I'm with the wrong man, but I can't leave.

[detoxneedednow]

Hi everyone

I could have posted this is the relationship topic, but I wanted to post it here as i've got a 5 year old dd who possibly has mild asd/aspergers and thought mums on here might understand more, where i'm coming from.

Ok so I met dp 8 1/2 years ago and we got engaged very quickly, too quickly, about 2 months after meeting. At the time I thought I knew him, but looking back I don't think I really did. I'd just come out of a rather dark place and my confidence was starting to blossom when I met dp, nevertheless though, I still thought deep down if i'm being honest, that I couldn't do any better. I loved him very quickly, but I have to be honest I don't think I was ever in love with him. I hear of couples falling out of love all the time, but I feel so sad to think that at 27 i've never been in love.

I'll tell you a bit about of him. He's very hard working...............actually, I was going to list you all the positives about him first, but I am genuinely struggling. I'll start with the negatives. He can be incredibly inconsiderate, thoughtless, sometimes a little false, aggressive, rude, we have very different sense of humours, which is a big thing for me as when i'm around people who are more like me I get sad because I know it's not going to last. When I laugh, it's like a form of therapy and it reminds me of the person I am and want to be...................then I have to go back to reality and be grateful if me and dp actually have a laugh together. Academically, he struggles and I always help him with spelling and grammer etc, but the older I get, the less attractive I find this. It didn't use to bother me, as I liked the idea of helping him.

He can be a great daddy, i'm emphasising daddy because he enjoys the daddy stuff like playing with dd and rolling around on the floor. Going for walks just the two of them. He's not a great dad though. I have to remind him the simplist of things regarding dd. Even silly things like making her breakfast. He shouts at her a lot for silly things. He sometimes will say sorry and i've even seen him cry once when he shouted at her and saw that she was frightened. I know deep down that he's a good person and I know that he loves us more than anything in the world. He would work himself into the ground so we could have a nice life and is completely mortified recently as his business has completely dried up and we're having to borrow a lot of money.

The reason I don't feel I can leave is because I genuinely do love him, but more importantly I don't feel I can trust him to look after dd on his own for significant periods of time, such as for the weekend. He would make my life hell if we broke up and I don't think he'd keep things friendly even for the sake of dd. He can be ridiculously immature at times.

I'll stop now as I can see I could go on and on and on.

Please, some advice more than needed. I can't tell anyone in my life all of this. I've told best friends little bits now and then, but overall, this is a first.

Thanks for reading.

mumslife, do you mind if I ask, how does being on the spectrum affect you and your relationships? I know it's a personal question, but it would be useful to hear some of your experiences. Thanks for your advice btw.

"I do help him with certain things yes, but I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing".

What do you help him with?. The day to day running of his business for instance?.

So how did you respond to his "You're my soulmate but I'm not yours" comment?. I guess you did not say anything.

How would you define the power balance in the relationship; would you say it is more skewed in his favour?. I do not like the way he has talked to you and by turn your DD at all on occasion and to write that he has previously made you feel intimidated on occasion has concerned me as well.

Why settle for this when it is clearly not making (either of) you happy and content. Love should not be such hard work honestly. You're both resposnible for the current state of this relationship and there is also now a child so its not just about the two of you.

What are you both teaching your DD about relationships here?. Think long and hard about that.

Regardless of whether he is on the spectrum or not it is up to him to see someone and be clinically assessed. You need more support too. It does not matter how old he is: I know of many far older people who have been assessed. It will give you and he a definitive answer one way or another. Not knowing helps no-one; knowledge after all is power!!.

The wrong answer is for both of you to sit back and do nothing. This relationship as it is, is clearly not working ou. What you have tried to date has not worked.

Attila, you're right. What we've done so far hasn't worked and i'm desperate to make a change. I think I have always hated raised voices so when I say he's intimidated me, I think that's why. I'm not excusing his temper, but i'm saying i've never felt like he was going to physically hurt me or dd atall. I'mnot saying that he hasn't mentally. I too, have said some rather unkind things too him. Some of which I am very ashamed of. I am not perfect and i'm sure if he was to write a list about me it wouldn't be necessarily glowing. When he said that I was his soulmate, but he wasn't mine, I cried. Mainly because I knew he really meant it and because it left me in a completely hopeless position. I knew where he was coming from, so I couldn't just say no, equally, you are my soulmate, because that would be lying and it would be pointless.................a quick "fix". I told him that I loved him and always would, but this relationship needs to be balanced and it isn't. To which he said "I know, i'm pathetic". Like I said before, i'm not the easiest person in the world to live with. My paranoia dp particuarly finds hard to deal with, but he does try to help relieve that sometimes. The ways in which I help dp are I suppose mainly academically, socially sometimes and I do help him with his business. I do a lot of the networking and advertising. Of course love shouldn't be this hard work, but it is sometimes. Relationships are never easy and yes this one is particuarly hard, but if there is any way in which we can stay together and can all be happy then we will. Even knowing that I probably am not with the right person overall. I would make that sacrifice for my daughter, as long as it doesn't continue to affect her.

mumslife, it does help thanks. A lot of what you said definitely reminds me of dp. Did your dh know early on that you were on the spectrum? Does he himself have any similar issues?

Hi, I'm the daughter of an Aspergers man and his long suffering wife (my mum!). I'm NT and they are still together. They have a very dysfuncitonal relationship in lots of ways (how can it not be!) but they sort of make it work. Overall my dad has gained much more out of it than my mum because she is his passport to the 'real world'.

I think the posts on here about what you are teaching your daughter about relationships are alarmist. I am in a very happy and very conventional marriage and so are my siblings. So I don't think you need to worry about that.

I wonder if one of the reasons my mum stayed with my dad is because of the nightmare around custody and access? He really couldn't have done anything practical.

One purely selfish thing is that I'm glad mum stayed because if she hadn't the person caring for my dad currently would be me.

I have PM'ed you. Too personal to put on the interweb for the world and his wife to read.

But the bit I do want to put out there for discussion:

I think that there is one immense benefit to an NT/AS relationship where the couple both decide to find ways of making the relationship work, comfortably, for both of them. And this is that the couple model a functional NT/AS relationship to their children. This is likely to be of practical benefit to those children if any of them have AS characteristics. Or if they, as NT people, find themselves preferring as an adult to make a couple with an AS person. Since most girls from happy homes end up with someone like father, and most boys from happy homes end up with someone like their mother [or the other way round obviously, when the child is gay], it's going to be relatively likely that similar relationship dynamics will play out in the next generation.

I love knowing that I am modelling an exceptionally unorthodox, but functioning family lifestyle to my children.

Hi detox reading your posts makes,me think you need debt counselling more than couple counselling. My SIL and BIL came close to splitting up recently. The stress of hos biz going down the tube and mounting debts were horrendous for BIL who ended up on ads.
I suspect that if you could get your family finances on an even keel you and dp would both feel more relaxed and agreeable.