Hello,
it’s my first message, I’m sorry for some lack of my knowledge in the topic but I’m new to it.
I met my ex- partner on travelling in Asia. We build a beautiful and strong friendship during many months, which later turned into happy and loving relationship. I was thinking he might be in Autism spectrum ( my mom is a teacher and deals with many people like this so I noticed some similarities), and myself I’m neurotypical. After travelling we were long distance couple as I’m from Poland and he’s from the Netherlands, which is still not too far away. We managed to maintain long distance for around 4 months, as were able to visit each other every month for some time. My partner was very much in love and had one of those „obsessive special interests” towards me, which was making me suffocate sometimes, but with talks about boundaries we worked it through, I got used to with telling myself he’s just very romantic and more needy than me.
however recently when I started a new job, had many family arrangements and a bit less time for my partner, I noticed him getting more distanced from me. After attempts to know what’s going on, he withdraw from me even more, and told me that he was struggling to much, is not happy when I’m not there, and the lack of clear points and date of our potential living together in the future is too much for him, and he doesn’t want a long distance relationship like that. I promised to give him space, but he withdrew completely from any contact with me. Myself I didn’t know what’s going on, and wanted to fight for us and give him possible solutions and ways to make our relationship better. After a week of silence from his side, I was hurting a lot and decided to end this waiting, as lack of any contact and willingness to give us a chance was destroying me. We had a brake up talk, in which I told him how much I love him and wanted to make this work and don’t give up on us. During the talk hes responses was mechanic, formal and lack of emotion. He said that he needed space and to think, cause he has many doubts and that feelings for me have changed.
And it’s only after that when I called with his mother and she confirmed me that he was diagnosed when he was a kid, but he’s doing great and he doesn’t want anyone to know including me. She told me also that he really needs space, cause he was struggling and hurting for weeeks, with not seeing me, which lead to panic attack and not having access to his emotions towards me anymore at this moment.
He’s a very social person, but with getting this information I started to read more and so many puzzles started to finally make sense in my head. I saw that our needs and communication was influenced by my lack of understanding his side. I still love him and would like to give us a chance when he’s ready. I think in my head the hardest thing to understand was that from big love, insecurity about me and planning future together, he never mentioned his struggles and made decision that didn’t make sense in my head back then. My mind also could not understand how his love might have disappeared and that his doubts were bigger than giving us a chance.