Married to someone with Asperger’s/ASD/ND: support thread 16

[BustyLaRoux]

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.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5299389-married-to-someone-with-aspergersasdnd-support-thread-15?page=1

Thank you @Echobelly and I hope the right job turns up for your DH soon. How long do they give him to try out each new medication? I'm guessing that is not on the NHS. I asked H if the provider he has chosen for his ADHD assessment would be able to prescribe and he said he didn't know! He could afford to pay for medicines privately but I don't think he will.

I think the sudden keenness to read up and do therapy is partly because it's his new specialist interest (I get several related Instagram reels sent a week from him!) and partly because it probably really hit home that I was really unhappy. He still won't look at any of the PDA and Autism books I have accumulated, not even the Eliza Fricker illustrated ones which I thought would be easy to pick up and fluck through. I've found them all so useful to read and to understand DD and myself a lot better. He also won't read the ADHD Marriage one either. It's all about mental health and various types of therapy (with a couple of ADHD poscasts thrown in), which is great as it seems to be helping him with managing his moods. Still not sure he fully gets the impact it's had on me and DD over the years though!

He's with a private titration service via NHS choice thing. The idea was try meds for 4 weeks, but he stopped the first one after 3 weeks because of leg pain and just followed up proactively in his bolshy way.

@Pashazade - I do hope his meds don't make DH more arsey, that would be unbearable!

Day 3 of school tests went OK for DS - even English which was his bete noire for tests. He's taking these tests still in a separate room, which he did after the first term last year, but he thinks he might be able to join the others for the next round in January , which would be good.

Great that the English tests are going well for your DS @Echobelly being able to do them in a separate room is great for him to rebuild his confidence there.

My H is also on the right to choose pathway so maybe there is a chance to try out meds there too then. I didn't realise they did that.

Even with all the changes for the better here I still can't see myself staying in the long-term but I think I have to find a way for the next few months at least 😕 maybe just taking it a day at a time and focusing on DD.

@ItReallyDoesntMatterAnymore I really like ACT and found it really helpful. I hope you will too.
Your dh reaction sounds similar to mine. After a couple of talks telling him he has been taking me for granted, suddenly some behaviours ‘disappeared’ and he is trying. That makes life copeable which is good (and yes that also means the bar is very low….)
The fact your dh is making understanding MH, ADHD etc… his special interest is good. I’d encourage that tbh because that’s a great hook for him to start becoming more knowledgeable (and easier to live with).
Im hoping your dd will carry on being on the up too!

@Echobelly i want to add to what @Pashazade said.
My dh is also working for an American company and it works quite well.

So they have no idea what they are like to live with? No awareness of themselves in relationships with anyone?

It was H who introduced me to ACT and I find it quite appealing and am currently enjoying reading The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris.

Yes life is a lit more copeable but like you say I feel I'm setting my bar a bit low. I can live with that for now and he is easier to live with for sure. I do have quite a bit of resentment bubbling under the surface which means I can't quite 'let him too close' but as a sort of friend/housemate and co-parent it works well at this moment in time!

Quite possibly, H never seemed to realise that his behaviour would have an impact on me or DD. It has made me quite angry frankly, particularly as he is now able to make some changes and I can't help but feel it's a bit late now...

So what do they think then is happening. We just too emotional or complaining about something irrational? Are they literally eye rolling us. In what world can relationships work if you are only interested in yourself? So they think everyone just goes around only thinking of themselves? I can see why this disables them, it disables everyone involved also. Half of me just wonders if my mum sits at home having no clue why we don’t talk, having no idea she actually has to show interest about us over here. Perhaps she is sad about it but doesn’t know why we are like this. It must be hard having zero self awareness, relationships go to shit and you have no skills to change it.

Does autism really cause you to have no interest in others?

It can feel like that at times (for me at least). My partner is definitely self absorbed and I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact she will always put her wants and needs before our child’s and mine.

She does ‘show’ empathy, but a lot of the time she says she feels like she needs to (as in knowing others will judge her negatively if she doesn’t), rather than actually feeling / experiencing empathy.

I struggled with this. I’m definitely ND but I could never put my needs before my children’s. I sometimes make myself feel unwell because I force myself to do things for them that overwhelm me. Is this the difference between low any high empathy in autism because I know lots of asd people have lots of empathy.

Maybe I’m being a little bit unfair.

She’s very good at masking, and I do see her show empathy to others (though she always says she doesn’t know what to say and feels awkward). She also says it’s a ‘learned’ response rather than a natural one.

With me and our child it’s different though. We’ve had a tough time past couple of years. I’m always been very much pick myself up and get on with it, so it may be a response to that. Same with our child, she knows I or / and her parents will support so she feels she can take a step back and not become overwhelmed. I know she cares, but has trouble showing it.

