Am I being horrible? (1st post, long, sorry)

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I'm not suicidal but I'm very very depressed and also see no way out in my 13 years of marriage.
No doubt that he loves me and we both agreed that he might be AS (undiagnosed).
But this piece of information doesn’t provide any well-needed comfort for me.
I sometimes just want to quit, but I know something is good inside him although this good doesn’t always come with the support that I need. He loves his family too but he cannot easily ‘divert’ his attention so he often prioritizes his own agenda before his family. As in it is an ‘accident’.
This is his love. This is his best. He has no other intention but love me and I believe that is the truth.
We have been sleeping separately on and off for a few years now (since 2007). I've given up on trying because trying to ‘staying close’ as a couple is just too painful for me.
By giving up pursuing the ideal - intellectual and physical intimacy I freed myself from seeing us as a married couple. I invented this scenario – where we’re just friends, we share a home and a child but we’re just 2 separate individuals. This makes me less upset and less angry. Getting rid of these negative emotions was the most liberating thing I’ve ever done and very beneficial for my AS spouse.
I apologized to him and stressed that the problems that I have is not knowing how to cope with his inability to seek to my needs (and our daughter’s emotional needs as well). I cannot offer anything else other than being his friend and keeping peace at the cost of me stop being his wife. (No expectations no arguments)
I know he’s not happy about this but nobody should live with frequent arguments and shouting. ‘I don’t mind whatever makes you happy’ he says. I especially don’t fancy continue being "expected" to explain things (relationships/ people/ our child’s reaction/ how not to be late/ how not to be rude etc) to him because the more I try to fulfil this role as a teacher/ therapist the more I resent the role – it killing off all the romantic feelings I had for him. I tried many times to rekindle but recently I found myself hated the whole thing because some of his attitude and doings still send me to the same emotional roller-coaster ride.
I’m sad that I only found out about Asperger’s 2 years ago when I feel I cannot turn back or reconciliation/ rekindle our marital relationship anymore. I've lost all that feelings for him.
As I admitted, the weaknesses are all mine. If I’m a stronger woman I will not let his inabilities drag me down. I should be able to ‘simply explain the problem to him without getting upset and tell him exactly what to do’ as he put it. I still find some of the things he said and done unforgivable. I have bags of problems of my own I really cannot carry him anymore.
I know he loves me. I know if I turn around, he’ll happily resume our old relationship.
But I don’t.
Is it wrong to want to divorce my spouse because I no longer willing to be his therapist/ mentor/ only friend/ wife? I suppose what I’m really asking is I want to free myself from this huge duty, please don’t hate me.

You are right Chronos, I’m technically just sharing a home with him but I quit all the things that I will do with a spouse. It does free me from that horrible pressure. And you’re right for the second point, I do have to deal with him a lot and being the broker between him and our daughter and support the family on my own (he is not earning, not helping with chores and not providing emotional support). I’m 37 but feeling 57!!

Going back to what you asked, what make me think he might be AS? Here you go – He never really had a job, very talented self-taught blues harmonica player/ bass/ vocal. He plays at gigs and makes £50 here and there but never really enough to pay the bills or sustain a family. When we were really broke (when I was pregnant with our child) I beg him to get a job (with tears) he plainly replied ‘a job will be too boring for me, I cannot do 9 to 5’. We literally had less than £100 in back and 3 months arrears in rent.

He cannot understand why keeping the house clean is pleasant (his standard would be doing the dishes when there’s no cups left in the cupboard) and when I explain the hygienic issues over his overly smelly bedding he’d just hang them out in the garden and insist that the sun and air should clean it up. He complains about the smell of washing powder.
He is very sensitive to materials, even just cotton t-shirt, it got to be right types of cotton or he will be well irritated by it. He wears a particular t-shirt inside out (even out on the street) because the seams are too ‘scratchy’.

He is also bad in time-keeping and friendship-keeping. He never initiate any social meetings, he only gets invited because he wants to make sure that ‘I’m wanted’. When I ask him ‘don’t you miss going out to see your friends?’ he replied ‘no’. He stays at home all the time. He never really get any things done but always busy on the Internet.

He cracks inappropriate jokes, once, he made a joke about his father’s sexual life. His brother started it but only subtle along the line of FIL choice of TV channel and then my spouse carried on to an increasingly explicit level… all our faces then turned into grimace, he still didn’t stop until his brother said ‘that’s is getting a bit much’. (fail to realise facial expression?)

He thinks people shouldn’t do anything for one another unless been asked. When I was overwhelmed by all the financial worries and housework when I was 8 month pregnant, I was all in tears and I asked him ‘how come you never helped?’ he simply replied ‘you never asked’. He was cross with me because I was ‘expecting him to read my mind’.

I moved to England because he was unhappy in Hong Kong. When we first got back to his hometown in the UK, he offered no help or orientation. I didn’t even know how and where to get to the nearest shops! Naturally, he’s on the computer all the time, finding ‘his way’ and checking out ‘the music scene’, somehow the welfare of his wife and child is not a priority, because ‘you didn’t ask’.

Once I got upset about being misunderstood by him and I really have had nobody to speak to, so I turned to his dad for a shoulder to cry on. My father-in-law concluded the whole conversation in this statement: ‘don’t expect anyone to be nice, treat them all as evil, even your husband and child, until you’re sure that they are angels and then maybe you can consider to be their friends’. Only then I realised what it is that I’m dealing with…I’m in the thick of it all.

