Anyone married to someone with PDA and managing everyday family life?

[Ittakeslonger]

Anyone on here married to someone with PDA? Just recently dawned on me, after 30 years of marriage, why my very affectionate, protective and loyal husband struggles with me asking him to do anything (to the extent I no longer ask him to do anything). Just wondering how others have coped with getting support for household chores, looking after children, planning holidays, getting things repaired in the house, getting rid of clutter etc etc. Mostly just would like to hear what it's like for others.

I’m with you there. Which is possibly also why I’m not still with my ex.

I imagine that they were treated as disobedient/willful and received a lot of violence as a result. Lots of children died and there is no way to tell if they had malnutrition through lack of available food, or through not eating what was there. There was also a lot less variety, so eating bread for every meal was less challenging.

And mine. I sometimes regret a lot of the choices I’ve made.

This would make a great episode of Horrible Histories

Really curious what I missed out on as never got to see the removed post!

Lol. It would.

Well it definitely causes difficulties but it's not to say he doesn't do anything. He will cook and shop quite happily when he chooses. The problem is communicating when there's something I've recognised needs doing . If there's a repair needed and I point it out, maybe just asking for advice.about what to do about it, he will go into melt down. I've learnt to call the repairman first and then ask if that was the right thing to do ( then he can choose if he'd rather fix it himself). However unless his mother is visiting ( when he rushes around) he cannot be asked to help with tidying or cleaning (although occasionally he will do some) and definitely not decluttering. I do the lion share of cleaning etc but he works very hard and will voluntarily do some stuff. He just can't be asked so I end up doing it. And he can't celebrate birthdays, too much expectation!

Interesting point! Maybe back in the past maybe occupations such as farming or fishing etc felt more autonomous. Maybe micromanagement is a modern invention?

Hope you find the right solution. I often think I should have left years ago, my life may have been so much easier, but life together has got a lot doable now the children are adults and I don't need the support I did.

Yeah, this.

So you have basically done everything for your kids growing up, either by yourself or after cajoling your h to help?

Meanwhile, he hasn’t bothered to chase an autism diagnosis or to wonder why he’s such a lazy, argumentative arse??

You’re either a saint or an idiot. How have you put up with so much?? What has seeing you do everything taught your kids? And how do you feel about your h now?

More like at work there are consequences while at home men feel entitled to just "relax" at the cost of their female partners. Unfortunately if you decide to have a family you need to find ways to cope. This is not "masking", this is finding ways that are necessary to function as an responsible adult. Yes it's exhausting and you can have a conversation about how to also create that safe space and you probably need to take care yourself alongside coping strategies. This is what women do all the time - women with autism, adhd, depression etc.
Men on other hand ger a free pass regardless of having or not having any conditions. Even neuroptypical men tend to be more selfish then women and society have much lower expectations of them.

I honestly don’t know how you put up with this. You must have the patience of a saint.

I am pretty saintly!

Agreed.

Not only are the women in these situations picking up all work at home that should be shared by their partner, but with the advent of increased diagnosis/awareness, they're also being pressured or guilted or persuaded into doing even more emotional labour: finding the right, magic set of words for their partner, of managing him.

Where's the personal responsibility here? Just because a man has a specific challenge, doesn't mean he gets to push that onto his partner. He has a responsibility to figure out how to meet her at least halfway, not her doing all the compromise and (conveniently) all the labour.

If your behaviour is identical to being a lazy, stroppy bastard, then the effect on the partner you supposedly love is the same, whatever the cause.

Presumably to get into the relationship and marriage in the first place, he masked somewhat. Why does he get to do the bait and switch, and stop masking once married and when the real domestic labour with children comes in?

Surely he has more responsibility to show his kids how to be a partner and how to be a parent, than going "oh well I have this condition, you just have to work round me, I'm not going to manage it."

