Married to someone with Asperger’s/ASD/ND: support thread 17

[SpecialMangeTout3]

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.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5355546-married-to-someone-with-aspergersasdnd-support-thread-16?page=10&reply=148665446

@ReleaseTheDucksOfWar
yes I echo what mangetout suggested. There is some very good trauma therapy available.

i don’t know if you have health insurance but if you do, some provide 28 days care outside for exactly this sort of thing.

even without insurance it can still be accessible.

there’s no need to struggle on. Even family therapy is available too which might help your youngest. My kids have both seen therapists over the years. If you think something is missing it may be possible to help in other ways while you get better.

I was told at the hospital to get both kids therapists again for now, to support me getting better so I don’t have them unloading too much on to me while I’m still recovering. It does help a lot.

I’m very sorry @Theydontwantme for how your mum has repeatedly abandoned you. It’s so hurtful to be dismissed over and over again. I cannot imagine the pain. It doesn’t sound like she will change so further hope for a different sort of interaction and love the one you crave is maybe just a road to further heartache for you. It’s a deep wound and I’m not sure how you come to terms with it. Did you ever consider no contact? Sometimes no longer interacting with the source of pain becomes a path to self preservation. To stop scratching a wound that can never heal. It’s best just to leave it alone. My brother has been no contact from my dad for 10 years after my dad hit him. He’s much freer mentally without him in his life. He doesn’t think about him ever now much. We both craved real love from my dad but he was never able to give us that. I see him once a year and I act the whole way through. It’s a performance and I dread it. I’ve said before on here I sometimes think it would have been easier if he’d died because then we could have imagined and pined for a love that never existed. But with him alive he is a source of constant disappointment and painful memories.

No she will never change. The truth is actually quite painful, more painful than the lie and the hope. There is no hope. Yes I will be reducing my contact down because I literally can’t bare being around her now l know the truth. That in itself is painful because honestly she doesn’t really care. She has many superficial relationships and people to do stuff with when she wants. I can’t have a relationship on these terms because I don’t view relationships like this. I’m in with my heart and soul or Im not in at all. I’m fed up of sitting in rooms talking superficial rubbish about who owns what, what house cost what, I simply don’t give a shit about any of the avoidance when I can’t get support when needed. I may as well put the effort into friends who actually show up and visa versa. She will always be avoidant and superficial, you can only survive the good weather with that, when the rain comes you on your own!

I am have ADHD myself and I am not like this. Sure I get overwhelmed but not like this. It can’t be just a ND thing because lots of ND people are really great. Lots of these on here must be quite damaged neurodivergent people.

Im sorry for posting so much. I really thought my H was a good man, very logical but good but I’m struggling with him atm. The other day my oldest with ADHD had a severe anaphylactic reaction and a stay in hospital. She is good now, she was scared but I’ve given her as much of me and cuddles and love as I can give and she’s gone off and playing and looks like she is ok. Me on the other hand I’m left feeling scared. I turned to my mum and that was the thing I posted the other day when I just got “move on” she didn’t visit us, not even to see granddaughter. I’ve opened up to H last night and said I still feel scared. He huffed and said well it’s over. I said but it’s not for me, I was looking for comfort. He just said it happened it’s over it’s logical to be ok now. Honestly I’ve been led in bed thinking what have I done. It’s like the image with the plants and each person waters each other, I’m so bone dry. I get that he and my mum view it very logical but I feel my through life and I don't know where to get comfort from. To these people I must look completely stupid for being effected. But how can you not be effected when it was so scary and my daughter was so scared and I can still feel her fear and the worry about the future now she has this allergy.

That sounds very frightening @Theydontwantme - I guess your H is just doing his 'very logical' thing that sees it as a thing that happened at it was OK in the end so just move on. He's maybe not able to look at it from the 'but what if it happens again?' and 'what if it's not OK next time?' angle, which must be very frustrating.

