Please help

Where to begin...

I have a ten year old son who is autistic and highly functioning. He struggles with anxiety and confidence. I love him dearly.

My wife has just received her diagnosis. She too is highly functioning. I love her dearly.

My wife's diagnosis has answered a lot of questions for her. I'm genuinely happy for her that this is the case, she has been through a lot.

We met about 15 years ago. I don't know exactly how long it took me to fall in love with her, but I do know that after the first 5 minutes together my life changed entirely, so let's split the difference and say 2 1/2 minutes.

Our early relationship was incredible. We decided to start a family, which required relocating for both of us. We are both quite successful in our careers,  but I had recently won a pretty big promotion so we followed my work.

Life went on, the pandemic passed. My wife helped me through an exceptionally tough time at work. Long story short, she saved my life. Shortly after, my wife lost her mother. It was a very tough few years for her. The pandemic passed, we decided we wanted more room and a bigger garden, so moved house.

Then everything changed.

My wife began to exert control over everything, which given what she had been through I completely understand. Intimacy and contact faded as time passed. We sleep in separate rooms. Any emotional connection seems lost and we exist on an almost entirely functional level.

For a long time I told myself that we could rebuild or reconnect, but following her diagnosis I don't see this being possible. I think her withdrawal makes perfect sense in light of her diagnosis and the challenges of the last few years. 

Please understand that I am not a selfish person. I worked myself to the point of suicide to provide for my family, and my last vaguely rational act during the dark times was to make sure that my life insurance policy would still provide for them. I don't expect life to be a bed of roses. I will do anything for my family.

But....I am feeling so isolated and lonely it's unbearable. My wife's diagnosis is very important for her and I'm happy that it helps her. But I can't help feeling that we have been cheated of the future we worked so hard to build.

Where can I / we go for help? This is really, really hard.

  • I’m so sorry - that must be so difficult for both of you. It sounds like you’ve been dealing with a lot of stress and change in your lives and that can have a big and very negative impact on a relationship. However if both of you still want to make your relationship work it’s possible to rebuild the closeness - as long as you both have the motivation to try. 
    Ultimately you need to have a long and very honest talk with your wife about how you both feel and what you both want for the future. Make it clear to your wife that you still love her but be open about how unhappy you are feeling at the moment. If she is a compassionate person she will try to understand how you feel. I’m  a Buddhist and have learned about the teachings on ‘deep listening and loving speech’ and ‘beginning anew’ (if you go on YouTube and search ‘Thich Nhat Hanh Deep listening and loving speech’ or ‘Plum Village Beginning anew’ this advice is readily available) - it’s very helpful when dealing with relationships of any kind that have developed problems. It really IS possible to repair if you follow these principles (that aren’t religious in nature - they are more about how to build positive relationships and leave the past behind) - in that you truly listen to the other person without judgement and with love and forgiveness for whatever has happened in the past. It’s not religious advice - it’s simply about the ability to restore peace and trust in relationships that have hit difficulties. Essentially to have love between people you need to really understand each other - and it’s about reconnecting and restoring that closeness you once had together. Trust is very important in a relationship - do you still feel there is trust between you? And good communication? Are you open with each other about how you both feel? 
    I wish you well and I hope you can find a way through this and both be happy. It sounds like your relationship has been wonderful in the past and I hope you can make it work, 

  • I don't believe that you're being selfish. Closeness and intimacy creates a connection and a bond, and the separation of bedrooms in your case, can create isolation. Perhaps after your wife had lot of changes in her life, with the pandemic, and the loss of her mother, and then the moving of the house, her anxiety about things moving around and changing against her will, might be causing her to try and reinstate a level of control, by exerting control over everything in her environment, to try and handle insecure feelings, or feelings of instability,  that nothing is fixed and perminant, and she wants a level of stability. Perhaps she's upset, and she does not have a good outlet, other than trying to control everything in her immediate environment. 

    Both of you are struggling, and it's hard to have open communication sometimes, but there are things that you want to say, and I hope you are able to say those things, and she's able to say her things, so that there's an opportunity for mutual understanding and progress to be made in the right direction.

    Just yesterday I've had a hard conversation with my partner. I realized that I was unconsciously feeling like I was missing something from them, and that externalized itself by me starting to have an unhealthy addiction to buying items, but it was a crappy way of trying to fill a void I had, and I was avoiding opening up to them because I feared a negative reaction from them, and it seemed harder to face them than to just get the temporary euphoria from buying items. Even being able to open up to them to become consciously aware of that, will help let go of that desire to get things to try and fill that void I had. Hopefully in the upcoming month, things will get better.

    I really hope the best for your relationship. I hope your wife will be able to reconnect with you.

  • Hi and welcome 

    I am very sorry to hear of your situation. For you to put this out there tells me that it is important to you to keep your family together and to find a direction to go in together. I think from what you have described you have been amazingly supportive of your partners diagnosis which has perhaps been difficult for you both. Equally you mentioned that your partner was there for you at a very difficult time in your life. 
    As others have said communication is so important here weather that’s by yourselves or like some suggestions using a couples therapy service. 
    I am also going through a similar situation in my marriage and I totally understand how your partner may need time by themselves from time to time. 

    I do wish you all the best and take care

  • It’s hard, I think I understand you both. You are not selfish, you have a need to feel loved. I also understand your wife’s need to be alone. I’m not diagnosed, but strongly suspect to be autistic and confirmed by professionals, I shared this information with my husband. I love him but often the closeness and intimacy is too much for me I also often struggle to fall asleep when being in the bed next to him (breath, touch, generally sensory issues). But I know he needs the closeness, so I’m not fully withdrawing. He needs more but I give as much as I only can. It’s harder for autistic person during and after hard times and traumatic events. For me I can say I need more solitude, time without absolutely anyone. We are working out some sort of compromise that I spend time with my family but then they let me be alone. And same with intimacy. I think you should talk to your wife and try to convince her for therapy for couples. 

  • Hi and welcome to the community

    I'm really sorry to hear of your and your wife's struggles.

    It sounds like you might both benefit from couples therapy or counselling with an ASD-experienced professional. Is this something that you think your wife might be open to?

    You might be able to find someone suitable in the NAS Autism Services Directory. Other options include searching via the BACP or Psychology Today websites. I haven't also linked to them, as posting too many links at once can cause posts to get quarantined for moderator approval and it's late on Friday. :)

    I'll also suggest the following book, perhaps to read before and/or alongside therapy / counselling. It aims to help autistic / neurotypical (which I'm assuming includes you) couples to work on their relationships through improved mutual understanding and communication, complete with exercises for you both to do and discuss.

    Loving Someone with Asperger's Syndrome: Understanding and Connecting with your Partner - Paperback - 3 May 2012 - by Cindy Ariel

    (It was written when "Asperger's" was still a diagnostic term, whereas it's now diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder). Caveat: between one issue / scenario and the next, the author keeps switching the gender pronouns around. In one scenario, the male is autistic, but in the next it's the female, etc. This can become confusing at times and I find it very frustrating, as I keep needing to check / remind myself "which partner is autistic this time?" But the trouble is worth the effort, I feel.

    The NAS also has some related advice here:

    Family relationships - a guide for partners of autistic people

  • This sounds really tough. I take it that you are allistic (not autistic)?

    I think that you need to talk to her about it. This is hard in any relationship. Her diagnosis should only arm you both with knowledge and hasn't changed her deep down really - even if she is different on the surface. You need to talk.