My partner shows no affection towards me

Hi Rottie girl,

I'm so sorry to read this.  It rings many bells with me.  I can't really offer advice, but I'd like to tell you my own story if I may.

I'm a male Aspie who was only diagnosed 4 years ago, aged 56.  Up until then, I'd had all sorts of problems with social and intimate relationships.  I'd never really succeeded in making friends, and my relationships had been very few and far between.  First girlfriend at 23 (only 6 months), second at 31 (about the same), third at 38 (even shorter).  Then, just before I was 40, I met the girl of my dreams: my one and only.  It was pretty much love at first sight for both of us.  We hit it off in so many ways and had the same approach to life.  We were married inside a year and settled down.

By about year 3, something was definitely wrong - but I couldn't figure out what it was, and neither could she.  I was getting lots of depressions.  I was with a woman who meant the world to me, and whom it would break my heart to hurt or upset.  And yet I couldn't show it to her.  Our sexual relationship slowly petered out until, by year 4, it was non-existent.  I couldn't even bring myself to touch her.  And, I have to admit this... I simply no longer wanted her to be there. I wanted to live alone again - as I had up until we were married.  I knew she wanted children, and I'd promised them to her.  I even thought I wanted them myself.  But the pressure of that on top of me just feeling 'wrong' became too much in the end.  In our 5th year, my father died, which became the catalyst for a complete breakdown for me, and our eventual divorce.  I still loved her, and I still feel affection for her to this day - 14 years after I last saw her (she wanted no contact afterwards).  For a long time afterwards, it haunted me.  I couldn't figure any of it out.  My feelings made no sense to me.  It was total confusion in my head.

Now, with the benefit of both hindsight and my diagnosis, I can see things a little more clearly.  A great deal of it was to do with my sense of psychological displacement.  I couldn't fit in with a cohabitation situation.  I'm a person who needs a lot of space and time alone.  I thrive on that.  But even with my being in a separate room with the door closed, my knowing that she was in the house 'disturbed' me.  On top of that there were other things.  She had her own problems, too, as she acknowledged.  She didn't seem to enjoy sex, or to want it very much. She seemed to find that level of intimacy embarrassing.  That was certainly a factor.  She could also be quite reclusive.  And she would become moody and untalkative - long silences - if there was something on her mind.  I usually had to prise things out of her.  I often wonder, actually, if the problem for both of us was the situation we were in.  Whether we both needed that space.  I still, though, feel that I was the main 'problem'.  And I didn't have any way of explaining it.  I kept a diary during our final couple of years, and reading it now I can see the mental torment I was in.  I was breaking her heart and knew it, as much as I knew I loved her.  But I seemed powerless to do anything about it.  It was a horrible, horrible feeling  It drove me to despair.

Now... I'm not saying at all that the circumstances as they were for us are exactly the same as they are for you.  But I just wanted to offer a personal insight.  Have you tried talking to him about things?  It can be difficult to do this in a way that doesn't end up getting difficult and accusatory, I know.  But perhaps he's feeling that he wants to say things and doesn't know how - in case, for instance, you get the wrong idea.  My ex-wife and I tried relationship counselling, which was a useful thing to try because it enabled us to say everything that was on our minds and for a third party to offer an objective perspective.  But it was too late by that time, anyway.  I don't know how you  and he would feel about such a thing.

I wanted to end with a short quote from an article I read recently about experiencing social life the Aspie way.  I'll post the link to the article, too, because it's worth reading in full.  But this bit is quite revealing, I think.  It's from an interview with a couple who were having relationship counselling.  He was autistic, she wasn't:

One of the most striking themes emerging from the data was participants' awareness of their difference and the efforts they made to overcome it. This did not involve a desire not to be ‘aspie’ but a desire to learn to fit into mainstream society. While some participants enjoyed spending time with other people with AS there was little sense of collectively celebrating their difference.

