When I was in my mid 20s, I was in a relationship with a young woman who may have been on the spectrum (although back then the concept was poorly understood). She quite plainly wanted to marry me, in fact she even went so far as to send an announcement to the local newspaper of our engagement (stating the venue of our forthcoming wedding, although not the date). I did not marry her, however. Neither did I leave her (eventually she left me, quite some time later). The thought I wanted to share is that, in retrospect, I now believe the right thing for me to have done at the time would have been to marry her. However, I also sincerely believe I am better off today for not having married her.
Does this make sense? At the time, I had no way to know what the future held, so the fact that my life is probably better today than it might have been had I married her, does not seem relevant.
To help in understanding, a major reason I did not marry her was that my parents (from whom I was not very independent at the time) were horrified by the thought of my being married to her. To be specific, they did not actually dislike her, but did not consider her to be "normal" and capable of being a fit wife. Instead, they told me she could never be more than a "pet". Apart from that, I did not feel the sort of extreme emotional need for her that might have motivated me to defy my parents.
In fact, although I had no desire at all to end my relationship with her, I treated her in a very insensitive manner that most young women would not have tolerated. For example, my decision to leave town (and her) for a job without even discussing with her what that meant for our future as a couple. When I was not living with her, but would come to visit her (as during our first Summer apart when I went home to stay with my parents and work) she would throw up after I left the house, and later tell me about it. But she never discussed it from the context of feelings, although of course she must at the time have felt a strong visceral need for my presence, to experience such an intense physical reaction at separation.
In all fairness, she also did a couple of things that would deserve some criticism. For example, she did not discuss the details of the aforementioned wedding announcement — I had no problem with her choice of venue but nevertheless was not consulted. But the biggest thing I can remember was one time she went on her own to a kind of cultural event, and when I went there to meet up with her later, I saw her walk past me holding hands with a guy several years older than she, at which time she gave me an odd look (I can't exactly remember, not being Mr. Facial Expression) but no clear evidence she saw anything wrong with what she was doing. BTW you may wonder about the immediate impact that had on our relationship, seeing that we were spending every night in the same bed; well basically I just told her that evening that I didn't want her to do that again in front of me — essentially turning a blind eye to what she might do behind my back. This may have some bearing on another thing my parents said to me, which is that they believed her incapable of marital fidelity — although what gave them that impression, I can only speculate.
Sorry that the last part of this doesn't necessarily serve to support my main point, but does anybody else have ambivalent feelings about a past life decision?
26 Nov 2017, 11:27 am
