Published on 12, July, 2020
I’d really appreciate some advice about how to proceed now that my partner has ended our relationship. We got together more than 6 years ago, but it is only in the past year that I’ve become convinced that he has Aspergers. He is now in his mid-50s and I am more than 10 years younger. At several points in our relationship he has gone through very deep periods of depression and anxiety and is in a particularly deep one right now. I need help to assess whether to accept it is over and move on, or try to help him even more, as I believe that he may be shutting me out because of fear.
He has been struggling with these issues all his life and has developed sophisticated tools to disguise what’s really going on with him, has no close friends and although he had girlfriends before me, the relationships were highly dysfunctional and almost devoid of intimacy. In the early part of our relationship I just thought that he had “commitment issues” which I was relaxed about as he wasn’t really my type even though I liked him very much as a colleague, and found him attractive. After about a year of having caring but casual fun, I tried to bring it to a natural end but to my astonishment he strongly requested that we give it a proper go. I agreed on the basis that we deepen the commitment and the intimacy and he did. It was an astonishing and lasting change and ever since physical affection has been the strongest, loveliest part of our relationship, even when I’m struggling because we don’t really have anything to talk about.
He matches the Aspergers definitions very strongly is some ways but not in others. He is highly functional and most people (including myself in the early days) think of him as private, but more-than socially competent and easy-going. But I’ve been able to see ‘behind the curtain’ over the years and he matches all of these http://www.autism.org.uk/professionals/teachers/breaking-barriers/asperger.aspx and almost all of these points http://www.autism.org.uk/gp#Checklist for adults. After the first couple of years his lack of social skills became almost paralyzing,; we’ll visit my friends and he is sullen and distracted to the extent of causing general discomfort, so that I’ve just stopped seeing them when he’s in town. He’s known my mother for years now and we’ve even lived with her for a while but she says that she feels like she doesn’t know him any better than the day they met. He has a limited range of interests, mostly related to his profession, but they’ve lost their ‘interest’ and he confesses that they’ve become little more than joyless distractions and he's struggling professionally and spiritually now. Communication between us is stilted and I confess that I’m feeling lonely and bored.
He has disguised these issues in large part by maintaining an itinerant lifestyle – a professional one in which he is very well-respected. It means that social interaction is kept superficial and ensures that he can “escape” (his word) whenever responsibilities become too pressing. This is where I get confused about an Aspergers diagnosis because his love of routine is actually a regular change-of-routine, although he maintains very identifiable habits and methodology in each new place. Our whole relationship has been punctuated with gaps of weeks or months at a time, but I had a similar lifestyle until the past year, so it worked well enough and we’ve have been working towards building a more stable base together, which is what he said, repeatedly and vehemently, was what he wanted. Until a few days ago when he said he realized that it isn’t, and that he wants out permanently.
I am also a trigger. I’m prone to ‘reactive’ depression and can be overly sensitive anyway, but recent events have been uniquely hard. In the past 18 months I have had 2 of the most challenging experiences of my life, including the recent traumatic death of my father, whom I loved very much and nursed through his last few months. My partner absented himself from both of these experiences – literally and figuratively – and my feelings about him have been deeply shaken by his lack of support. He even tried to break up with me the day after my father died because I wanted him to come back to help me through the funeral; he said it was “too much for him”. He did eventually come back for the funeral but I made that clear that even if he is in a bad state, this is unacceptable behavior if we’re in a relationship and the tension has been clearly been a factor in his current state of mind. He rarely says he loves me, but despite how bad it all sounds, he is extremely loving in almost every other way; faithful, generous, and generally tries very hard to be a good boyfriend. I was also single for a long time before we met and I know that meeting someone new won't be on the horizon for a very long time, if ever. I'm a very independent person, but I like being in a committed relationship. At times there is a very beautiful bond between us, which I will be very sad to let go of.
