Published on 12, July, 2020
A not so quick intro. Been married for 20yrs, have children, have a good job. I seemly make friends quite easily. I have a life that a many of austistic men would be quite satisfied with.
Apparently I wrong about most of the above. After several conversations with my wife (which we both discovered I was austistic after being married for a decade) my evaluation of myself and my life appears to wrong.
My wife feels unloved, and unable to speak with me. Essentially emotionally abandoned. My kids are afraid of me or don't "like" being around me. And I really only have 1 close friend, who I can't bring myself to talk too honestly about my situation, so how close of a friend could he be?
Not sure why I'm writing this. Maybe I'm looking for suggestions regarding how I can draw closer to my wife and kids and how can I deal with this crushing realization that my life isn't what I think it is?
I'm in a very similar situation. I've got a successful career, I'm sociable and most people would never guess I'm diagnosed ASC.
I'm in my 50s, I've been married for 20 years, my wife tells me that she is lonely, that i'm not there for her etc. we have two young adults (teenagers) both with ASC diagnosis.
After I was diagnosed later in life my wife went through a period of sending me YouTube videos of "how to deal with an autistic spouse", some of the videos even suggested that ASC can be prayed away, or that eating less gluten would make you less ASC. She was using my diagnosis as a negative thing. I'm pretty clear about it. I'm an autistic man, not a man with autism.
My wife has her own issues, she suffers with anxiety and at certain times of the month, the anxiety levels would be off the scale. During that time she could be unpleasant to be around and I'd frequently find myself having self-injurious meltdowns. When her menopause started I found it so hard to cope intended up on SSRIs for more than a year.
I finally snapped a few weeks ago, when she physically attacked me and I've made plans to move out.
It has been horrendous and I hate that I've got to do this, but now that I've made the decision I'm realising just how toxic the relationship has been and actually I should have got out a long time ago.
My reluctance to be available for my wife, comes from me wanting to protect myself, for not wanting to get hurt, for not wanting a meltdown. You can't get stung if you don't poke round the beehive.
Is this really an autistic thing or a more general relationship thing? I think autism is a very easy lable on which to hang any problems and especially not to look at ones own behaviour.
Having suffered from serious pre menstral symptoms myself I can empathise with you both, I know I was hell to live with, I felt I was living in hell, there's so little help or understanding with pre menstral problems and the effect it has on the whole family and not just the woman who's being ruled by hormones she has no control over. However it is now recognised that some women suffer worse than others and some doctors are being more helpful, unfortunately not all.
Can you go to couples therapy? Even if you go by yourself it will still help, she may decided to come with you if only to find out what your talking about.