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Different needs in a relationship

Audhdgirliepop

My self and my partner are both a mix of ADHD and autism. I was diagnosed much later in life than them. We both also grew up in "difficult" households with "difficult" parents that I feel has left us with poor comping mechanisms and bad communication skills. 

I'm wondering what is things that can be changed and what are just parts of us that we need to accept or decide we need someone who can offer us those different things. 

My partner is unable to cope with my emotional needs and can't be compassionate when his first call is being pragmatic. I can appreciate this but I asked him if he could stop giving me advice when I'm sad and just comfort me first, and he said no that's just how he is and he won't change and I just have to accept it. I saw a video of a doctor explaining how you should just accept this and get those emotional needs from someone else. But sometimes there are things I only want to tell him, and I feel like I can't. Is this him being stubborn and maybe being brought up with a parent who taught him to be like this, and I can show him that he needs to be more flexible, or is it that I need to leave and find someone who can listen to me be sad and comfort me regardless of if they agree with the thing or not. 

Anyone got through this before and have advice?

  • My wife feels the same about my "advice" rather than "listening". Fairly recently, not long after diagnosis this came up in conversation and we talked it through.

    At first I was a little confused as my default response to someone with a problem is to offer them a solution. Took me a while to start to understand that sometimes the "problem" is the fact they just need to talk about something and have someone listen. Sometimes she does need a solution and some help with it though.

    She agreed to tell me if she needs the later and I agreed that unless she did I'd assume it's the former, so far it's working well.

  • You could try couples counseling, but if he's refusing to even consider not giving you advice when you're sad, you may have to accept that he won't engage with the counselling process, also it might be a case of won't rather than can't. Sometimes these things can be a matter of how you approach asking for support, many men are quite mechanistic in their approach, 'I'm an engineer and I fix things' was the answer from one ex of mine, I started to phrase things more mechanistically and he did engage more meaningfully. We did eventually split up though, because his unwillingness to support me emotionally whether I was sad or angry and his binary way of thinking of the world and his insistance that his way was the right way and mine never was made the relationship untenable.

  • Audhdgirliepop said:
    I'm wondering what is things that can be changed and what are just parts of us that we need to accept or decide we need someone who can offer us those different things.

    I've had a similar experience and a solution I found worked well was couples counselling with a psychotherapist who really knows about neurodiversity.

    You clearly have a complex dynamic with plenty of background trauma that is possibly complicating things so you need someone trained on helping you both find a common agreement on how to work with one another  and quite possibly have individual sessions as well to help each to deal with the changes this will require.

    Audhdgirliepop said:
    My partner is unable to cope with my emotional needs and can't be compassionate when his first call is being pragmatic.

    In this situation for exampe, it may be suggested that you need to make sure you communicate what you need I would imagine and your partner needs to echo this back to reflect their undersanding of your situation. Assuming he will "get it " is likely to end in failure to achieve what you need from it so both sides need to agree the terms of engagement and the rules of response.

    This won't be a one time session - quite possibly a half dozen or more will be needed to work out how much more you want to work on things and this will just be the start of your own personal journeys if either of you are serious about understanding yourself and "improving" yourself - whatever you agree this to be.

    It needs both of you to agree to it but if you can do this then you should be in the best place to make a lasting improvement in your relationship.

    All that said, I'm just some random off the internet so don't just do what I say please - do your own research before making any decisions.