Guidance needed for relationship with autistic partner

He’s reflective. As far as I know he has yet to have one moment of realisation but after these episodes we talk about what’s happened and he often finds it easier to disassociate by using other people and third parties in the same situation rather than us to discuss what’s happened and the outcome. I can’t pretend I don’t find this hard as I’m just wired differently and I find you lose the impact of what’s happened but I’m trying to understand and make it easier for him. It’s just hard when you’re in the moment and there’s no reasoning. I do appreciate your help 

I’m glad to hear that you have a great net of support and it does sound like having a twin is a good leveller! Thank you for you guidance, there’s definitely a lot for me to think about 

I can only offer a view from the perspective of someone raised by a father with ASD. I think there is very little you can do to alter your situation in terms of his behaviour. He won’t see things from your perspective or even your children’s perspective. However, I can tell you that your children will be affected emotionally and that may be hard to hear. I have a very strained relationship with my father and his behaviour has often left me feeling hurt and upset over the years - perhaps even resentful. Intellectually I can rationalise his behaviour; emotionally it still hurts. So, after years of making allowances, I now allow myself the space to grieve the relationship I wish we had and keep my distance out of self-preservation and for my own mental health. I think the breaking point for me was seeing my son upset by his grandad’s behaviour and realising this was how I had felt growing up too. 

Hi

While I've managed to get through life and cope, over the last 10 years I've got busier with work, the family got bigger and took a couple of responsibilities outside of family and work, all of this contributed to make me worse, no time to wind down and even when I did, often I'd spend the time dwelling on unresolved issues. Lots of meltdowns. It came to a head while I was going through diagnosis. with an ultimatum from my wife: "If it wasn't for the pandemic I'd suggest you go back to your mum and dads". I'd took my eye completely off the ball and let things get so bad with meltdowns at home. It left me feeling very depressed but ultimately I knew I had to do something about it if I wanted to remain with my wife and children.

Alright, I know that your partners situation is not mine but like some of the other fine people here have said, your partner needs to have the revelation that it is in his power to make it work.

I've heard that ASD being likened to special abilities: "What's your super power?", well Peter Parker says "with great power comes great responsibility" If that's good enough for spider man, it's good enough for me.. I don't know where your partner sits on the spectrum but if he has a job and has been and is in a relationship I feel that he has the ability to be more self aware of his traits and be made aware of the potential damage his meltdowns cause to you and the rest of his family and make adjustments.. It obviously hurts but you care enough to come here to ask for help.

As to your own self worth: You deserve to be happy too, don't ever forget it.

I wonder why it is he seems so reluctant to discuss his diagnosis? Have you asked him why this might be?

My father is certainly on the spectrum and suffers from very high anxiety that he has kept well-hidden for most of his life.  He is 80 now and only just beginning to open up about how he struggles sometimes and has done all his life.  He can still be quite defensive if the subject isn't raised with a great deal of tact and sensitivity.  I think, for him, he sees his differences as something of a failure when, as a man, he feels he should be 'strong' enough to cope.  Obviously, this is not a view I share at all - he is an extraordinary and wonderful man who is very well loved and is a fantastic father and husband.  He was never angry as you describe but could be very controlling in regards to the life of him and my mother and kept her out of many of the decisions he made.  

I think it is much harder for men to admit vulnerability often as boys are socialised from such a young age to never give voice to vulnerability.  I worked with children and young people with SEN for ten years; it was noticeable between the ages of 12 and 14 how boys were pressured into no longer showing any emotion other than anger.  Many of the boys I worked with who had 'anger management issues' were in fact extremely anxious and presenting that anxiety in a way that they felt was most socially acceptable.  

That's not to say that I don't still believe your partner has a duty to seek help - I do.  Whilst his needs of course matter, yours and that of your children are not secondary to his. Whilst his anger is not directed at them, I'm certain it will be having an impact on them.  As someone who grew up with an adult who had similar issues with their anger (my mother - very shouty), I can assure you that it had a long-lasting impact on me.  

