I read today about Ongoing Relationship Trauma Syndrome and further to that Cassandra syndrome. Are these real things?
i ask because i believe my husband of 27 years has Asperger’s. He refuses to consider it. Or seek therapy together.
He says a therapist couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. And then refuses to explain what he means.
Our relationship has been hell for us both as over the years he’s been unable to continue to disguise his lack of empathy, compassion and ability to comprehend my facial expressions, and his obsessions with his solitary hobbies, and now blames my behaviour for the extent of his.
It’s very true I have not responded well to his emotional distance particularly at times of distress - death of my mother, my current illness and things like that. I don’t think my son understood until he witnessed my husbands verbal dismissal of my feelings in the hours before my mothers funeral.
In the early days most people did not believe me when I referred to the problems he and I started to have. It’s only over a long period of seeing my mental decline and his lack of awareness of me that some family and friends have begun to realise what’s been happening between us
He is now very distant emotionally and absorbed in his hobbies. I am retired, he still works. He’s been in the same job for 45 years and now works at home. We are together virtually 24/7. He has an online life I know very little about. I am sinking into depression and aloneness.
I’m desperate to find an answer now as to how to cope. We can’t financially or physically live separately. I can’t go on getting upset with him as it drives him further away and then he’ll punish me with silence in what’s increasingly become an already very quiet life.
