Relationship and Marriage Breakups from an Autistic’s Perspective

For the majority of our autistic lives things are predictable. We structure our lives to minimise change and to keep to a set routine. 

But as much as we try to avoid it unexpected things happen. As we get older, we become more and more experienced and capable of dealing with these events. We tend to think about the ‘what ifs’ to prepare ourselves. Such as what if one of us lost our job? Then put measures in place, just in case. Big things happen but we are mentally prepared to cope.

Life is often a struggle at times be it:

• Long term or lifelong illnesses
• Struggling to get by financially
• Getting through the day to day difficulties of navigating a non-autistic world
• Seeing people who are successful in their careers all around us, but not quite reaching those heights ourselves (knowing that maybe our autism is the barrier preventing us from doing this).

But we get by.

We try exceptionally hard and find our way through the best we can. In our minds, for those of us who are fortunate, we have got what we need. A strong healthy family who we love and they love us in return. We get by financially and our home lives are stable and secure.

Then, bang!, out of the blue a massive life event happens that we never predicted. Things that were a given to us, that we thought would never change. It could be anything such as: The loss of a parent. A lifelong illness. Or separating from your spouse.

These are the hardest things to cope with. The level of stress they cause is phenomenal.

My Story

My wife and I had been together for over twenty years. We’ve got two amazing kids and we lived a happy life. Like with the majority of people, we just about got by. Many people had more than us (nice holidays, new cars, better homes) and many people had less. But for me I thought we got the balance just about right. Although we were striving to aim for more, like most, so that one day we would have those nicer things in life.

We’d seen many couples and marriages break up over the years. In fact most of the people we knew. But we pulled through.

For me I never thought it would be different. It never even crossed my mind. We’d had rough patches. But we always got through it.

Then the shocking news came. That my wife wasn’t happy and hadn’t been for a while. She felt we’d drifted apart over our extremely long relationship and we’d both changed too much and wanted different things. Whereas I thought things were going well with us. She wanted to end our relationship. 

But we had a heart to heart and got through that difficult period. It was a wake up call for me. So I tried my absolute best to make our marriage stronger.

A lot of time passed (about a year) and everything seemed to be ok. But then, out of the blue, something happened that I never saw coming. This completely broke the trust in our marriage and friendship and ultimately became the start of our marriage completely breaking down.

I still tried and hoped we could work through it and keep us together, if only for the kids, but it wasn’t to be.

Pain

The pain is unbearable. The loss. The blame. The self doubt and loss of self confidence. The sadness. Endless days of tears. Then the continued fear about the future as well as being scared and lonely.

Every imaginable feeling. 

As I’m autistic it is was often impossible to decipher what emotion was actually hitting me the hardest. 

This lasted for many months and even still today. I often wake up in the very early hours of the morning and panic. Not being able to get back to sleep. I get a wave of emotions and fears about the future. But now I can calm down quite quickly. Keep this in check and I’m gradually getting better. 

Knock on Effect

The implications of this separation will be astronomical to me and includes:

• Not only losing my wife but also losing my best friend. As my wife was always my best friend too. The only person I trusted completely.
• Losing most of my family. As my wife’s family had become my family. I saw her parents as mine. Her aunties and uncles as mine. In many ways I was closer to her family than my own often spending special times together like Christmas day.
• My home – the one place I thought I’d never lose. I put in every measure to make sure that was always secure.
• The area I live in, as I can’t afford to live in the same town anymore.
• Time with my own children – only being able to see them half of the time instead of all of the time.
• Financial stability – having to run and pay for everything alone. Increased bills but a decreased income. Fear of not being able to manage.
• Savings – all of which need to be used to buy duplicates of what I already own such as beds, appliances and so on. Legal fees for buying a house, surveys, divorces fees.
• Companionship – as I’ve never lived alone for a single night before. Now I’ll have to get used to this for half of my life.
• Children’s stability and wellbeing – them having to get through this incredibly difficult period of change and financial hardship.

All of this causes other long term health issues such as sleep deprivation, stress, depression and so on.

At this very moment in time we’re cohabiting. But this is for the very short term. Very soon I’ll be living alone and seeing the boys for half of the time.

Advice 

Going through a separation is tough. I never found it easy; even when I was younger and the relationships were shorter term. But this one of course hit me the hardest. Some of the things that helped me:

• Initially try to fight for your marriage and do whatever it takes to stay together (if that’s a possibility). But if this option is exhausted then you have to let them go. We are all free to choose this path, even if it doesn’t make sense to us. I would have never done it myself, as I’ve always put the kids first and seen marriage as a lifelong commitment, but we’re all different. My ex’s view has always been that married couples should not stay together if they’re unhappy even if kids are involved.
• At your time of weakness, like with many things, you have to fight the hardest. When you feel like you can’t face the world. You have to be stronger than you’ve ever been and deal with things you’ve never faced before. You could be seriously taken advantage of in this situation if you don’t.
• The pain lessens in time. It is still painful and still hurts. But you get moments where you can carry on with life and not think about it constantly.
• Luckily I knew the importance of letting out these emotions instead of bottling them up. But on the flip side you don’t want to sink into the depths of deep depression. To start with it was an uncontrollable daily thing. Then weekly, every two weeks and so on. Where I’d wake up. Nearly always in the morning. Then cry my heart out. Then carry on with life.
• Don’t blame yourself and try to not blame your ex (if circumstances allow). If you can; forgive. For me it’s been much better to do this than the alternative. I do get negative emotions and feelings at times, like sadness, but for the most part I’ve moved on. 
• Try to stay friends if you can, especially if children are involved. We are ok with each other and talk etc. it’s never the same but we get by.
• Have ground rules which you both agree on. Which can be hard to set in place when the other person doesn’t care as much about breaking them anymore.
• Things die down in the end. You adjust, your ex adjusts, your children adjust, then things are ok. (We’re not quite there yet but we will be).
• For some people they jump into the next relationship and get a new partner and this solves a lot of the negatives. But as much as it solves it can bring on a set of different problems and have massive implications for you and your own children. (I’m not in a new relationship at stage in my life).
• Seek the help of a counsellor if you need it. (My work provided me with a free session and it helped at the time).
• Definitely use your family for support. They would have been through it before and will help you deal with it all emotionally.
• Perhaps most importantly do not blame yourself and stay strong.