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22 weeks pregnant and autistic husband has left me

Lulu

I'm writing this as I am desperate for some insight and answers, although I know some of my questions are not able to be fully answered.

If possible, I would like opinions on if this is autistic behaviour, and if so, if there is likely to be any chance of saving our marriage.

I have been with my husband (32) for 4 years. In the beginning he was very eager to move in together, but seemed to struggle once we did. He used to insist on doing the cooking in the beginning, then as time went on he refused to cook at all and would even avoid eating anything but bread. He also stopped helping with any housework and also became very quiet in the mornings, often responding with "uh huh" to any attempt at conversation I made and becoming irritable whenever I pushed for anything more. He would make me a cup of tea every morning, kiss me on the forehead and leave for work an hour early so be could sit in the car and play on his phone for an hour before going in to work.

He has always made it very clear he has wanted children. We married a year and a half ago, only had 6 months where we were able to go out before the first lockdown hit, my husband was furloughed from his job and really seemed to struggle with this. At this point we were unaware of any links with autism.

He filled his days playing on computer games, some days only saying as much as "hi" to me in the morning, before spending a full day gaming and then going to bed, sometimes without saying goodnight. On other days he was determined to start our family and I fell pregnant in June but I was not met with the excitement from my husband that I expected which left me feeling confused. I then miscarried in late August. And my husbands reaction again was very limited, no emotion at all. When I questioned this I was met with rage, an issue that has always raised its head from time to time, although over time he has tried to control himself when this happend and I was hopeful that eventually the rage outbursts would stop altogether. He left after this and went to his parents, leaving me feeling broken. Eventually  he came back and agreed to go to counselling for issues we believed to be linked to trauma in his early 20s. 

The rage improved for a while and the gaming, he assured me was only because of lockdown because we were not able to go anywhere on a weekend. He did used to like going to the coast and doing things on a weekend before the lockdown. 

I then got pregnant again in December and the third lockdown began in January. By this point my husband was playing on games on his phone constantly, he old sit in the room with me but would constantly have his phone in his hands making adjustments to a strategy game he played with the people from work through the week and on a weekend would be on the came console all day both days. Again I was left feeling very lonely. 

By late January he had quit his counselling and the rage outbursts had started again, at this point what I was willing to put up with for me, I was no longer prepared to put up with for baby. I left the family home. He begged me not to leave him and promised to get help. Eventually  I returned home and he was trying to not go on the games for my sake but I could see he was behaving like an addict and he told me himself that he didn't even want to be on the game fur had a very dtrong urge to be regardless. I asked him to ask for help with he gaming and he refused to accept it was an addiction, the rage started again and I left again. 

He talked me in to coming home days later, he slept with me and then, straight away, began behaving very childlike telling me that he didn't see a future but that he loved me and didn't want to hurt me. He left with his father who believed that he really was not well and reassurred me that he didn't think it was over for us but that my husband just needed help.

It was during this time of separation that I started researching his behaviours, desperate for an answer. I came across a list of autism symptoms and sent them to my husband asking if he could relate. He jumped on it straight away and both him and his parents strongly believe that he is autistic.

We tried rekindling our relationship through him visiting me at home, and I could see he was making the effort to leave the phone in another room and the conversations were so much better. Unfortunately there have been a number of arguments, in recent weeks where he has labelled me controlling as I have asked him to cut down on the gaming for the sake of our family. He has stopped answering my texts and has been to the family home and taken all his things. His father has told me that my husband doesn't feel able to make a decision of whether he wants to be with me or not, but that I should move on and that maybe when baby is born we will be able to start rebuilding things then.

I'm finding moving very difficult having not been given any closure from my husband himself, I want to be with him, he does have his faults but I feel that as he is due to be assessed the same month I am due to give birth, the help could come too late. Please help me with any opinions or advice, I love this man and want to learn to work with him and his autism if that is what it is. Is there any chance he will come back to me and our family? Or should I just let go of all hope. 

Parents

  • 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.

Reply

  • 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.

Children
  • in reply to Peter

    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 reply to Peter

    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.