divorce

I got married young. I think I can say that now with hindsight. We had our fair share of troubles. She battled with her mental health. I didn’t really know what I was battling with. I thought I had depression, but didn’t feel sad.

I started a job the day after my wife left me. She left because she couldn’t handle it anymore. I went to work and was told, “wow, I wouldn’t have thought your wife had just left you.” Probably because I was able to function and was positive. I obviously over shared with people I hardly knew and was obviously masking to within an inch of my life. That’s what I do. I now know what it is.

So the divorce was a long time coming. I almost left her 6 months before she eventually left me. It was my monotropic logical brain that stopped me; thinking about the unravelling of finances and the selling of the flat. My heard said go but my logic said stay and make it work. So I did. We sought the advice of a relationship counsellor, which I got a lot out of. She didn’t however. I remember the moment very clearly when I knew she had decided to leave me. She was telling the counsellor about a situation whereby I had hurt her feelings after commenting on something she hadn’t done, and the therapist turned around and said “Well yeah, but how do you think not doing that made Ian feel?” She was expecting everything to be turned around on me, and me being the cause of all of the problems. I think the therapist had an underlying notion that something deeper was going on. I still see this therapist, more than 3 years later.

I now know the cause of the frictions, Autistic vs Non-Autistic differences. I do remember in the middle of an argument she shouted at “ Are you fucking Autistic or something!!??” So that was the first time Autism entered my thoughts.

I remember telling my mum about this and she revealed that she’d thought I was Autistic when I was a baby. I’d line things up and enjoyed playing on my own. She did say she spoke to the doctor, but because I developed well and didn’t present typically (due to being good at masking probably), the doctor dismissed it and my mum didn’t follow it up.

I was thinking about investigating that when she left me, and then, I honestly never gave it another thought because my life was turned upside and I was facing divorce. I met someone else and that relationship blossomed, so I didn’t think it needed further investigation and put it down to growing into different people. Now I’m several years into my new relationship, this time now with kids, similar things started happening, obviously different, but the same grinding down described by my ex-wife is happening to my current partner.

I was accused by my ex-wife of coercive controlling abusive behaviour. (Which I now think is that she was living with a burntout undiagnosed Autistic person who has no support and was firing off in all diorections because he wanted to feel secure.) We lived in a flat I didn't want to live in. Because she wanted to live there. We lived in an area I didn't want to live in. Because she wouldnt move further away when we bought the place. We had two cats, that I was quite allergic to, because she wanted them. She had full access to all of the banking accounts and upon the start of the divorce took a considerable sum of money out of it and left we with essentially nothing. I did all of the accounting work and running of money but she accused me of controlling her finances.

If you look at it through the lens of Autism, then it suddenly stops being malicious thing that was accused and becomes executive dysfunction. It’s also an Impulse Control issue. Neurotypical people have no problem suppressing their anger or frustration if something doesn’t happen the way they want it to. The purpose of executive function is to manage tasks such as planning, organisation, reasoning, multitasking, problem solving and behaviour inhibition. Now, whilst I’m extremely good at all of those things within a work environment, and probably because I’ve become very good at masking, at home it’s a very different picture. I interrupt, get distracted when it comes to household tasks, I get frustrated because the bag of peas hasn’t been opened ‘properly’ and I find it very difficult to not say something about it, I suggest improvements to the way things are done quite often, not because I think the other person is wrong, but because I’m trying to help them improve the way they do things (which sounds arrogant, I know, but its not even that, it’s because my logical monotropic brain doesn’t understand why you would do it any other way.) Work is cold and emotionless, to some extent, and this doesn’t translate to the home environment. The home environment is complicated, filled with nuance and emotional situations that I don’t understand. We trip up all the time.

My current partner is very neurotypical, and when I say very neurotypical, I mean she scored 6 on the RAADS-R test. She is a mum of two. She is incredible. But she doesn’t understand Autism. Some of the things she does just triggers me like you wouldn’t believe. Even when I say, blatantly, stop saying that or please just be direct, she can’t. She has to do it her neurotypical, unclear, emotionally driven, no logic way. And we clash. She’s started to say we’re not compatible. I hope that doesn’t mean it’s going to end. I think she's fallen out of love with me because its hard work to live with me now. I love her so very much though. I love my family.