We had lunch with my parents today, which was nice although lunch took forever to arrive, as my parents got held up in traffic and by the time they arrived the place had filled up and dozens of people had ordered in front of us. DH was doing this annoying thing when he is being all hyper, which then winds up DS, and then DH gets all hissy and angry with DS for being hyper when he is being so as well! I pointed this out to him and he did apologise. I don't know if anyone else finds this with ADHD partners.

DH also made an off-hand comment this morning that we need to talk about when I said the bills account needs his input and he just said 'I have no money' then 'I'll see what I can do'. Now I have no idea if 'no money' means £50 or £5000 and we will have to talk about it because honestly we will have to plan for worst case scenario (though I am reasonably confident he'll get something, at least a contract, in the next 8 weeks). But if he's genuinely running low, we need to set expectations. I can pay more into bills quite easily on my current salary, and I'd rather we switched from 50:50 to, say 30:70 and gave him longer to spread out what he has left rather than going 50:50 and then suddenly it has to be 100% me. I'll admit I've been a bit head in the sand - when he's said he's 'running out' in the past, he's usually still had really quite a lot left but I can imagine now 'running out' is less that it has been.

@Theydontwantme gosh, that must have been so frightening? Really glad to see your dd is doing well now.

But I can see how hard it is when you have an emergency like this happens and you’re on your own. No support and even worse you’re basically been told you’re doing emotions wrong and you’re not supposed to be anxious/worried etc…. So hurtful and Infuriating.
🫂🫂🫂

So I’m ok to have emotions, some of them
conflicting like I’m happy she is ok but it’s scared me? I’m not being stupid. It’s ok to need people to comfort me?

Absolutely - it's not just OK, it should be pretty much a minimum requirement, even if you don't understand someone's need for comfort yourself, you should see they have it and provide that.

I guess some people just can’t for whatever reason, they are inflexible. I can be many things if I’m needed and try to meet people’s needs because relationships mean a lot to me. I want people to feel safe with me and not feel on edge. My daughter said to me the other day after the incident that she was glad I was there because she just felt safer. She doesn’t understand a lot of emotions or the words to say but she feels safe, and that meant an awful lot to me. I wish that I had someone who made me feel safe. I don’t think you need to completely understand someone’s world to make an effort.

How could you tell the difference between someone autistic not understanding feelings or someone narcissistic who is deliberately ignoring your feelings. Part of me feels like I could be a scapegoat. I’m portrayed as overly sensitive. But I feel I’m someone with good emotions and my mum is pretending because she can with some. If I’m being told I’m too much then people aren’t looking at the fact she is faking.

Maybe the difference is the narcissist does it in a way that feels like they are deliberately trying to hurt and belittle you?

Related issue here - DS has come back from first school test and he froze up again like he did a term and a half ago, despite having prepared well and still being in a separate room, which is disappointing.

DH has yet again given him a lecture (not angrily) about 'well just write something, all you have to do is write something.' I have experienced anxiety, I know it is utterly self defeating and you can't bear what it's making you do or be incapable of doing, but you just can't beat it. I have explained to DH time and again that anxiety is not logical and you can't talk someone out of it, you basically have to remove the source of the anxiety.

I honestly think the best thing DH could do for DS now is to promise him never to do that lecture again, and stick to that promise.

It's good DS is starting counselling soon and that we have a meeting with the counsellor the day after tomorrow as well. It's a shame today's test and tomorrow's, English, have been the hardest for him historically and where he's been most likely to freeze. I hope this doesn't throw him for all the others.

I'm thinking of suggesting to DH that if he can't promise never to lecture again can he at least tell DS he promises not to say it again tomorrow if the same thing happens. Because it just might help if his brain isn't going 'Dad will give me the lecture again and I'll feel so frustrated and stupid'

He doesn’t need to say anything at all other than I love you.

Or maybe 'Ah, that's a shame when you did such good work preparing' for example, which acknowledges DS's work and doesn't judge. But maybe that's the use of the word 'shame' is still a bit much.

I want to talk to DH but he's deep in a programming exercise he has for this job he's applying for (got onto second stage of the process, which is good) and being frustrated by it, so he's not in a good mental place for it.