Plastic said:

He needs to have an epiphany moment where he realises that his responses to simple things are different to the other 90% of the world and he needs to learn about the way his brain works.

This really resonates Plastic and I think is very true.  I still sometimes forget that when I experience discomfort, it is not that the person causing me discomfort is doing so intentionally even though I feel I have a very good understanding of my brain and how autism affects me. The other day, our neighbours across the road were having a get together in the garden and the noise was driving me absolutely spare and I was getting very angry.  I felt, in the moment, that they were being very inconsiderate and very nearly went round there to say so (my partner's reaction suggested this was a bad idea).  When I had calmed down I realised that they of course had no idea that I would be sensitive to the noise and were just going about living their neurotypical lives with no intention at all to upset me.  I'm sure for individuals that perhaps have not come to terms with their diagnosis or sought to understand the implication of it, these sorts of misunderstandings must happen all the time. 

NAS68016 said:

I am very frustrated by this as he is blind to the support I do give him and because he won’t get help he’s very much on the path of a like it or lump it attitude.

He's not understanding himself - his mask is too rigid - he relies on it so much that he can't see any other way of thinking as it has served him so well all these years.       He needs to have an epiphany moment where he realises that his responses to simple things are different to the other 90% of the world and he needs to learn about the way his brain works.    Then he can move forward with working out strategies for his well-being - and yours.

You're welcome.

Support - very little - adults are normally just diagnosed and left to it - it's a postcode lottery.      I finally have a social worker who has a good understanding of our problems so she can help when I need it.        

I'm fortunate that I'm older and have lived a very difficult life so I've had the variety of experiences to be able to measure and analyse myself - so I understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it - but I also realise that most of my responses to life are hard-wired so even though I know what will happen, I can't always stop the automatic response.

I'm a twin so I had a 'working model' to compare myself to all through childhood - I think that helped a lot.

It’s so interesting (and reassuring) reading your replies and I can see so much of my partner. I have to do all of our calls and interactions and I am often be told that I’m playing games when I am trying to wind him up when I hand on heart had no idea I’d even upset him. It helps to get this kind of perspective when it’s told to me without emotion as I only get to hear about these feelings when he’s at peak level. Thank you so much for giving me some insight, I am trying to put myself in his shoes although I know I’ll never really understand 

i have a question for you, do you or have you had any external support for your autism? 

It will be hard for you to imagine the levels of stress and anxiety - the mask makes it look like we're fine - but in reality, every single tiny thing that is not resolved 100% is driving us nuts - every single personal interaction where the outcome was not satisfactory rattles around and around in our minds trying to figure out what was really meant or what trick was being played - and every single unplanned change means there's a cascade effect as all the rest of our day's routine is blown out of sequence.  

This all sounds petty and stupid - but it's unbelievably stressful to be in our world so the more routine and predictable things take on a high value because they are brain-soothing.      Video games & train-sets are our own little world where nothing goes wrong.  

People are risky - totally unpredictable - so we often avoid them if we can.

Anything you can do to let him know you understand he's stressed and anything you can do to help him push the stress aside or mitigate the stress really helps.      

For example, my wife does all my phone calls - she's good at wrangling people and takes no crap, whereas I'm poor at working out people's true intentions - it takes a HUGE load off me for very little effort on her part.

Hi, thank you so much for your reply as you’ve given me a different perspective. I’m really hoping I can get him to co operate reading these replies to see that we both need to approach things differently and your comment about wanting to get help is something I do think is a good perspective.

I agree regarding the children and it’s difficult to convey to them when he won’t discuss his condition. I’m worried they will either a) think this behaviour is acceptable (none of our children are autistic) or b) resent how he behaves towards me. To be clear he has never shown anger towards or purposefully in front of the children, but inevitably they can hear him and what’s said sometimes. 