I have been trying to get him to think about the Aspergers possibility, but he has completely dismissed it. He shut down to the point of almost non-functionality last week and I eventually persuaded him to take the online test. He did it in private and it came out at 18 – well under the limit. When I reviewed the questions with him, he had fudged the answers, whether to deliberately ‘pass’, or just because of a profound lack of self-awareness, I’m not sure. I re-took it on his behalf, with him present for consultation and the result came over 32. He found this very difficult to accept and told me that the relationship was over the following morning. He has since left on one of his trips, resolute and having changed his arrangements so that it is possible that I may not see him again.
I’m clearly struggling. The relationship was far from perfect and I’ve wanted out myself many times, but so far I’ve always come to the conclusion that the good outweighs the bad. Now I’m not sure if I have an option of whether to continue or not, but I am deeply concerned about the welfare of this man that I care deeply for, particularly as he’s pushing away the only person he has ever let into his life.
Advice from the Aspergers community would be very much appreciated.
Reading the OP's mail it seems that needing answers for her partner's actions and behaviour she pushed him into taking the AQ test and confronted him with the possiblity that he is autistic. This in my view is not something one adult should do to another and the man showed no sign of wanting that or welcoming it.
The partner has coping strategies and has worked out a functional and for the most part happy life. His answers are not the ones a neurotypical person would be happy with but they work for him. There is nothing 'wrong' with him as some posters have suggested.
I'm sorry to appear unsympathetic but many neurotypical people enter into relationships with autistic people, then seek to pathologise and label them when their needs are not met in that relationship. This is immensely harmful and destructive for the autistic partner who often has no support. The non-autistic person rarely takes a good look at themselves and why they entered and stayed in such a relationship.
Yes, I think you're right, Paul.
lostmyway said:Tom, I know this is off-topic and with apologies to Mara, but I honestly think you have the ability to write a book about being as Aspie - seriously. It would give a lot of insights and guidance to others, which is what you are accomplishing here and accomplishing very well. For me, anyway, the way you write about yourself is fascinating and easy to understand and I think it would be a waste of your talents not to use your gifts for the benefit of others. At least consider it.
Tom, I know this is off-topic and with apologies to Mara, but I honestly think you have the ability to write a book about being as Aspie - seriously. It would give a lot of insights and guidance to others, which is what you are accomplishing here and accomplishing very well. For me, anyway, the way you write about yourself is fascinating and easy to understand and I think it would be a waste of your talents not to use your gifts for the benefit of others. At least consider it.
Haha! Thanks, mate! But I've already done it. The novel mentioned above. Except, at the time of writing, I (and my therapist) thought I had BPD. I had all of the symptoms. So, I wanted it to be 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time', except from the perspective of an adult with MH issues rather than a boy with Asperger's. Re-reading it in the light of my diagnosis, though, I can see it's all about ASD! Plus, I sent a copy of it to Professor John Carey, the academic and critic. He was highly dismissive, commenting 'I've never read such a self-absorbed narrative. The character seems to have no empathy for the lives of anyone else around him.'
Hm.
I've thought since about re-writing it in the light of my diagnosis, and the way this has radically altered my take on life - both past and present.
It's on the back-burner...
Thanks again. For someone who needs a lot of reassurance, I find your comment very reassuring! People throughout my life have most often commented on what I've done wrong, rather than the opposite.
Mara said:Thank you everyone for replying. I cried and cried when I read your message Tom, as the notion that he really may be just better off without me struck home. I really do want him to be happy, so I guess I have to come to terms with the fact that he just may not be able to cope with having a relationship. Very hard to do as I know that he has had some of the happiest times of his life with me, and until a few days ago he expressed his desire to working through our problems together. I read of AS people being very honest, but that doesn't seem to be the case with him - he's more about saying what he thinks you want to hear to keep an equilibrium, does that suggest that perhaps he isn't AS?
Thank you everyone for replying. I cried and cried when I read your message Tom, as the notion that he really may be just better off without me struck home. I really do want him to be happy, so I guess I have to come to terms with the fact that he just may not be able to cope with having a relationship. Very hard to do as I know that he has had some of the happiest times of his life with me, and until a few days ago he expressed his desire to working through our problems together. I read of AS people being very honest, but that doesn't seem to be the case with him - he's more about saying what he thinks you want to hear to keep an equilibrium, does that suggest that perhaps he isn't AS?
