How do you grieve a marriage to someone with Autism and ADHD after divorce?

[Bramble234]

I was married 20 years. In the early days there were a few odd things he said but i was totally in love. After 10 years we had a lot of issues with needing IVF, my health issues, issues with family pets etc etc. I noticed as soon as the hit the fan he ran a mile. When we disagreed we couldn't talk about it. He just didnt seem able to chat. We saw a counsellor and it didnt help. Eventually we got divorced, We coparent our 2 kids. He has severe depression although its somewhat controlled now. I have severe physical health issues, work full time and do 95% of the parenting. He's had a girlfriend for a year or so. I'm single after a 3 year relationship post divorce.

Recently our son was assessed and has ADHD. This has bought things to a head with my exh and he finally got assessed. He has always known he has dyslexia but has now been diagnosed with ADHD and Autism.

We tried to have a conversation yesterday about our daughter and his autism is so so so obvious now. His response to some of the chat was just cruel and heartless. I think back to the last 25 years and he has never said thanks to me, never told me im good at anything, never given me a hug and comforted me through all the trauma we have had. He's had so much therapy that if i tell him now that im struggling with something he says that he 'hears what im saying'. He sounds like a robot. He doesn't feel anything, He's just trying to express the emotions he has been told he should have. I've recently learned i need another surgery and his response was what if it goes wrong and your disabled, meaning he would have to have the kids more.

We divorced 5 years ago but he has lived with me and the kids for the last 6 months because he lost his job and house. He is moving out in March to his own place as he has a job now. I didn't want to let him move back in but he had no where else to go and the kids want to see him.

I just cant get passed the anger at him for being so uncaring, at myself for not knowing something was different all along, for always thinking at some point he would give me a hug and comfort me even after 20 years of him never doing that.

My kids have ADHD and one has dyslexia. I fear so much for them if they grow up like their dad. He is so selfish, self obsessed and cold. He cant help it, i know that now. Its how his brain work. As he has a girlfriend i assume he doesn't come across this way to her.

I just feel so sad. I just don't know how to move on. Its been nearly 5 years and i still struggle to accept that he just isn't the man i thought i married, that he was never capable of giving me what i wanted, that i was so stupid not to realise earlier. The relationship was so one sided where emotions were concerned that I made myself physically ill carrying the load all by myself. I just feel so sad i got it so wrong. We both would have had such better lives if we had been with other people. If he had known 25 years ago that he had ADHD and Autism his life would have made more sense to him and we would never have got together.

And i know people with autism and ADHD can have a wonderful life, i know there are positives and i focus on them for my kids. But they both mean my exh could never be the man i thought and hoped he was. The formal diagnosis has made me so sad.

Sounds like he has NPD cos nobody I know including myself with adhd are selfish fucks with zero empathy. Lots of 'us' live fantastic fulfilling loving lives. HE might be a prick dont paint is all with the same brush.

Meet-up app has “Support group for spouse’s partners of adults with autism” .. maybe listening to others might help??

It's always very hard when we realise that the person we thought we'd committed to wasn't the person they turned out to be. Not least because we often end up kicking ourselves for not realising sooner.

But the thing is this: I'd guess that you're not someone who's been trained to recognise ADHD, autism and/or depression. After all, no-one's born knowing how to see those issues, how best to respond to them or how to judge when it's time to draw the line. You either learn that stuff through being specifically taught about it or through living it.

When you got together I doubt he was explicit about the mental health problems he had or the issues that would cause in your relationship. You made the decisions you made at the time with the best information that was available to you at that time. 20 years down the line you now know a hell of a lot more. But it's unreasonable to beat yourself up now because 20 years ago you didn't know what you now know - after all, how could you? You couldn't see into the future. You couldn't read his mind to divine the intricate details of how his brain worked.

At the time, you made decisions based on the best information you had. Now you've got more information and so you'd make different decisions. That doesn't mean you were at fault in the past, it just means you simply didn't know. You now know differently. Sure, it cost you a lot to learn that lesson but that's just the way it is sometimes - the most important and impactful lessons you learn are the ones that cost you the most.

Beating yourself up for not making a different choice in the past is just an exercise in self-flagellation. It won't change the past, all it will do is make yourself feel like crap in the present. You have already learned the lesson and I'm sure you'll not make the same mistake again so that mistake has not been in vain. That experience has helped you to learn and grow.

For me, what really helped me to move on from a shitty relationship was to realise that what was most important was forgiveness. Not for my ex, but for me. I needed to forgive myself for getting myself in to that situation and for taking too long to realise what was really going on. Part of that needed me to simply accept what had happened - it didn't mean I condoned it, it didn't mean that what my ex did was ok, but it was about accepting that it did happen and that beating myself up about it couldn't change that.

