Getting back to my discussion of the book Aspergirls (see my other posts here), let’s talk about being married and living together.
I have been avoiding this topic because it is a difficult area for me. My husband and I have had a lot of ups and downs in our almost twenty years of marriage, and things have been extremely stressed between us of late. In fact, we are currently living in separate bedrooms and trying to figure out where to go from here.
Being married and living with another person is hard enough for anyone, but it can be especially difficult for someone with Asperger’s. In a similar comment to one she made in the chapter on choosing a job, Rudy points out that “self-awareness is truly knowing who you are, what you like, and what you don’t. In our case it is also knowing to what extent your AS will affect you in a relationship.”
Another thing she said that really struck me was this:
It’s really important that a person with Asperger’s is not criticized. That only makes us curl up into a ball. We need positive reinforcement for the good things we do, and then we will strive to do more of that. It takes a very special partner to understand this.
~~Rudy Simone, Aspergirls
The most difficult aspect of the whole topic is not one that is covered in the book, and that is the religious aspect of marriage. I was brought up to believe that divorce is not an option except in extreme cases involving abandonment, adultery, or abuse, and that someone who got a divorce was basically giving up on their faith.
While I don’t believe any longer that you are walking away from God by getting a divorce, I do still feel that it is not something to take lightly, and I am not even sure to what extent “what I want” should enter into the picture.
And while it would be easy to paint my husband as an uncaring, irresponsible person by selectively reporting things he has done or said, that would not be the whole truth. It would also ignore the ways in which I have hurt him, both consciously and unconsciously.
We have talked and talked and just keep going around the same core issues, which to me signifies that we have opposing perspectives in many areas, both practically and philosophically.
What I really want is for it to be okay for us to forgive each other and move forward separately to live the way that we each want to. And just as I want to be free to structure and control my life and my environment the way I want it, I also want him to find the openness and affection that he so desperately wants but that I don’t feel emotionally safe expressing right now and don’t know if I ever will.
But I keep vacillating wildly in my thoughts and emotions. At times, I have a sense of peace and optimism about splitting up and I truly believe that it’s okay to feel that way. At other times, I think that I’m simply being selfish and giving up too easily, and that I don’t have the right (or the Biblical grounds) to put all three of us through the pain of a divorce.
I would love to have some discussion of this on here. I am really trying to look at this from all angles and figure out the right path to take.
It sounds like, based on your language, that you would like to get a divorce, that you are looking forward to the independence and control that this choice offers, but you feel a burden of guilt from both a religious and responsibility perspective for wanting to make this choice. I think that’s a perfectly normal sentiment, ASD or not.
Something that has helped me when faced with this question (married for eight years) is to try to envision both futures as realistically as possible. When faced with conflict and problems that never seem to get resolved, leaving can start to seem like a shining beacon of possibility and represents freedom, independence, and control (values that Aspies really appreciate). But I find that I need to ground myself in reality and realize that, even if I were alone, I would still have the same issues and life would still be hard.
When times are hard and my hubby and I question, “Would we be better off apart?”, I am reminded of how, at the core, we truly love each other for who we are. Even though we make mistakes, we hurt each other, we fail each other, we have our own personal issues that drag each other down at times, we still have bright moments of happiness, laughter, and tears that bring us back together and remind us that we are joined as one and we complete each other. But those moments only come about with patience, selflessness, vulnerability, honesty, and lots of communication.
I have a similar attitude as you about marriage and divorce, that divorce is not to be considered lightly, but I also sympathize with your struggle. On the religious aspect, I stopped going to church years ago, and no longer consider myself a Christian (not sure what I’d call myself), but I do believe in the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfullness, self-control), and that it is a good benchmark for making spiritual decisions. It might help to ask yourself how either decision would affect your relationship with God and your ability or likelihood to produce fruit of the Spirit.
I appreciate everything you have said here – it touches on so many aspects of what I am going through. I think the biggest sadness is that I can’t find that core you mentioned. There have been so few moments of true connection against so much pain. And I don’t want to go back to the way things were. I can’t see myself moving forward together unless there are drastic changes in the way we are interacting with each other, and at the same time I’m not sure I have the energy or strength to wade through everything to get to that point, or if it’s even possible to get there.
i have really been feeling God’s love through this whole process and will definitely continue in prayer over the whole situation. Your point about the fruit of the Spirit is so good, thank you for pointing me in that direction.
First off AM I commend your bravery stepping out and talking about this. It is hard to talk about especially when it is linked to religion. I just put up a post with several videos of Dr. Tony Attwood answering questions about some of the topics I feel are linked to relationships and emotions. It helped me a great deal to watch them and actually helped me come to a place of accepting the fact that I think and do things drastically different from my husband or others.