Trying to fit in had emotional and spatial dimensions. Some people learned by watching other people and developing ‘tricks and ploys’ to facilitate their participation in social life. A few participants talked about forcing themselves to endure social situations they knew they would dislike, such as going to gigs or staying in the halls of residence at university, because they wanted to learn to overcome these difficulties and ease social interactions. A couple of participants described reading books about body language or self-help skills to learn how to interact ‘normally’. This process again was about learning a surface level of fitting in; it was not internalised or lived but learnt. A married participant, for example, talked about trying to develop his emotional communication to improve his relationship with his wife;

'The problem with emotional communication is in both directions or all directions. I can't read my wife's emotions, except on a very broad brush; happy, angry. I would have difficulty putting in the finesse of ways. And the same thing applies to my own. I don't communicate my own emotions usually because my emotions don't communicate themselves to my mind. I know I have got emotions but I don't explain them.' (Richard, aged 58)

He returned to this theme later in the interview and the following extract includes his wife's comments;

Sue: Yes, I mean on a number of occasions we tried various forms of counselling which hadn't really had any effect at all because the general aim of most sort of relationship counselling is to try to get both sides to appreciate the other person's point of view and that is something that Richard just couldn't do. He couldn't put himself into my shoes and see anything from my point of view.

Richard: I remember, the counsellor was saying, “You should take more account of your wife's feelings.” But even then I think I knew the problem was that I didn't know what her feelings were and that was why I wasn't taking account of them, so it wasn't helping. They were telling me to do something that I knew I wanted to do but I couldn't. (Richard, aged 58 and Sue, aged 56)

Again this extract highlights the way in which the participant knew what the problem was but did not have the appropriate symbolic capacity to resolve it. He was not able to put himself in the shoes of his partner to have some idea of how she felt. The foundation of most therapy/counseling logic is the question “tell me how you feel” and this question is often overwhelming and impossible to tackle for people with AS.

Here's the link to the full article.  I wish you well and hope you are able to come to a solution that works for you both.

'It's like you are just a spectator in this thing': experiencing social life the Aspie way

Best regards,

Tom

Hi Rottie girl,

I'm so sorry to read this.  It rings many bells with me.  I can't really offer advice, but I'd like to tell you my own story if I may.

I'm a male Aspie who was only diagnosed 4 years ago, aged 56.  Up until then, I'd had all sorts of problems with social and intimate relationships.  I'd never really succeeded in making friends, and my relationships had been very few and far between.  First girlfriend at 23 (only 6 months), second at 31 (about the same), third at 38 (even shorter).  Then, just before I was 40, I met the girl of my dreams: my one and only.  It was pretty much love at first sight for both of us.  We hit it off in so many ways and had the same approach to life.  We were married inside a year and settled down.

By about year 3, something was definitely wrong - but I couldn't figure out what it was, and neither could she.  I was getting lots of depressions.  I was with a woman who meant the world to me, and whom it would break my heart to hurt or upset.  And yet I couldn't show it to her.  Our sexual relationship slowly petered out until, by year 4, it was non-existent.  I couldn't even bring myself to touch her.  And, I have to admit this... I simply no longer wanted her to be there. I wanted to live alone again - as I had up until we were married.  I knew she wanted children, and I'd promised them to her.  I even thought I wanted them myself.  But the pressure of that on top of me just feeling 'wrong' became too much in the end.  In our 5th year, my father died, which became the catalyst for a complete breakdown for me, and our eventual divorce.  I still loved her, and I still feel affection for her to this day - 14 years after I last saw her (she wanted no contact afterwards).  For a long time afterwards, it haunted me.  I couldn't figure any of it out.  My feelings made no sense to me.  It was total confusion in my head.

Now, with the benefit of both hindsight and my diagnosis, I can see things a little more clearly.  A great deal of it was to do with my sense of psychological displacement.  I couldn't fit in with a cohabitation situation.  I'm a person who needs a lot of space and time alone.  I thrive on that.  But even with my being in a separate room with the door closed, my knowing that she was in the house 'disturbed' me.  On top of that there were other things.  She had her own problems, too, as she acknowledged.  She didn't seem to enjoy sex, or to want it very much. She seemed to find that level of intimacy embarrassing.  That was certainly a factor.  She could also be quite reclusive.  And she would become moody and untalkative - long silences - if there was something on her mind.  I usually had to prise things out of her.  I often wonder, actually, if the problem for both of us was the situation we were in.  Whether we both needed that space.  I still, though, feel that I was the main 'problem'.  And I didn't have any way of explaining it.  I kept a diary during our final couple of years, and reading it now I can see the mental torment I was in.  I was breaking her heart and knew it, as much as I knew I loved her.  But I seemed powerless to do anything about it.  It was a horrible, horrible feeling  It drove me to despair.