Hi Mara,
It may not be that he'll be better off without you. It may instead be that he feels completely uncertain as to what to do for the best. Again, I'll try to explain based on my own experiences.
In my marriage, I admit I felt stifled. I loved this woman I was with - a powerful, overwhelming emotion - but I was doing all of the things that I always felt I didn't want to do: be in a marriage, have a mortgage, have a steady job, etc. It was about much more than that, though. It was about letting go of the rudder I'd been using to steer my own way through life, and suddenly finding myself adrift at the mercy of the currents. At the time, I felt it was because I was a natural nonconformist. Now, I think it may have been my Aspie side finding its first expressions in a situation that I'd helped to create (and had convinced myself that I wanted), but which I didn't feel psychologically or spiritually comfortable in. My parents, thankfully, were never pushy and always wanted me to do whatever I wanted to do, as long as I was happy. I know they were concerned, though, that I never seemed to have (or want) friends. And I think they were puzzled about my introversion, and my seemingly odd take on life. Even in my mid-teens, I used to look at the lives of other people and simply not want to live those lives myself in any way whatsoever. I saw societal expectations (conditioned aspirations, as I thought of them) - career progression, buying a house, raising a family - as something totally alien to what I thought life should really be about. It didn't ring true for me. It all felt too prescriptive. Things like fashion never made sense to me. Why would anyone want to express their individuality by looking like everyone else? It wasn't a path I wanted to tread. So, whenever I had the opportunity for a promotion in my first real job, I would turn it down. Then I'd give the job up and go find another one. Then another one. I never wanted to settle or conform in any way. In my 40 years of work, I've had perhaps 25 jobs (and it's been more 'career regression' rather than 'progression': I earn less now, in real terms, than I earned 30 years ago). The longest I ever held a job was 6 years. The shortest, 2 weeks. The 6-year job was in a wholefood shop. I loved it for, as I see now, very 'Aspie' reasons. It was a hotbed of nonconformism, radical politics, anarchism... in short, everything that was about being a square peg in a round hole. Questioning and rejecting convention in all its forms. Dropping-out.
It was my first job after uni, when I should have been using my degree for career advancement. But I hadn't done the degree for that reason. It was education for education's sake - and the best thing I ever did. It opened up my mind, and enabled me to take the alternative path in life that my still-unknown Aspie nature needed to take. In my 30s, as I was then, I was being the rebellious teenager I'd always been inside - and still am. I don't 'go with the flow' and have never wanted to. So... marriage, with a mortage and a steady (stiflingly boring and conservative) civil service job on the one hand. On the other, the very human part of me that loved another person and wanted to be with them. But the two things went together. Not a good mix. Something had to give.
And it did. In 2004, my father died. That was the final straw. I crashed, as did everything around me. Within a year, I was divorced and living alone in a low-rent flat. I'd also given up my well-paid 'career' for a minimum wage job, working in care with special needs adults. My ex-wife, heart-broken and devastated, wanted nothing more to do with me. It was horrendous, because I still loved her. But how would I ever be able to convince her of that, given what had happened? I wanted us to remain friends, but that wasn't possible for her. I haven't seen or heard from her since.
That's the point I'm trying to make. I'm human, and as such I experience strong human emotions. Love is one of the strongest. I loved that woman, and therefore couldn't imagine my life without her. I wanted her in my life. But my life, in that situation, made no sense to me. It wasn't really about not wanting commitment. It was more about wanting two things that seemed, in my head, to be impossible to have at the same time: a loving relationship with another human being, and the independence of a solitary life in which I could focus totally on my own needs. In a sense, then - to be back in control.
The same goes for my last relationship. I loved the woman, but I lost control of my life. There were options, of course. We'd discussed living apart as a way to make it work. But financially, such an arrangement was impossible. So... we carried on, until it imploded.