I always thought that it was my English so I went to study English, then I thought it was my lack of understanding of culture differences so I went to do Social Anthropology and then I though it was my small social circle so I went volunteering to widen my social circle and then I realised it’s none of these…

Sometimes I will ask him to kiss me or kiss me with passion or kiss me while holding me in his arms. The communication is one-sided, I never get any info from him, when I ask he'll say ‘of course I’m happy’ or ‘of course I love you’ or ‘of course I care’ or ‘of course I want to make money’ why do I have to ask?! I was expected to be mindreading-ready.

The worse for me is this one ‘you can’t expect me to know that, you have to explain it to me without getting upset and tell me exactly what to do’. But not the other way around for me. I'm tired of this game.

And you’re right at the final point, I’m staying because I cannot afford the time and money to live separately from him. I feel that I’m using him and his inherited home but I cannot get out.

Thank you for your reply Chronos!

It seems to me that many of your problems started with miscommunications that grew into serious emotional turmoil in your mind, but not in his. Now that you believe that he has AS, perhaps you could try a different communication style with him, and see if that relieves some of the pressure you feel.

An example is asking. Asking works differently for a normal person vs. an autistic person. For a normal person, if someone asks you to do something, then that's basically an order from them to you, implying a superior-to-inferior power imbalance in that moment and adding to the existing long-term power balance between the two of you. By not asking, you're being gentle with the other person, hoping that they will pick up on your desires without you putting them into an inferior position. It also gives you pleasure that someone thought of doing something without you having to ask. For an autistic person, asking is just asking, no power play involved, so they will do something if you ask them and not pick up on your desires otherwise. In addition, some of us are really uncomfortable with people doing things for us without us asking them. If we wanted them to do something, then we would have asked. Someone who is used to thinking this way is not going to think that someone else prefers that they do things without being asked. Just like you can't believe that you have to ask him to do everything. It's a clash of communication styles. Maybe not even a clash. More like a miss. Think an asteroid missing the Earth.

In other words, your husband doesn't and can't and won't read your mind. When you want him to do something, just ask. You don't have to be gentle with him. When there's no clear reason why the thing has to be done, come up with a nice logical one and give it to him. If you can, state your emotional needs and wants clearly and ask him to fulfill them. He will do this for you in exchange for you telling him about them and not expecting him to read your mind. Remember that you also cannot read his mind, so don't project your frustrations into him being wilfully lazy or neglectful. His perspective makes total sense to me. After all, you didn't ask. Remember that you're the one with the emotional needs and wants that you want him to fulfill for you. He might not have those same needs and wants himself, so don't expect someone who doesn't have those needs and wants to know what they are and if and when others have them and expect them to be fulfilled by him. If you don't have a second head, then you're not going to have to brush its hair every morning. Sorry for the creepy image.

In summary, you're not horrible, and he doesn't sound horrible, and your miscommunications don't sound insurmountable to me. The only thing that I didn't understand was why your being a teacher to him killed off all the romance between you. You're helping him function better as a husband and father. How is that such a romance-buster? If you still want to save your marriage, then you will have to change your perspective on that. And you will both have to work on matching up your communication styles so the asteroid actually hits the Earth some significant percentage of the time. Sorry for that too. I dunno why my examples are so creepy. When in doubt, just say it out loud. Chances are he'll appreciate that from you. Tell him that you're changing your communication style for him, and tell him that you expect specific actions from him, and tell him why you expect those actions, whether they are being more affectionate with you or paying more attention to you and your daughter or supporting the family with a regular income. Chances are he'll get it if you say it out loud, calmly, and logically. If you hint it or say it in a way like he is totally inadequate or at fault for everything that has gone wrong ever, then don't expect him to change his perspective or behavior.

Last thing: Your situation and the situations of many NT spouses in an AS-NT marriage reminds me of the NT parent-autistic child crisis. Basically, parents lose it when they find out that their child is autistic. Part of them doesn't want to do the hard work of connecting with their autistic children. The big difference between the two situations is that wives can divorce their husbands, but parents can't divorce their children. To divorce or not to divorce? That is the question. Stick around this board. Once you learn his perspective from people here, and you teach him yours, the work may not be as hard as you think it is.

Codmicvoid, I totally agreed with you. btbnnyr put it in together rather neatly in what you quoted.

don't wait around for something that will never be

don't mis-spend another portion of your life waiting

My mother (I'm not sure if she is AS or not) does not regret having married my father because she could not imagine life without us but we went through hell and she's upset that she did not connect the dots sooner, and that she thought she could work him through his immature behavior. he never changed, he still yells, very possessive, easily emotionally hurt, he still doesn't know why certain things make him react the way that he does, he often misses the context by which others are operating or speaking in, its a mess.

It is buyers remorse in an emotional sense and in the AS monthly meetings I attend, Im hearing from a lot of men who married an NT that their wives, too, feel betrayed in a way, or robbed of something, perhaps of a fairy-tale reality, perhaps simply of leading a normal life...

Wayne, I really appreciate your reply and you answer it section by section

He hard that same message for numerous times. His respond to that would be 'I know of course I know' and that's it.
My problem is, 'if you know and you know that it's hard and taken a lot out of me, why didn't you help?'
'if you know uprooting me from my home country and my family to live here with you is hard why didn't you give me more affection and support so I'm not so desperately lonely?'

This whole going around in circle.

I sometime think that I'm totally handicap in the forgive and forget department.

I need him to try very hard to meet me in the middle for years, I'm in a stage where I'd just stand behind the 'middle line' and waiting for him to show up. I gave up getting over to his side to bring him closer to me...does this metaphor make sense at all?

I'm a terrible, terrible, terribly petty and calculative...

it has been a long time indeed.

Thank you for your suggestion, I've been mostly using mobile text nowadays and you're right, it works better for both of us.

Wayne, this is the second time your reply made me smile

I'll try that.

How did you find out about your condition?