Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi
My husband told me he was tested as a child and has Aspergers, he has never had any support or anything at all, and has never told anyone part from me now.
When he told me a lot of things fell into place for me. We have been struggling with arguments, angry outbursts, miscommunication and when arguments have escalated he has threatened our marriage and his life.
He will not move out of his rented one bedroom flat, even though I own a house. He wants me to sell my house and move into his flat, until we can find a suitable place together. I usually spend most of my time at his so my house is left empty. He makes me feel guilty about spending time apart from him, with family and friends. He says he feels lonely.
We had another massive argument which escalated quite badly a few weeks back so I left his flat and moved back to my house, I literally just don’t know what else to do, I just know that I can’t live like this. I told him that we need counselling and he now thinks I’m blaming him and Aspergers.
I would be very grateful if anyone could give me advice on how to save my marriage?
If he's lived on his own for years with the ability to control his environment in his own flat, he really won't want to let go. You are a departure to his known stability so it will take a lot for him to trust - especially as we're often diagnosed because we stick out from the group - and kids a nasty at school so trusting is incredibly difficult for us - you may find him subconsciously testing you to establish your limits and 'truth' level.
You cannot let yourself become his mother and let him rule your life.
I wouldn't sell your house - maybe think about renting it out if you're moving in together but hold on to your asset.
I would only suggest counselling if you can find someone who understands Asperger's - we don't react as expected.
BTW - are you familiar with masking? As we grow, we realise we don't fit so we create a fake persona that gets us past all the social interactions that we're forced to endure. Everyone's is different - some more sophisticated than others - it works great while we are encountering normal, known events. When we are in unknown territory, we are stuffed - we have no internal guide to know what to do so we improvise - and that when we look really stupid - and we can feel it - so as a diversion, we often appear angry or frustrated - we don't mean to - we just have no clue what to do. This is most embarrassing in close relationships where we can't hide from our partner.
Our mask works well for many years until life gets too complicated - but our inability to easily modify the mask makes relationships difficult - you need to understand what going on and how he's adapting his mask for you.
If he's hiding away from you in his flat, it might be because he's having difficulty adapting and he's getting physically exhausted by the effort - it's amazingly tiring to play the social game - especially if the person is knowingly poor at it.
To get over his lonely feelings, help him get involved in a hobby he likes (we usually secretly like childish things like Lego or models or planes & cars) so it can be a way of meeting others over a common interest. We hide these desires because we get bullied for being childish.
Try having a chat with him about how he feels about life - what he'd REALLY like to do.
Hi Plastic
Thank you for the informative response.
I think I have started to act as his mother and it is taking over my life. That’s why I have got to this point. No I am not aware of masking, I shall read into it.
He has made a couple of friends through football, however has managed to loose quite a few of them recently as he has fallen out with them.
You're welcome - more about counselling - we are poor at judging immediate situations and women are usually much better than men with conversional skills - so we will often feel as though we're under attack and unable to fight our corner - the output can be unpredictable - from anger outbursts to total silence and disconnection.
Also - We build little internal models of the people we interact with so we can predict what they will do and we can plan our conversations - but if those people don't react how we expect, we are thrown - in if this happens too much, we become unable to interact with them. If they lie often - even to save feelings - we lose trust and often stop interacting at all - it's the 'safe' option.
Football tends to be very 'normal' - his friends are probably NTs - he'll have more reliable acquaintances at somewhere more aspie - like a model club or in museums.
How self-aware of his Asperger's is he? If he has no support or other Aspie friends, he'll be all alone in his mind trying to figure out an increasingly complex world - without any external learning, he'll remain the same - getting more frustrated as life generally gets more complex as we get older.
We are really bad at guessing what's in someone else's mind and if we've finished an argument, we often expect the other person to be on the same page - and it doesn't work like that so we're often poor at measuring the temperature of the relationship. I'd suggest writing it all down for him so he can try to elaborate his model of you in his own mind without the argument raging.
With things like the paperwork, I'd start with something along the lines of: "I'm more than willing to fill the form in for you - however, I'm only human and I make mistakes - you have the option of doing it yourself, me doing it with your help or me doing it for you - but if I make any accidental errors, they're your problem for subbing out the job." It would let him know that him blowing up after the fact is unacceptable - he either wants help or he doesn't.
The additional problem is if he's already stressed up for whatever reason, say to 99%, then only a tiny thing will push him over 100% and that tiny thing gets the full blast of the other 99% frustration being vented in your direction - it's not fair on you but it's quite common - but it's not personal.
Unfortunately, most people will take it as personal and he may say some bad things while venting the other 99% stress.
I'm not excusing his behaviour, I'm just trying to give you pointers to what might be actually happening. I suspect that you could boil all of your problems down to his inability to handle stress properly. Depending on how well we mask and the environments we work in, we carry an awful lot of stress and often burn out in out 40s. It's why I suggest having a calm chat with him about life and the universe to see what kind of life he really wants. (for example, I'm a successful aspie engineer whose life got too complex and I became really ill - my plans of big detached house & BMW became unachievable so I've had to reset my sights somewhat lower - I just want to retire out to the peace & quiet of the countryside to have no stress.)
If he's trying hard to compete in the rat-race, he may be conning himself about his ability to cope so might need a reality check to re-evaluate his life and his behaviours.