It's an odd fix to be in, really. I realise now that, for me, falling in love is about losing control. Which, of course, it is. That's, for many, part of the fun of it. That wonderful, floaty feeling, when everything seems sharper and brighter and you feel so full of energy and hope. That's how it's always been for me. And I, too, have had some wonderfully happy times with my ex-partners. But there's always been that underlying sense that I've lost control of something more fundamental: my own sense of self. 'Self' being the operative word, I think. I'm a selfish person. Not wilfully, though. It's something I can't really help. I wish I could. It's the way I'm wired.
I don't know if this is the case with your partner. I think it's probably an aspect of any relationship - the ceding of control, the sharing, the compromising.
With someone with autism, though, it's much more problematic. As I've discovered. And so, sadly, have all of my ex-partners.
As a footnote: a few years ago, before my diagnosis, I wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about living with my as-then unrealised and unfathomable condition. Here's a telling passage:
'My relationships with women... have always been difficult and unstable. My emotions go haywire. I want the person, and then I don't. They're everything to me, and then nothing. I try to finish things. And then, when it's over, I go to pieces and want them back. I simply can't cope either way. Yes... I am better off alone. And they're better off without me, probably. It doesn't stop me wanting something, though. I'm still human. We all need love.'
Hi Mara
Sorry to hear about your situation. I'm a female Aspie, married to a male Aspie. I don't know if I can be much help because, to coin a phrase, "if you've met a person with autism, you've only met one person with autism". This means we're highly individual, and females can be quite different to males too, which can result in their not being diagnosed, or even realising it themselves.
You say you suffer from "reactive depression" - so do I. Have you taken the AQ test? Do you recognise many of the following traits of female Aspies in yourself? taniaannmarshall.wordpress.com/.../
With reference to trying to heal your relationship, are you able to contact him by email or text? We have trouble processing verbal information, so it's easier for us to think about something if we can read it.
Me and my partner are finding things are getting more difficult as we get older (we're same age group as your partner). I get more tired now from dealing with people at work, find it even harder to control my emotions, and don't want to see people apart from my husband outside of work.
We feel more secure co-habiting, but it's not all a bed of roses. He goes to bed and gets up earlier than me, so we each have time on our own while the other is in bed - me in the evening and him in the early hours of the morning.
Maybe your partner is struggling more to cope as he gets older. He probably didn't not give you support out of choice - he probably really couldn't cope. It can be difficult to work out if this is the case though - I know.
Sorry I can't be more helpful.
Good luck
Pixie
Hi might be having trouble facing that he is ASD.
I have trouble facing things sometimes.
I'm sorry to read of your struggles. As a mid-50s Aspie male myself (finally diagnosed last year), and one who has never had a 'functional' relationship, I can identify with quite a bit of this. I can't really offer much help, I'm afraid, except to tell you of my own struggles in this area. It might offer some perspective for you.
My only long-term relationship was my 5-year marriage, which ended 12 years ago (long before I knew anything about autism, though I can see now that the depressions I was suffering then were most likely related to it). It was very traumatic for both of us. I loved my ex-wife very much, but for some reason that I still can't quite explain I was singularly unable to show it after about our second year together. I didn't like touching her. I didn't, in the end, even like sharing a bed with her. I stopped telling her that I loved her, and couldn't say it - even though I did love her. There was a combination of factors involved. She, too, had many issues. Oddly enough, her behaviour was very like your partner's. She would be sullen and withdrawn at social occasions, such that they became embarrassing for me. I've never liked social occasions myself, but I always involved myself in them as fully as possible (though looking back, I can see that it was 'learnt' behaviour, and I was over-compensating in many respects). I think the crux of it, though, was that I found cohabitation difficult. I need to have control over my environment, otherwise I become very anxious. And having another person sharing it became increasingly difficult for me. I became colder and colder towards my ex-wife. In the end, this was a coping mechanism, because I was simply unable to function any longer in the relationship.