Well, mine presumably has no idea that I now think he likely has PDA so he wasn’t blaming that or using it as an excuse. He just became impossible to co-operate with in the way I usually would with anyone else, once his anxiety got triggered. I wonder, if he’d had some strong anti anxiety meds at the time, if we’d still be getting along fine. In hindsight it seems to be the way anxiety affects him that makes him become impossible to deal with. Appreciate I’m not a dr or expert of any kind, other than having known him, and also known lots of normal people that behave reasonably for comparison!

But if you're diagnosing him, and he doesn't know or agree or doesn't want to do anything about it, I'm not sure how it helps.

You could be wrong and he behaved like a lazy stroppy bastard because he is in fact a lazy stroppy bastard.

Or you could be right and have twisted yourself into a pretzel and worked really really hard to manage him and still got the lazy stroppy bastard behaviour. He needed meds? Would he have agreed? Would he have taken them regularly? Would it just end up yet another thing you had to run round trying to figure out how to get him to do, what magic words you needed?

You can't "fix" or manage someone who isn't actively trying themselves.

PDA is primarily an anxiety disorder. Like all anxiety t manifests at different levels in different environments and situations and some days will be worse than others s especially when the individual is disregulated. Past trauma or stress will make certain areas of someone’s life more more pressured than others. The demand can be external such as a partner asking them to do something or internal such as noticing a chore but feeling overwhelmed. combined with poor executive functioning it can be crippling.

This does not mean an adult with PDA is not responsible for working through their own problems and being accountable.

Declarative language is supposedly the key such as “gosh it’s nearly dinner” rather than “can you please make dinner”. However as the triggers, personal capacity and emotions are individual around each task I don’t think it is a one size fits all.

This. With bells on. And I agree, such a dynamic is a poor role model for the children, whether they themselves are ND or not.
But no doubt such views are considered ableist by some.

I massively agree with what @category12and others have been saying. My possible PDA DH I have described on this thread got the riot act read to him on Good Friday and basically told I am about to leave.

In a strange situation now.
He’s spent the last week (on holiday from work) doing house jobs full time and got loads done. Loads of things I listed as massively overdue and a couple of other things he decided to do himself. Genuinely quite impressive.

I guess this means he can do it when he wants to? Or only when in extreme danger of being left?? Or it’s a burst of activity and will slide back to normal inertia Probably the latter.

Edited to clarify

Also, reading up more about PDA I think it doesn’t apply to my DH as he is very committed to playing a musical instrument and goes out two nights a week to rehearse or perform. Sometimes three. Also practices his music most days at home. From what I’ve read about PDA it would disrupt that as well but he never avoids or drops out of anything musical.

Yes I agree pretty much. But it is useful to have some insight as I have to coparent/parallel parent with him still. So knowing what language to use and trying to avoid escalating his anxiety unnecessarily and being occasionally able to feel some compassion is helpful.

He's doing things to keep you from leaving. Probably figures if he does a few things for a little while, you'll be impressed and decide to
stay. He's calculating that life is easier with you there, and so he can do this for a month or two, until you let go of how fed up you were. That's my guess, anyway.

Demand avoidance is a thing, and quite common in the general population -it doesn't necessarily have to sit within a diagnosis of autism.

Pathological demand avoidance, as part of an autistic profile, is on another level; it's debilitating and fucks people's lives up. I think that PDA is one aspect of the autistic profile that is almost impossible to mask, unlike many other autistic traits. A family member has PDA and it impacts everything, all day and every day, hurts those around them and not least themselves, prevents them from doing even the things they love and ought to be able to look forward to. The anxiety is crippling and interacting and communicating can be like this weird inverted, topsy-turvy game of trying to make something happen without seeming to make it so.

Recently, I've come across PDA referenced glibly in similar ways to the way some might appropriate OCD to explain quirky preferences or reluctance: "That pile of dishes? Nah, the old PDA is strong this morning..." It makes me so mad.

Same, but really if people actually knew how horrible these things are to live with, they would never joke about them!
Bless their innocence is what I think because I know.