Wife of suspected aspergers/HFA husband looking for advice

Hi Kazz,

I'm sorry to hear about the struggles that you're going through.

As a starting point, and I hope it doesn't sound patronising, please remember that you're in early days. If you've been evaluating the possibility of autism in a time frame that matches roughly with the Chris Packham documentary, then please don't put too much pressure on yourself to have all of the answers within months, or even a year.

A big discovery like this takes time. No matter how long you've been together and lived together, suddenly having a reason for all of those things that once just were is a very, very big deal. You've spent such a long time identifying these behaviours but not knowing why they happened or if they were deliberate, so you can't expect everything to fall into place as soon as you've found the reason.

It sounds like your husband has spent a long time masking. He's found ways to cope with everything he's dealing with on a day to day basis, because he's had no choice. He's been forced to appear normal, probably for so long that he can't even quite appreciate how much he's really coping with. If he's never believed that he's autistic, he certainly won't be thinking about how that autism affects him.

He probably feels immense upset and pressure in social situations, but might not even realise that's how he's feeling. After all, it's how he's always felt. He hasn't known anything different, so he's doing his best to socialise and probably ignoring every single moment that tells him he absolutely hates it and wishes he didn't have to do it.

The best thing your husband can do is read up on autism. As much as possible. Ideally, he'll join autism communities himself. Once he's fully equipped with a wide range of experiences and opinions, he'll be able to better identify when his autism is affecting him and can verbalise how he's really feeling. Let the discussion points come naturally. Don't sit down and list your needs, working our compromises one after another - wait until a moment when one or both of you are struggling, find out why and work out a solution on the spot. It'll take time to adapt, but it's unlikely your husband will realise just how many things are affected by his autism until he's specifically in each situation.

Regarding the furniture, there is a high likelihood that he needs to feel in control of his space. It'll make him feel safe and comfortable. You can try to accommodate those needs in smaller ways throughout the house. You shouldn't be restricted completely in making your own choices, but please understand that his environment may need to be a certain way to make him feel like he can relax. Unless he has complete control, he may find that he is never comfortable in his own home. But he does need to learn to compromise. Does he have his own car that he can slightly modify? Could you give him a room in your house that is his to do with as he wishes? Does he have his own storage space that isn't shared? Somewhere he can keep his belongings without them being mixed up with everyone else's? Personal space is extremely important to many autistic people, but something adults don't get when they're often sharing bedrooms with partners. Children get their own rooms to retreat to, but adults usually do not. As a result, they're desperately trying to create that personal space in what are actually shared environments, which can be stressful for everyone else.

Routine affection can be extremely difficult. Likely, he just doesn't think about it. It's not that he doesn't love you, but that his brain doesn't remind him to actually show this in the way that you might expect. Or, in fact, in any outward way at all. He knows it's true. He hopes that you do. But he simply won't have any kind of mental prompt to make this clear. The struggles with apologising might come because he genuinely doesn't realise that he's done wrong, or because he simply can't find a way to verbalise his role in the situation. He might feel like it's not entirely his fault, or he might want to justify why he did what he did, but his communication difficulties make this such a challenge that he'll instead clam up and might even argue that he's done nothing wrong. Writing things down is often easier than verbalising them, so it may help to provide him with this option.

Above all, please remember that all couples struggle. You've identified that in your relationship the struggles are likely caused by autistic traits, but remember that all couples have differences and conflicts and hard times. You run the risk, now that you've identified autism as the cause, of blaming the autism for all sorts of relationship problems and creating an idealistic and impossible view of what your relationship could be like if the autistic traits were not a part of it.

As you've said, he is trying. There will be enormous cost to him, to try and provide the things that you need in a relationship. And that is something that you'll both need to accept. It will never come naturally, but the fact that he's fighting against all of his natural instinct to try and make this work shows just how much he does care, even if it's not exactly how you'd expect him to show it.

I can't recommend any books, but I do think that online communities and even offline support groups might be a far better place to go for help. You'll get a far wider range of experiences and views from those really living through this, and you can begin to work out what you identify with, bit by bit, without becoming too overwhelmed.

I would recommend that, if he's comfortable with it, you point out all of your husbands autistic moments as they happen - in a nice way, of course! Over time he will learn to identify which of his behaviours are unusual - he might not even be aware of them all at the moment - and will hopefully start to find ways to tell you why those behaviours exist. That way, they won't seem so strange to you any more.

Hi Kazz,

I'm sorry to hear about the struggles that you're going through.

As a starting point, and I hope it doesn't sound patronising, please remember that you're in early days. If you've been evaluating the possibility of autism in a time frame that matches roughly with the Chris Packham documentary, then please don't put too much pressure on yourself to have all of the answers within months, or even a year.

A big discovery like this takes time. No matter how long you've been together and lived together, suddenly having a reason for all of those things that once just were is a very, very big deal. You've spent such a long time identifying these behaviours but not knowing why they happened or if they were deliberate, so you can't expect everything to fall into place as soon as you've found the reason.

It sounds like your husband has spent a long time masking. He's found ways to cope with everything he's dealing with on a day to day basis, because he's had no choice. He's been forced to appear normal, probably for so long that he can't even quite appreciate how much he's really coping with. If he's never believed that he's autistic, he certainly won't be thinking about how that autism affects him.

He probably feels immense upset and pressure in social situations, but might not even realise that's how he's feeling. After all, it's how he's always felt. He hasn't known anything different, so he's doing his best to socialise and probably ignoring every single moment that tells him he absolutely hates it and wishes he didn't have to do it.