This became evident again in my most recent relationship - the only other cohabiting one I've ever had. Again, I loved my ex-partner very much. But our being together under one roof was disastrous. She was extremely messy and untidy. Also, she had severe depressions, and severe exhaustion (I suspected CFS) and wouldn't go out for sometimes weeks on end. I did all the housework, washing and shopping (which I didn't mind as I've always done those tasks) - but her untidiness made it very hard work. She couldn't understand why I couldn't just let things go over my head and relax a bit if the place wasn't quite right. In the end, she took more and more control of our living environment until it became essentially her flat with me living in it (even though it was mine and I paid the rent) - yet she'd rebuke me for not being more generous. She also accused me of not caring about her, or showing any concern for her feelings - even though I went out of my way for her in every other respect, and always told her I loved her. In the end, she left because she could no longer stand my 'abuse' - which was my constant shouting rows with her because her own behaviour was causing me so much anxiety. But then, of course, the feeling was mutual.
I don't entirely rule out another relationship. But I don't want to cohabit again. There is another side to it, though, if I'm totally honest about it - and that's the time and commitment involved. I'm extremely possessive of my time. This is an aspect of my condition, I think, because it's about routine and order, and the need to be able to focus on my own interests. If I'm away from reading or writing, for instance, for any length of time, I get anxious. It's also a reason why I don't actively seek relationships and prefer not to have friendships - because (aside from the obvious social communication problems I have) they mean having to divide my time to make them work. Autism essentially means 'self-absorption' - a tendency to view life in terms of one's own needs and desires.
This is why I've never wanted a job that has involved lots of extra hours, or varying shift patterns. Nine-to-five is my ideal state. And then, when I get home, I'm into 'me' world, and that's where I like to stay. I don't answer the doorbell or the phone. Disruption is simply that: disruption. But it's not just an irritation, as it might be for other people. It's a source of great anxiety, and it throws my head completely out of synch for a while.
Maybe there's a clue in that.
I hope things work out well for you, whatever happens.
Good post, Tom.
I think you have given Mara a first-hand account of what it means to be on the AS which, hopefully, will make it a little easier for her to understand her loved one's perspective.
Your info is invaluable.
Mara, he probably knows there is something wrong with him but chooses to sweep it under the carpet rather than confronting it head on.
It was a good idea for you to make him take the test because even though he may have fudged his answers he will know he wasn't being entirely honest and, hopefully, this may have set him thinking about what his real problems are.
If an adult refuses to seek professional help there's not a lot you can do other than occassionally prodding him and making him face what this is doing to your relationship.
If you mean as much to him as you think then he faces the possibility of either taking steps to get some help or losing you for good and you really do have to lay it on the line in that respect so that he gets a clear and unambiguous message, otherwise this situation could go on indefinately without resolution.
This is one of the problems of people on the AS of course, i.e., that they have difficulty in making 'life management' decisions which keeps their life on a (more or less) steady course and it is important that you help him in this respect by showing him how concerned you are about his wellbeing. I know you have already expressed this to him but you really must persist because it's obvious he's being very stubborn about it and sometimes we have to be as stubborn to make someone change their mindset.
Again, one of the problems with Aspergers is the lack of awareness of the feelings of others and this makes it even harder to 'get through' to people, although he is not doing it on purpose.
It's going to be tough, Mara, but with the kind of person he is you have to be tougher and make him see it is ultimately because you love so much him that you are prepared to move heaven and earth to create a better future for the two of you.
This sounds like a terrible situation, I wish I could offer advice but I cant think of much to say. Why does he have such an issue with the possibility of having Aspergers? Does he have preconceptions about it?
Trying to break up with you just after your father dying is pretty rubbish even if he was struggling with the idea of having to support you at the funeral. Everyone is different but I don't think I could do that to a partner even if the idea really freaked me out.
I'ts difficult to give a perspective from the male point of view because everyone is affected in different ways. And I'm very new to this anyway having only been researching the possibility of being on the spectrum myself for a couple of weeks.
Short term I don't see much that you can do if he really doesn't want to be with you other than make sure you're contactable if he does decide he needs to talk or see you.