Marriage break-ups

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so yes, it if formalised now.
i am living under the same roof as my ex-partner and we agree to co-parent.
I really feel as if the way i live - which i am PERFECTLY happy with - is so different to what is expecetd of me in a marriage, that it is quit-time. he feels the same.

we have a son. but we will both keep parenting him. i'll continue to hang on the peripheries with my special interests and my computer and my ex will do all the day to day stuff.

anyone have any advice or pearls of wisdom?
i actually feel relieved but upset.
although i can see that the best way for me to be is alone and with my interests......
i do actually worry about my son.

Last edited by millie on 25 Jan 2009, 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have no personal experience with this, but I've seen a lot of it real close. Most of my family seem to get divorced, so I count myself for lucky, not getting married in the first place.
As I have observed from my family members, they all got upset for a while, that's natural, since they had to cope with the chaos the break up causes.
The advice is to cool down, take one step at the time and let things sort out gradually. There is no particular reason to worry about your son, since you both seem to agree on that issue. Kids also get upset, but they seem to adopt to the situation quite fast. I have not observed that any of the kids in my family got any long term problems from their parents divorce.

Very good advice. Thank you. It was also something I needed to hear too.

To the OP:
I'm going through some hard times with my spouse, and we got two kids. I guess relationships take on different phases, and sometimes they get better and sometimes they get worse. I really thought that it was time to end mine when I'm planning in my head how I'm going to leave my husband and I walk around the house deciding what I want to keep and what he can keep. Then, I talk to my sister and she's planning her wedding, and she said even in her relationship (and her and her bf with 3 kids have been together a lot longer than me and my husband...like 5 to 6 years now), she went through phases like that and now they are doing really good. In my case, I got some theories on why my husband is an ass that might resolve themselves in the next couple weeks...I guess I'll see on that.

Either way, the advice I am going to dish out is the same I got from my mom. Now is the time to think in the next 3 or 5 years, where do you want to be in life? It doesn't matter if you are single or not in that time, but imagine it as if you were a single mom with no help from anyone else. Where do you want to live? Where do you want to be working? Etc. It doesn't hurt to set up some long term goals and work towards them. Include your son in your plan. Remember, these are YOUR goals. They have nothing to do with what is expected of you from anyone else but yourself.

Then when you set out those goals, you got to become the closer and follow through. You can create a plan of things to do type thing, but you got to make sure you do them. Maybe include it into a routine like taking a couple hours a day just to work on your goals, and if you are done for the day with your goals, then the extra time you had allotted to them can be spent any way you wish (i.e. special interest).

Mllie, I am so sorry to hear about what you're going through. I can relate, as I'm divorced from my daughter's father.

This is a major reorientation, and you should expect the rules of the game to change. Right now, you have an agreement worked out with your ex-partner regarding parenting, but once people break up, the arrangements can go through many, many changes. I completely agree with Tantybi that you should make goals for yourself that include your son. Something has be a stabilizing force here, and the only thing you can control is what you do and how you handle it, so setting goals and working each day toward them is crucial.

I also want to caution you against believing that you are a lousy mom. You aren't, but I think sometimes that you've conditioned yourself into believing it. Perhaps your ex had some part in this, I don't know. But I think you have to demand your rightful place in your son's life. You can't just be on the periphery. This isn't to say that you can't paint every day or spend time on the computer, but please do not cede the parenting ground to your ex.

When I separated from my ex-husband, I said to someone that maybe I should just give custody of our daughter to him, because I thought he was the better parent. The person said to me, "Stop. Do not sign any papers while you are operating under this kind of distortion about yourself." It was the best advice I ever got. The truth is, in my first marriage, I felt like everything was my fault and that I was always in the wrong. My ex and I were in a terrible pattern, and it took some doing to break it. In my present marriage, I am loved for who I am. I now realize that I have always been a great mom *because* I am different and *because* I have challenges. Who doesn't have challenges? Our kids need to see that as a positive thing, because the world is a baffling place for NTs too, and our kids need to see that we're not just effortlessly gliding along *or* beating ourselves over the head because we can't.

Find some way to include your son in the things you love. His dad can take him to video arcades and crowded playgrounds and all the rest of it. But you have your strengths. Assert them. Don't cede any ground because you feel lousy about yourself. It may feel overwhelming because your son is small and there are so many years of parenting ahead, but believe me, one day you'll wake up and your son will be grown. It will happen in the blink of an eye. Don't relinquish your right to be there.