YES IT IS

Sorry, I dint mean to be shouting. But please yes, it’s totally normal to feel both happy and relieved and extremely anxious. It’s nirmal to want support. To need to ‘talk it out’ with someone, if only to be able to say ‘that was terrifying’.

And it’s totally ok to feel two things at once, even if one is a happy feeling and the other isn’t. It’s just called being human

@Theydontwantme i think the difference between autism and narcissism is the intend.
which means that, when you are in the receiving end, it might not feel that different.

Or rather, for me, it made it even worse because I could feel there was no intention to be hurtful at all despite the fact I was feeling hurt. I found it a bit of a mind fuck tbh.

Having said that, the inability to support someone, to listen to them or acknowledge that you have an emotional life separate from theirs isn’t just autism or bring a narcicist. My parents are like that and theyre ‘just’ emotionally immature. But this leads to emotional neglect. Which is crap, whether you’re a child or an adult.

Yes is feels like emotional neglect. I think many autistic people can show up for someone they love even if they don’t understand. This feels like something else, it’s inhumane. Having adhd myself I can relate to others who are ND with so much empathy and understanding. This feels intentional. If it was sloppy or misguided but there was intention to show care then I wouldn’t feel like this. I sometimes think her replies to me show superiority, like her opinion is the only one and when I disagree she clamps down. I don’t think she likes me. I think she masks empathy but my requests annoys her because she actually has none and I make it visible .

Yeah, we all had another bust-up over today and I'm sure DS will freeze in tomorrow's paper as well, but I think that was going to happen either way, certainly when DH made such a big deal of today.

He then has a go at me for not being there at the door to talk to DS first then and I'm feeling like 'Hey, I am busy being the only person earning consistent money for the last 5 years'.

DS is telling DH he is the problem and DH is all 'That's just an excuse'

Honestly, at the end of that I felt like researching divorce again. DH was being all snitty at me for 'not being the one who helps with school work' - well yes, he has to more because I can't do maths and science, and I couldn't do French. But also... I am doing everything fucking else.

I am making sure the bills are paid, doing at least 70% of the housework (even if I do it badly), making sure the kids have clothes that fit, booking school/heath appointments, paying for school trips and summer camps, arranging almost all our holidays (and paying for all of them for the last 5 years) making dinner, booking things for us to do together as a couple or as a family.

And when the kids were younger and he wasn't working I didn't demand he do anything except pick ups, I was even the one taking leave in the holidays to entertain the kids, I was doing the logistics task of arranging some sort of childcare for all the holidays, which was really complicated in summer, even though for some of them he wasn't working, and in all those years he barely ever volunteered to take them for even a day to save my time and our money.

If I finally said 'do something with the kids today', I'd get back to an empty house at 6 and then they'd tumble in 20 mins later and he'd reveal he took them out to the park at 5.30, and that was 'doing something with the kids'. I cut him the slack of appreciating that at the time he had undiagnosed ADHD, of understanding (when the market was much better) that applying for roles was intensive. But he never thought to offer up what he could do to help me.

But then of course, after the dust settled he was being reasonable again. And he said he will hear DS out after school tomorrow after he asked to be heard out.

Part of me wants to run to the divorce lawyer, part of me doesn't want to do that without warning, so maybe the compromise is I say we need some marriage counselling, just focusing on our dynamic. The sessions we had with a counsellor about DS have just been a waste of time as DH nodded his head at the time but actually doesn't accept anything she said to do and he doesn't feel any shame when she told him all the stuff DS had poured out to her. Dammit I felt shame for not saving him from that.

@Echobelly have you told DH that DS’s struggle is no reflection on him and ultimately not something he has a right to kick off about, in the same way you don’t have a go at him for not getting a job because you know he’s trying really hard. I know my DH was triggered by DS’s struggles because they reminded him of him as a kid and all the shame he felt (was made to feel) along with it, could he be projecting? DH has learnt to step back now as he recognises he finds it triggering. (Sorry if I’ve said all this before!). Plus honestly there’s no shame in deciding you want out, it certainly sounds like you at least would have one less person to worry about on a daily basis. Hugs (if acceptable 🙂).

