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Autistic Female Partner, communication and work

Smiley Workingpoor

I'm a 22M with a female partner the same age. We've been together for five years this summer. There's been a lot of ups and downs, and we've both developed quite a lot since then. One consistent issue is communication. It's been a problem since early in our relationship, and something I've struggled with since long before that. It was really difficult for her to tell me about her diagnosis and it was rather fresh when we got together. She's made tremendous progress in finding ways to make life easier, which is equally important for her physical disabilities. I've been glad to help her and the growth alongside various tools developed has tremendously improved her quality of life. I've made gains in communications, especially in helping comfort when there's sensory overload or spiralling thoughts. This is largely due to a lot of wonderful resources such as this forum or related books and articles. Despite all this, there's still communication issues between us. Sometimes I even really hurt her feelings just by not focusing enough on my own body language. The truth is though that I'm really tired and in pain a lot. I've had serious tramua and work an average of 60 hours a week doing seriously physical labor at a construction materials plant. Frankly there's a lot of times when I have to focus on her well-being when I'm struggling quite a lot myself. And I'm glad to, I love her and want her to be having a good or at least not bad time. But when I do struggle it can really upset her, sometimes just by making her feel bad because she doesn't feel good enough to help. I don't know, this all seems really personal to post, but I guess I was just hoping you hear from other partners both typical and on the spectrum on what can help convey my desire to help though I'm struggling in a way that won't make her feel guilty for her own struggles. She just never seems to believe me and I hate seeing the way it makes her feel. Any help would be greatly appreciated

  • Me and my partner had similar struggles to your situation. He was working a laborious job, and he's tired and in pain, and then he comes home and has to worry about me, that he didn't have time for himself. I didn't understand his pain because I was consumed in my own trauma and behaviors and just didn't sort out my own life, and it hurt me to hear that he didn't care about me, but the reality was that he didn't even have much time to even take care of himself, and he really needed that.

    You need time to take care of yourself as well, you need some space to just relax and not stress out and worry about everything once in awhile, or feel like everything (her struggles and your struggles) are only resting on your shoulders. That's a lot of pressure and it can be overwhelming.

    I decided to deal with my own struggles and find ways to improve my own health and life circumstances, because it was clearly too overwhelming for my partner to try and figure out all that, and to try and take care of me without even having enough time to take care of himself. I didn't want most of our time together to be about struggling.

    I initially thought that other people could handle and manage more than I could (they seemed to do a lot of things on a daily basis that I just couldn't do and struggled with), and that my partner could handle everything on his own, but that's not true. I learned from watching something, that a lot of men had intense anxiety about being the sole provider and decision maker of the family and it was a lot on their shoulders, but they had to deal with it alone, and they might use a lot of maladaptive coping mechanisms (like drinking) to deal with the excessive stress, and I found that kind of depressing. There's not much help provided for this type of thing. So now I just try to handle as much on my own, so my partner can just worry a little less, and relax a little more.

  • in reply to aidie

    Thank you, Ive read some discussions but never felt the need to post until today, been a rather tough one. Everyone here seems really kind and considerate