NT wife needs help understand sex life with AS husband

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I feel for you.
In March this year I told my wife of 16yrs I wanted a divorce due to lack of sex.
We have always had a very up and down relationship. We have 3 fab kids that we both love dearly (eldest has a PDD:NOS Dx). We spent a lot of time in counselling earlier on in our marriage which threw up the jaw-dropping surprise that my wife had felt in our courtship and honeymoon that we had had too much sex. So this has always been an issue.

About one month after making the split, which incidentally I did because I was miserable and I felt I was making her miserable and most importantly, I didn't think I could make her happy and I wanted her to be happy even if it meant she ended up with someone else, I couldn't sleep and spent the whole night turning everything over in my head. When the sun came up I realised that there was a distinct possibility that it might have been me that was the problem and it that was true, I would probably make the same mistakes next time. So I said to my wife I was going to go on a journey of self-discovery. I said I didn't expect her to do anything or change but I wanted to be sure that if we did split I had left no stone unturned in trying to salvage our relationship.

I bought 6 Aspie books and got myself referred by my GP for specialist Aspie counselling because we had both suspected I might be affected in some way and started reading. I also decided to make a conscious effort to be nice to my wife. Seems like an odd comment? Yup but I could not understand why she was with-holding sex and over time I had lost respect for her as a woman and in my warped black & white thinking had disengaged from her almost completely. Yes I was there in the house and looking after the kids but actually I was doing very little to help and I was really only there in person, not in spirit. I was enduring the situation because I was married and I had no choice. An incident stopped me in my tracks and made me reconsider our situation, hence the split.

During the course of my reading and some online tests I had discovered I am almost certainly Aspie and also so is my wife. When I read the descriptions of Aspie's, it was truly a revelation. Suddenly I understood why she and we were like we are. All those strange things I had done etc etc. However although being Aspie maybe gave a rationale it didn't take away some of the truly stupid things I had done over the years; the vast majority of which are truly cringeworthy. I do not know why she stayed with me and in fact when we had our split argument she did say that she hated me and had decided to leave me when our youngest was 18, (she's now 8, so 10yrs of this grief: commited or what?)

So the mission to be a better husband and father continues. We are living apart but see each other almost every day. We have dates to start Aspie specific counselling in July and I can't wait because as a result of all this grief I have come to realise just how much I want to be with her. I am just hoping she will stay the course and we can find a way to optimise all the good things and minimise the less good aspects of our conditions and our relationship.


How does all this help with the original posting?? Well I suppose you need to know whether his no sex announcement is permanent or temporary or whether as others have said he is just overloaded at the moment and needs some space and maybe support from you.
When I look back at us, I couldn't see what was wrong but I knew that something was fundamentally wrong. My only relief in all this is that I know that my premise was that I cared for her and wanted her to be happy. What I mean is, he may just be feeling overloaded with work and your ongoing counselling and maybe the "no sex" thing just means "give me some space". I say this because my stupid and childish attitude to relationships had not really moved on from my adolescence in that I associated sex as pretty much the only way of communicating my feelings to my partner. He may be similar and asking for some time out from the stress and emotional grief of the relationship counselling but not necessarily saying never again or even that he doesn't want to at all.
You'll need to ask him (maybe via your counsellor?)

Stick with it, I'm now on book 11 or 12! I can't undo the past but I can learn from my mistakes and be a better husband/father/person and that's what's keeping me going.

I've written far too much, I hope you find something useful in my rantings. Good luck and chin up!
A

rdos, if you're asexual and you marry a sexual person - then yes, I suspect that you will find a cheating partner in your future - that or a depressed one or one that leaves you. The need for connection and intimacy is too strong.

Marriage is about compromise, but compromise goes both ways.

We only need food to eat, but we enjoy delicious tasty food. If you were with someone without a sense of taste and the only food in the house was tasteless, bland, boring but sufficiently nutritious meal replacement shakes- although not in great quantities - you'd start to crave roasted, seasoned vegetables or a juicy burger or a delicious fresh salad or a ripe peach. If your partner insisted that you always eat at home even though you were hungry - eventually, you'd break and hit a taco stand. It isn't fair of them to insist you only eat their food at home when they're not even giving you sufficient calories.

If you're asexual you may not see why this analogy is valid, but I'm giving it a try!

When I was young I was offended by the idea that a partner might want to seek sex elsewhere if I couldn't provide it. But if I partner again and I get sick or completely go off sex, I will give him my blessing to go elsewhere (I'm not talking about temporary illness). I won't want to hear the details and it wouldn't be ideal. But I wouldn't want to control someone else's sexuality the way I foolishly gave control of mine away.

No, I'd break up. I don't want to be in any relationship with someone I can't make happy. Especially marriage.

But this strikes me as silly, too. Sex is just one part of life. If your relationship is great outside that, and it's just not something you can or want to do, why would you throw away the whole thing, especially if she wanted to stay married to you? It sounds it'd be more about you, and your own self-image ("what I can do for a woman") than it'd be about her and the relationship.

With my ex...if he could've gone and had some nice recreational sex while I was disabled, had a good time, it wouldn't have changed who we were to each other. And God knows he might've been happier. My only worry there would've been about the woman, whether she'd be hurt if I recovered and he stopped wanting to meet up with her.

Sex is a very core need for tons of people. If I cannot meet a core intimate need then we are not compatible, we may as well just be friends instead. Sex to me is the highest form of physical intimacy, it is the most extreme physical display of a bond there is, if she gets it from someone else then she may as well be with that person instead. If she is capable of having emotion-free recreational sex then I wouldn't have married her to begin with.

hear! hear!