My aspie husband is convinced about divorce and wont budge

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Hi all,

I got married in dec 2015 after 10 months of courtship period. During the courtship period, my husband seemed to be very happy with me and was sort of emotionally open. After marriage, we went on our honeymoon and it was great. When we resumed to our daily lives post the honeymoon, he started being concerned about his routine and would not like his daily routine to be disrupted. Due to some misunderstandings we had our first fight due to which he was so hurt that he weeped unconsolably. His father asked us to visit the marriage counsellor because he could not understand my perspective and was always logical in his approach. Thereafter, we shared good times which were accompanied by misunderstandings/arguments. We went for a trek together for four days in the third month of our marriage. After we came from the trek, he seemed to be aloof and withdrawn. He would talk to me rarely and would only criticise. He started getting irritated and found me to be a nagging wife, a wife who constantly needs validation, a wife who suffers from inferiority complex, a wife who is not emotionally independent etc..within a few days of this we had a fight and he concluded that since we fight our marriage is not working and divorce is the right solution. Though he accompanied me to the marriage counsellor, he constantly maintained that logically divorce is the only solution to our problems. This happened within 3 months of my marriage. I tried to assure him that i will change and adapt but in vain. When i confronted his father, his father said that my husband has reached his 'trigger point' and 'gone into a shell'... He will take atleast 1-2 years to come out of it... I was taken aback...i rechecked this with the marriage counsellor and he said that my husband is an aspie. I tried my best to be positive to him, give him space, understand him but he refused to get in touch with me or contact me. He refuses to even shake hands or hug me coz he feels extremely scared and uncomfortable. My husband is convinced that divorce is only a solution to our problems coz he is fearful of confrontation, misunderstandings and fights. He says that he has a soft corner for me but does not feel like talking to me or be in touch with me.

Last 7 months of my life have been miserable and i m emotionally drained. Though i really love him and want to make this marriage work, i also feel that he will suffer to a great extent if fights happen. I have decided to go no contact on him coz i can see him being fearful. My question to aspies on this forum is that will he ever realise how deeply i loved him?

Fight the divorce.

My posts lately have all been about encouraging breakups between non-married couples, and always for good reason. When you aren't married, you can come/go as you please.

I view marriage as sacred ground.

Fight it. Do NOT sign divorce papers. Nobody can force you to grant a NFD/ID. Lawyers will try all kinds of blackmail tactics to pressure you into giving in and giving up. Beware those tactics and ignore them. Pretend they don't exist. They cannot hurt you.

You got married for a reason. Typically if a marriage makes it past the 5-year mark, they will last. If you and your husband together with the intervention of your families can work things out, your marriage very likely will last.

Depending on laws in your jurisdiction, if you stay separated long enough, then divorce is automatic and you can't really do anything about it. However, if he won't come back to you within a certain time frame, what you can do is threaten to sue him on grounds of abandonment. If you had a fight, throw in mental abuse just for fun. This casts you, rightly so, as the victim, and gives you the power to clean house. Inform him it will be much cheaper and easier to work things out since you don't really want a divorce, but you are prepared to do what you have to in order to protect yourself and your rights. You love him. You love your marriage. There's no reason to break up. And if he tries to move forward with divorce proceedings, hit him with grounds. Hit him HARD, make it HURT, make it HURT BAD. Then we'll see just how well his "logic" works!

"No" is not an acceptable answer here. Only reconciliation. Time to suit up. You're going to war!

If you weren't married, I'd say let it go. There's more at stake when you're married. Don't give in and don't give up. If he starts divorce proceedings, consult with a lawyer. Make sure your lawyer understands that you want to reconcile with your husband. Lawyers like NFD because they're quick/easy money. Contested divorces are nothing but headaches. You don't see them as much as you used to because lawyers have gotten good at getting together and agreeing to settlements within the NFD that never make it to public view. It's typically a wife who caught her man cheating or some such, which her lawyer uses to blackmail her husband into giving up. Looks to me like you already have abandonment. Just make sure you collect evidence. Emails, copies of letters, keep a diary of phone call dates/times, etc. You can prove that you tried everything. And because he screwed you over, you can sue for, say, spousal support. Now if he'd prefer a two-income existence and have an easier life he can just come home any time. If he insists on being an @$$hole, take him to the cleaners.