There is nothing wrong with you, Millie. Nothing. You can do this.

PM me anytime, my friend.

Total sympathy with you, millie.

I am going through the exact same thing right now.
and I absolutely understand what you are experiencing.

I am short on time and cannot reply at length right now.
I'll craft a better response later.

Please just know you are not alone, and that in this situation, you being healthy and happy is best for everyone involved.

thanks people....my WP mates are helping. thanks so much Mosez, - i relaly did needto hear my son will be ok and thanks tantybi and nesh. thanks acacia.
i do feel i i am a lousy mum - well - an atypical mum. i willl, as you say Nesh, focus on my strengths, my american pen pal.

My son's dad is actually a very good person, and we will stay co-parenting for as long as we do. He is into that, and although it has gotten pretty nasty the past 6 months with his increasing frustrations with me and the realistion that i am not going to actually change much more than i already have, at least he is not some thug ratbag who will create nastiness for its own sake. he is not vindictie and neither am i. So there are some pluses there.

i hear it when you you say Nesh, about the rules shifting and changing. I just lock in to whatever has been arranged as if that is it. i try to create systematic order that may leave little room for the realities or complexity of the situation. i think my adherence to this approach is very very leiteral and it terrifies me that you and tantybi reaise the issue of changin gplans and goals and rules. THis is utter meltdown region for me. I am quite naive as i had this view that after one talk we were sorted in temrs of co-parenting under the one roof and that would be the case of the the next ten years!! I have special interests and do not really wantot be disturbed and i could happily live without another relationship until the day i die. what i maybe need to realise is that he is not going to be like that and i need to factor that in. WE are moving into the realm of PEOPLE ARE NOT INANIMATE OBJECTS territory. this is going to be quite a ride for me...................


In relation to the rules we set concerning our son and co-parenting,I suspect i have some kind of childlike naivety concerning this. it is the theory of mind stuff which can be quite unedeveoped in me in certain areas - particularly wehn i have no prior cogntive imagery or experience to draw from and use to help me through. It is as if now that i have a plan and it is sorted, everything will remain like that, in spite of changes in my ex's need or wishes or situation. the changing rules and not their content is what is so difficult for me i think. i'm not very good at it. oh well.

yes....i am a good mum. but i am not good at anything typical that a mum is supposed to do. I might just hang on to the fact that my son gets a weird mum who makes animal noises around th house and mimics peoples' voices and comes home from shopping with say, a loaf or bread and five bottles of extra hot chilli chilli sauce and never writes a list in the first place even though the fridge is empty. allthe practical things i am lousy at, but i do know i am fun for him - more fun than most people could even imagine and i can sweep him up in m world and he can feel pretty good from that , i think. My son gets to hang in a real artist's studio and meet amazing people who are out there and not a part of the mainstream world. he gets expsure to experiences that most kids don't. that is enriching.

anyway, thanks all. and Acacia...hope you are also ok. look forward to hearing from you soon.
thanks all.

millie,

It is astonishing to me how similar our stories seem to be.

First of all, let me say again how completely OK it is going to be. Things coming to a head like this is a necessary part of life for you, your son and ex-partner. It's an opportunity for all of you to learn, to make some changes, and to come out on the other side happier and more productive. However you're able, try to continue to frame things positively, and that's how things will tend to turn out.

Like I said, my situation is a lot like yours.

My ex-partner and I are still living under the same roof, and have done so for 5 years. We have not had anything like a "relationship" for at least 2 years. Things fizzled out pretty quickly, actually. She kept waiting for me to reciprocate her feelings, and there was nothing there. I felt like I was giving everything I had. She felt unfulfilled and increasingly frustrated. We had no idea about AS until just last month, and it explained everything. It was at that point that we knew that we could never have a loving, constructive relationship. Our needs were too different, and those needs could not be met in the present situation. All of the figurative (and sometimes literal) banging our heads against a wall had amounted to nothing.

We are in the process of sorting out our lives to the point where we can arrange a different living situation. It has become overly apparent to us that we cannot live together. We've been trying to just be polite to each other in a shared-living scheme for years now, mostly by avoiding each other. That has resulted in countless misunderstandings, fights, meltdowns, and all kinds of bad craziness. She has nightmares about me. It is really unhealthy and I worry about how it all is affecting our son.