I do feel that we are bearing the brunt of his anxiety. He is reluctant  to open up as he believes it ends up an argument and that I don’t support him. I am very frustrated by this as he is blind to the support I do give him and because he won’t get help he’s very much on the path of a like it or lump it attitude. Hopefully I can encourage him to be as brave as you as I know this will be an ongoing journey, for me too as clearly I need to change my behaviour to help him x

Hi there!

I would look into the low arousal approach - it a geared towards children but is certainly applicable to supporting autistic adults in meltdown too.

How do the children in the household feel to witness his anger?  Whilst you are an adult who can choose to be around that behaviour, children do not get such a choice and the impact on them also needs to be considered I feel.

I am concerned about his unwillingness to calm down until you have apologised and his refusal to accept help.  Ultimately, his autism should be preclude him from understanding the impact his rage has on you and the children.  In my view, he has a duty to seek help to better manage his difficulties so that you and your collective children do not bear the brunt of his meltdowns. I am female and autistic and I certainly would not expect my neurotypical partner to tolerate that sort of behaviour indefinitely whilst I refused any help offered.  There have certainly been times when I have been less that ideal as a partner as a result of the anxiety I experience linked to my autism; one of the primary motivations for addressing my anxiety was out of love for my partner  and not wanting him to have to live with the impacts of that indefinitely.  He would never leave me I feel, no matter what I did or how unwell I was, but I love him and so want to make sure our life together is as happy as it can be. 

Thank you, it really does help to try and understand what you are going through.

We only seem to talk about my partner’s autism when things aren’t going well and then he often feels it’s being used against him, and to be honest sometimes it feels like it’s a justification for some behaviour. I did laugh about your last comment as I’ll be completely honest it’s crossed my mind. If I didn’t know he was autistic I would have to question whether I’d accept the behaviour as I wouldn’t accept anyone else speaking to me like this.

I hate that he must feel so stressed all the time and it manifests in the way he then acts. I just want to help him and help our family and relationship. I really value your comments 

Hi J,

thank you for your reply, it’s good to hear that people make this work. Have you been together long? I’m interested to see how people make this work long term? 

To reply to a couple of your points, I apologise for using the word trivial as I understand the thing said or done may not be trivial to my partner, it would of been better for me to explain that I don’t always realise something said will trigger him, although it’s fair to say sometimes I just don’t think and say something which can affect him like making changes and I need to work on that.

It can be hard sometimes when things change which they inevitably do a lot when you have children. Regarding losing myself, it wasn’t self worth it was more my ability to communicate. I do find it difficult that sometimes I can’t retaliate or offer an opinion because of the consequences. I guess you have to pick what you value more, and overall I want to be with him and be happy together. I guess part of it is because he has a lack of anger control and the alternative is to pretty much let him do what he needs to I do wonder if it will affect my children’s view of behaviour. For example I know my partner doesn’t mean to raise his voice at me and I ignore it on the whole, but if he wasn’t autistic I wouldn’t accept someone speaking to me like this. He doesn’t like to discuss his condition in front of the children and I therefore wonder if they consider this a healthy way to speak to a partner, if that makes sense? 

I guess I’m looking to just put it out there and see what I can do to make it work for us and our family. It’s always going to be a challenge whilst he doesn’t want help. I understand it may be perceived that I don’t want to be with him, but I love him dearly and the majority of the time (like with everyone) we have a wonderful relationship and I want to spend my life with him, I just need some reassurance and help to get through the dark time as it’s only ever one extreme or the other 

This is pretty much my standard answer to these - it seems most high-functioning aspie/autie blokes will end up in this situation eventually.

We mask - we learn at an early age that we don't fit in so we create a persona that allows us to hide in plain sight - it's a universal 'get me through the social day' mask that means we get bullied less.     It's INCREDIBLY tiring to keep up.

Unfortunately, the mask operates with very simple, rigid rules - like a truth table - if this happens, do this - or if that happens, do that.   