This time of self discovery and self acceptance is huge and I go back and forth with feeling selfish and also feeling horrible for not being able to meet my husband’s needs in many emotional/physical areas. It is a hard place to be. I wanted to tell you that you are not alone in your feelings, I don’t really have any answers, but I think the more we discover about ourselves and feel that we are allowed to discover ourselves without guilt or shame the easier it will be to recognize what is best for us and the people in our lives.
Everyone has an opinion about marriage and in the past few months it has become a special interest of mine. I find it fascinating and still confusing. I am not sure how much it is helping, but I have learned more about acceptance of others and really searching for my true feelings about it. I have been living under the opinions and ideas of others without really thinking about what marriage means to me.
I am not sure I contributed much here I hope I made sense I am really off from the last few days.
Oh, and I have tried to say positive things out loud like you suggested on your comment, I confess I felt physically ill trying to say anything good about myself! It was horrible. I have been practicing and it really is painful, but I think that what you said was very important to try and start to speak daily so thank you!!!
Thank you for the compliment, and I saw that you had posted some videos and am interested in watching them. I actually feel like a small part of this is the desire to let my husband be free to seek out what he needs in a relationship. He said to me the other day that if anyone could make the co-parenting thing work, we could.
I am so amazed by how much work you have been doing on your own journey of discovery and appreciate you sharing so much of what you are dealing with on your own blog; it is truly helpful.
And yes, you are His favorite!!
Wow, I’m sorry to hear things are so rough.
What I wonder is this: what do you need to do in order to be the person you need to be?
And sort of a separate thought but sort of not…okay, the church that I grew up in isn’t one that puts a lot of emphasis on the necessity of being “born again,” so I never really had that experience, religiously.
It was some time after I got my diagnosis that I realized that I felt…a little bit reborn. Not as a Christian, but as a person. I actually thought “oh, this is what evangelical Christians are talking about!” in a sense, at least. I felt born again to be the person I was supposed to be, like I’d gotten a second chance to be that person. And I’m still figuring out who that person is in a lot of ways.
Also, not that any two people’s experiences are directly comparable, but I was about six years in discovering and accepting that I was probably autistic before I got diagnosed…and it was a LOT to process, even in that length of time, and then there was a whole lot more after that.
You just did in one year what I did in six. It sort of blows my mind.
Do you feel like you can take some time to get a sense of who/what you are now as a person before you have to make a decision?
And lastly…I tend to think that God is more understanding that we sometimes give Him credit for.
So fascinating to compare this to being born again. I became a Christian when I was 8, so it was a different experience than if I had been an adult.
You make a good point about how much I have been dealing with lately in terms of change and shifts in perception. There have been so many times when I felt put down and criticized, but is that just my natural confusion and emotional intensity causing me to overreact to what he intended as simple helpfulness?
I go from feeling like the main issues are really my fault to recognizing that, no matter what, he is not allowed to yell at me or say mean, horrible things. (This is a rare occurrence, but for me, even occasionally is traumatic and hard to let go of.) And it’s even worse when he defends his outburst by rationalizing that they are uncommon and are caused by the difficulties in the relationship. He thinks if we talked more and I was more affectionate, he wouldn’t have the feelings that caused him to lash out, but I think he should take responsibility for choosing what to say and how to say it.
I definitely agree that God is even more merciful than we can imagine. I am feeling His presence more and more, despite all that is going on in my marriage.
“He thinks if we talked more and I was more affectionate, he wouldn’t have the feelings that caused him to lash out, but I think he should take responsibility for choosing what to say and how to say it.”
I agree. He can be upset if he doesn’t feel like he’s getting the affection he needs, but he *cannot* blame you for what he does. No matter what your shortcomings in the relationship may be, saying horrible things to you is never acceptable and only he can take responsibility for that.
Do you feel like your Asperger’s Syndrome affects how, or the extent to which, you express affection, and does he try to understand how it might impact you in that regard?
Surprisingly enough, he has been very supportive of this whole process of getting the evaluation for AS, and he feels like it has provided a lot of answers to things that didn’t make sense before. But he also seems to feel like the dx means this is the way things are and there isn’t much hope for things to change.
He may be right, I am not sure. I think I used to make more of an effort and have withdrawn more and more over the years as my life has become more overwhelming and as various negative things have occurred between us. I also think that my depression has contributed to it, whether through active symptoms or through side effects of anti-depressant medication.