Let me say here that it is good that your ex is supportive and wants to make things work in terms of living and parenting. I don't want to scare you with what I just said about the disintegration of my shared-living arrangement. That is how things have turned out for my ex and I as individuals. Every combination of people is different, and there is no reason why you can't make your arrangement work just fine.

My son is 3.5 and is mentally more like his NT mother than me, which I am somewhat thankful for. His mother and I experience a great deal of inconsistency in raising him. She is able to respond to his emotions in ways that I cannot. He acts out around me, like he is constantly trying to get my attention. He is the total opposite around her. She is the better parent as far as all the intangibles are concerned. Socializing, Communicating, and processing Emotions are all things she can teach him that I have problems with. I am the better parent when it comes to certain practical hands-on physical things. Yet I often feel like I am short-changing him. I can be right there with him giving him (what I perceive to be) my full attention, yet he will seem restless, irritable, even angry. He is also old enough now to tell me, "papa, I want your attention!" This seems to be a big problem. I think he could be better off if his mother and I were not around each other. He wouldn't have to witness all of our problems, and we could each focus totally on him in our own ways.

So our goal is separate places to live, and continued co-parenting of our son.
There are plenty of other complicated details, but I won't carry on with that.

My advice to you, millie, in addition to what I said earlier, is to keep talking about this objectively.... to your son, to your ex-partner, to yourself, to us, to whomever. Make sure there is an understanding of WHY things are happening the way they are to everyone involved. That is one of my greatest fears... that my son will not understand why his mother and father don't live together, or that he has done something to cause it. He will need constant communication and reinforcement about it. You should just make sure you do the same. I suppose that's kind of obvious, but I thought it needed mentioning.

It seems like you know what you need and that you can do that alright. You can continue to be a good mother. You can finally define and live your own life. Overall, this is a good thing. I feel the same way about my situation.

I guess that's it. I'm not the best at sympathy or words of wisdom, but you know we're always here to listen and provide support.
Keep at it.

thanks acacia - your words resonated very clarly with me. just woke up this morning as is i am in a dream of sorts.
My son and his dad are very ver close. they do everything together and i am somewhere between a livewire who bowls on in and a kind of ghost.
my son knows his dad and i really care about each other. he also is old enough to state his needs - one of which in 2008 was " i want my parents to live together."
he starts school again today and hoes into a gifted and talented program....he's a super brain with defintie traits who would prefer to watch pokemon all day and if kids come over to swim in our pool, and he is wtching pokemon - well, the kids frequenly take secon place to his main obsession.. Now in saying that i do not feel he is AS. THere is no question he has traits - he also repeats things over and over again and gets distressed if cetain foods on his plate touch. but those things in themselves don;t make AS - althought they point to his idiosyncracies as a kid who is highly sensitised. he never learned to talk really - he just starte with fairly full conversation. and the first few years of his life was the hardest thing i have never done. it felt like close to death because of the emotional proximity to him thati was expected to give, as a mum. NOw, that has nothing to do with love. that is the great tensiona dn paradox i taklk about in us ASD people. we can crave teh contact and closeness and when it arrives it is strangely suffoccating and overwhelming.

his dad runs the house basically. i used to do more, but i am completely spent in that regard. after two years of ebing suicidal and not topping myself because of my son, and then finding out it was AS - female presentation - i began making changes.

this separtation is the next stage of that and i am really trying to do what is right for me. whilst minimising hurt of others. the latter is important to me.

my son also gets really naughty with me. but then, i unwittinlgy encourage it with my games with him. i amjsut a big kid int hat respect so i let him free with all the stuff kids AREN"T supposed to do, because i don't get the social constraints at all.
He actually has a SWEAR jar for ME!! i think you all might get the picture then. it says a little about my developmental delays in certain areas!!

thanks friends. i actually feel really glad to have met all of you. even though i do not know what any of you really look like - you are important to me.

Wow, millie and Acacia, I kinda go through some of the same parenting struggles.

My kids are 1 and 2, girls. I probably don't give the one year old enough attention because the two year old always seems to be wanting it. My husband is always telling me, "She was being really good until you came home." I know he's more structured than I, but he and I butt heads on that. I feel like all he does is discipline, and for things that are normal for a 2 year old but inconvenient for him. It is possible my hubby might be a little Aspie too, but we are not sure.