There's a term for this which is radical acceptance that I got a lot from. Once I accepted the reasons I got in to that situation and forgave myself for that, that took away 90% of the resentment I felt. Resentment is a destructive emotion - it's like drinking poison and hoping someone else keels over and dies as a result. If you can bring yourself to the point of accepting why you made the decisions you made in the past, highlighting which ones turned out to be poor decisions, and then taking steps to ensure you don't make the same mistakes again in the future, things might seem a lot less painful.

Be kind to yourself. We are made of our experiences. Learning from our experiences is how we grow.

Have some experience with this. Basically ASD doesn’t equal cruelty. That’s something else

Just as you would with someone with ginger hair, consider how you approach the situation. So, what's the connection to neurodiversity? It’s also important to consider that.

Just look at it as a failed relationship. The ND stuff ia seperate

I think that it sounds more than autism - possibly alexithymia? There’s also the (controversial) Cassandra Syndrome which can apply to (some) wives of autistic husbands. I mention both in case you were looking for more understanding.

But I think @GasperyJacquesRoberts thoughtful and kind reply says everything. Be kind to yourself, OP. The issue with having spent so long with lack of validation or emotional connection is that you then start questioning yourself. You’ve done nothing wrong.

Sounds like you need some therapy of your own.

Sorry, what? Since when has ginger hair had anything to do with disability?

Thankyou everyone whose taken the time to reply. I know its the autism that means he is emotionally shit. Im sure there's autistic people out there who are lovely but its a common theme on mumsnet that women married to autistic men find they are very unsupportive, uncaring etc. My son has ADHD and hes only 9 and is lovely and caring.

Ive had a look at radical acceptance. Thanks. I will look more into that. I think I do need to accept I wasted 25 years, I cant change it. I just dont know how to accept it and stop blaming myself.

Thankyou I do have a therapist as I have PTSD from health issues and I will talk to her about your suggestions.

I dont think hes narcissist as he doesnt interact with me enough. Hes just in his own world.

I suppose its the same really when any marriage breaks down. You never get married expecting divorce, especially after 20 years. But when your husband does stuff you never thought he would do its a shock. I just cant believe hes the same man I fell in love with.

I think im going to be more honest and blunt with him. Im actually going to stick up for myself and stop putting him first. He cant pick up on any subtleties and hes never had friends as he says he doesnt understand how to. So blunt it is. Somehow I need to stop expecting him to realise what hes doing and to be nice.

I have autism, my dh has bipolar and adhd and our son (13) has autism (fairly severely, he’s at complex needs school). So we have a whole household of it. The one thing I will say is that whilst you are suffering and analysing everything, your dh is not. He is quite happy with the way things are. So in terms of worrying about your dc being like him you should try not to. You’re putting your own values and hopes for their future on to them when in reality their lives may be more similar to your dh but that doesn’t mean they’ve failed or will be unhappy - I hope that makes sense. For example, I don’t have any friends, don’t want or need any, I like my own space a lot and I think the reason dh and I work so well together is that we’re both as introverted and strange as each other. I was previously married and I found being in a “normal” relationship absolutely stifling.

What do you want to teach your children about relationships and what are they learning here?.

His diagnoses are no justification or excuse for how you have been treated. What you are describing is abuse not at all attributed to either ADHD or autism. Your ex h is emotionally shit but that could equally be due to his upbringing.

And your ex h is still living with you all!. Why on earth did you allow him to live there? That is a completely untenable situation and he should be gone now, not in March.

This is v interesting. I hadn't heard of Cassandra syndrome.

My exh has also been diagnosed with ADHD and suspected autism though as he got a private diagnosis, I don't think he pursued that. He still seems reluctant to accept autism.

Our son is autistic (preciously would have been called Asperger's).

I also believe my exh has NPD. He abused me in many ways (all but physical).

I took worry about my son. I just tell myself that exh did not grow up with any understanding of himself. His mother is a narcissist and he had an unstable childhood. My child has me. I've done my very best to provide a stable and loving home and to help him understand himself and others.

But it can still worry me. DS can be cold and selfish. That's how it comes across although he isn't doing it to upset anyone else.

I find it hard to navigate when I should be just letting it go and accepting his behaviour because he can't help it, and when I should be explaining that his behaviour isn't nice for others.

Who diagnosed your H?.

It sounds like you are trauma bonded to him due to how he has treated you over the years. He’s as happy as a clam still under your roof; it’s your kids and you who are suffering as a result. You’ll never fully recover from him as long as he lives there with you.

