Published on 12, July, 2020
I feel like there is a hot rising volcano in me. I’m afraid it will erupt soon due to lack of loneliness. Since the beginning of my relationship I masked a lot, but I wasn’t aware of that. Now we have a child and my mask slips off. I just can’t cope and mask. I Need loneliness, stimming, silence and ear plugs. I never needed them at home before because there was silence. And although after being told by therapist that I’m an aspie I informed my husband about it. I told him briefly about ASD/Asperger what is this, that it’s me and my personality and it will not change and there is no cure. Of course I work on myself and I’ve done a lot on my own without any knowledge and support. Since I figured out that my panic attacks are caused by noise, I started wearing earplugs and there is a huge improvement on my mental health and well-being. I feel much safer and calmer with them. I finally can relax! And I don’t get panic attacks anymore and heart palpitations are gone. And although he knows that I still hear “are you again with your earplugs?!” “You gonna destroy your hearing!” - while it’s me hearing the lightbulb in the lamp or ticking watch on his wrist. Or comments about me wanting to be alone and pace the kitchen again. If I can’t get the peace and silence for some time everyday I feel like it’s a boiling water in me, like a rising volcano. I start moaning and get more and more overwhelmed and irritated. Although I encouraged him to read about ASD a bit if he wants, but he didn’t and seems to not be interested at all. On one hand I hear how sweet I am, on other hand he is more and more annoyed by my weirdness. I’m even wondering if he actually loves me. Or which part of me he does. sometimes I wonder if I should have got married and become a mother. Maybe my step dad was right, when he told me many years ago, when I was a teenager and still having meltdowns, that I’m not suitable to live independently and have a family. It hurt me a lot, but there was no explanation to why I should have never become a mother and wife. I asked my mom many times what’s wrong with me and she always told me that there is nothing wrong and I’m perfectly normal just like her. mom sorry for long post. I’m afraid of possible divorce. Has cv anyone similar experience?
Your mother was right in a way, there is nothing wrong with you - you are a perfectly normal Aspie. You've done great, finding ways to manage your panic and anxiety, but your husband is undermining that good work with the comments and the inability to support you.
Can you get counselling as a couple? If not or if you don't like the idea of talking to a stranger, you will have to sit down with him and talk seriously about your fears that your relationship is heading towards breakup. Ask him to work out some compromise with you, as to how you can have some "alone time" - perhaps he can go out with friends or to see his family without you sometimes?
You don't say whether you work, or if your child is yet at school. If you are working, maybe you could arrange to shorten your working hours and arrive home a bit earlier than your husband and child? If you are at home all the time, is there a nursery, child minding service, or family member that could care for your child for at least a few hours each week to give you a break?
I hope it all works out well for you.
Thank you for your answer. I replied before but it disappeared somehow. So counselling with my husband is not possible because he refuses. He just expects my therapist to press a button in me, to make me stop being weird. I never stop my husband from seeing his friends and never insist on being there with them, there are men, talking about football and watching it so nothing for me and I would get overwhelmed easily. I manage things the way that he has time for himself, watching movies although I don’t watch with him because I can’t watch anything for long. I just quit to process what I saw and relax from the screen flashing pictures. My husband is not happy that I chose working in a warehouse instead of office, but I explained to him many times that working with the phone, having to speak to people causes me anxiety and depression, but looks like he has a short memory. I started working short time ago, our daughter is 2,5 in kindergarten, requires a lot of attention and she gets that, but I also need time alone.
It's difficult when your husband refuses to go to counselling and expects someone to flick a switch and make you OK, my ex husband was similar aloght he did go to counselling at first and managed to make it sound like it was all my fault and me having "issues" they were only to happy to agree with him. Sorry to say this but he sounds a bit of a snob about you working in a warehouse, sounds like he's like to be able to say something that appears more middle class.
I think you should go to couples counselling on your own, they do do this, and maybe your husband will join you a bit later. It would give you some space to talk about you and how you feel about your relationship and enable you to have some support with someone who seems quite rigid in their thinking.
My own experience has been of men who think I'm great at first because I'm "so different" to other women they've met, they say I'm lively, intelligent and that they can have a conversation with me and I don't watch soaps. Then they start getting bored and things start getting awkward, they start to become embaressed when I dont' have anything in common with their friends partners and their friends and family make comments about me. 'Can't you be a bit les weird' was a comment frequently repeated, my replay was'No', but I've a trail of broken relationships behind me and have realised that I'm just not suited to them.
As your daughter get older and more independent I think it will get easier or at least different.
Do you have the option of a room in your house that you can make your own, have a quiet room, maybe your daughter would benefit from it too. Most of all remember you don't need fixing, you're not broken, you're relationship with your husband maybe disfunctional, but it take two people to have a relationship, two people relating and if only one of them is, its neither right or fair. Maybe you could ask him what he's afraid of disovering about himself were he to go to counselling? This isn't all about you, this his about him and his refusal to think of you're needs as much as you think about his.
I think you might be on the recieving end of projection from him, he's got this idea of the perfect woman in his head and you fulfilled lots of his criteria, now he's trying to cram the real person into his fantasy. I've so many people do this, both male and female and he's almost certainly not concious of doing it.
I would suggest that he's the insecure one who needs you as a kind of social credential to show his internal image of himself that he's successful and OK. You being "normal" will be part of that, my ex was like that and in the end it was what drove us apart, everything he and his family did was normal, a bench mark and the rest of his life and mine had to live up to it. Some of the things I did that wern't normal were things like reading a newspaper, or not being that fond of chips, going shopping when there was still food in the house. Then I went and worked in a "weird shop", otherwise known as a wholefood shop that was run as a co-operative, with no bosses and all taking an equal responisibility for running it, people asked questions about it and he didn't like it.