Oh, and no, I'm not a lawyer. Always check the laws in your jurisdiction to be sure what your rights really are. I'm a former paralegal/process server. And my wife worked as a paralegal a lot longer than I did. We went through a bad spell during her time with the lawyers. We both know all the tricks, partmof which has made staying married so easy for us. A respectably decent lawyer can BURY your loser husband in so much paperwork and delay tactics it could potentially take years to ever agree to anything. With reconciliation on the table, a spouse can quickly end the nightmare by just coming home.

I also recommend getting a PI and keeping your guy under surveillance. You're technically still married. Consequences for cheating are pretty serious. Take him to the cleaners. By drawing out divorce proceedings into a lengthy ordeal, it gets easy to fall into ugly temptations. USE THAT.

Keep us updated as things develop. Whatever happens, everything will be ok.

You have the weapons you need. Now FIGHT!

Thank you, angel rho.

I already threatened him that if he does not reconcile i would sue him. This was my way to remove him out of his shell and come forward for communication. But this move also had a bomerang effect. He now uses another 'logical technique' to say that if i loved him i would never think of suing him. I m terribly wounded and hurt. He says that hes in depression and in shell. Will he ever realise how cruel he was to me..

His problem is that he doesn't completely understand how to look past himself and accept that he is part of and responsible for something greater than himself. We are all guilty of that, aspie or no. NT folks are better at reciprocity than aspies, IMO, but neurodiversity is no excuse for hurting people. I suspect he has deeper problems than his relationship with you.

Be ready to follow through on your threat. He's allowed to be in his shell as much as he wants as long as that shell is with you. Reconciliation or his wallet and freedom. His choice.

Oh, and "if you truly love me" is a two-way street. No, you DON'T love him. You love US. See the difference? You will fight at all costs to protect US, and you will destroy ANYONE insofar as you can who threatens that. WE can be in a shell if WE want to, but WE are darned sure going to be in a shell TOGETHER. You want to pull the plug on US? Fine. As long as YOU pay for the mess YOU made.

Start looking into a divorce for grounds to protect yourself. Sure, you love him, but you have yourself to worry about, too, should the worst happen. Don't let him emotionally bully you like that. Reconcilation or consequences. No compromises.

On a side note, see if "impotence" is grounds for divorce where you are! You could have a lot of fun with that one...

Thanks again angelrho!

I understand from your post that you know a lot about the way an aspie functions.

I really want him to be in this marriage out of his love for me and not out of threat. Can you let me know if his feelings about me have just disappeared? Is it possible? Or is it that he hates me?

Am I getting this wrong or did you really just know this guy for 10 months before getting married? If that's the case it doesn't surprise me things didn't continue to go well. 10 months are not enough to know a person well enough to be sure you are compatible and want to spend the rest of your life with them.
A lot of relationships fail within the first two years because people get to know each other better and find out they are not compatible after all - married or not doesn't make a difference when it comes to compatibility. It neither makes you more compatible nor makes you know the other person better than if you weren't married.
For how long did you really live together with him and were not just dating before getting married? Seeing someone often and actually being together with someone the whole time are two completely different things. He might have enjoyed spending time with you and actually love you but even so constantly being around you could be tiring and draining - especially considering that he has Aspergers and constant social contact is exhausting for lots of people with this condition.
Also, some people with Aspergers Syndrome have difficulties shifting their attention from one activity to another. This means constantly being around another person who can expect ones attention at any time could make it a lot more difficult to get the things done one has to do. Even if he managed well while you were just dating - because he presumably knew before when he would meet you and when you would need his attention thus wouldn't constantly get disturbed while doing something else - living together with you could have gotten too exhausting after some time. If that's the case he didn't suddenly get concerned about his routine getting disrupted but the situation changed from one that allows him to have a routine to one that doesn't and after a few months this exhausted him.

This doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't love you or that he doesn't know how much you love him but the ideal relationship for you might look a lot different to the ideal relationship for him. The way the relationship is might have turned out to be more painful than anything else for him and thus his natural reaction to this might be to flee from the uncomfortable situation - thus divorce.

If he truly loves you he might be a bit too quick to give up on the both of you but if the relationship like it developed just made him miserable and his misery and his reaction to his misery make you miserable then where's the point in spending your lives together in misery till the day you die?
By this I don't mean that it necessarily is impossible to make a relationship with him work but you'd both need to be willing to try to understand the other's point of view and you'd need to see if your incompatibilities are in areas where you can compromise or if the both of you simply are not compatible. By the things you described it'd seem that he has been mostly irritated and not very willing or able to see things from your perspective - so that's something he'd need to be willing to change for a relationship to work.

