Can you learn to live with someone ?

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Hi,

First I am only 29 years old but I have been living independently for a while and I think what I want to speak of has much more its place here than in the "Love and dating" forum. I have been with my partner for 4 years, we are not "dating" any more and we know we love each other ; the problems I have are more about how to live together.

I just got diagnosed with AS last week, and I have only been considering the possibility of having an autistic condition since last December. My partner is absolutely not autistic but she is clearly a gifted person and hypersensitive (she never got any formal diagnosis or assessment but she and almost everyone who know her agree with that, or would if they knew the words). We have been together for 4 years.

We are not living together right now because we have to live in different cities for work reasons. We have lived together in the past, and even if it was not all bad it caused many problems. In a few months I will go back to my home city and we have plans live together again, which makes me very frightened. I am extremely anxious at the idea of living with someone on a daily basis again.

One thing I want to make clear is that it is not just about me and her. I have been in other relationships in the past and they didn't work out, not only because of my autistic traits but also because we were just not so well matched as human beings (in terms of interests, ethics, goals, etc.). I know a relationship is not only about "love". I don't see any such incompatibility with my current partner. On the contrary, I can't really imagine someone with whom I could get along with better. I am not saying she is unique, the world is huge and there are certainly some other persons for whom I could feel the same, but just it is not that I wish she would be different and can't get over it. I have thought over that in depth many, many times when I thought of breaking up, and my analysis always was that all the problems I had with her I would certainly have in any other relationship (and with many other people they would even be much worse). That made me think I was thoroughly unable to be in a functional relationship, so I tried to "fix" myself and couldn't and it made me mad. Now I have the beginning of an answer with the diagnosis of AS

I won't give too much details because I don't want to post a too big wall of text, but basically every time we lived together it caused me an intense anxiety. In the beginning I was completely masking or suppressing it as much as my other autistic "needs" and feelings because they made me feel wrong and guilty and I did not know why I couldn't be in a relationship in the same way as most other people. Later it led me to depression (though the relationship problems were not the only cause), meltdowns, poor self-esteem and despair. About our relationship, we nearly split many times and sometimes she was really angry or despaired because she could not understand me. When I was feeling really bad she did her best to support me (and she really did a lot, she's great) but she often felt rejected and got fed up and angry.

Since I have discovered I have AS and then got diagnosed, we have been speaking much about that, and our communication improved a lot. I think she understands much better why some of my behaviours and reactions seems unnatural to her and don't ask me things that seems meaningless any more. I myself know better how to give her what is important for her. And moreover, I am starting to accept some of my aspie traits and tendencies I had been hiding or repressing for a long time and I learn to communicate about them, which makes it easier for her to understand me.

So I am feeling better than I used to... but not all the way all right and I am still very anxious when we are together. I think that the root of the problem is that for me, the "rest" state is when I am alone and I can't really imagine things being different. I can enjoy social interaction (with my partner, with some friends, even with some colleagues or interesting strangers, usually in 1-to-1 interaction) but (as with most of us I think) it is always tiring and an effort. No matter how I like the person or the discussion we had, I can only enjoy it because I know for sure that afterwards I will be able to get myself together. Even having a travelling friend stay at home for a few days leaves me very worn out. It is just that living permanently with someone looks almost impossible to me, and I am wondering if I can do anything about that.

I am feeling very sad about that because I see how her behaviour changes and she tries her best to understand me and to make herself understandable to me, and up to a point it really works. Our communication has improved, and when she asks me if I feel less anxious I answer yes, because it is true. But the complete truth is that I am afraid it is not enough and never will be, and it really has nothing to do with her behaviour.

Can anyone relate to that ? And did you find a way to make it acceptable to live with someone, or did you have to find alternative solutions, or to give up on relationships completely ?

(I apologize if not everything in my post is completely clear, I reworked it many times and try to keep it quite short but it may not be as clear as intended.)

I'm no expert, but I think anxiety means one cares and wants it to work. It happens in all relationships, for what I've heard, yet with some it's like " walking on eggshells". If you care, you worry. If there are two, the word is comunication. No matter how hard it is or how tired one may be, it is important things are clear.
I see NT's restling with ghosts all the time - things that exist as doubts or misunderstandings in their minds. Maybe Aspies or others like Aspies stumble more, but on the other hand their consciousness might just bring the relationship to another level. Providing of course the other half knows the issues related and has the good will and the good heart to take time to learn how to deal with those issues. There are no angels though. The other half is human as well. So the center, IMO, needs to be the "we", even if sometimes the spotlight points to the "me" or the "he/she".

Have you considered talking with her about this, and exploring the possibility of living near, but not with, each other? It could be that she's also anxious about how things will go, and that much as she might be excited about seeing you more often, there are things she appreciates about living on her own, too.

It's true that boundary-setting can get difficult if you live nearby, but if you can be sensitive about it, then saying, "I need some days on my own" is less likely to be interpreted as a rejection.

Some people really need to live with a partner, but you guys have already shown that you can live apart.

Thanks for the sound advice, capricasix and tarantella64.

Sure. We both care and want it to work, I am sure of that. I don't worry about her not caring or leaving me. I used to but the level of communication we achieved has solved that. I don't think she will leave, and even if she does, I will be very sad and probably depressed for some time but not resentful nor puzzled.




I see what you refer too ; that is the kind of things we have been able to discuss much better since I am aware of my condition, and it is largely what made our communication improve.




We have been discussing that kind of things a few times, but in the past I couldn't really consider it a long term solution because I thought that kind of "need" could not exist for real and was automatically because I had some kind of problem with her or with relationships that I had to fix. (Yes, I really was a world champion for guilt and self-deprecation.) Now that I know myself better we should discuss that again. In the close future, living in two different places when we are back in the same city would be problematic for financial reasons, though.

That's pretty much how I feel, too. The problem for me was that I sort of had to move in with my girlfriend when we found out that we're going to have a baby. I tried to suggest that there might be some in-beetween sollutions, like renting another apartment next to my own, and using both, or having two "private" rooms just for each of us + a common space, in a larger appartment we're renting right now. But each of these suggestions was seen by my girlfriend as me trying to get away from her. The result is that we live in the way she wants, and I'm actually having no rest at all, feeling that I have no place where I'm in control of the environment. It's exhausting as hell. I wish I could stay on my own for few days, but it doesn't happen sincde 1,5 years now.

If I had known more about Aspergers early in my life, I would NEVER have lived with a lover. It was always so stressful-but I didn't realize how ill-suited I was to continuous coupledom. Even having your own room in the house, if you say you want to sleep alone, it's "why, what's wrong, is something wrong?" And you talk, talk, talk about the relationship but that doesn't solve anything because the Aspergers doesn't go away.

I could have had better romantic relationships and not nearly so much chaos (breaking up, finding another place to live, explaining the situation to friends) by just keeping my own little apartment and going on dates. If someone wants to be in constant physical proximity, if they interpret that as love, doesn't that tell us something? We know how that need for closeness is going to feel when we get home from a long day at work.

This sounds harsh , but that's been my experience. Many people at WP seem to be in positive relationships and live with spouses; it just wasn't the right thing for me and caused avoidable stress to my romantic partners, all of whom very much wanted to live with their lovers.