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Partner issues

NAS88073

New to the page and looking for advice and support. My wife has had an initial assessment and has been told she probably has autism and adhd. She has now been put on an extremely long waiting list for further diagnosis.
We have recently had a difficult relationship. We lived abroad. I worked in China for a year but covid meant the family couldn’t join me. We have two lovely children, one who has autistic traits and finds social situations difficult with meltdowns. 
My main problem is with my wife. We have disagreements where I feel not listened to or not having my points acknowledged. Seemingly, if I disagree with her then I am wrong. This is on most things. I understand how I need to change but not sure how to communicate and get my wife to acknowledge we have a communication issue.

Any help, advice or links would be appreciated.

  • I'd look up the Double Empathy problem.

    Emotional Empathy is a sort of 'telepathic' relating with and responding as expected. Cognitive Empathy will be what you'll both need to rely on to attempt to connect. Most likely, you have shared interests and perhaps mutual attraction, but how each of you experience this might be incredibly different. Technically, Autistics perceive and understand the world in such a different way that I'd suggest even our reward systems (psychological) are triggered by completely different things. 

    This isn't common knowledge, unfortunately, because of human bias, it can be painful difficult to learn to pause, reflect and go through some basic training a therapist might suggest to curtail miscommunication. She may be doing a great deal of extra work to communicate in the world around where you feel a sort of bland fluidness. The problem will always come down to an issue with translation. 

    Learn how each other communicates and never imply. Pay attention to the "4 horsemen of the apocalypse of relationships" and maybe make a contract for having difficult discussions. 

  • I think you are having a fairly normal issue with your relationship caused by a combination of lots of time apart, your wife probably feeling resentful because you chose work while she was stuck at home with the kids and her autism is the cherry on the cake.

    To get her to engage with you on the relationship issues you need to open up to her, be vulnerable and tell her explicitly what you feel and what it means to you.

    A common issue for autists is out lack of knowledge of social rules and this includes relationship rules, so if there is something you feel that "everyone knows", you probably need to consider that this may not be known to your wife.

    For important stuff like this we can need it really spelled out for us. The What, the Why and the What Next parts of the conversations.

    My advice is thing this though, maybe look up a good couples relationship counselor and be ready for the awkward conversation that I suspect you need to drive initially, with sensitivity and with brutal honesty.

    Try to keep emotion out of the discussion, even when you are talking about your own emotions. Focus on what it means to you and avoid judgement.

    Give your partner time to process and space to do this - have babysitting on standby if possible (certainly for any counselling sessions).

    It hurts like hell but if you are to have something worth having on the other side of this, the only way out is through.

    That is my advice (based on a true story...)