22 weeks pregnant and autistic husband has left me

Er planing money spending ahead of time can be. I personally hate going into debt if I can avoid it. So I plan big spends far ahead and put off big spending that can be safely put off till the last minuet. I don't want to be in a situation where say I couldn't pay the rent because bill X was paid earlier in the month etc. A lot of worst case scenario thinking goes on. This is why I have all my important monthly spending set up by direct debit to go about a week after pay day.

But if I'm aware of a big expense coming up, say an MOT the car may not pass. I tend to want to build in a money buffer so that the day before payday I have at least X money in the account.

Anyway I wouldn't encourage you to wait for him to open up. In my limited experience when it comes to talking about feelings there are two kinds of autistic people. My kind, the kind that dumps all of the deep and heavy feelings on people in one big unmanageable raw lump, and the second kind that needs to have the way they are feeling teased out of them because they find articulating it all just too hard or too scary. your husband sounds like the second kind.

  As much as I'm trying to give my husband the benefit of the doubt and be the all understanding wife, this has just made my day

Thanks for this Peter, yes this cycle is where I think we have fallen since the first lockdown and things have just got worse from there. 

I am willing to wait for him to open up and I am willing to reconsider my approach now I know what is potentially causing his behaviours. 

It's just a case of waiting it out now, I don't think he is planning on making a decision of what he wants before baby is born and that's 5 months away. 

Can i ask if spending money is an issue for people with autism? The idea of parting with any money seems to be accompanied by a begrudging attitude. Even when it comes to paying for things to prepare for baby. 

I doubt this is to do with autism. People think a tonne of characteristics that have piss all to do with autism are caused by it. I am autistic and I would never do that to my gf. Hes probably just a selfish *** by the sound of it. 

It's only logical he'd be more immersed in his escapism if he feels more under pressure living with you. And of course this is a vicious cycle the more you try to stop his escapism the more he feels the need to escape. It's like constantly nagging an anorexic person to eat more. It has the opposite effect. You need to sit down and have an honest talk with him about why he finds life with you so hard and be ready for hard answers. For example what if he says

• I think choosing to have a baby now was a mistake.
• I feel under pressure to be the provider but I can't.
• I am scared you'll go back to work after the baby and I'll be laid off, I don't think I can cope as a house husband.
• Having a baby seems to have changed you as a person, I miss the old you and worry I'm loosing the woman I married.

I don't know what's in his head but I'll wager what ever he says you'll find hard. And you can't just brush these things aside or adopt a 'that's life deal with it' attitude. If you want your marriage to work you'll need to work constructively to address these problems not just expect him to accept them as facts of life.

Hi Peter,

Yes this is very much the image of me that he had painted to his parents, that I'm the evil control freak trying to control his life. His parents make it harder by saying that he should be allowed to have his hobbies, which I fully agree he should, but while he has been staying with them he has not been  engaging in these hobbies to the same degree as he does at home. Which again makes it look like i'm being petty and controlling from their point of view because theyre seeing something very different to what I see on a daily basis. 

I don't know if he's not engaging in the gaming as much there because it is his safe zone. I'm confused by this if it is as his parents kicked him out of the house when his meltdowns become to much of an issue during a traumatic time of his life.

They blamed him for his behaviours and outbursts, and he had told me he just always thought he was a bad person. Now it's like because I tried to look deeper, to see what was really going on with his behaviours, to try and get him help and support, I'm now the villan as you say and his parents are becoming the hero's, finally accepting of him now they have an excuse for his behaviours. Behaviours they have previously cast him out and blamed him for in the past.

In fact the more I think about it from a certain point of view in the story of his life, within which he is the main protagonist, you've cast yourself as the villein. You're the one who is, from his point of view, always demanding he give up more control. You've given the impression that giving up progressively more and more control of his own life is the price for making this relationship work. You're controlling his space in the house, controlling his time, controlling the bedroom, and you have reasons for doing all these things but to him it all just seems like a constant one way loss of control. You need to find a way to flip that narrative. You need to have a conversation where you recast yourself from a setter of conditions and limits to a supporter. There needs to be mutual support in a relationship. You need to sit down together and instead of talking about sacrifices that have to be made talk about your dreams, the freedoms you aspire to, where are they the same, where are they different. You need to become each others allies in achieving these goals even if personally they don't make sense to you (or him). Instead of talking about sacrifices that must be made for necessities sake talk about the work you both have to put in to help each other get closer to the kind of life you want.

I'm going to take an intellectual pot shot at what might be going on. ... You said your husband suffered a traumatic event in his 20s? Common to traumatic events is a loss of control. Either of your self or your environment. Horrible things are done to you or you are forced to witness them done and you can't control it. This can lead to patterns of behaviour that include extreme escapism, a tendency to be a control freak and potentially angry outbursts when placed in a situation where you feel out of control.