The best thing your husband can do is read up on autism. As much as possible. Ideally, he'll join autism communities himself. Once he's fully equipped with a wide range of experiences and opinions, he'll be able to better identify when his autism is affecting him and can verbalise how he's really feeling. Let the discussion points come naturally. Don't sit down and list your needs, working our compromises one after another - wait until a moment when one or both of you are struggling, find out why and work out a solution on the spot. It'll take time to adapt, but it's unlikely your husband will realise just how many things are affected by his autism until he's specifically in each situation.

Regarding the furniture, there is a high likelihood that he needs to feel in control of his space. It'll make him feel safe and comfortable. You can try to accommodate those needs in smaller ways throughout the house. You shouldn't be restricted completely in making your own choices, but please understand that his environment may need to be a certain way to make him feel like he can relax. Unless he has complete control, he may find that he is never comfortable in his own home. But he does need to learn to compromise. Does he have his own car that he can slightly modify? Could you give him a room in your house that is his to do with as he wishes? Does he have his own storage space that isn't shared? Somewhere he can keep his belongings without them being mixed up with everyone else's? Personal space is extremely important to many autistic people, but something adults don't get when they're often sharing bedrooms with partners. Children get their own rooms to retreat to, but adults usually do not. As a result, they're desperately trying to create that personal space in what are actually shared environments, which can be stressful for everyone else.

Routine affection can be extremely difficult. Likely, he just doesn't think about it. It's not that he doesn't love you, but that his brain doesn't remind him to actually show this in the way that you might expect. Or, in fact, in any outward way at all. He knows it's true. He hopes that you do. But he simply won't have any kind of mental prompt to make this clear. The struggles with apologising might come because he genuinely doesn't realise that he's done wrong, or because he simply can't find a way to verbalise his role in the situation. He might feel like it's not entirely his fault, or he might want to justify why he did what he did, but his communication difficulties make this such a challenge that he'll instead clam up and might even argue that he's done nothing wrong. Writing things down is often easier than verbalising them, so it may help to provide him with this option.

Above all, please remember that all couples struggle. You've identified that in your relationship the struggles are likely caused by autistic traits, but remember that all couples have differences and conflicts and hard times. You run the risk, now that you've identified autism as the cause, of blaming the autism for all sorts of relationship problems and creating an idealistic and impossible view of what your relationship could be like if the autistic traits were not a part of it.

As you've said, he is trying. There will be enormous cost to him, to try and provide the things that you need in a relationship. And that is something that you'll both need to accept. It will never come naturally, but the fact that he's fighting against all of his natural instinct to try and make this work shows just how much he does care, even if it's not exactly how you'd expect him to show it.

I can't recommend any books, but I do think that online communities and even offline support groups might be a far better place to go for help. You'll get a far wider range of experiences and views from those really living through this, and you can begin to work out what you identify with, bit by bit, without becoming too overwhelmed.

I would recommend that, if he's comfortable with it, you point out all of your husbands autistic moments as they happen - in a nice way, of course! Over time he will learn to identify which of his behaviours are unusual - he might not even be aware of them all at the moment - and will hopefully start to find ways to tell you why those behaviours exist. That way, they won't seem so strange to you any more.

Thanks for the reply Blade - there is so much in there that is helpful.

When I first realised the problem I felt relief, but I think I was expecting it to be 'solved' if you know what I mean. I'm now realising this this is, as you say, a big deal, and is going to take a lot of time to get my head around. 

Blade said:

Don't sit down and list your needs, working our compromises one after another - wait until a moment when one or both of you are struggling, find out why and work out a solution on the spot. It'll take time to adapt, but it's unlikely your husband will realise just how many things are affected by his autism until he's specifically in each situation.

This is something I can work on. My husband has times when he wants to talk about it, and others where he really doesn't. I am one of these people how likes to get all problems out and analysed to death in one fell swoop - all the time!.  I can recognise now that in the past I have made some things worse by being like this.  My 'lets talk about this and not go to bed on an arguement' style has been counterproductive to his needing time to process things and deal with them at the right time.

Blade said:

Personal space is extremely important to many autistic people, but something adults don't get when they're often sharing bedrooms with partners. Children get their own rooms to retreat to, but adults usually do not. As a result, they're desperately trying to create that personal space in what are actually shared environments, which can be stressful for everyone else.

That hasn't occured to me, but yes - 'own space' is really quite hard for a couple and this explains some behaviour that I've misinterpreted for rejection. He does have space where he worked on a railway hobby - however, he's virtually finished the project and so doesn't get as much alone time there as he used to. The control of own space makes sense and fits in with a lot of things.  I'd say this has got worse as the children have got older. I'm not a naturally tidy person and neither are they.  This is something we can all improve on. My husband gets affected often when he can't find things - when things aren't in the place they are supposed to be. Whereas I can live in chaos, but generally able to find everything within that chaos!

Blade said:

Routine affection can be extremely difficult. Likely, he just doesn't think about it. It's not that he doesn't love you, but that his brain doesn't remind him to actually show this in the way that you might expect. Or, in fact, in any outward way at all. He knows it's true. He hopes that you do. But he simply won't have any kind of mental prompt to make this clear.

This is so accurate to both his behaviour in this area and how he describes it - it's as though you actually know him!!.  We have talked about this aspect the most - mainly because it's the one I struggle with most. In the years gone by I have very much fallen into the belief that because he never said he loved me, I thought he didn't love me. I'm starting to understand now that he just shows in it a different way.

I am somewhat of a realist and everyone has problems - I think once we both get our heads around it, knowing about the autism will help negotiate those hard times that most people face at various points in their lives

Thanks again for your reply - it has been very helpful. :)