, what allowances we make if we don’t connect then we don’t.

It’s a good question that.
Do we have to be in a couple to be happy because it’s fulfilling that need for connection?
If Im housebound and can’t really get out of the house, make new friends etc… does it mean I’ll never be happy because I’ll never have a new partner or have regular friends?

Now I’m not saying that the need for connexion is a need that doesn’t exist or isn’t important.
But I feel that it’s also essential to remember that many people don’t have that and yet can still find happiness.

I'd agree about @BustyLaRoux 's husband being profoundly abusive. That speedboat incident was ... well, he he should have been shoved over the boat and held under with an oar.

Sorry, @BustyLaRoux, but it's true I'm afraid. His behaviour was genuinely shocking.

Yes but I don’t think you can find happiness with someone whose presence you don’t connect with. If you are preoccupied with surviving the relationship and less occupied with making yourself happy via friends or hobbies etc. These relationships take up so much energy, I think it will affect happiness. When I say partner I mean connections, we need people/hobbies/surroundings we have connections to. If we are emotional beings we need emotional connections.

I sometimes think of my childhood, being raised by my ND mum. I have no emotional feelings and very little emotional connection to my mum because she was completely unemotional. She is my mum by birth and by blood but when I think of my childhood there is no emotional tie. I don’t think back in feeling. I think this connection is vital. Whereas my dad when I think back it pulls my heart and it pulls my life. I holiday in places that make me think of him and the emotional safety he gave me. Emotional connection is my personal driving force.

When I say partner I mean connections, we need people/hobbies/surroundings we have connections to. If we are emotional beings we need emotional connections.

In that case, there is no way I could ever find happiness

Im housebound. Have very few friends in the U.K., Friends that im really close too live abroad and so are my parents. And my parents are emotionally immature so connexion has always been ‘iffy’.
Connexion with dh is very superficial.
And I don’t have enough energy to do many things so what I can do as a hobby is quite restricted.
So by that token, I should never be happy (with or wo dh)

And yet I know it’s not the case. I can be happy…..

What has always created issues for me is hoping for a different relationship, closer to an NT/NT marriage. It’s hoping for dh to change when it will never happen. And so is ruminating constantly about what dh has done or not done etc….
That has been hurtful and destroying my happiness. That was all me.

@SpecialMangeTout the relationship with yourself is the absolute most important thing in the world. I personally wouldn’t be happy with myself with a partner who shouted and ignored me. I want to feel good about my partner and I want to feel good about myself within the relationship. I’m not sure how to feel good within a relationship where I have no impact in and no importance, I may as well be anyone then and not the brilliant individual I am. I am like you and suffer M.E and may not be able to do everything but what I can do is me and my brain and my humour and my personality. But that’s me.

It’s so interesting this idea about a partner making you happy, or not.

I make myself happy. There’s aspects of happiness I find with DP. We have a lot of fun together. I (selfishly?) do not join him in areas of life where I don’t find happiness, such as when we attempt to blend our families.

He has his kids this weekend. I have mine. We will not be spending time together. DC and me are seeing friends and I’m volunteering at his youth group and marshalling junior park run. I could be at DP’s with his two badly managed ND kids but it would be chaos. Weekend after is a city break as DP and me have no kids then. It will work well as long as I remember he is there to entertain me but not support me.

Ferrari men can’t be your everyday men. You can’t rely on them for cold mornings or long journeys or dark nights. They’re the ones you take for a spin on weekends or days off when the roads are clear of stress and the sun is shining. They are too high maintenance for every day. They are fun and exciting but consume a vast amount of energy.

Lol @Neurospice that would be my worst nightmare. We all want and need different things to make us happy as we are all so different. The spontaneity would kill me 😂

One thing I really enjoy with my partner is the wild camping and the fire and the marshmallows and the adventures. He loves this and so do I. He’d probably talk my ear off about something boring and I’d talk to him about something deep and meaningful but just sitting there is enough for me with the fire.

Just to say I am well aware I am in an abusive relationship. For me, there is a distinction between intention and not intentional. I understand that particular distinction may not resonate with everyone and I am certainly not suggesting anyone should accept abusive behaviour. That distinction is important FOR ME alone. I believe many of his abusive behaviours are intrinsically linked to his autism. But I don’t mean that is an excuse. And I don’t mean that the autistic community should be judged by his actions or all lumped together. The boat day was extremely bad. But I think what was worse was that when I tried to talk to him about how upset he’d made me, his response was “well I’m upset too”. He will always make everything about him. His feelings. That is the autism part. And that was more hurtful than how he behaved in the first place! But I also think the inability to cope with frustration without getting angry is linked to his autism. Shouting abuse at me. Leaving me to cope with an angry Italian man while he sat and drank…. That’s just being a cunt!

@BustyLaRouxmost people don’t wake up and say to themselves today I’m going to be abusive. Intension is a massive distraction. He isn’t abusive because he is autistic. He is abusive AND autistic. He is a whole and not a sum of parts.

I wonder if this type of thinking has a name, is it called splitting. I was very guilty of doing this in my marriage. Splitting my husband up into parts….well he is a good dad, he did the washing up, he bought me flowers, he had lots of friends etc etc. He only shouted at me and pushed me and threw things occasionally so he isn’t all bad. Is this an ND thing or just something people do because of the dissonance? We stop looking at them as a whole person. It’s like if we made the most perfect cake and put one drop of poison in it, it’ll still kill you.

I think this is semantics really. But as I said, I’m kind of immune to it now. I know he wishes he were different. He has tried to react less angrily to things and he has succeeded to some extent. Tirades like the other day and the boat are rare. But they didn’t used to be. And I am much better equipped at dealing with them. I walk away. I don’t engage. I don’t cower (as I used to) and I don’t shout back (usually!). He is the way he is. My SIL is the way she is. My dad is the way he is. All three of them shout at people. All three of them are autistic. All three of them are abusive. None of them would admit that. So who cares why. The only difference it makes is for me to make peace with it. They can’t help it. They can’t see what they’re like (DP is probably the most accepting of his faults to be fair). They can’t empathise. They don’t understand what’s wrong with their behaviour. And I guess that helps me accept it. It is liberating to accept what you cannot change. It is so much less upsetting than willing them to be different.

@Rainbow03 no I think it's a human thing, there are plenty of examples of women elsewhere on the boards going oh but he's a good dad when he's just spend three hours screaming abuse at them! Sometimes I think it's the sink cost fallacy, none of us like to give up on something when we've put a lot of effort in, but it has to reach a point where the cost is surely too high and then just maybe people will find the mindset needed to walk away. Although I appreciate many can't leave for whatever reason, I think it's still highly protective of the self if you can find the fuck it (I matter more than you) mind set for moving forward.