Now... I'm not saying at all that the circumstances as they were for us are exactly the same as they are for you.  But I just wanted to offer a personal insight.  Have you tried talking to him about things?  It can be difficult to do this in a way that doesn't end up getting difficult and accusatory, I know.  But perhaps he's feeling that he wants to say things and doesn't know how - in case, for instance, you get the wrong idea.  My ex-wife and I tried relationship counselling, which was a useful thing to try because it enabled us to say everything that was on our minds and for a third party to offer an objective perspective.  But it was too late by that time, anyway.  I don't know how you  and he would feel about such a thing.

I wanted to end with a short quote from an article I read recently about experiencing social life the Aspie way.  I'll post the link to the article, too, because it's worth reading in full.  But this bit is quite revealing, I think.  It's from an interview with a couple who were having relationship counselling.  He was autistic, she wasn't:

One of the most striking themes emerging from the data was participants' awareness of their difference and the efforts they made to overcome it. This did not involve a desire not to be ‘aspie’ but a desire to learn to fit into mainstream society. While some participants enjoyed spending time with other people with AS there was little sense of collectively celebrating their difference.

Trying to fit in had emotional and spatial dimensions. Some people learned by watching other people and developing ‘tricks and ploys’ to facilitate their participation in social life. A few participants talked about forcing themselves to endure social situations they knew they would dislike, such as going to gigs or staying in the halls of residence at university, because they wanted to learn to overcome these difficulties and ease social interactions. A couple of participants described reading books about body language or self-help skills to learn how to interact ‘normally’. This process again was about learning a surface level of fitting in; it was not internalised or lived but learnt. A married participant, for example, talked about trying to develop his emotional communication to improve his relationship with his wife;

'The problem with emotional communication is in both directions or all directions. I can't read my wife's emotions, except on a very broad brush; happy, angry. I would have difficulty putting in the finesse of ways. And the same thing applies to my own. I don't communicate my own emotions usually because my emotions don't communicate themselves to my mind. I know I have got emotions but I don't explain them.' (Richard, aged 58)

He returned to this theme later in the interview and the following extract includes his wife's comments;

Sue: Yes, I mean on a number of occasions we tried various forms of counselling which hadn't really had any effect at all because the general aim of most sort of relationship counselling is to try to get both sides to appreciate the other person's point of view and that is something that Richard just couldn't do. He couldn't put himself into my shoes and see anything from my point of view.

Richard: I remember, the counsellor was saying, “You should take more account of your wife's feelings.” But even then I think I knew the problem was that I didn't know what her feelings were and that was why I wasn't taking account of them, so it wasn't helping. They were telling me to do something that I knew I wanted to do but I couldn't. (Richard, aged 58 and Sue, aged 56)

Again this extract highlights the way in which the participant knew what the problem was but did not have the appropriate symbolic capacity to resolve it. He was not able to put himself in the shoes of his partner to have some idea of how she felt. The foundation of most therapy/counseling logic is the question “tell me how you feel” and this question is often overwhelming and impossible to tackle for people with AS.

Here's the link to the full article.  I wish you well and hope you are able to come to a solution that works for you both.

'It's like you are just a spectator in this thing': experiencing social life the Aspie way

Best regards,

Tom

Yes, thank you.  Helpful for me in a different way

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I have bi polar so i can relate to the needing of own space. My partner and i have an excellent talking relationship we are very open and honest with each other. He knows i need to be shown affection but he said he cant  as it makes him feel awkward. I dont make a big issue as i understand the reasons why but it isnt healthy for my well being. I am trying to be there for him but not getting much back is tiring. This is where the distance is setting in...how do we work together before it goes too far to get it back. I can relate to your experience.