Published on 12, July, 2020
My husband is undiagnosed Aspergers. I believe he is also depressed although he won’t talk to anyone about it.
He was in a bad mood yesterday, the approach of winter is never good, & I could feel it brewing. He does have a temper but sometimes it escalates for days & everything is wrong. He blames everyone else for what is wrong, rants & I hate it. It always make me feel very low. I try not to get involved in arguments if I can & just pray for it to calm down.
He exploded at our daughter (11yrs) last night (not entirely without justification) & this morning it’s raining. We then discovered that he put his jacket in the wash bin without emptying his pockets & now his wallet is in the washing machine. That is enough to set him off ons downward spiral. I fully expect to get home & find him v drunk!
Does anyone else have a partner who exhibits similar behaviour?
Does he know he's aspie?
We tend to repeat behaviours because we think we're ok and doing fine and 'coping'. Have you said to him that his behaviour is just unacceptable?
As we get older, the coping mechanisms we created when we were young are not sophisticated enough to manage the changing world around us - we have difficulty accepting all the changes - and because 'we' haven't changed, it must be everyone else causing the problems. (we work on logic - but it can be flawed).
He might be approaching overload where the stress of trying to pretend to be normal is more than he can cope with - the stress of work, the stress of children etc. and the tiniest thing at home tips him over the edge.
What does he do to wind-down? Does he have hobbies to indulge in? Where is his mental escape (apart from inside a bottle)?
My daughter growing up was the trigger for my own diagnosis - I couldn't adapt fast enough as she grew up and was changing too rapidly for me to keep up. The diagnosis meant that I understood how I functioned and that I might get trapped in odd behaviours that seemed sensible at the time.
I have lots of hobbies that I can get lost in - and spending time doing something I can completely control removes the anxiety of the world that is out of control and causing me stress. It's why lots of us do solitary hobbies like video games, model trains, fishing etc. - it's all controllable.