As we get older, our lives get infinitely more complicated and instead of single problems, we have multiple parallel social issues that cannot be solved by this logic - and we have less physical energy to sustain the mask - so we get overloaded internally by the programme getting confused and jammed up.    We get VERY VERY stressed by it all - the social game gets too complicated so we spend all day and all night trying to make sense of it.

Unfortunately, this keeps us at 99% stressed and we lack the ability to healthily defuse all this stress.    Time would fix it naturally, but instead, we're forced to go to work again the next day for another bellyful.     It gets to the point where we don't know what to do - many burn out completely.

Unfortunately - you, as the 'safe person' in our lives will unwittingly say something very minor - but because we're at 99% stress already, you become the focus of all of that 100% stress venting in one go - like popping a cork - a big argument, lots of shouting, nasty things said, things damaged etc.   

None of it is really meant - it's just uncontrollable venting to get rid of the pain in our brains.

Unfortunately - it leaves a really bad atmosphere afterwards - you're hurt and annoyed, he's embarrassed and sorry - but unable to to dig his way out of it - the mask doesn't help us in this situation - there will be no 'back down' mode as it was never needed when we were young.

Fortunately, we are often able to compartmentalise - if something that we like to do comes along, we are able to push all that stress to the side and concentrate on the nice thing in front of us - like a trip to a nerdy museum or interesting hobby - where we can redirect our brain onto a technical challenge - that is your opportunity to chat to us about stuff - we are in 'low stress' mode.     

It's where you can talk about hypothetical stuff like the way you would prefer things - and how can you know when he's stressed and by how much - would a flash card system help?     Red, amber green - to let you know how the day has been,       Green = a nice day - lets go out to dinner etc,.      Amber - feeling agitated - need to decompress!       Red = leave me alone - I'm so stressed I'm going to explode - my brain is melting!     Probably best not to load him up at all in Red mode but just make him a cup of tea and let him watch tv until it dissipates itself - and you do your own thing/hobby etc. until he can sort himself out.

Also - people tend to leave many things unsaid and unclear - and as we get older, different things begin to play on our minds - mortgages, savings, pensions, retirement etc. so letting him know that you're on the same page as him and he's not having to solve all of life's problems on his own helps a lot.    The more you can talk and agree about what you're actually doing and the reasons for doing it, the more that can be put to bed in our minds and then we have more processing time left to do nice things..

There is of course a disclaimer - he could just be an unreasonable A-hole. 

hello,

it shows you care about your partner to come and seek support off your own back.

have you suggested he seek support? Does he just deny the help? He will probably find it hard to trust or let anyone in.

First thing I noticed was the use of the word trivial, this is the first thing I would suggest you may want to change. The situation or the words may be trivial to you, but they’re clearly not trivial to him. For the standard person, a change of plan is fine , but to someone with autism they will feel lied to and even with a good reason, still struggle.  I try to avoid it with my partner, if I do change plans, I give plenty of notice and reassure him it will be fine. I always find apologising for they way they feel and a cuddle can help, but you will need to catch him before he goes to far down the rabbit hole. 

you mentioned a comment can set him off, if you know the comments that set him off, avoid them, i know the exact routine of anger and then periods of silence, but I imagine you argue back? He will see that and understand that he is just getting anger back, which will make him more angry and betrayed. 
im not saying never have an opinion or don’t argue, but I’m saying if the start point of this was something “trivial” be the better person and apologise for making him feel that way, you can still voice your opinion on what you meant, but if you fight fire with fire it will only end one way.

i have experience shouting and throwing of stuff, leave him alone and don’t antagonise him, he will calm down.

 I don’t know what you mean by losing your self worth? You are his partner and this is about him and your relationship, support him and it sounds like you guys are happy when it’s going good? Strive to keep it that way. 

It sounds like you two have a lovely relationship with your children most of the time, so please think of the good and things will work out.

ulitmatley my advice is to read up and do your best to support him, stand up for truly important things you believe in, but if there is a trivial or a random word that sets him off or a subject you know that will make him angry, just change the subject or be a supportive partner and apologise and quickly move on.

J