Published on 12, July, 2020
I’ve mentioned before that my wife is a District Nurse, yesterday she visited a new patient. the lady said that her husband may come into the room, or he may not, he will be unsure of you because your new to him, my husband is autistic.
My wife doesn’t normally disclose much about herself to patients, on this occasion though they started chatting, my wife told her about me and they started comparing their lives. The going to social occasions alone and the days of ‘radio silence’, plus other similarities.They both said how nice it was to be able to talk about living with an autistic partner to someone else and someone who actually understands.
The lady said that her husband wasn’t diagnosed until his forties, my wife said to me last night that she is still trying to understand autism, speaking to someone else filled in so many of the ‘blanks’ and made her feel not so alone. She kept apologising for taking about me, she said that she just needed to talk to someone else about autism. I was quite relieved that she had found someone to hep her, I sounds like they both needed someone.
It got me thinking about how autism doesn’t only affect the autistic person, it affects all those around you, wether they want to or not, they are ‘dragged along for the ride’, I think the two people I have just mentioned have quite a few more conversations ahead of them.
I know I struggle to explain how different things affect me, I often don’t understand them myself, for a partner it must be worse, they get ‘plunged’ into a world that isn’t theirs. I just wanted to share this as a positive thing.
Roy said:, I often don’t understand them myself, for a partner it must be worse, they get ‘plunged’ into a world that isn’t theirs
It's really nice to hear about the successful relationships that some of us have!
I think you've touched on a reason that many of us find achieving that hard though, sometimes it feels like we're from a different planet from NTs, how can they ever understand us? Or we them?
There's also making space for someone else in your life, lots of space,
Well, obviously sometimes it works, which is lovely!
Thank you for your reply, the trick to my relationship is a lot of time apart. I won’t pretend it’s utopia, we often argue, but it’s not half as bad as it was before I realised I’m autistic. I know when our children were young, she often got near to leaving me. My behaviour wasn’t like everyone else’s. We both have our own interests and pursue them separately. It’s just been a big learning curve for both of us, the good side is, we know why things often went nuclear.