A-NT Marriage and Infidelity (x-posted in Love and Dating)

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Hi everyone,

I apologize, but this is long.

I joined this forum a few years ago when my son was diagnosed to gain some autistic perspectives on navigating life. I'm NT, and my husband and I believe that he is autistic, but he is undiagnosed.

Since the birth of our 15-month-old daughter, things have been really tough for my husband. He finds day-to-day life very difficult to cope with, and he has a lot of anxiety and some rage issues as well. On many occasions he has said things like, "I don't think I'm cut out for this," and "I didn't know it would be this hard." He has recently started individual counseling. Over the past year, I have felt that we were growing apart. I tried to reach out to him a few times, but he didn't really respond, so I thought he probably needed space. I gave him as much privacy as he wanted, encouraged him to go out on his own if he was feeling overwhelmed, and didn't push the emotional intimacy that he seemed not to want. I thought we were just going through a rough patch and that things would get better eventually. About a month ago, we hit a point where he seriously made plans to move out, but then we had some very good talks about where our marriage had gone wrong and how we could fix it. We agreed to get counseling and things have gotten much better over tha past few weeks.

When things got bad between us, he apparently felt that we had lost whatever was good about our marriage and that our relationship didn't have a future. About 6 months ago he became involved in an emotional affair with a woman he was involved with before we met. They exchanged email and chatted online. It started out just as friendly catching up, but escalated to sexual fantasies and statements like "I love you" and "maybe someday when our kids are grown we'll be together."

I found out about this last night, totally by accident. I wasn't snooping. I have never, ever been suspicious or jealous. I trusted him completely and I never thought he would be involved in something like this. He has always seemed like the most moral, ethical person I've ever known, and lying is very difficult and uncomfortable for him (or so I thought). He told me that when things got bad between us, he felt like he couldn't open up to me and he just kind of stumbled into this relationship. He found it so much easier to connect emotionally with her, and he didn't think that the feelings he had for her 15 years ago would resurface so strongly.

We talked about how he has a much harder time communicating verbally than he lets on, and he feels that since I communicate my feelings and wishes so well, he feels like he never has a chance to be heard. He thinks that since he could write to her instead of trying to talk face-to-face, it was easier to invest himself emotionally in this fantasy relationship than to work on ours. I asked him if he had ever considered trying to write out his thoughts and feelings to me, and he said it never occurred to him before, but he thinks it would be a really good idea moving forward.

He says he loves me and wants to focus on our marriage and make it work. I believe him. I'm still processing a lot of hurt and wondering how I'm going to trust him moving forward, but I realize now that I wasn't giving him what he needed, even though I thought I was (space, privacy, etc). I don't want to by the typical NT wife, insisting that he relate to me in an NT way, and I guess I'm just looking for some thoughts on how to move forward from this, from an autistic perspective.

Someone on another forum (probably NT) said that because he is autistic, my husband is unable to sustain satisfaction through investment and growth in a long-term relationship, and that once the first attraction wears off, he will continually be seeking gratification through new romances because that's what he sees as love. I am offended by this, as I think it really sells him (and other autistics) short. At the same time, my husband has expressed frustration that he doesn't feel the passion for me that he did when we were first together, and he doesn't seem to believe me that this is normal. Thoughts?

Austistic guys usually die virgins.

The fact that he is both married AND is cheating is proof positive that he is NOT on the spectrum, and is either NT or has ADHD.

So your marital problems have nothing to do with autism, and have everything to do with whatever baggage the two of you have.

you're both a couple of garden variety neurotics who need counsuling. So procede on that assumption, and go get counsuling!

Everyone is 'neurotic'. Im not using the word as an epithet. My point is that neurosis is a software problem, and not a hardware problem like autism. Your problems are the stuff of any marriage might have regardless of how the two folks are neurologically wired.

A married couple who are friends of mine, went through a similar issue about 5 years ago. The husband (aspie) had become obsessed with an online affair (online only - no phone calls, no personal contact). He became so wrapped up in it that he eventually leaked hints of it to his wife. She checked one fact and the whole was revealed to her. She was devastated.

The affair consumed all his emotional energy and made him feel newly enlivened. (It's easy for this to happen, as online affairs are based in fantasy; not having to relate to the "loved" one in any real context.)

My friend was unwilling to stay married to & make a home with a man who was emotionally devoted to fantasy and had nothing left to give her and their son. He was unwilling to forsake his newly awakened emotional life. They decided to divorce. The wife proceeded to live her life as a single mother. The husband continued to live in the house with her and she was pushing him to leave through a gradual series of measures.

Five months later the husband decided that he didn't want to leave their home and they went into marriage counseling. The husband consented to break all contact with the online woman. They treated their relationship as a courtship. The wife did not put her wedding ring back on until she felt sure that; she was receiving her husband's emotional attention again, that he really wanted a marriage with her and what he was offering was what she wanted.

It took over a year after the counseling started for her to decide she wanted to settle back into the marriage. During the interim she treated their relationship as tentative and kept up her newly established single woman interests.

They are still married and are doing fairly well as a couple.