Published on 12, July, 2020
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 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.