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

[SpecialMangeTout3]

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/5355546-married-to-someone-with-aspergersasdnd-support-thread-16?page=10&reply=148665446

Do you think a child can have a relationship with a mum who requires no emotional demands? Or the same in a relationship? Two people who feel the same about emotions Im guessing can have a good relationship as they won’t demand from each other. I have read many quotes that say a relationship without emotional safety is just an attachment or a trauma bond. Is this the case?

I feel I’m attached in the sense I hope one day it will miraculously change but I’m beginning to understand this is not changeable. I am really undecided about how to move forward with someone who I know will never respond to my emotions.

I'm sorry I missed up you with another poster, I wasn't paying enough attention.

I too had a mother who didn't love me, narcissist not ASD, though probably ADHD. Damned well hurts, doesn't it?

I’m on the fence with what to label, can’t/won’t it’s all the same to me. She doesn’t see me as a whole person with feelings and emotions so she’ll never respond to me accordingly. I’m not sure I want that type of person in my life anymore. I’ve reduced contact an awful lot. I don’t want someone invalidating my children’s feelings around them.

I think, from experience, you'll be happier when you drop the hope. I had to also drop the contact, but you may find another path.

I have read many quotes that say a relationship without emotional safety is just an attachment or a trauma bond. Is this the case?

Is an extremely interesting question. ASD partnered with ADHD seems to be common and probably a mutual dependency thing as far as I can tell. My feeling is the children of abusive parenting often see each other a mile off and pair up. We have both! I'm open to the suggestion we're mutually dependant through trauma bonding, it fits.

I really want to drop the rope. Almost every interaction I am hurt when I leave. I want to fit I really do but they are emotionally too neglectful.

what throws me is she has some very successful relationships, but they are all non emotional ones, very successful superficial relationships. I have to remember what they are when I worry why I can’t have them. I have less relationships but they are emotional friendships, it takes effort and time to be there for people so I have less time for lots of relationships, if that makes sense.

This

Isn't

You.

Keep repeating that until you believe it. I broke contact with my mother nearly 10 years ago and have not regretted it. Occasionally I reread one of her abusive letters if I need a bit of resolve not to start to feel sorry for a 95 year old "abandoned" by her daughter.

Hugs all around for the trauma of having a parent who didn’t meet your needs. It’s so sad and ultimately about dealing with that grief in order to be able to move on in the present. Easier said than done, though.

On this topic, parenting is tough right now, and I’m seeing more and more of an internalised PDA profile in one of my kids. Of course every bit of research shows
more clearly this is DH too. Some recent realisations have been heart crushing tbh, like how often he experiences my attempts to help as a negative intrusion and loss of autonomy. I could cry an ocean of all the wasted time / effort I’ve put in which I now see had been - yeah - a total waste of time.

I’m stuck in a multi-day rage if I’m being honest. What PDA support asks just seems too much (see this resource https://pdanorthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Understanding-and-supporting-PDA.pdf which basically says no accountability ever, it literally says ‘lend them your nervous system’). I realise it’s a nervous system disability but I actually am so very tired to try to rise and meet these kind of needs. I’m massively resistant to it also because it means living an inauthentic life for me. I can’t be who I am. I don’t actually value being someone’s co regulation partner yet never even getting connection or recognition in return. It’s all just about avoiding hostility or withdrawal from my kid and partner ultimately, but I had expected that this already be a baseline in relations and not something that has to be constantly and effortfully secured.

I’m mad about how I even got here. I’m angry at DH masking so hard if I’m being honest. I get the intention was not malicious but the despair that’s come out of it has been a lot. I realise that being in this situation with family members (plus of course my own flawed personality -let’s be clear) has meant I’m effectively in ‘learned helplessness’ mode. I just don’t expect any effort to translate into positive action, which is crippling. Part of that I’m beginning to see is that PDA is exceptionally paradoxical if you can’t understand the basic avoidance at its core.

I know that what I need to change is myself, and only I can find ways of getting them all out of my head. Putting all their needs down (as let’s face it, my family are only thinking about me as I meet their needs or have the capacity to judge them, and not really as a being in my own right). Or put their needs down enough so as not to be the bad mother that some of you have been so hurt by. I’m lost in that grey area if I’m honest.

Bottom line is that just don’t want to deal with any of this, I didn’t choose it and it’s a huge ask. And I have so much grief that I don’t have the easy, uncomplicated relationships that I had wanted or expected, and that the qualities that I see about myself as positive are so terminally misrecognised and under appreciated. Rant over! That was cathartic and thanks for reading ❤️‍🩹.

Im so sorry this is so shit really for many of us. I have a daughter with ADHD and she is definitely demand avoidant.

It is hard when we don’t get viewed the way we want to. There are many positive qualities about myself I think also and they are totally wasted on my family members. It’s so sad. Growing up believing the good things about you are bad because someone hasn’t valued them. Then going on to unintentionally surround yourself with more people who don’t value you. Life is hard! I am trying to widen my circle to include people and places where who I am can come out.

That’s only my experience.
My mum is NT but has never been able to see me as another full person. Reality denied. Unable to cope with any emotional stuff. Etc etc

There’s been some hard times recently because I’ve put strict boundaries and refused to engage in her ‘games’ (in a psychological sense).

Now we have a relationship, on my terms but within the confines of her abilities.
ive given up dreaming of being emotionally closed and having a proper mother- daughter relationship. I’ve accepted she’ll never be able to see me as another full other person with her own likes/dislikes/life rather than someone who is there to reflect her own world.
She is avoiding triggering areas.
And we have a relationship. It’s superficial. It’s little and as often as it works for me. It is what it has always been (but I refused to acknowledge for a long time). It’s not hurtful anymore.

