NT Wife of five years told me there is no emotional connection and may leave me if things don't change..

So just a little background of myself and my wife, I was diagnosed when I was 30 years old that I had asperger's syndrome. I had no idea and I had went to the school psychologist (yes, I was getting my teaching degree at the time) for unrelated reasons but when he explained it to me, things in life started making sense. Fast forward 6 years when I met my wife on match.com. The moment we met, everything just made sense. The first date she came to my apt where we talked and made out, the next day she came back over and basically never left. I proposed a month later and we got married 5 months later.

In the beginning, all was well. We kissed a lot, we had a lot of sex, we did stuff together, but as time went on all these things started to fade. One of the causes of this is we are both gamers and once the pandemic hit, we both worked from home and we had our offices set up in different rooms. These offices also included our gaming set ups and we would essentially spend all day in separate rooms. Like, after work I would cook us dinner and bring it to her and we'd eat in our offices and hang out in them till bed time. Of course, this would be a big factor as to why our connection has diminished, but I don't think it's the only factor.

I grew up in a family that was very affectionate. As a result, despite the stereotype of people on the spectrum not liking touch or kissing or whatever, for me that is my "love language". For her, it's words of affirmation; unfortunately, this is the part that I really suck at and it's the biggest reason she has felt the connection has been lost. Every day I hug and kiss her multiple times and she gets annoyed by it. We tell each other we love each other, but of course that isn't enough for her. I tell her she's beautiful and she's the best thing in my life, but it's not enough. When I try to get intimate with her or try to hold her in bed it's a constant no and of course this makes me feel rejected and crappy.

To give you an idea of how sucky I am with the emotional support, I'll tell you a quick story. One of the problems in our marriage for the longest time is my wife couldn't control her spending. We were renting a house and we were going to buy it, but whenever we would start saving up money, she would spend it - this led to arguments, but we got passed them and about 2 months ago the person who was going to sell us the house said we ran out of time. While we were conversing with the homeowner, despite me really wanting the house I basically moved on about it and started thinking about our next move. She on the other hand started crying and when got into the car to go home, while crying she asked me what was on my mind to which I said, "Well, it looks like we'll have to get rid of the dogs if we are going to rent another place." This basically set her off because instead of consoling her, I talked about getting rid of the dogs (we can't have kids and these are like her children) and she just couldn't stand the fact that I was void of empathy... I mean, she did ask what was on my mind and I told her

Anyway, we got through that with a good talk and things were going well. 

This next part may seem out of nowhere, but it leads to the bombshell of the post title. We had figured the reason she was never into sex or anything related to it was because her hormones were out of whack. This is something we figured for about a year or so and she had recently seen a new doctor that had tests done and she had discussed the results of the tests the other day. The doc told her that everything was in working order and it would have nothing to do with her sex drive. Once she learned that it wasn't the case, she then had an epiphany that the reason she has no sex drive is because she feels no emotional connection to me and basically sees me as a roommate. She has hinted at this in the past when she would get super upset and say hurtful things, but I always took what she said during those times with a grain of salt (she told me to do that). This time however, she was calm cool and collected - during the conversation I asked her if she had thought about a divorce. She had paused for like 20 seconds and then said if things don't change then yes. This of course was super devastating to hear and brought back my old thought and feelings of "who would ever want to be in a relationship with someone like myself."

After this conversation I've felt super weird because I had never thought about divorce and thought we'd be together forever. I find myself not knowing how to act - do I give her hugs and kisses still? Do I never make any advances? When I talk to her I find myself avoiding eye contact. Like, I feel wrecked with her having thoughts of just leaving. But if I do these things, it will only hurt things. I basically feel like I've gone from being a husband to being friend zoned. She has told me that the reason she told me this stuff was to help me understand why she was always rejecting me when I would make any advances. And, I appreciate her doing that because it makes sense - but it was that 20 second pause that makes everything feel so off now.

After all this, we have decided to find a marriage counselor and I have found some that also specialize in autism so hopefully it will help things out. Perhaps we can develop strategies to bring us back to how it was in the first year of our marriage. I truly do hope so since she is literally the only woman I had ever felt any sort of connection with and it's someone that I don't want to lose.

Anyway, I guess that's it. Not sure why I'm posting this, perhaps it's because it's a place that people may be able to understand it. But that's my story and if anyone is interested, then I'll provide updates when we see the counselor next month.