“It might help to ask yourself how either decision would affect your relationship with God and your ability or likelihood to produce fruit of the Spirit.”
And this, that Trish said, is brilliant and I wish someone would’ve asked it of me at one point in my life.
Yeah, it’s an awesome idea and a very valid test, I think.
Hi there,
I haven’t commented too often on your blog, but I do read everything you write and I wanted to send you some comforting vibes. Never been divorced (nor “married” for that matter) but I’ve been at the crossroads of a relationship and…ok, I know it’s not the same, but it’s still hard. It’s so hard. I’m not so sure it’s an Aspie thing, specifically, but a human thing. We’re all human beings. We all have to negotiate our relationships in the best ways that we are able.
For what it’s worth, I think you’re absolutely doing the right thing here… looking at it from all angles, considering all ramifications. I think it’s perfectly normal for your feelings to change daily, hourly, etc. I also think that “what you want” is not only important, but a cornerstone of the whole decision process. You should absolutely consider what you both want, individually and together, and whether it’s possible to achieve together or not.
Are you also getting some marriage counselling (together or apart)?
Thank you for the good vibes and for being a loyal reader – I really appreciate that!
I appreciate the good advice as well. You asked about counseling. I have been discussing this with my own therapist and, after the last blowup by my husband, I demanded that he go to a therapist as well. He did go for three sessions, one of which I was asked to attend to give my perspective, but he doesn’t really see how it could help our relationship for him to discuss any of his issues. He feels that not getting enough love and affection from me is the cause of his problems and that since a therapist can’t make me do that, there’s no point in discussing any of the other problems.
I have tried to explain more of how therapy works and how a person can identify what they want and work towards it within themselves, regardless of whether the relationship survives, but he says he doesn’t understand what I am saying.
He came back from the third session telling me that he was going to go to this person once a month for six months to adjust to becoming single. Then when I referenced “his decision” about our relationship later, he insisted that he hadn’t made a decision and was only going along with what the therapist was recommending.
No matter how many times we talk, I still feel like he is letting life happen to him and avoiding any responsibility for his own actions (or inactions). I do not want to live my life like that any longer – I have let it go on for too long, and I don’t see how to continue with him if he can’t see any need to change how he is approaching things.
((())) I hope that whatever decision you make, it gives you peace.
Thank you, Kim.
AM,
I am sorry it has taken me so long to visit your blog. I did not realize things were so bad at home. I cannot and will not tell you what decision is best for you, but I would like to offer some insight about the process of going through a divorce and my relationship with God during my own divorce from my first husband.
Our relationship was different than the characters in my novel, but he did have issues with partying and even occasional drug use, so my decision was based on the fact that I knew he would not change because of his own untreated or self-treated depression and addictive personality. He refused to go to counseling at all until the day before the divorce papers were served and by then it was too little, too late. Thankfully, we had no children so contact after the divorce was not an issue.
Still, I did much soul searching before making my decision and even though I feel I made the right decision the actual process was painful. We had only been married for nine years although he had been apart of my life for three years before we got married. (Nurses try to save the world, and I guess it took me a while to realize I could not save him.)
I was taking an Adult Spiritually and Growth class at the time and really studying each lesson and doing meditative prayers. I sincerely believe I got the message loud and clear that God would love me no matter what decision I made and that I had to make the best decision for me.
I did my best to make the decision as painless as possible and even covered the entire costs of the divorce and paid my ex-husband to get him out of my life, but the divorce still caused both of us to have financial hardship for months afterwards. I guess what I am trying to get across is that divorce is not just an emotional process. It affects finances too. That is not to say that you should stay married for that reason, but just to make you aware that this too can cause emotional stress and this can cause even more anger on both sides.
Plus, realize that you, your husband, and your son will all need time to heal if you do get a divorce. I spent over a year doing this with a support group and with private counseling and even then, I did not trust my judgment when I met my current husband. Thankfully, I had help to deal with this and he was and is very supportive.
Weigh everything out and keep praying and I am sure you will make the best decision for you and your family.
Keeping all of you in my prayers!
Hugs,
Sue
Sue,
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your comment and all that you have shared with me. I think the financial concerns are the other big issue that has kept me from facing the situation, but I am really working hard on that area now as well.
Thank you so much. You have given me a lot of chew on.
AM
Glad to help!
Hugs,
Sue
I am sorry to learn that you are going through a trying time. I wish I had the wisdom to offer you advice.
I offer you my support and respect during this difficult time.
Lori
And I so appreciate both of those things, Lori. It helps to know there are a lot of people who care about me when things are difficult.