So here is a hypothesis. Your husband has a traumatic experience and is left with these patterns in his life. He finds love, he finds you, possibly something he never thought would happen, and experiences a new found sense of freedom. But moving in with you involves giving up a lot of freedom and control. He is no longer the king of the castle and feels progressively more pressure to find avenues of escapism to placate his feeling of being trapped and out of control. Then he starts to feel like he's loosing control in the relationship, control of his temper and control of what ever mojo it was that attracted you to him in the first place.

You get pregnant and he can't control your pregnancy either, you miscarry and he can do nothing about it and just like all his other feelings of powerlessness he has no way to express it or deal with it other than escapism. Then he looses control of his career to boot and because of lockdown looses the freedom to do many of the things that make him feel normal, like he is in control.

That you have a baby and like most parents he probably didn't realise how much it would dominate your lives. He's lost even more control for probably at least 18 years worth. These collective losses of control constantly dig at his unresolved trauma and he is starting to feel like he is loosing control of himself. Maybe he worries he will hurt you because of that, maybe not physically but ruin your life in some way.

this is my hypothesis. If it is correct the question is how can your marriage become a place where he feels he can have more control over his life not less.

Hi Lulu,

Firstly, I am so sorry to hear you are going through such a difficult time. Your story resonates with me as I am a mum of a 2.5 year old and only realised after our baby's first birthday that a lot of the issues my husband and I are having are likely related to his undiagnosed aspergers.

I love my husband dearly, believe he loves me and i know without a shadow of a doubt that he loves our little one with all of his being. The intensity of the interactions that you describe with your husband is not to the level I have experienced in my family life but things have been very difficult at times.

Although my husband brings some wonderful qualities to the table I think it is fair to say our parenting and management of the household is not an even split and my husband needs to do his own thing in order to help regulate his senses which means things can fall on me quite a bit.

Plastic makes a very good point that we are conditioned to think along certain lines. My advice would be to think outside the box.

A baby is for a lot of people a seismic shift, whether they are on the spectrum or not. You might struggle with a traditional family model as this may cause a lot of stress for your husband but that does not mean that the only alternative is being a single parent and not being together. It sounds like he needs space to take the pressure off an I expect that as your baby is born and he/she is going through all the phases there will be a recurring need for your husband to create space for himself.

Although it would be hard not to have the support from a partner that you might ideally envision, in the long term it might benefit everyone to have more space so that your husband can come to you on his terms. This might mean that you will not have the situation you always dreamt of but it could also mean a bit more headspace for you as you adjust to being a mum. In any case, talk to people you trust so you can have a good support network around you as you become a parent.

I hope this is helpful and sending you lots of positive energy.

It's quite likely that one or both of his parents are ASD - he's probably got a very primitive 'human simulation' program running in his head because of that.   Anything other than smooth, calm, middle of the road is completely uncharted territory for him - he probably has no mechanism for dealing with conflict sensibly - it's 0-100 instantly.

In times of stress, we often say extremely hurtful things -  there's 10 million thoughts in our heads all shouting at once - a random one pops out of our mouth - almost like Tourette's - it's more designed for us to vent the strength of feelings rather than to hurt the recipient - but once you've heard it.......

Office jobs are usually HELL for us - it's all social politics and water-cooler chat and people playing status games - we're bad at that.      Being out and about in a varied environment suits us better - the people we meet are fleeting, professional meetings so we can put on a limited performance to get us through it.

We also get trapped into the typical 'normal' lifestyle of trying to beat the Jonses - we're better off in a slow & steady, low-risk environment where we have control of our surroundings - it's why you find so many aspies in niche services or specialist jobs.        Try thinking about a lifestyle for you all that meets all your needs - maybe a shepherd on an island or a furniture restorer or model train dealer - a life you ca all take part in to make him feel supported and part of a family-team rather than a forced bread-winner.

Plastic

His parents don't ever talk about their feelings, I'm not sure if either one or both of them may be autistic to varying degrees. Or even if my hubby has simply learned not to discuss feelings from them. If they are autistic they are undiagnosed. When I miscarried our first pregnancy, my hubby blamed me for it, telling me that I'd killed it and that he was glad it was gone, he insisted after he calmed down from his rage that he didn't mean those things and that anything will come out of his mouth just to try and hurt me more than he is hurting at the time. (Is this an autistic trait by the way? Before reading about autism I considered it to be a narcissistic trait). He escaped off to his parents and his mum sent me one text regarding the miscarriage, that is all I heard from them, I heard nothing from his dad.

His family have always said to me that he is a changed man for the better since meeting me, much calmer in his temperament and even offering hugs up to them when they depart ways, something he'd stopped doing during adolescence. 