What I've been doing that's been kinda working for me though, is when she does something bad (and I pick and choose my battles wisely), I say no and correct the behavior (as she won't voluntarily get down from the table type thing). If she starts to melt down, I hold onto her like a big hug and try to talk her into relaxing on her own (like calm down, it's really no big deal, mommy loves you, etc.). If she keeps going back into the same behavior I said no to, or if she starts throwing things and knocking things over (a behavior I say no to that happens usually during her meltdown of being told no), I threaten first with her going to her crib (which she can escape out of it in less than 10 seconds). If she continues, I usually leave it at one or two threats before I take her to her crib. Then I don't call it a time out. Only the mommy gets time outs (that means mommy needs a break because she's getting too frustrated and is being bad so she needs a time out). I call it her alone time to "chillify herself." Then that way it's not focused on punishment as much as this is something you need in life sometimes like a diaper change. It's been working pretty well, but not as good as the occasional slap on the leg. I just am against that because she doesn't think it hurts. She thinks its a fun game, and now she smacks everyone all the time. With the one year old, I worry about her "playing" like that. I don't know how my husband gets that to work for him though. What's even more weird, she and I spend more time together and I pay more attention to her and actually play with her one on one, but she craves more attention from me than my husband.

As far as house wife, oh, I suck. I hate it hate it hate it. But, if I don't clean, cook, change diapers, feed kids, etc., nobody else will. My husband works, brings home the paycheck, and he even lets me spend the money to my will to the last cent (mainly because he's too lazy to deal with bills). But outside of that, I do it all. I even did his resume for him to get the job. He won't even order his own meal through the drive thru. Oh yeah, I get the cars fixed. He won't even take them to the mechanic. It gets so frustrating, and this is the cause of most of our marital problems.

Like yesterday, the house was a mess cause I didn't clean it for four days. I wanted to over the weekend, but I got sidetracked. It looked like nobody cleaned it for months, and the landlady makes many surprise visits and will kick us out over a little mess (let alone a big one). First, I'm on the computer doing my special interest (a small business I hope to nurture into something like a decent pay check), and my daughter won't let me work. I had to pay attention to what I was doing, and I got to the point where if she was in the room, I was sidetracked. A complete Aspie moment. What should have taken me 15 minutes to do took me two hours. But I got it done, and then decided to clean so she can run around from room to room following me. So, now I got a huge job, and I'm tired. So I take my Hoodia because it usually gives me a little energy, not as much as coffee, but I was kinda nauseous and coffee makes it worse. No, this time, different story. I never took meth or rolled on e, but yesterday, I felt exactly as I would imagine the buzz to be off one of those. I couldn't sit down to enjoy one cigarette. If I tried, I was stimming major with stims I never do. I hated the feeling, but I seriously cleaned yesterday. Even after the migraine headache developed, I was moving in fast forward all day. NOt just cleaning, but also handling the two year old trying to put things in the toilet, climb up on a chair to help me with dishes, throw things, etc., and the one year old who needs a bottle or a diaper change, and so forth. So, after I do all the dishes, I start the rest of the house finding more dishes to do. Meanwhile, my sister in law who is staying with us for a while, decides to cook herself some eggs. She uses two clean skillets. Why two? I don't know either. So I go back to my clean kitchen, and it's not clean. So I do another load and a half of dishes, not one dish being mine, and re-clean the stove and countertops. Now the house is clean. Feels good. But I got to hit up the grocery store because we are expecting snow. So I go get enough supplies for a week, including a propane heater in case electric goes out, yep, I'm prepared. When I get home, there's yet another load of dishes, and now I'm ready to crash and burn that the pills wore off. ON top of it, I still had my headache, and I couldn't twist my back to the left without sharp pains going through the entire left side of my body. So, I do the dishes again (which again, not one dish was mine). I also cleaned the stove again, as well as the coutertops and table, again. My husband is watching me do this, standing there, offering to do it for me. I'm like, if you wanted to offer to do it, then why didn't you just already do it. Then, when I'm done knowing I wanted to take a nap before he went to bed, he goes, "well, I am going to bed now." I had to wait two more hours for the 2 year old to go to sleep before I could even lay down. I'm here to tell you in this long complaining story that it does feel like a life of servitude when you do all the chores. So, A, make sure you are not the person doing all the work, but B, also make sure you aren't making someone else be your slave. I do get very depressed over it. I don't get suicidal because of the kids (and I never really get suicidal anyway). But I get self destructive. It would be nice if the husband would help out more, but hell at this point, I'm happy with a back rub once in a while and acknoweldgement and respect for what I do.

