Disabled and married to an Aspie

I do wonder why you didn't take the choice to divorce before you got ill, and why you would spend 45 years trying to change someone or imagining that he would change?  You are blaming him for having wasted your life, but no-one forces someone to stay with someone else and if you think about it, you are using him.  You are not leaving him because he is your carer, people with autism aren't without feelings and he may realise that.  Yet still he stays.  Perhaps if you could read his mind you would see that he has remained stoic in the face of what must be a difficult situation for him too, and has not abandoned you.  He tells you he loves you every day, men who do that are few and far between and who's to say what's in his head when he says it?

You are placing an awful lot of blame on him, and it seems very unbalanced to me.  He didn't fool you into thinking he was something he is not from the outset, he gave you himself as he was.  No person alive is perfect, you admit he is reliable, hard-working, intelligent, funny, a good home-maker and a great grandfather.  Is it fair to entirely condemn him because other peoples' emotions confuse him?

This isn't about how your children or grandchildren would react, if you want to make a decision then you should make it.  But it would not be fair to do so without having sat down and explained to him in a concrete way first, what it is you have felt lacking in the marriage and the effect it has had on you.  Be prepared for him to be entirely confused though, as to why, logically, someone would wait almost half a century to speak up about it or to remedy the situation.  People confuse him enough, but that one will be a humdinger.

It takes two people to make a marriage, and marriage is about communication.  If you have tried to explain to him what is wrong (it doesn't say so in your posts) and he has ignored this or been unable to resolve it due to his condition, then at least you tried.  But have you?

Don't you think basing a relationship on someone being devastatingly good-looking isn't a reliable basis for a relationship?  You made your choice and you hung on in there for a very long time, despite him apparently never giving you an indication that he could offer you anything more.  Why are you blaming him?  You are clearly bitter and it appears seeing only your side of things.  It's unhealthy for anyone to put all their emotional expectations onto one person in their life, no human can easily bear such a weighty burden.  When you consider that it probably takes all his mental energy to cognitively process what he must do for your as your carer every day, to have the wherewithal to manage a great bedside manner as well is huge for anyone, letalone someone with Asperger's.  Why have you not regularly cultivated contact with friends who could offer you enough emotional support that you would feel the pain of his own lacking, less strongly?

If he has sensory issues, sitting in a hospital waiting room with you for your eye appointment would have been very hard.  He did admirably well to manage only some inobtrusive huffing and puffing (and he would not have been even aware of you thinking anything about it).  He may have been suffering from aversion to the fluorescent lighting, rattling trolleys, noises of other people, fear of the environment etc. and yet still he stayed stoically with you because it was expected of him and he tried to perform his expected role, no matter how difficult for him.

All of the above trait-related comments assumes he does have Asperger's, if he doesn't have a diagnosis then it's speculation.  However, I would advise anyone, that if their marriage made them that miserable, and if they had made every attempt to communicate that to their partner, that they make a decision based on what they want and need, not on relying on someone for practical help or what their relatives would say.  There are support agencies out there, such as adult social services.

I just wanted to put the other side to you, it's not fair to blame someone to that level for your own life choices and I am an Asperger's female married to an NT male, who could give just as many reasons why NT males don't make good husbands.  I don't mean to offend you in any way, but sometimes people get so wrapped up in their own negativity that they never see the whole picture.  I have sympathy for your situation, your life must be hard with a disability, but never forget, Asperger's (and all autistic spectrum conditions) are legally disabilities as well, only it's an invisible disability and therefore doesn't attract sympathy the way other disabilities do.

I do wonder why you didn't take the choice to divorce before you got ill, and why you would spend 45 years trying to change someone or imagining that he would change?  You are blaming him for having wasted your life, but no-one forces someone to stay with someone else and if you think about it, you are using him.  You are not leaving him because he is your carer, people with autism aren't without feelings and he may realise that.  Yet still he stays.  Perhaps if you could read his mind you would see that he has remained stoic in the face of what must be a difficult situation for him too, and has not abandoned you.  He tells you he loves you every day, men who do that are few and far between and who's to say what's in his head when he says it?

You are placing an awful lot of blame on him, and it seems very unbalanced to me.  He didn't fool you into thinking he was something he is not from the outset, he gave you himself as he was.  No person alive is perfect, you admit he is reliable, hard-working, intelligent, funny, a good home-maker and a great grandfather.  Is it fair to entirely condemn him because other peoples' emotions confuse him?

This isn't about how your children or grandchildren would react, if you want to make a decision then you should make it.  But it would not be fair to do so without having sat down and explained to him in a concrete way first, what it is you have felt lacking in the marriage and the effect it has had on you.  Be prepared for him to be entirely confused though, as to why, logically, someone would wait almost half a century to speak up about it or to remedy the situation.  People confuse him enough, but that one will be a humdinger.

It takes two people to make a marriage, and marriage is about communication.  If you have tried to explain to him what is wrong (it doesn't say so in your posts) and he has ignored this or been unable to resolve it due to his condition, then at least you tried.  But have you?

Don't you think basing a relationship on someone being devastatingly good-looking isn't a reliable basis for a relationship?  You made your choice and you hung on in there for a very long time, despite him apparently never giving you an indication that he could offer you anything more.  Why are you blaming him?  You are clearly bitter and it appears seeing only your side of things.  It's unhealthy for anyone to put all their emotional expectations onto one person in their life, no human can easily bear such a weighty burden.  When you consider that it probably takes all his mental energy to cognitively process what he must do for your as your carer every day, to have the wherewithal to manage a great bedside manner as well is huge for anyone, letalone someone with Asperger's.  Why have you not regularly cultivated contact with friends who could offer you enough emotional support that you would feel the pain of his own lacking, less strongly?

If he has sensory issues, sitting in a hospital waiting room with you for your eye appointment would have been very hard.  He did admirably well to manage only some inobtrusive huffing and puffing (and he would not have been even aware of you thinking anything about it).  He may have been suffering from aversion to the fluorescent lighting, rattling trolleys, noises of other people, fear of the environment etc. and yet still he stayed stoically with you because it was expected of him and he tried to perform his expected role, no matter how difficult for him.

All of the above trait-related comments assumes he does have Asperger's, if he doesn't have a diagnosis then it's speculation.  However, I would advise anyone, that if their marriage made them that miserable, and if they had made every attempt to communicate that to their partner, that they make a decision based on what they want and need, not on relying on someone for practical help or what their relatives would say.  There are support agencies out there, such as adult social services.

I just wanted to put the other side to you, it's not fair to blame someone to that level for your own life choices and I am an Asperger's female married to an NT male, who could give just as many reasons why NT males don't make good husbands.  I don't mean to offend you in any way, but sometimes people get so wrapped up in their own negativity that they never see the whole picture.  I have sympathy for your situation, your life must be hard with a disability, but never forget, Asperger's (and all autistic spectrum conditions) are legally disabilities as well, only it's an invisible disability and therefore doesn't attract sympathy the way other disabilities do.