Hi guys, am new to this thread but have been reading for a while. Such comfort to hear how you guys are navigating similar kinds of challenges - my friends are well intentioned but I feel like they just can't totally understand.

My boyfriend has ASD and we have a young baby. We live abroad (originally from different countries), life is hard enough as it is - we've spent the last few weeks finally sorting out a nursery that feels safe and a nanny who is lovely and baby has bonded with.

Now he's hyperfixating decided that we need to move to his home country, near his parents (who I don't trust at all), and if not he won't be happy. He's decided all his/our daily struggles are because we don't live in his home country. Every day he's now saying "I hate it here" and blaming me for not wanting to drop everything and move. I'm just trying to get through the day negotiating that he takes the baby for 1 hour each day.

Any ideas how to get him to see that he's hyperfixating and moving won't solve all the problems that are just inherent to juggling new baby with work etc?

It infuriates me that I would also, in an ideal world, like to spend some time near to my family in my home country too, but instantly wrote that off because travelling to and fro wouldn't be best for our child. So much seems to just be framed around what he wants. When we went to view nurseries for example, my criteria were safety and good child:caregiver ratio. His were proximity (so his drop-offs don't take as long), and cost. I asked what about criteria for the baby? He said "she's fine". Just an example but feels like that's the overall theme of our life at the moment.

Sorry I think it’s just the overall theme of life for most of us with ASD family members on here. It’s all about them as they can’t see beyond themselves and we should just be fine with it. In my own case nothing has worked I’m afraid. Thinking of others needs is not something they can do. It’s just a constant battle.

I even asked mine to fake it by putting notes in his diary to buy me flowers or a chocolate bar now and then. Just as he would if I was an employee and he was still at work.

It worked.

For one month.

That’s bad, the things we do just to feel some sense of connection. But the sad thing is there really isn’t any and that just makes me feel sad. The truth is crap. I’d like to hold onto the notion of it’s not their fault, perhaps I can adapt to it etc etc but I don’t get the connection I need from the things that they do. I can see it now that they go through life quite singular, not being how do I put it emotionally and spiritually connected to humans. There is an invisible thread kind of missing and that is for me my life force.

@mcrlover I think you should give him a time frame, say we are staying put for at least a year to give this setting a chance, we will revisit this conversation in a year I am not discussing it before then, put a date in the diary even.
Unfortunately my friend’s husband was like this and always blamed where they were rather than trying to find work/learn the language make a home for himself. This went on for 20+ years, he was also AuDHD.
I would make sure you are financially stable in case you have to go it alone, and absolutely do not move to his home country as depending on the rules you may not be allowed to leave again with the baby if he refuses permission. Although to be honest his levels of concern around her seem a little lacking.

I have surprised myself with my ability to cope with the lack of connection, but he's been ill and I wouldn't leave a sick husband after 40 years anyway. I reconciled it by looking at my friends' husbands and realised that there is simply no man I would want to be in a partnership with. So my choice is alone or with a man who is great at the mechanical side of running a house and finances, does more than his fair share of chores, and is a good lunch, night out and holiday companion when he's got his brain straight, which is more often now he's not actively ill. He's also a sweet man who outside our home (or as he puts it "my home" !) everyone loves who wouldn't knowingly hurt a fly, which helps.

Thanks @Pashazade - he just won't take it though. The therapist said to just stop trying to teach him and I think she's right, but DH won't let it go.

We tried 'leaving DS to it' last tests and not putting many demands on him and barring maths, he completed the tests. His results weren't great. That said, if you assume he'll be up at grade from there by GCSE time, they'd translate to several 4s a 5 and 6 which is... perfectly OK, surely? I'd rather leave DS to it and he gets that than he gets no GCSEs because he's too anxious to sit them.