Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
My boyfriend and I have been dating for 2 years, he was waiting for an assessment to find out if he is autistic when we first met, he was assessed and they said he had autism. It's not something I really notice in him, as in he doesn't have many traits that I notice? My cousin and uncle both are autistic and I've also worked with people with autism as a therapist so I have interacted with people who are autistic and think I understand a bit about it but my boyfriend seems to be less obvious? If that makes sense, I wouldn't have known if I just met him and he never told me.
The issue is, I don't always know if the way he acts is related to his autism or if it's just a general maturity issue, I personally could not tell that he has autism, he does say that he has masked a lot so maybe I'm unable to tell? The main issue we have is when he gets very emotionally heightened over what I would perceive as a small issue, sometimes it blows up and he can shout or gets very upset, I do my best to try and understand his frustration but at times it is frustrating for me because I feel he's being petty or immature over something which could have been easily solved or avoided, I myself am a very analytical person, I have OCD (it's manageable and I've been in long-term treatment), so I know at times I can probably be very annoying when I want things to be ordered or very specific whereas he is very laid back about most things but gets very anal about a few things such as his car, clothes and his glasses.
To give an example, he got fitted for new glasses and went to collect them a few days ago, he didn't like the way they felt when he put them on as his eyes had not adjusted yet, I explained that happened with my old ones and they would feel better after he wore them for a few hours, he got annoyed and said this hadn't happened with his old glasses in the past, I said if they didn't feel better by in a few days maybe we could take them back and explain, this didn't seem to calm him down much, he started going on about what a waste of money it was, and how he was stupid, and he would rather just break them, he was raising his voice and stomping about, and I was a bit on edge but also tired and frustrated with him at this point I got kind of frustrated and called him childish which just made things worse, I was exhausted from caring for a poorly family member and was low on emotional energy and yes I probably should not have called him childish but in the moment that's how it felt. He ended up in a bad mood and went to work.
I feel like a bad person as if I forgot his autism and that I don't care enough, I feel like I should just "get him" but I can't always understand him and because he doesn't always communicate things this can make it even harder to understand his reasoning or what he's actually feeling.
He has been saying recently he's been feeling down and I think he has some issues with self-esteem that he was working on in therapy, I just don't know how to help him, and sometimes I wonder are his reactions related to how he experiences the world or is it just a general anger or maturity issue? Does he find things that I think are not that stressful as a larger deal? Sometimes with bigger problems like his health he is completely not affected, and brushes it off but smaller inconveniences really set him off. I struggle when he gets angry due to my past with trauma, I want to be supportive and understand him better but I find myself judging him at times and I feel awful about this, as someone who has worked as a support worker and a therapist I am usually very patient and understanding but with my boyfriend I can feel myself getting frustrated with his behaviour at times, especially when it tends to the more immature side.
Has anyone got any advice in how I can be a better partner to him, I want to be more supportive and less reactive, he's 30 and I am 34 so I feel we're mature enough to sort things out I hope.
The world is changing and not for the better. It all adds up. There's a few complexities here. One is knowing the self and how I'm impacted. The second is how I impact others. The third is recognising what's healthy in a relationship and having good boundaries. The fourth might be appropriating time to let it all out. I love my ADHD friends cause I can go off and they get it, forget it and we move onto the next billion topics. Their brains work at my pace.
Autistics mature slower for very specific reasons. Often we can be about 10 years behind our peers in many expected ways and then "wise" beyond our years in others. We grow very different. The main reason is a loss in translation: we aren't taught in ways which we learn. But we can be far more open to reason through a problem and 'fearless' about working things out because we might not think of troubleshooting an issue as something that reflects on us. It's external.
But, we also need to learn how to better deal with an onslaught of sensory assault, which is Very Real. Take responsibility to protect ourselves and ask for help. Always have an exit strategy. Help others understand if we cannot process situations internally. I don't have an internal monologue - I might process by talking about it out loud and fix it. But also, we can afford dignity and room for others to leave if they're overwhelmed because we're overwhelmed. My son recently told me I was complaining a LOT and I apologised. We discussed it which helped everyone understand. I'm 50. At 30 I was barely coming into my own. But I'm also female and not given the same room to have external faults like males.
I have never had a problem getting glasses either until recently. But even if I pull up evidence that the human eye cannot see with proper clarity in the absence of infrared light, which is heat-based, no one believes me except for a couple other autistics who also start researching the info and they're not in charge of the medical board. All the new lighting is LED - there's an absence of natural filament heat-based light, so chances are a great deal of the human population will be getting the wrong prescription. I've spoken with others who apparently just 'live with it'. This is because most non-autistic individuals can dull their senses or, desensitise. This isn't always good, as one might not notice the building impact until it's too late. The autistic, however, is more likely to notice a sensory impact immediately. There's a bio-chemical difference which creates less of an ability to dull the senses. It's one thing that makes us autistic. This was advantageous in a tribe, in an early formation of civilisation. It still has potential, but we live in a world overrun by humans who use language / social-linguistics different than us and in such a way that non-autistics can be susceptible to a type of hypnosis and will desensitise for the 'sake of togetherness'. Too few demand accountability for the overhaul of lighting, research into how the eye uses light to see stopped (for the most part) in the 70s, and how Autistics use language to communicate is often heard and seen as "odd" - it's often so different we're treated as though we're lying or invisible even if we try to present a thing with humility. This adds up.
Now, when I tried my glasses on several months back, I had a headache almost immediately. It wasn't just startling, it was an incredible inconvenience. It's incredibly dangerous - I couldn't see properly. I've needed glasses since I was 9, this has never happened. It's also: ONE more interruption into a flow -and it took me 3 months to get back to the eye doctor because life is overwhelming, I work non-stop and have trouble with scheduling, have to cook all my own food (gut-health issues). To take a few hours out of the day and go back halts a whole day if not a few days of work-flow. This is expensive and it's one more overwhelming incompetence which adds to a daily frustration. But I try to curtail what I allow my son to see. I'm an adult :) I can be a bit more responsible in the presence of others.
But I also need a cooling down period. I can't anticipate the overwhelming amount of chaos, but I can also learn to exit and go for a walk in the park. While what I feel is a great deal more intense than what you will feel, the appropriate response would be to punch through a wall, but I don't. And I've had to learn to live with never feeling safe, never having a comfort zone, AND learn self-discipline. So I'm hyper vigilant. It's not OCD, I simply take matters into my own hands to be overly responsible because I don't desensitise the same. A way to explain what this is like is how a non-autistic will describe micro-dosing on psilocybin.
Perhaps no one has ever said anything to your boyfriend. I have to say, though, sometimes it's better when my ADHD friends get just as scream-y and intense along with me. It helps me move on to feel heard and understood.