Im confused with the masking empathy. So underneath there is no empathy, it’s just done because otherwise people will look at you funny, because you will get left, because you know it’s wrong to not show care? If left to their own devices and not mask what would they do? Just avoid the person needing empathy? Sorry I just can’t seem to grasp how if you love someone you just act don’t you? How does showing empathy overwhelm someone?

I’m equally confused by it, as are the therapists she’s spoken too.

Yes basically she knows it’s wrong to not show care and that she needs to show empathy. She’s had friendships in past breakdown because of it.

If she hadn’t learned the masking then yes, she’ll change subject or find a way to avoid them.

I think the overwhelming is from the effort she has to put into mask, and when she later tries to understand. She has a tendency to go over stuff again and again afterwards, and questions if she reacted in the right way and said the right things. At times that has caused her to spiral.

With me, I know she’s masking so I think she feels like she doesn’t need to now (because it’s not like I can walk away completely now) - at least it feels like that, and as unhealthy as that sounds.

It just sounds like she has some internal systems missing. Not guided by the voice of empathy. As does my mum really. She is guided by what she wants/thinks and what she is interested in only.

Another possibility is alexithymia.
So she doesn’t know how to react in the spot. She doesn’t know she feels about it either. But she has learnt that not saying anything is an issue. So she masks and tries to find ‘the right’ answer.
And then like most autistic people, she looks for patterns and understanding what happened etc… because that’s the only way she can make her way through life.
I have a good friend who is autistic. Extremely clued up on psychology. She has been working with people and made them feel Safe enough to disclose all sorts that they hasn’t said to anyone.
And yet, if there’s a situation that’s overwhelming, unusual, she freezes. She doesn’t know how to react. She is struggling to put herself in someone else shoes.
That’s not lack of empathy. As in it’s not coming from not caring about oter people around them. It’s coming from struggling to understand the works about her.

I suppose that could be very hard, not knowing how you feel about anything. You don’t know if you find something sad in what someone has said for example? Or not knowing whether something you say has offended someone. You don’t know if you feel guilty or responsible?

When my FILdied, neither dh nor dc2 cried. They couldn’t process that on the spot. They didn’t cry at the funeral either. It doesn’t mean they weren’t sad.

A friend of mine who is on the spectrum too takes months if not years to process the death of people she was close too. She isn’t crying either.

But I don’t think any of them can tell how they feel. They process stuff on a different time scale (so my friend gets hit by the grief a couple of years later. DH took weeks. Others might take a few days etc…). In the mean time, it looks like they’re not caring.

Knowing if you’ve offended someone is different. Because you’re reacting to their behaviour or words that show theyre offended.
Some autistic people might not understand why though.
Feeling responsible depends on your understanding of the situation (did or should you play a role in xyz happening). So is feeling guilty.

Perhaps that is why my mum is ok with strangers and colleagues. It’s easier to mask with these people but it’s much harder to mask with close family and friends. She seems to pride herself with these relationships. I guess they have more positive feedback for her as they tend to ask for less and she can nod and smile.

Oldest (who might be autistic) seems very unmoved by things like people dying, though he's not had anyone closer than great grandpa died. He didn't really show much feeling when our cat died last month.

DH has started new meds, slept terribly last night, so hoping that doesn't last too long as they seem to make a difference already. For one thing he's much less grumpy than he'd usually be not sleeping.

We had a good final session with ADHD family therapist today, with DS, and it felt like we all agree things have improved in the last year. Though with DH there is always a sense of waiting for the next time he really blows his top. DS has revealed that part of what makes him nervous about tests now is knowing he's getting towards his GCSEs, so I reminded him that it's normal for practice tests/mocks to be below your final mark. Therapist also made the really good point not to think so much about the mark as what you learn from them. She did ask him the question whether we compare him to oldest, and I'm glad to say he didn't think we did. DH admitted he'd sometimes slipped on that one when frustrated though, but it's something I am very much keen to avoid.

Do they not feel the impact of their words on a person? Because my mum and partner really speak very literal which given the emotional context of a situation are hurtful and I would never say things the way they do.

Methylphedinate seems to be working really well for DH; sleep and appetite are good, no side effects yet.

He's now through to further rounds for two jobs, well I think today was a final round that he thinks went well - he's reasonably confident he will be offered one of them. Nothing to do with the meds, but he's one of those people who's always been quite good an interviews, which is as well given his patchy job history. He seems to be feeling a bit better about the US one, partly because he's coming in at the lower end of their salary expectations, while the other he's at the top end and then he feels more pressure that he has to be 'worth it'.

But meds could make a difference in keeping a job, which would be amazing. I mean, also that he might be on the right level - this is going back to software engineering rather than management, where he seemed to have fewer issues.