Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm married to this person for over a decade, he is autistic, he spend his time talking to himself instead of talking to me, we don't have children because he never wanted children, but I did, now that I am 41 years old I regret bitterly I listened to him and now we don't have children. I feel like is getting more and more distant towards me. We don't make love. He just want to go out with other people. When I try to have a conversation with him, he just keeps shouting at me and getting aggressive.
I feel like I am alone in this marriage. All I I do is crying, I don't care if my husband is autistic, I just want him to love me as much as I love him.
I've been in exactly this situation as the autistic person. I was helping completely burned out by the level of contact with my partner, caused by the pandemic and him having to work from home and not see other friends. When he had an active social and work life before the pandemic, we worked fine as I got the amount of alone time I needed, and we get on extremely well now he's moved out and we see each other 2-3 times a week. But while we were in this intense period of being together all the time I completely burned out and got to the point where I couldn't do it think about anything but eating and sleeping. Not being able to talk to myself freely was one of the hardest things as it makes me feel like I don't fully exist when I can't do that. It took me 6 months of alone time to get back to a higher level of functioning.
Your partner desperately needs space. You need companionship, but does it have to come from him? Can you focus on friends and hobbies for a while?