(Again, I might be misinterpreting the whole situation as I am not sure that by '10 months court ship period' you mean you only knew him for a short time or possibly that you were engaged to him for 10 months after knowing him for (some) year(s) and already living together with him several months before getting married. I also don't know what exactly his symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome are and the things I mentioned above are merely examples I deem possible.)

By the way, I absolutely don't agree with AngelRho unless your husband is deliberately mean and wants to hurt you instead of just being unable to understand you and too stressed out in the relationship to make it work.
I don't see the point in making a divorce as painful as possible for anyone involved and I don't see the point in forcing anyone to stay married to you because if you keep deliberately hurting another person to make them stay with you how can you expect their love for you to survive the pain you put them through?
This is not to say that how your husband behaves towards you isn't wrong (the constantly just criticising and ignoring you certainly was wrong) just that it makes a great difference if he wants to hurt you and is deliberately mean or if he just couldn't bear the situation how it was either because of his disability or because the two of you aren't compatible after all.

I agree with this.
Be aware there are some people here with strong religious views who will tell others to remain married in ALL circumstances. Some of those same people have said pedophilia is normal and shouldn't be illegal.
In other words, be careful when taking advice from strangers.

Thank you!

I am from India and we had an arranged marriage. Hence the courtship for ten months. he has following aspie traits as per our marriage counsellor who also happens to be a psychologist.
A) logical approach
B) lacks eye contact in stressful situation
C) cant seem to understand my perspective
D) difficulty in expressing emotions
E) mindblindness
F) fears confrontation
G) fears fights/ arguments

He never showed these traits during courtship period but he changed after wedding. When i asked him reason for considering divorce he says that he handled our relationship during courtship period but hes unable to handle it and all the fights are due to me and the mistakes i made are grave though we fought on trivial issues.

Will he ever miss me and come back?

My view, personally, is that feelings are irrelevant as feelings change over time. Marriage is intended to be permanent and thus shouldn't assume feelings will stay constant. I feel that is a poor reason to get married, i.e. "love" and all that, because we define "love" in emotional terms rather than actions or something more tangible. I say "I love you" because I feel a desire for you. True love is an action, actively taking care of people. If someone is taking care of your needs, he is loving you. If you are taking care of his needs, you are loving him. Is he loving you right now? Obviously not. Does he feel love for you? Maybe or maybe not. I don't think it matters.

What you're asking is how does the aspie heart and mind relate to all this. We have feelings like anyone else. We often struggle to bring that across appropriately. Logic says take care of ME first. So sentimentality tends to take a backseat to the emotions that affect ME right here, right now. That's why the naysayers in here ask why you would want to live with someone who is miserable with you. Why punish them for how they feel? I say you deserve justice, too. I say your feelings matter, too. I say you both committed to marriage and you didn't ask for the old bait-and-switch. So don't put up with it. Seek reconciliation and healing of your relationship. Demand justice where you've been wronged if he insists on running away from his problems.

I have similar emotional issues. I just choose to face then head-on. I have a hard time responding emotionally and out of reflex take it personally if I can't resolve something that only time can heal. So I tend to embrace a less emotional outlook on life and love as a whole. I DO things because it's important to people who are important to me. Sometimes I get joy out of it, sometimes I don't, rarely do I get personal satisfaction out of it, but people do respond to it. If nothing else, they feel sorry for me and help me out of sheer pity. I don't get it. So I try to act gracious, or at least how I think gracious people are supposed to act, and just keep doing things that I hope will make other people happy. I dunno...they keep giving me money and stuff! lol So even if I don't feel love for people, I at least try to "act lovingly" towards others. This what you lack. Get him to understand that and half your problems will vanish.

But really what we need to work on is saving your marriage. Get him to a place where he will at least go through the motions of reconciliation and you've got him. Let him know if he needs to go into his shell (b.s., but whatever) you will let him do that. All you ask is that he stay with you and you work things out together. You aren't suing him for grounds to hurt him. You're just protecting yourself and trying a last resort to save the relationship. Help create a "safe space" within the relationship and the home. Figure out ways of handling disagreements calmly and quietly. Allow each other room and time to think things through so emotions don't run so high.

He thinks he's being logical, but he's really not. Saving the marriage is in the best interest of all, so that argument won't fly. The thing about logic is that we are all committed to our opinions and conclusions, so your best-laid argument and defense will ALWAYS fail. That's all bias and red herrings, btw, so don't believe a word of these logical traps and word-games. Logic says that marriage is a lot of work and risk and best left alone--stay single. But you ARE married. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the marriage itself. So fix it. Reconcile. And stand and fight battles worth fighting. WIN.

