New aspie father with relationship issues

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I haven't been on here in years but I thought about coming back for advice.

I'm 31 years old and recently had my first child born more than a week ago. The mother is an on-off fiancee who I met and went out with a year ago. For the past 9-10 months we had serious issues. She seems to understand Aspergers but feels that I am mostly lazy and selfish when I behave badly around her. I believe it may be a focus issue or lack of social awareness, however. In short, I have done many things that may have been aspie related, which undermine our relationship. Before I really go into detail with some of those, I just want to hear about ways I can improve empathy and listening skills, since most of my problems seem to be caused by lacking both. I really love her and I don't want to give up on the relationship, especially now that I am a father. Any advice is appreciated.

Have you tried having her list concrete ways to help out with your kiddo? She is probably thinking that it should be obvious to help or step in, while you may be clueless.

Listening skills are one thing, but is there another means of communication that would be more effective?

It's not always easy to know what she wants me to do sometimes. I decided I wanted to marry her because she was honest and open, and never sugarcoats anything. On the other hand when I make mistakes repeatedly she thinks I have real moral failings and talks about leaving me. Some of those mistakes came about because I was afraid or anxious. For example, I would lie to her to cover up doing something she told me not to do or cover up failures. Her intense emotional reactions to my failures are too much for me to handle. I have acted the same way when my dad loses his temper over things I did wrong. I feel like winning back her trust and confidence in me is a daunting task that keeps getting sabotaged by one thing or another. She has stayed with me this long so I can help her with the baby (She is often too physically ill to do many things on her own), but even as an aspie I could do much better than this.

As for helping with the baby, I have been pretty good so far and at least on par with most NT new fathers out there. I can feed, change, burp, soothe, and otherwise keep him healthy and content. The only main thing that worries her is when I am not paying attention or having trouble doing things at night when the baby is wide awake. I work a 9-5 IT all week but I try to wake up to help her with the baby as needed. I feel bad about her doing everything at night by herself with her health problems (she has sarcoids, OCD with germ phobia, had a c section, etc.) but she tells me I am better off being well rested. She doesn't think I am capable of functioning well when I am tired, at all. But I feel that she would respect me more if I could find a way to make it work somehow.

Honestly, I would try counseling. It sounds like you both have issues that exacerbate the other person. Just from a quick read, she needs to tone down emotionally enough to not trigger you. Also, threatening to leave at every argument is not an effective way to communicate. Childbirth and lack of sleep can be a huge contributor to emotional outbursts, so that's a tough one.

You need to own up to mistakes/failures, and hopefully you both can find a way to calmly work towards solutions. I absolutely know what you are talking about, and know it's tough.
It's good you're helping out.

That's just my two cents, but it may be a rocky road. Perhaps a therapist can lead you through it if it doesn't resolve with time (and more sleep.) I wish you the best.

Edited post below

I do appreciate the help and I agree with everything said. I do try to take responsibility for most mistakes I make but it isn't enough if I keep doing the same hurtful, careless things over and over again.

I am seeing a counselor right now, although she isn't an autism spectrum specialist and actual support groups for aspies are sadly limited here in New Orleans. My fiancee isn't ready for couples counseling right now, so my counselor is taking a different approach by focusing on helping me react to the daily issues in a more positive way. In addition to Aspergers, I also have low/inconsistent self-esteem. I am currently working with the counselor on bettering my understanding of self-worth and related things. However, I still feel that my Aspergers issues and how they affect my relationship aren't addressed well enough. So I came here to fill in that void.

How are you feeling about your baby? I have a reason for asking.

I love my son with all my heart. I want to be in his life more than my own dad was. I want to be more involved in his life than just spending money on him. And I believe I am capable of doing that if I work hard enough and put his needs before myself.

I feel about my son the same way I feel about my fiancee. I love her very much but I feel so lacking in empathy whenever I hurt her feelings or do something that makes her feel that I don't care about her enough. It's something I don't want either her or my son to ever feel, but I still struggle with the worst parts of Aspergers every day and those things affect the people around me.

Congratulations!

Everything you've written in this thread is so open and honest. If you just communicate these same things to your fiancee then I hope it will ease the tension that might have been created by any aspie awkwardness.

Pregnancy, childbirth and nursing can be hugely disruptive and challenging for women. That presents bigger than normal empathy challenges. And it's a big relationship challenge because your lives are completely different from everything you have experienced up to now. But I think it's extremely valuable if you can show your wife that you are excited by this new life. It also brings many new ways to show that you care by sharing all the labor of parenting and all of the love and celebration (new expressions, new movements, reading stories, playing with new toys, taking pictures and so on). If you are doing all these things then I encourage you to take pride in them even if you don't get immediate positive reinforcement from your wife.

New parents sacrifice some sleep - most co-workers understand that so i wouldn't worry about it. I think it's more important to do everything possible for your family than for your company. Even if your wife tells you not to get up at night to care for the baby, maybe it's worth doing it anyway because you want to.

Again congratulations. If you show how much you care with words and actions then I believe everything will work out well.

You seem like you would be a fine dad.

It's nice that you're willing to be up with your fiancée to help take care of the baby.

There are some mothers who are conditioned to believe that dads are not really that capable in taking care of babies. It's a society-related problem in many cases, I believe.

When you do want to help, be gentle. Realize that she probably wants to be in charge (again, society-related). Offer to do "go-fer" type stuff if she wants that--but make sure she never talks DOWN to you.

Some family therapy might be useful, both in helping your wife communicate with you the right way and you communicating with her. I asked how you felt about the baby because you didn't express any feelings about that, but since you feel committed to the baby, it's extremely important to work hard to keep your fledgling family together. You can actually take the baby right along to the appointment (I assume... some therapists might not be happy with that, but I'd recommend it). Good family therapy treats the family unit as the "patient" and tries to make the family unit successful, not one or the other parent or the child.

Good luck and congratulations. You actually have achieved something wonderful, now work on keeping it intact.

I'm with BeaArthur.

I've had similar issues, with me repeatedly doing things or forgetting things that my wife just couldn't understand anyone who really cared about her doing.

Couples therapy has been amazing. It's not just about communication, but also having an expert who can back me up when I say "I can't help that." The other thing that's helped a lot has been having a son diagnosed on the spectrum. She suddenly had a interest in learning what the world was like from his perspective and suddenly started saying things like "His dad does that too."

Make sure you have a therapist with autism experience. Otherwise they might just gang up on you for being a "bad communicator."

I wouldn't bring it up in a confrontational way. Perhaps phrase it as, "I'm really committed to this, but I need help communicating, and seeing a therapist by myself doesn't help me communicate with you. I need someone who can see how we interact together."

If it's anything like my experience, you fiance will find more than a few things she needs to work on too, but let her discovery that for herself.