Married to a man with autism

i am very similar to ur husband !  get some other friends to go on walks etc he wont mind.  once u have kids they will change him and u. As he grew up he may have had to constantly protect and advise his brother and he just hasnt stopped.

I think either you ask him to get a diagnosis with a view to getting more help with his behaviour OR ask him to attend marriage counseling so that u can communicate what you have just mentioned in your introduction.

Have you said to him " I think you are autistic yourself" I wish someone had said that to me :). Maybe he doesnt realise he is ,,,  an autistic sees the world completely differently 

does he have friends ? someone needs to say stop please its ok ... in my head  i worry about all types of stuff but with meditation ( where u watch ur thoughts ) i realised i can  reduce the negative thoughts then ignore them. 

U are so correct he needs help.

married to someone with autism. said:

He lives in constant fear that he is breaking rules, offending someone or letting people down, he thinks the worst is going to happen in every conceivable situation

I see myself here too. And the older I get, the more "life" there is that trails out indelibly behind me for my overactive mind to pick over and ask if I on every occasion did the right thing, and if I didn't could anything come back to bite me, and if it did how much could it hurt, and if I could do anything about it now should I, or should I cling to the true statement that 99.999% of the stuff we worry about never happens.........

This might not be strictly part of ASD but it is part of me and entangled in my ASD, and when I was diagnosed my clinician noted that I was describing how huge the effort is for me to stop my mind running this way and simply enjoy life. 

I know from my own experience that two things help; 1) Knowing that I have ASD and 2) Cognitive Behavioural Therapy but it has been a long journey and there has been no quick fix.

married to someone with autism. said:

A lovely walk in the country was spoilt recently. I enjoy admiring gardens and houses in the road we live in but he won’t even slow down to admire a beautiful tree or rose bush as he fears someone may think he’s a burglar sizing up the property if he stops. 

I can see myself here. I was diagnosed with ASD recently and can well imaging myself being reluctant to pause, or compromising by standing some distance away, for fear of an interaction with the owners. For me, the anxiety comes from fear of not being able to find the right words under pressure to explain why I was looking over someone's fence & hence sounding awkward and inarticulate plus displaying awkward body language.

As Plastic says, it's easy to be tempted to deploy the "no action = no stress" strategy. I see myself here too.

Also as Original Prankster says, this might not on its own indicate ASD, but neither would it rule it out. My own report mentions my "need for correctness" and I recognize this both in the way that I explain things and in my need to ensure that I always do the right thing (at least if there's a risk that I'll be seen doing it, which risks of course I overestimate wildly) because I'm terrified of being admonished.

The way to get him to act differently is to appeal to his sense of stress - like over a contractor - get him to try another one by saying that he can always blame you in front of the previous contractor if he feels the need to call him back by saying "the wife got this other bloke in but he turned out to be rubbish"  It gives him a plausible, foolproof solution to having to go back to the other guy,   This excuse/reason will probably never need to be used but it gives him comfort if it goes wrong.

The looking at gardens - bloke on his own is a potential burglar - bloke & his wife is a couple out for a walk.    It's all about finding solutions that allow him to put all his anxiety to bed.

If you can see the up-coming stresses, you'll soon be quite resourceful in providing guaranteed solutions that allow him to push risky actions into certainties or low-stress actions.

You might also find that his work environment is a bit too out of control so all of his pent-up anxiety means he's unable to accept any more risks at home.  He's reached his anxiety limit.

The need to do the right thing means he'll accept stress at work because the risk of not doing could result in him  losing his job, lifestyle, family etc.   Too much risk.

The main thing is you being able to talk to him about all this stress and come up with workable solutions that allow him to function better.

Thank you so much for replying.  I think you have hit the nail on the head with your theory that autistic symptoms are grown from an overblown sense of risk. That's exactly it! To give you one example, on Sunday we went for a walk into our local village. I love looking at houses as we pass them, commenting on lovely rose bushes or beautiful trees etc and will stop to point these out. My husband won't stop or even look in the direction of whatever it is I am talking about. He later said that someone will think he's a burglar sizing up the house if he looks or stops. This sort of behaviour happens all the time. He is very good at his job but won't push himself forward for promotion or more money as he may offend someone and get fired - consequently we are always broke. He will hold onto extremely bad workmen (an electrician comes to mind, whilst renovating a house) because he doesn't want to offend them and make them feel bad. Can you relate to any of these issues at all? I have tried talking to him about things but he just gets cross. Can you offer any advice on how I can lower his sense of risk and impending disaster? Thank you.

I'm a bloke in my 50s with aspergers.   I've done a lot of self-analysis since my diagnosis 10 years ago and I've formed a theory that most of the autistic symptoms are grown from an overblown sense of risk and an inability to deal with the unknowns involved.    This impacts upon every aspect of our lives..    Things where the outcome is predictable and simple are nice for us - low stress and nothing to worry about.   It's everything else that causes problems and as we get older, we're juggling so many different stresses that we can't cope.

Some really simple ways of reducing our internal stress is to stop doing things (no action = no risk) or take overblown, rigid control of things so they can't possibly go wrong.    That way, our risk-analysis (catastrophe planning) can drop down to a lower-stress mode.   Unfortunately, this impacts negatively on all those around us.

He needs to recognise this behaviour and what impact it's having on his loved ones and on himself - it's very easy to become a couch-potato / hermit to reduce all possible stress.

He has to understand that stress is nature's motivator - it powers all your basic needs like hunger and being cold - so he needs to re-think what he's doing and, if possible, embrace that stress and train himself to direct it in a more controlled way that helps the family rather than locking it down.

Are you able to talk to him about each of these fears in turn and come up with an agreed, cast-iron solution for them all?  

I agree. It must be awful to live with such fear everyday!

Thank you for your reply. I think though that catastrophising is quite a common trait for someone with autism. He also has a lot of more typical autistic traits - very black and white thinking and isolating himself from friends and family. I agree he does need support but he is very adamant that nothing is wrong. 

And for him to get some insight into his behaviour which sounds very distressing for him

That doesn't really sound entirely consistent with ASD... the catastrophising sounds more like OCD-type thinking, but it may be that it's ASD with a bunch of co-morbid anxiety/other conditions.

Realistically, this is probably not something you can deal with on your own - your husband probably needs support to be able to cope better himself, thus lessening the stress on you.