This doesn't sound like NPD to me, not even covert NPD. People with NPD want to be admired and liked and go to great lengths to get the 'supply' they crave to boost their ego. They are consummate liars, and gas light and manipulate. People are simply pawns to them, useful and so kept around or not useful and dropped.

I'm not sure being blunt with him is going to help OP, do be honest though and you need to be clear with him - but he can't help how he is so there's no point being nasty. It's not his fault that you went along with it and just thought it would change at some point. At the same time there will be reasons that you accepted how he was and went along with it - probably to do with your childhood - so blaming yourself isn't helpful either and won't change things. I understand that feeling of not being able to get that time back though as I've been through something similar (with someone who it turns out does tick all the boxes for NPD).

I think you just have to try and look back at the positive things in your life, there will have been more to your life than just your marriage. If you hadn't married you wouldn't have your lovely kids for example, and you might have married someone who turned out to be unfaithful or became an alcoholic, started taking drugs, developed mental health issues or even committed suicide - there are a lot of things that can go wrong over 20 years in a marriage.

Maybe learning more about ASD and ADHD would help with all the family? If you can understand why he has behaved the way he has it will help you to accept how he is and be more ok with it. Same with the kids, the more you understand the more you can support them and have appropriate expectations.

It's not unusual for autistic people to not say thank you or give compliments for example (google can explain more), he might not like being hugged/hugging or see the point in it and the things you've found cruel and heartless probably weren't from his autistic point of view. They were probably due to him being logical, literal, black and white thinking, an inability to put himself in someone else's shoes etc

I think this is a combination of things. I wouldn't just put it all down to adhd/autism.

It's always interesting that lots of us know women with autism/adhd who aren't nobheads. Who can navigate relationships and the world much better than some of the men we know with adhd/autism. That's not to say its easy for anyone but the expectations on women are far higher. So some of what you have seen with your ex is potentially just down to being raised as a man and being a nobhead.

I would keep your expectations open with your children but also know they are different to your ex. They are them. They are individual. They are being raised in a different world to your ex with different parents.

In my family we are slowly getting diagnoses likely all audhd. My husband used to be a nobhead then he changed because he wanted to. It was mostly irrelevant in many ways his neurodiversity. What was more relevant was being raised as a boy/man who has no expectations on him what so ever to have emotional intelligence/accountability/empathy. All those things that regardless of anything women are expected to know.
This is obviously individual to our own circumstances. It will be different for others. I just don't think it helps anyone to label behaviours under any one bracket. We are all so very unique and vary in our capabilites.

Be kind to yourself. Continue therapy. Grieve what you have lost and grant yourself forgiveness for not knowing what you didn't know.

Men with autism are still men. Primarily selfish and very blinkered when it comes to noticing the needs of others. Huge stereotype I know but generally true. They are less likely to mask their autism in order to fit in with others, in the way women often do. This is why when women with autism get to menopause they often reach burn out; unable to mask anymore and the oestrogen they had which helped prop up their “care about everyone else side” falls away. This is where I am now and I really feel it. It’s hard. I just don’t have the energy anymore to keep acting / masking / trying to fit in. Men tend to just side step this aspect of autism completely. This is why so many people see men with autism as being arseholes, and women less so. I think anyway.

Reading down the responses here, there seems to be an emphasis in downplaying the role of autism in your marriage breakdown.

Whilst I understand why this is an it's important for education, I can't help that feel that some of the responses come from a feeling of defensiveness, rather than truly empathising with the OP (I am myself most likely ADHD by the way).

I think what you need OP is be be understood and to be comforted. There are many women like you out there and it might be healing for you to be in a group with women like you.

There is an on-going thread on here on Mumsnet for such women -

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5447569-married-to-someone-with-aspergersasdnd-support-thread-17

One can feel anger and distress at the amount of time wasted on a bad marriage, or an unsuitable man. Be careful how much more time you waste on angry rumination.

Also, how much do you have going on in your life OP? How's work? Hobbies? Friends?

A friend of mine was diagnosed with autism and ADHD a few years ago. She is overtly an extremely kind generous person, but her diagnosis seems to have flicked a switch in her.

It’s as if it gave her permission to stop masking (I assume she was masking) and the consequences for her husband and son have been immense.

It’s a complicated story, but her DH has spent his life loving her and trying to support her - pre and post diagnosis - endless sacrifices, and now he’s left with a broken marriage and almost the full responsibility of caring for their autistic son while she carves a new relationship with someone who understands her (I.e. is also autistic).

Despite being an immensely kind person, her inability to see the way she destroys him with her choices and assumptions just blows all of our minds.

Seeing this, plus my own experience with my DH (suspected ADHD) plus other people, makes me feel a NT / ND relationship is a very hard road to travel.