OK, so he married you without even thinking about the consequences beforehand, and then he suddenly wants out, again without thinking about the consequences. Yes, he sounds very logical.

Sounds like he's placing all the blame on you, and using "logic" as an excuse for his illogical behaviour. I've experienced that, it's not acceptable and it's not nice.

You just have to keep reminding yourself that just because someone insists you're a terrible person, it doesn't make it true. Especially if they are self-righteous about other things. A person with morals can very much be abusive.

I still hold to hope this marriage can be saved. But I agree with what you said here. Good stuff.

Aaaaah, ok... First, let me say I'm sooooo jealous! Arranged marriages are a way of merging families together. It's all about the big picture. I would SO love to do this for my own children, but unfortunately things don't work like that in the United States. I've decided we will teach our kids certain things most parents don't. For instance, if they talk about bf/gf either around us or at school, they will be punished. As long as they are in school, they are to keep their noses in their books and will not be allowed to date. What we want to do as they get older is try to associate closely with families we know very well and encourage them to date within those circles once they finish school. My dream for my children is that we can work closely with their families to make sure they succeed. That's as close as we Americans can get to arranged marriages, but I'm a firm believer that marriages are between much more than just two people. I'm a huge fan of courtship. I'm guessing all this is very much a part of your reality.

I'd like to know more about your culture and attitudes about marriage, about your courtship customs and things like that. Your legal system is probably a lot different and you may not have so many rights or options as we do. Marriage is no different in principal. That part works pretty much the same way everywhere. What you need to do is work with your parents and his parents to convince him to, as we like to say, "man up."

I'm not convinced this is really your fault. All the same, work on going the extra mile. Work on your temperament and disposition. Speak less, listen more. Learn to "respectfully disagree" so you won't appear to nag. We all have different ways of communicating effectively. Be flexible and open-minded. You know, all those things you probably already do! You are going to be just fine.

I hope it can be saved too. And thanks, I happen to agree with a lot of what you say too. Except this...



I'm sorry, but I think it's about the meanest thing you could do to a person. They need that relationship experience, and early heartbreaks at school, they need to get that out the way as it's part of growing up. If they're not allowed to do it it's likely they'll rebel. And you can't choose for them who they'll date, that's also very mean. They'll be miserable, and might even hate you.

@smudge:

I get where you're coming from and I know how it looks.

My wife and have talked about it and we both agree that Western dating practices are more about societal/cultural pressures than they are of actual benefit to young people. We are quick to point out the stupidity of sexually precocious kids in their classes and of older students. Successful people and leaders tend to get past useless distractions such as dysfunctional romantic relationships and focus on things that actually matter. The way I see it, that isn't mean. It's WINNING.

As far as rebelling is concerned, in my experience rebellion always came out of parents/kids having confrontational relationships. We avoid confrontation by sharing with our kids the outcomes of bad decisions. If a child persists in bad behavior, we punish as a last resort. But usually we just have our kids observe other kids' mistakes and underscore the end results. They're too young to know about sex/pregnancy/disease, but they do understand that men/women do things to hurt themselves and each other and how that can be disruptive. We don't worry about rebellion because our kids can already see through the mistakes of others that certain things aren't in their best interests so early in life.

With parents who "did everything right," you still had rebellious kids. And with some parents who were abusive @$$holes you ended up with great kids who still managed to stand on their parents' shoulders and excel at life. Plain fact is kids will rebel if they choose to, regardless of what their parents do or don't do. And kids will be well-behaved regardless of what their parents do, or don't. It ultimately doesn't matter because regardless, bad kids will be bad kids. We simply choose to keep our kids ahead of the curve.

Also, I don't like patterning my life around this idea of "kids will rebel." It just assumes the worst of all children, which is the most frightening thing about it. Almost as bad is that it's a way to emotionally blackmail parents who are on the right track.

He does not want to meet me or talk to me because he thinks that we will only fight. His parents are supportive of his decision since they feel it is stressing him a lot. I feel this behaviour is very cruel towards me. I fail to understand one thing that according to me its that emotional bond or in logical terms the 'willingness' to stay together will help us be together. He has clearly communicated to me that he finds us to be incompatible and hence he does not have willingness to talk to me. I m really hurt and the emotional trauma is huge. Can someone tell me if he will ever change his decision based on his emotions.