His father has always worked away through the week and only been home at weekends. Because of this my hubby has always said he wants to be there for his child the way his dad never was. Although this seems to be, like you say, a nice idea but maybe something he may find impossible. 

When I firs met my hubby he was working away through the week but after a month and a half of meeting me he moved to an office based job so we could see more of eachother. 

He also wanted to move in with me very quickly, despite me telling him to not make such quick decisions as I didn't want him regretting them later. 

Thank you Plastic, again for your wonderful advice. You have given me such hope that this can work. I'm aware I have a lot to learn too and that it's not all on him. Now I need to learn how to communicate with him without sending him in to overload. 

It sounds like multiple problems.

We're programmed from an early age that we grow up, we get married, have kids etc. but for some of us, we can't handle the stress and chaos of the whole thing - but because it's normal - and we try so hard to be normal, we end up getting into things that take too much from us.

Stress - he's clearly suffering from extreme stress - and we don't usually have a normal mechanism to deal with it - we need time to defrag and reboot our brain computer - that's normally when we get home from work and need to sit quietly for a little while to switch into 'home mode'.    He seems to use the phone as his stimming / relaxing tool.

Emotional disconnection - he seems to be taking it all as very logical and it likely that he's doing his best at mimicking the emotional support he thinks you need - but for whatever reason, he's let it slide - that may because of overwhelming stress taking up all his brain time so the details and small stuff get missed.    If the stress is really bad, he'll retreat into his stim/relaxation tool (the phone) and essentially switch off from the outside world.

You are likely to not understand what going on in his head so you are getting frustrated - shouting, crying-  throwing all sorts of random emotions at him - it overloads and confuses him - it's all 'feelings' with no logic - he can't process that.

The baby - seemed like a good idea at the time but now the reality is overloading him - his mask allows him to juggle only so many balls - and a few more have been thrown at him he's losing the ability to perform.

This is an uncomfortable one - pros and cons are like a see-saw.    Is he starting to see you and whatever emotions you throw at him as too many cons and if you outweigh the pros, he'll cut off.    This is purely logic based.  

He wil have kept a laundry list of your faults - if everything is going well, they are put away in his brain - when things go wrong between you, the list comes out and you get scored.    You have bonus points on your side because his parents are together - that mean 'pairing'  is programmed as correct and normal - he'll want to maintain a relationship.

What do his parents say?     In a way, you need to 'reset' his stress and be able to speak to him in a very calm and logical way and get to the bottom of his stress (he may be in a totally hidden panic about providing for you and panicking about his own abilities to earn money.    How financially stable are you?    If things were bad, do you have a house to sell to move in with his parents temporarily?   

You need to get to the bottom of all his stress - and try to get across to him that you're there for him too - he's not on his own - and work through a ton of possibilities with him to try to find something workable - a plan where he can cope with the stress.

It's a lot of work for you to do this all without emotion - treat it like a plan for buying carpet - zero emotion - or he'll get confused because he'll feel as though he's not reading the situation properly - more stress.

Good luck with him.    If you can get him sorted out and his brain back in the game, he'll be fine - it's just we absolutely cannot deal with uncertainty - and today's world is 100% uncertainty so he'll need help to make sense of his situation.

Hi Michelle, 

Thank you for your insight.

At the moment my husband is living with his parents, ignoring my texts and is completely refusing to engage in confession regarding a decision of if he wants to be with me or not. Apparently he does still love me but had said he doesn't know if love is enough anymore.

After doing some reading I realised that this could be him shutting down. Although he is still going to work and engage in his hobbies. I don't know if this means anything.

Due to him leaving, I am in an extremely bad place, worried he will forget about me or stop missing me the longer he is away, but I don't know what to do for the best.

In your opinion, what is the best thing I can do right now? Do you think there is any chance of him coming home?

Thank you again for your input 

Hi, I'm Michelle. 

I struggled with adjusting to becoming a parent and I had no idea that I could be autistic at the time. I think this situation may get worse for your husband before it gets better. I don't think it is of any coincidence that this is escalating as you look more visibly pregnant. It is becoming more and more real, and no matter how much we may want something, a change is still a change and becoming a parent is a very intense unknown situation for us. You too as presumably a neurotypical person. 

Perhaps you are emphasising too much about what has to change for him to be a good parent I.e. not gaming as much, rather than looking at what can stay the same, which is a comfort for autistic people that often like sameness or routine. You'll both eventually adapt to the new routines of a new baby, but that takes time for everyone. 

I wouldn't  want to be a brand new parent ever again because it was one of the hardest adjustments of my life. That being said, I do love my children (I have two girls) and I try to show them love. Sometimes I'm rubbish at it and I'm too self-absorbed in my own interests, but I try to balance it out.