So yes it is possible to have a relationship. But it will never be what you’re dreaming it can be or it should be.
lots of grief there…..

@WindyW its heartbreaking isnt it?
The balance between given it all for the dcs and supporting everyone vs putting yourself first is a hard one to find.
ive put my dcs first, theyre now adult. And the Result is that I’m seeing as the one responsible for all ills whilst dh comes out as perfect 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Very gently, I’d say you really need to separate what’s happening with your dcs agd with your dh. They dint have to come as a package. You can say NO to supporting your dh, let him fail even separate whilst still fully support your dcs.
I know that if I was deciding what to do now, I’d go down the route of separation from dh.
Sooner rather than later and certainly much before my ill health fully caught up with me. It’s not worth it.

What is the relationship called then? I can’t figure out what it is. You turn up to see someone who has no benefit to you and really you don’t like and has and does cause damage. Do you see her as mentally unwell? Can you tell yourself I’m doing the right thing by visiting my mentally unwell mum. For me it’s like stepping into some alternate reality and she is the queen. It’s bloody awful and I’m the only who can see it. Do you just let her do her thing then leave?

I feel like we’re looking at relationships through very different lenses.

I don’t evaluate relationships through their usefulness to me.
The way I relate to my mum has been a well thought-out, conscious decision. I am not hurt within that relationship. I’m not avoiding anything. It’s an arrangement that I’ve chosen and one that works for me.

You don’t get hurt that your mum hurts you? My mum is hurtful, she will put me down every occasion she can really. I evaluate my relationships by how they make me feel and this one makes me feel awful. Have you chosen to go even though she doesn’t make you feel good? Do you feel anything after visiting? Sorry I’m not trying to be rude I’m just not sure how to relate to someone who takes from me when I go, she literally has little bites and digs, when I leave I am less. I mean I see her as a rude women who I’d like to tell to sod off.

Don’t relationships need to be fulfilling and you get something from it?

i thought you said she wasn't nasty or am I getting mixed up with someone else? Or are you just swaying between seeing her behaviour as intentionally cruel and then at other times not intentional and caused by factors she can't control? Sorry, I'm a lurker so haven't contributed under this user name before...

She is dismissive and she puts down any emotions, so she will minimise, she leaves me out of things. I may have said she isn’t nasty but I actually think she is. She isn’t nasty to others but then she has no other relationships where she needs to meet someone emotionally as my sibling also hates emotions. When they are together they do kind of laugh at it which isn’t nice. It’s like the opposite of NT laughing at ND people.

I talk myself round in circles because I have a very different experience of her. I see how my sibling has a better experience because they are fine being left alone and doing activities then being alone. They talk about others as if they are stupid and sometimes laugh at people’s difficulties and dilemmas as if it’s all nonsense. I don’t find this very nice. I don’t find my family very nice, very insensitive. It’s not how I wish to raise my family. I think I have to just come to accept that I view them differently and I can’t unfeel how I do and that they won’t change. I’m like a square peg amongst round holes.

Ah, I understand. That does sound difficult. Can you have conversations with her on non-emotion based topics that you're actually interested in? Or would that kind of relationship hold no value for you?

Can I ask how your ASD partners cope with birthdays? I often find DH'S birthday quite difficult and upsetting because he can so often seem to spend the day moping and acting like he's having the worst day, despite efforts to make it special. It's as if he builds up this picture in his mind of an amazing, very special day and when anything about the day is 'normal' e.g. bad weather, going to work, normal daily routines it sends him into this morose mood. I don't think it helps that his birthday is in January! But it does often make me feel like efforts to make it nice aren't appreciated.

Mine’s fine, not bothered about a huge fuss but appreciates things being given and appropriate to him events. But low key obvs.

Mine can go into a funk about bad weather anyway but his birthday is at a time where the weather can normally be trusted to be OK. He's fine on birthdays, appreciates every effort.

How old is yours? I think there is a trigger in lots of people about not wanting to be another year older that gets worse with age.

41. I think he has got a bit like this recently. Last year we had a really nice weekend away for his 40th and he enjoyed that and was really happy with it. But obviously that's not always feasible.

Oh that's interesting. For some reason we fell into a habit years ago of always going away for both our birthdays, even if it was just one night. We also have "birthday slave" duties where the slave runs around doing everything (within reason! ) that the birthday person says. It just sets the day aside as different and belonging to the birthday person. It seems to work for us. If anything, I'm the one who gets frustrated if the presents don't live up to my expectations (like the shower gel doesn't smell very nice not like I haven't got diamonds! ).

Sadly it is tricky for us as we don't have any family living nearby so getting away requires a lot of planning. I'm going to try to make later special (mornings are always a nightmare as running round doing the school run etc.) so am just hoping things will be looking up a bit this evening.

DH’s Birthdays are not an issue.

But I’m wondering if it’s just the idea that birthdays should be <insert impossible to reach level/occasion/organisation> so anything that doesn’t match that perfect standard is a cause for grumbles/dysregulation. In that case, maybe agreeing of doing much less could work?
Like ‘from now on, let’s make birthdays easier. We’ll do a nice meal in the evening where we will open presents. That’s it’.

Basically setting up how the day will look like so he doesn’t imagine, in his head only!, what it will be and then gets disappointed?

Has he ever voiced what his expectations are?