Hi everyone,
I hope you all are keeping safe and coping with this lock down period. Firstly, before I mention anything I want to say that if there is anything that I say that might not be correct i.e. wrong tone, wrong use of words/terms, please let me know. I am new to this and I am constantly still learning. I will not take any offence to it! I am in need of some perspective and advice on a situation I am going through.
I am a 25 years old male who is in a same-sex relationship with a high-functional autistic adult. We have been together so not so long, approaching 6 months. So far things have been amazing; he is someone that treats me very well, is super emotionally aware of my feelings and is very accepting of who I am. I see him not only as my partner but a good friend. We get along very well and I provide him as much care and support as he does; it is a harmonious relationship. I feel lucky that he showers me with so much affection.
However, due to the lock down period, we have been separated and haven't seen each other for a while so we communicate via social media and calls. I've not seen him for about 3 months now and I am starting to see us drift apart in terms of our communication. Yesterday I had called him to mention that I think lately our communication on social media has not been working and I would like us to explore different methods for us to spend more time together and communicate i.e. watching a movie together, playing games etc. He accepted it and it seemed fine, but shortly after he expressed a lot of unhappiness by text saying that he thought things were going so well, and it seems like our relationship is going to end.
I had attempted to reassure him that things are fine, I am still happy and that I wanted to bring to his attention that I felt we could improve on our communication, as it had resulted to us just sending one word texts due to not having anything to talk about. I felt like it was important to bring this to his attention as I felt like if it wasn't spoken about, we would drift apart and grow distant. Things got a bit heated and miscommunicated and he wanted some time apart to think about things.
I woke up to his message saying how he hasn't eaten properly, slept properly, he feels drained and his chest feels tight to the point where he feels like someone is stamping on top of it. He tells me that he feels that I wanted to change him as a Autistic man and that it isn't fixable. He feels misunderstood and wants to run away, and is not sure whether he wants to do this again because of how much it has physically hurt him. I apologized and tried to reassure him that I still care about him the same way, I don't see him any different and that I am not trying to change him as a person. I am just wanting to better our communication so in future, if we do come to a similar situation, we both have the tools to help us so things do not escalate to this extent.
I have asked him what I can do to help him or better the situation, and he says he does not know. He isn't sure what he wants right now and things were left off where I said I still see him the same way, I still want to be with him and I want us to get through this. I said that he needs to focus on getting better first because of the amount of hurt I have caused him. I am afraid that if things escalated again in the future in regards to something more serious, that I would end up hurting him much more over something that might be miscommunicated. I don't want to cause that pain to him to the point where hes not able to breath properly and take care of himself.
Can I please get a perspective of this situation and what I can do to help this? Is this behaviour something I should accept and tolerate?
I appreciate all comments.
Thank you. x