Last weekend I went away with a friend for a couple of nights, and we had a fabulous time shopping, drinking wine, talking and eating. Not necessarily in that order! We spent a lot of time talking (or moaning!) about our husbands, as women do. My friend's husband is a senior civil servant, who has what I think are lots of AS traits, for example no empathy, no emotion, selfishness, rituals and set routines etc etc. He has always been much the same but she feels he is getting worse now in his mid 50's. She has confronted him recently about their relationship, but he won't discuss, and he describes "putting things away in a box in his head" as his way of dealing with difficult or emotional situations, such as when his father died recently. When I described some of Mr H's less endearing traits and suggested that I think he has AS, my friend had a lightbulb moment, but knows that her husband wouldn't accept diagnosis.
So we are in the same depressing boat, 2 women in our mid / late 50s, feeling completely trapped in our marriages. We agreed that it's not all bad, that our husbands do have some redeeming features, (hers is good at DIY, not too sure what mine is good at!) but that we mostly feel pretty ground down, demoralised and miserable by putting their needs first all the time, and by not having our needs met.
We came to realise that in order to stay in our marriages, and to stay sane, we have to both find other ways of getting "positive strokes", either through work, friends, children, grandchildren.
It's a sad realisation that your marriage is never going to meet or fulfil your needs, but trying to find a positive slant, I am so lucky that I have some wonderful friends and we support each other .
Hannah x
PS, when I got home, after a 4 hour drive, Mr H greeted me, not with a kiss, or a cup of tea, but with an update on his toothache, followed by a list of things he had done while I was away, hoovered, cleaned the sink, done a load of washing. I was tempted to drive straight back off!
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