I have another friend who is autistic and ADHD, and our relationship survives by me having VERY strong boundaries. Even so, her RSD means if I don’t reply to messages the same day, she immediately believes she’s done something wrong/I’m angry with her, etc. It’s such hard work. This is despite her self-awareness of herself. It would be so much easier to not be friends with these women.

My experience has been that there is very little room for the NT experiences. Impossible to say “Your intensity is suffocating”, or “Your RSD is draining and exhausting”, or “Your clutter EVERYWHERE is impossible to live with” because they can’t help it and it’s not their fault and they are struggling. But god, it’s hard to live with and, honestly, if I had my life again and the ability to recognise traits, I would have avoided a relationship with someone who was ND.

OP, I think you need to re-frame the expectation of some kind of closure -you are not likely to get anything like what you feel you need in terms of acknowledgement from him, so you need to centre your need for closure and completion on how you can reconcile the passing of the decades and the considerable energy invested in a way that feels healing to you.

A previous poster's reference to forgiving yourself is spot on, and the analogy of drinking poison another poster is very apt.

My stbx is most likely autistic; undiagnosed but more open to the possibility since our DC was diagnosed. He can see it would make sense of a lot of his life experiences: life-long mental health issues, periodically flaring OCD, social isolation, language and information processing issues, rigidity of thinking and a perennial feeling of being misunderstood. He is someone who has always 'gone his own way' irrespective of (and not infrequently in spite of) social expectation, sometimes with really uncomfortable consequences.

He too has done a lot of therapy (a specialist interest) and, when we met, was already proficient in couching our differences in 'therapy speak' (but crucially lacking in reciprocal perception): it had the effect of me thinking it was 'all me' for a long time. I've never heard of Cassandra Syndrome -it may be controversial as a PP suggests, but the fact that it reflects my experience and is a 'thing' is validating. I've always striven to hold on to the idea that we are both equally responsible for the mess we've found ourselves in, but CS at least addresses how disconcerting it is to try to 'do' relationship with a person who lacks the capacity to resonate with and respond to even the most basic emotional and perceptual differences.

I am now in a position where separation looks more manageable, but I am genuinely concerned about his capacity to manage to maintain a household in which he could effectively co-parent our DC. I don't want them to see him struggle to manage on his own, and to worry about him. This feels like a real obstacle to separation, so I understand why you have taken him in again temporarily, even though @AttilaTheMeerkat has a point.

Wishing you well with finding a place in which you can let the past be the past and move forward, feeling good about yours and your DC's future.

Absolutely this, partcularly your last paragraph.

I think the third reply nailed it. You did what you did at the time with the best intentions with the knowledge you had. My son is severly affected by his ASD. He was diagnosed at 3. Didnt talk at 7. There is no gifted or talented aspect to his autism. He will never be on a forum defending his very valid flavour of autism. No literate person gets to talk on behalf of his lived experience of autism.

But find some comfort in that he is genuinely one of the sweetest deeply caring loving people alive. He doesn't go around hugging strangers. But those he is genuinely close to he cares deeply about and says the most thoughtful things to. Not platitudes. We went past my dead parents house and he said to me "you must miss them terribly, we are all still here and love you and that's what Matters' he has the mental age of five at 14.

Also you can be a arsehole and ND. There's no mutual exclusivity. I'm sure lots of ND people are also shits like lots of NT people.

That's part of the human condition, Being a shit. It's not part of the ND.

Why does a formal diagnosis make you sad?

It means that it wasn't your fault. It wasn't anything wrong with you that made you 'undeserving' or 'unworthy' of a spontaneous hug or any encouragement or compliments.

It's not that he specifically reserves contempt for you or deliberately withheld physical affection or supportive words in order to hurt you. He didn't see that you were unhappy or in pain and decided that this was pleasing to him or decide consciously that what would really, really hurt you at that precise moment was for him to zone out or get distracted by something else.

Instead of somebody who took pleasure in screwing with your head and your feelings because it made him feel good and powerful, he's somebody who was unequipped to automatically be able, instinctively, to make you feel good.

It doesn't mean that earlier diagnosis would have turned him into somebody else. It doesn't mean that none of this would have happened - but it does mean that it wasn't you failing to be good enough.

I think this is wise. Stop prioritizing him. This is the path forward. In a way being nice to him, helping him, prioritizing him were all trauma responses (fawning) or a kind of bargaining/denial of the reality which is he is a terrible partner. When you stop trying to influence his behavior you will begin to accept the reality snd be able to move forward.

Thanks so much for this. I have looked up Cassandra syndrome and so much of it resonates with me. I totally feel unheard by friends and exh. No one can really know what its like living with someone with no emotional awareness without living it.