Tough times, wife upset over our social life

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I'm approaching 50, undiagnosed, very high functioning masking for the first 35-40 years just being considered a little awkward, but last 5 years I have more or less surrendered to the aspi, cutting things that drain me. Never had real friends, but now I'm not trying anymore.

Both my kids (11+14) are also showing clear aspi traits and are seeing friends less and less. My 14 year old daughter is struggling with and treated for anorexia and depression. When the depression is under control she will be tested to get an official diagnose.

With Corona and my daughter, we haven't had anything resembling a normal life for 6 months, confined to our house and strictly planned 6 fighting meals a day, it is tough.

My wife (for more than 25 years) is a very social and outgoing person, she is frustrated with the outlook of both me and the kids being aspi and not wanting/able to socialize. Basically she is saying "this is not what I signed up for".

Don't really know how to respond. I want to make her happy, she is my only friend.

Maybe your wife just needs time to process it. We often get something different from life than what we sign for.

She needs to adress her social needs outside the closest family so everyone's needs - both her need for social life and your need to be alone - get adressed. It would be good to schedule social and non-social time.

Also, having friends is possible for Aspies but they need to be people who like the Aspie for who they is - including acceptance of one's need to be alone.

Is the problem that you and the kids don't socialize enough (enough in her opinion) with her as a family or that you don't agree to go with her to meet other people? Or both?

If it's the first, it'll be tricky. People who are social by nature need enough socializing to function properly, but introverts, aspies especially, need enough alone time to function properly. So if you and the kids need very little social contact, yet your wife needs a lot, someone will eventually end up having to work a lot harder than the others. I suggest that you explain to her the importance of loading batteries on your own, but without belittleling her need to load her batteries by socializing. It'll be easier if she has other people she can socialize with when the rest of you don't have the energy for it.

I feel your wife's pain of "this is not what I signed up for". It was really hard on my parents when my 2 older siblings started showing signs of severe autism(myself to an aspie extent as well)and they didn't understand that the heck was going on. There was no family history of autism before then on either side. At least it's not THAT bad for you.

Mostly the latter.
It's not that I don't agree to meet other people, I just don't know how to keep the conversation flowing or I'm overloaded by multiple conversations at the same table.
At some point I will try to escape by playing with the kids, pets or just hide at the restroom for a while. I always end by excluding myself sitting alone being awkward.

Maybe you could compromise a little and do one social outing with her a week.
Maybe visit a park or do something together that interests her?
I found if I did a whole day that was less stressing than interrupting a day to do something.
Something you may want to think about.

There is no getting around the disconnect between your needs and your wife’s needs. The only solution I can see is if you are both able and willing to compromise.
I married an outgoing person as well. Our path varied from yours, however, because he just didn’t want me along at all unless it was a work related event. We never established a home social life I guess because that was my job and I had no talent for it. He wanted to go play and leave the house and kids to me. I guess I was supposed to create my side but that just wasn’t in my wheelhouse. I married him to find that outgoing essence I lacked but as many of us find, it doesn’t work that way unless your partner wants to be that bandaid. Does she understand and accept your needs as real?
I tried to achieve NT social levels for the longest time but gradually just realized that is not where my happiness lies. The struggle made me physically ill. My husband could not see past his own needs.
Now that my kids are grown, I seek my own happiness and live my life with as little stress as possible and have left my husband to find his. We live separately and see each other a couple times a month as friends, coparents, and to maintain a few small financial benefits.
There are a lot of possible outcomes for you. Together or apart you can find a new happiness.

How to keep the conversation flowing is just something one learns if they learn it; there's really no simple advice to that. As for being overloaded by too many people, is it possible for you to suggest to your wife that you'd socialize in smaller groups?
Is it a problem to your wife that you sometimes escape the situation in those ways? If it is, have you explained to her why you do it?

What a recognizable situation/question

"How to keep the conversation flowing is just something one learns if they learn it"; "compromize"
I don't how it would work, I skipped compromizing long time ago, you cannot always play theater, especially when you get older, I have the impression; just use some social "tricks" at max

Only things I could come up with for now:
- if your relation has a strong basis, perhaps you could fall back to what she "did sign up to", whether good looks, humor, creativity, musical skills, love of nature, professional skills, whatever; if a relation has a strong basis, that could help a lot
- if your wife has strong self-reflective skills, it might more easy to find an "intelligent" way out of problems, more easy to understand each other; same applies for the kids

No idea whether this sounds as a weak reply

Perhaps you and your wife could work together in having group conversations?
I've learned how to do that with my friends, in that we will tag team to get our point across.

It may also help for her to discussion how social situations went and what she saw or perceived that you may have missed. It can be useful to see the perspective of someone who is very social and learn from that.

That's excellent advice. That's the kind of relationship that might actually work for me.

Group conversations, discussions, learning from that, . . I would even be more depressed hearing about that. Especially teenagers-daughters might also revolt against all such advices, some of what are on the brink of what I would call paternalizing, if you would allow me to use that word

Anyway, maybe works for the one, not for the other, I just talk from own perspective, I hated those people who say what you should do, so-and-so, especially when I was young myself
Perhaps ASD is also an anti-authority-thing, you might just protect your self within your own privacy, and you just don't want to have people just show up in your inner privacy with advices of all sorts; especially not about shifting/changing/adjusting your inner being

What about putting your energy in finding something you're naturally good at, also for the kids, music, horse riding, anything
Or use some social tricks, and turn your social clumsiness into some sort of charm; people don't necessarily need perfection, that's boring; especially from women I like some kind of quirkyness, for example in the French movie Amelie:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9lie
movie about a quirky girl who struggles with loneliness, but turns it into a charm

Most Aspies are introverts. We recharge our batteries by going off to be alone for awhile. Your wife is an extrovert. She recharges her batteries by being in a group. Her conversation will bounce from one person to another and each time her batteries gain a little voltage.

