Or: Pretty soon something is going to give.
Ah, well, hello. This is all of my second post on this forum for all that I've lurked here for quite some time. I am - and have been - in a three year doomed marriage. I believe that I may have Asperger's based on several facets of my personality - my inflexibility and lack of understanding of social niceties, my emotional detachment and inability to read the emotional states of other people, my narrow range of obsessive focus. I further believe that these compounded issues within my marriage.
Disclaimer: I am glossing over a lot of material, but I at least hope to convey the inspiral of death.
My wife and I met and had a casual friendship across the course of several MMOG-related forums from about 2001 onward. 'Casual' meaning 'tangentially aware of each other's existence'. In mid-2006 we were both on the rebound from bad relationships; she had wound up pregnant, single and slumming at her parents' house in the USA while I (in Ireland) was trying to work my way out of an affair with an older married woman who was desperately in lust with me. We actually got really talking for the first time over a conversation about both our relationships. Four months later I flew out and met her for the first time. She was just shy of being full term in her pregnancy at the time.
I made a decision to commit to taking this child on as my own on what I'd basically call a spur of the moment whim. The opportunity to do good and experience something new was there and I took it.
I stayed for two weeks, returned after the baby was born for two months and finally moved to the USA permanently in mid-2007 after seven months back in Ireland (waiting for my K-1 visa to process). We got married in suitably local style two weeks later. No more than two or three months later we started having fights. I'll cut down the exposition on the first year of our marriage by putting it thus: I felt my wife was acting cold and distant toward me and refusing to explain why (I can't read body language), so I reciprocated. My wife felt her initial cold shoulder to me was justified (it is 2010 and I'm still unclear on her reasons) and that when I gave it right back to her, I was being an as*hole. Vicious circle, pot meet kettle.
We had huge, often violent, fights, money being at the heart of many of the arguments. She left me in 2008 because I took exception to how she treated our income; my wife would throw a fit if I ever spent money on anything, period. Pursuit of my hobby/passion was effectively banned. We made up, moved house (closer to her family and our work), moved house again (again even closer to her family) into a house we basically couldn't afford to live in because she refused point blank to ever consider a condo or apartment.
By the end of 2008 our marriage was admittedly on very shaky grounds. Her daughter/my step-daughter grew up into a wild and intelligent little girl who loved us both, but we had our fights about her too, on the topic of adoption.
And then my wife got pregnant, right at the turn of 2008 into 2009. Our son outright destroyed our marriage because all through the pregnancy I couldn't get my head around the concept of me being a father again. My wife's attempts to...I guess you could say get me used to it...only drove me further away. We came to outright blows on several occasions. I tried to leave her for Ireland in April 2009 with the assistance of my family back home, but she learned of my plans at the last minute and talked me out of it. I had quit my job to leave, she had quit her job over the pregnancy, so with no money coming in we moved back in with her family, something I absolutely hated because their house was filthy, run down, covered in animal waste, infested with ants and cockroaches, packed with junk (my mother-in-law is an obsessive shopper/hoarder). It brought more stress.
My son's birth was some sort of miraculous conversion because I finally had something I could grasp, understand and appreciate. A teeny, tiny me. However, our fights immediately began again because I neither supported nor approved of her natural plans; what came first in my heart was the baby's interests. I remember us screaming at each other at 3am in a neonatal intensive care unit over the week-old baby because she was refusing to let him have nutritional supplements. Doctors and nurses had to intervene and nearly pull us apart. After we were all finally discharged and came home, our fights just got ever-worse because I failed to support her in favour of the child's welfare. She did her best to keep her son away from me, and finally I split up and moved back to Ireland in November 2009.
Our real troubles began then.
Not long after I came home, my wife's mother prompted my wife to gank my two bank accounts in the United States, buy expensive gift cards and presents for her family and then had them all lie to me about the matter. Only the honesty of one of my sisters-in-law brought word of the real story to me.
We fought a lot; argued; bickered; discussed. She announced that she wished to reconcile and move to Ireland to join me. I was ecstatic, but we had delay after delay. First I withheld promised money because of my fury over my bank account, then she wanted me to see a psychologist over my coldness and depression, then she...etcetera. Her requirements kept on piling up. Last week I finally broke down and told her that I didn't want her to move. We'd been fighting continuously for three years (I was told in as many words by my doctor that the stress was driving me crazy) with no end in sight and honestly I was and am ambivalent toward my son. I am concerned for his upbringing and well-being, being his father, but I'd be lying if I said I loved him. While I don't in any way feel anything outright negative towards him, I believe his conception was a deliberate act on my wife's part; since that day he has helped end my marriage, and leave me in a state of suicidal depression.
Neither my wife or I have been angels through all of this; we each have done terrible things to one another on a regular basis...but I am the only person who has been able to admit fault. My wife is a proud, stubborn woman who seemingly cannot perceive herself as being in the wrong on any conceivable topic. To date she's never admitted wronging me, has apologized for anything and continuously claims that it is all my fault. And well, I admitted to her that I may have Asperger's. If that isn't a sign that I am defective, then she doesn't know what else to say.
We don't talk, at least not directly. I still keep in touch with her family, her daughter's grandparents and some of our mutual friends. She spies on me online (I won't admit to spying back, but I have left comments in public places; she has acidly attacked me over them, hence she is watching), and has even masqueraded as her own mother!
I simply cannot get my head wrapped around my wife. She is proud, angry and currently has both of our children with her in the United States of America. There's no trust. She ripped off my bank account, lied to me, got pregnant with my child deceitfully and lied about it, whereas the fact that I am even mentioning her here will serve as proof in her eyes that I can't keep anything to myself.
I simply wonder if anyone else here has been stuck in a similar situation. How did you deal with it as an Aspie? Was it happily resolved?
04 May 2010, 9:14 am
