Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello,
I’m hoping for some guidance as I try to understand more about my partner and his condition.
My partner has been told he’s autistic by professionals but has chosen not to seek any help. He’s a wonderful man and we have been together 3 years and have a child together. He struggles on a daily basis with his autism (has difficulty adjusting to new situations and changes in routine) and he has opened up very little to anyone that he has autism and therefore gets no support and along with that I have little support when things go wrong.
The difficulty I’m experiencing is his anger. Very trivial things will make him escalate very quickly to extreme anger which results in him raising his voice, swearing and hitting things (not me but objects). Along with this it often results in him shutting down and not talking to me for hours if not days and/or threatening to leave. At times he is threatening with ultimatums but he genuinely doesn’t seem to see that this is not acceptable behaviour and he often will only consider calming down if I apologise. Often this starts from very minor points like changing the plans of the day or a minor comment I barely even register myself.
I don’t want to sound like I’m criticising my partner as he is a wonderful and accomplished man when not behaving this way. The struggle is he has no bar on his anger, even when other people can hear or our children are home (we have two older children separately).
I’m trying hard to ignore some of the behaviour to prevent these mood swings but in that I’m losing a little of my own self which isn’t the solution. Does anyone else encounter this with their autistic partner and how do they deal with it? Are there any techniques anyone can suggest to diffuse the situation? The anger tends to come on so quickly that I get caught out and then he’s unable to talk through the situation. Any help would be appreciated as I want to support him and help out relationship,
thank you
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.
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
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
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.