The coronavirus is a great hardship for extroverts. They are unable to recharge. They are under stress.

I am an extreme introvert and my wife is an extreme extrovert. We were in isolation (voluntary quarantine) for around 3 months. When I could see my wife under distress, I took her places. Many times just driving around helped to reassure her that the world was still there. I took her shopping. I took her to eat at sit down restaurants. We would break quarantine. But on the other hand I had a fair degree of knowledge on the threat posed by the virus and how to minimize it. So I would insist on wearing N95 mask and constantly washing our hands with hand sanitizer. It relieved the pressure. She was able to vent the stress.

I have a few rules that I developed for our marriage. This is Rule #5.

Keep your wife happy. I am an extreme introvert and I am happy being an introvert. My wife is an extreme extrovert and she is happy being an extrovert. It is important for me to allow her to be the best extrovert she can be. If I lock her away in a house and restrict her from developing new friendships, I will break her. So it is important for me to encourage and expand her social network. When we moved into a new housing development, none of our new neighbors came by for a visit. I could see that they were all waiting for someone else to break the ice. So when I got home from work each day I would take my wife in tow and walk over to a neighbor and knock on their door and introduce us and invite them over for a cup of coffee. About half of our neighbors were glad to meet us and they immediately invited us in for a chat. They became instant friends. This may sound like a strange thing for an introvert to do. But I am fearless but my wife is not and besides I didn’t really need to socialize, I just needed to introduce ourselves and then stand back and let my wife do all the talking.

She says that about her own children, because of their autism?



Hugs.

It's one thing to say that about one's spouse, but it's especially sad that she would feel that way about her children with autism and mental health disorders.

This sounds very familiar. WARNING: what follows is only my experience. Other people have different experiences!! !

I was diagnosed around 40. At around the same time I left my church. It was the kind of church that is almost a cult - everything in your life revolves around that church. So when I was diagnosed AND left at around the same time, my wife felt the same. "This is not what I signed up for." The key factor here is that we never had anything in common. She was and is a wonderful person, and I cannot fault her in any way. But our personalities and needs were so different. After 19 hears married we finally got divorced. We knew it was coming for a couple of years. Really, the signs were there since year 1. When we divorced the youngest was 12. It was hard on her. In hindsight I wish we had waited another year or two, because the older children came to terms with it much better. Obviously I most wish we just liked each other and could have grown old together, like my parents who are still together in their 80s. But that is what happened.

So the big question I would ask is, do you and your wife enjoy each other's company? Or DID you, for most of the marriage? Like, you BOTH genuinely preferred to be with each other? If so, then I am sure it is worth saving. If not, then in my view (and it is ONLY my view, listen to others as well) then the only question is, how long to wait for the sake of the children?
My user name - "trapped in hell" - comes from the last years of the marriage, and just after. When I felt so lonely. It felt like I could shout and scream in the middle of the street and nobody would hear. It was not a happy time.

But then I learned something. There are a lot of lonely people out there. A lot. Of both genders. All different kinds of people. Many of them intelligent and loving and interesting and exactly what you need and always wanted. And in some ways 50 is the perfect time to date. Because people are starting their second childhood, but this time they are not stupid. When we are young we don't always know what we want. Or what we want is decided by our crotch, not our brain. Or we are still changing. So it does not always work out. But at 50 you know what you want and you are not likely to change after marriage. Same for the other person. At 50 there is less risk. And less nonsense. A lot of people at 50 are either escaping a bad marriage, or have about given up hope. At this age they are not looking for wild parties, they are not looking for money and looks, they are looking just for a DECENT PERSON. Somebody honest and faithful and genuine. Apparently such people are rare.

After the divorce I lived near my kids for 4 years, until the youngest was close to leaving home. At that point I began dating again. I first met my new wife on her 50th birthday. That was nearly 8 years ago. We met on OK Cupid. I don't know what OK Cupid is like now, but back then it was perfect. You could answer hundreds of questions, and really get to know somebody before meeting them in real life. My life since then has got better and better. This time we married for the right reason: because we are best friends and just want to be together. Eight years on and we still phone several times per day when we are apart (she works off shore). Both of us thought we would never find real love. But it happened!

In my case the first marriage was a mistake from the start because we had nothing on common. My life started again on the second marriage and it just gets better and better. Getting divorced was such a no brainer, for both of us as adults, that the only question that mattered was how to minimise the pain for the children. That was the hard part. There is no good answer. But for us as adults it is like night and day. I could never have believed that life could be so much better now. I still worry about the kids, obviously, but we keep in touch all the time. The two oldest are happily married (or equivalent) and the youngest just graduated. Everything is OK now I think, even for them.

Like I said, this is only my experience. And maybe we (the first marriage) are unusual as it was so clear cut that we were different and should never have got married in the first place. Hindsight, as they say, is 20:20.

I don't know if this helps.

No recent posts from the OP, unfortunately;
I'm curious whats going on; also to learn from them