But now, I'm to the point where most of what I do is for the kids, and not the husband. I really could care less anymore if the man has clean clothes or not. As long as the kids are square, I'm happy. When he decides to show me some love, I'll return the favor. Until then, I'm on strike as house wife. The house will be clean because I'm still the mom, but he'll be doing his own laundry soon. I wonder if he even knows how to do laundry? Ah, it's like parenting a teen right?

Anyway, sorry to go so long, but one thing that has helped me with parenting is http://www.babycenter.com/behavior-prob ... pe=2UvjEmU

I also try to research a lot on health and nutrition. I think that's where my Aspie nature has really benefited my children. Oh hell, I'm sure it saved their lives. I'm telling you. Some doctors and nurses are about as smart as my neighbor's dog crap in my yard, and like that dog, they will crap in your yard. So it's good to know what is really up, and I find it very helpful to get to know different illnesses, home remedies, and info on drugs (RX and OTC the doctor recommends). My only problem is that outside of shots and requested by mom prescriptions, the doctors don't have much use to me. They all assume it's pie in the sky to take a 1 and 2 year old out, wait for an hour in the waiting room, wait for a half hour to an hour in the patient room just so I can talk to someone who doesn't know what they are talking about for five minutes. But they swear that they will have more on the subject before the next visit, but by then, you can tell they forgot to research it but they won't admit it. The question how many licks does it take to get to the center of the tootsie pop is like how many visits to the doctor does it take to get an answer. Anyway, Aspergers helps me with that because I'm anal about things being done correctly, and I make certain my kids don't get lousy treatments. A lot of my NT family will disagree with me on that because I am not a doctor, but I keep trying to remind them where they think their doctor gets his information. They really think he memorized everything in medical school I think, and then God sends upgrades to only doctors about new information in medicine.

Yeah, I might have a little PMS, so I think I'll quit for now and approach this again in the next couple days. I keep complaining about something instead of going on the topic I wanted to talk about. Since I put so much time into it, I don't really want to delete it. However, the next time, I might benefit from starting a new thread. I really am now interested in how Aspies parent. I just need to wait until I'm a little more chill.

wow tantybi. good luck also with you rlife. what is going to happen when the two kids get older and start trying wtih social exchanges. tht has been hard fo rme,


SO, i get my son reaey for his return to school yesterday. had all the clothes laid out on the spare bed in his room. i even tidied his room the day before that in prepartation for his first day in year one - which is like a f*****g logistical nightmare for to complete
i get him ready and we drive to school and i am thiking the roads in my small town are exceedingly quiet. we get to the school and he walks up a long treel-ined path and i am feeling pretty A-one. I am priding myself on fthe fact i have managed to actually spend half the usual length of timeon WP for his school morning and first day back, and i have also packed his bag and he looks pretty neat and happy. I am in the car waiting to watch him enter into the schoolyard. my mind wanders here and there and i conetmplate the current situation in my life and the fact so much has changed in a year. then i click out of dreamscape and vivid movie brain experience, and return to the material world.

My son is still at the schoolyard gate.

Suddenly a teacher flings the gate open and ruches down the path waving her arms at me. i am still in my car and am watching her exchange witj my son and she toddles down the path arms, flailing. (think landlocked helicopter.......)

Tthe words start taklng shape.


"the school is not open. it is a pupil free day. kids are not back unti tomorrow."

LOL

I did something like that once, but when I was in school. I think I was the only kid to show up to school one day when there was no school. And my mom was a teacher at my school, so you'd think I knew.

I should also say that my husband did really good yesterday. He did give me a back rub, and I really needed it. I think my hip is a little out of place (that's according to a doctor from about 6 months ago...like I have time to get an xray and go to physical therapy). Either way, I had a migraine most of yesterday and the day before, so I needed that. Get this. He was playing on the xbox 360, online, with a member from his band and a member from his old band who is also an old military buddy. He stopped mid game to give me a back rub without me even asking.