Married adult children and 4 grandchildren, DH HFAutistic

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After 40+ years of marriage I am emotionally exhausted. I know my DH loves me. He is a good man. But very critical of me and has been for a very long time. I notice when he is tired it gets worse. So sometimes I just tell him to go take a nap. I have to say that because our children did not see a healthy relationship between their father and mother they married some very odd and almost totally opposite of the values I personally hold. I knew that even before I married my husband he was afraid of me. I married him anyway because I love him and still do. It is almost like my husband needs there to be something wrong with me so he has be the one who is completely okay. None of our friends buy that. Two of our friends have tried to support me. One gave me information about HF autism. One teaches children with disabilities which includes children with autism. Both were nice and as helpful as they could be but things thing to progress in our relationship. I dislike feeling stuck. I need to personally move on and I do not mean divorce. I need help with promoting growth in our relationship. Any and all advice or questions appreciated.

You cannot force anyone to grow, you can only act as a catalyst for someone else to grow and how they use that catalyst is their choice. I don't know what to say but I'm curious how High Functioning autism fits in to your post. One of your friends said something about this, but i don't get how it pertains to 95% of your post, it seems like a pretty random, arbitrary detail without any explanation. Please restate for clarity

My DH is nearly certainly HF autistic. I am not. I'm fairly certain his father was HF autistic, I have a friend(female) who has told me she is HF Autistic and a long time family friend(male) has also said he is HF autistic. I'm pretty certain that my father was HF autistic too. I adore my husband and our friends who do not think like me. I woke up this morning and had a nice discussion about how amazing we are all are. Early in our marriage I made all kinds of mistakes. For the first 5 years of our marriage we never talked about anything important. I was the one that said we aught to get pregnant. And then 7 years later I had to take him with me to the doctor so he would agree to have another child. I know he loves me and adores our children. I just feel stuck. Maybe just writing about it will help me. We have so much brain power and spirit power that we can use. I know he is still fearful of me and that is a problem that keeps us separated. I need intimacy with my DH. I feel more like his mother than his wife and it seems to be getting more like that all the time so I am very concerned.