Please Help! my partner cut contact out of the blue!

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Hi Everyone,

I'm a NT woman new in here and i would really appreciate some advice!

I've been dating a guy with autism for a few months now and for the last few days he's pretty much cut contacts.

A bit of background info. He has a primary partner and he's in an open relationship. They wouldn't really discuss the other people that they're both seeing but a couple of months ago they talked about it and he told her about me. Around the same time he was going through some pretty serious family issues as well as a health scare and he got very distant.

Until then the relationship has been great and quite intense. we text a lot and decided to see each others about once a month as he was worried to get too obsessed and not wanting to change his primary relationship. I also am non monogamous and involved with other people and have two jobs, so this arrangement works perfectly for me. We've both told each others that we care about each others.

However, when he got distant i knew he had a lot going on with everything else and i thought i'd give him some space. He was discussing with his primary partner the status of their relationship (with him having told her about me). So, in my head i thought there were all the signals that our relationship was over. This broke my heart because i really care about him. However, he made contact apologising for being distant, due to his health scare and we met the day after. I told him how i felt and he was sorry and surprised because i felt like that. That i should tell him when i feel like this because he can't read my mind. He hadn't realised i needed this kind of reassurance but i think he understood as since then he's been in touch a lot. We've texted pretty much every day (with him initiating most chats) and talked about meeting this week.

We texted every single day last week and then i texted him on Saturday confirming my availability for this week and didn't hear back. I know it's not an extremely long period, but it's never happened before. He's never waited more than a few hours and usually he replies quite quickly. He hadn't even read the messages (whatsapp).

I was fine over the weekend because i know he had some family gathering going on but when on monday evening he still hadn't read the messages i was very worried about him. On tuesday morning i texted again and nothing. By mid afternoon, I had been staring at whatsapp any chance i had to see if he would get online, and nothing. i was so worried that i called him. (we never speak on the phone cause he hates it and he would have to explain to many things about the openness of his relationship to the people around him). He obviously didn't pick up, but then he texted me straight away apologising for missing my call. the conversation was very brief, i asked if he was ok and he said kind of. I told him i called because i was worried something had happened to him hand he said nothing had happened. he said part of it was because he had the family gathering over the weekend. That was literally the whole conversation. I was so furious with him for making me so worried that i didn't reply any more.

In the evening when i calmed down i typed a really long message explaining how he made me feel, as he previously told me i should tell him cause he can't read my mind. I made sure it didn't sound upset, but clear enough to get the message across. I asked my friend for suggestion on whether to send it or not as i was still a bit upset and i wanted to make sure i didn't say the wrong things. My friend suggested that he very clearly still has s**t going on and for the time being i should only tell him that i'm there for him if he needs me. so i did. He hasn't read that text yet (24 hours) and i've checked whatsapp and he hasn't really been on it at all. I believe this has nothing to do with me/us. I think it has to do with the family gathering he had over the weekend as he has been having some serious problems and the day of the gathering it's the day he stopped contact.

Now i'm here heart broken because i'm so worried about him and there's no way for me to help him, because my needs have been highly disregarded. I still want to do what's right for him, but without completely forget about myself. I've been considering whether it's good for me to stay in this situation. Any input about this would be extremely helpful! My knowledge of autism is fairly limited unfortunately.

I also would like to hear what you think about me finding a way to contact him to let him know how this situation has affected me.

Tank you very much!!

So

No offense but I don't really believe these kind of relationships can work, just my opinion. Perhaps he considers the relationship much more casual than you do and wants to keep it separate from the rest of his life, I dunno it just seems like a lot to expect out of someone that already has a significant other and apparently other issues as well. Personally I would wait to be contacted, I think going thru extraordinary lengths to get the number or to contact him some other way would be a big turnoff to someone in a relationship like that.

Hi Jacoboy,

I really appreciate your reply! I'm not sure what expectations you think i have other than for him not to make me think he's dead in some ditch. This, and possibly honesty about things that concern me is the only expectation we've ever discussed.

when last time i told him i wanted to give him space because he had a lot going on in his life he told me I shouldn't have had because i am part of his life and i should tell him when he makes me feel like this. This was less than a month ago. I do understand that things can change, but at least before this it didn't seem he thought it was more casual.

He's gone from texting me every day to this. He knows if he can't or doesn't feel like talking he can just say so. It has happened from both sides without any issue before. He talks to other people on whatsapp and he hasn't been on it to talk to others either. That's why i think this doesn't have anything to do with me, it's him dealing with whatever it's happening and not realising how it's affecting me. Like last time, just worse.

Everything about that reminds me a lot of my last relationship, I won't go into detail, but it ended in zero contact and a lot of sadness. I'm not saying your situation will end bad but it's a strong possibility, so you should try to keep that in mind so you get hurt less if he really does want to distance yourself from you.

I guess my best advice is don't send too many letters about how he's hurting you. That could just make things worse because it's really hard to hold back being emotional with those and it might just make him shut you out even more. Did he give you a reason at all for why he's doing that? I personally think that's a really mean way to do end a relationship.

If he normally gets back in touch with you quickly then it sounds like something major happened. He will probably get back in touch with you at some point. But it also sounds like the nature of your relationship with him is changing and probably not in a good way.

In my experience periods of unexplained silence mean that contact will probably be cut full stop at some point. It happens once or twice, excuses are made, and it gets smoothed over, but eventually it will happen again.

If he was lying in the hospital in a coma or something like that then I hope someone would inform you. But if you're not in the loop there's a reason for that. If this is hurting you then it might be time to think about whether you want to be in a relationship where the other person is allowed to disappear with no explanation.

Dealing with family can be extremely stressful, to the point of overload. It may be that all he can get done is dealing with them and then decompressing. I've been in that situation (family vs spectrum) and in order to get through it I had to put everything else on hold, completely. It wasn't due to feeling angry or anything else negative toward the people I was avoiding - simply put I was having to do too much. Perhaps something similar is happening with him?

Have you considered contacting his primary? They might be able to shed some light and I've noticed that in open relationships of people I've known (not mine, there's no way I could handle that level of social connectivity & interaction), it helps when the individuals have at least a bit of a meshed relationship. Then again, all those I've known were poly so maybe it doesn't apply?

If it were me, I'd send another text/email/whatever you think will get read, & just tell him that you understand he has things to deal with and you will back off if he needs it. If he's trying to do too much, that would be the kindest thing you could do at this point.

My reply doesn't seem to have been posted, so I'm typing it again:

I talked with a couple of friends that have a bit of experience with ASD and they think i've overreacted. I realised that we've been having breaks in the texting before but i think what drove me crazy this time was that he didn't read my messages for a while.

I texted him yesterday and we chatted like nothing's happened. He was struggling to deal with his problems and has no idea what i've been through... I feel like such an idiot!! I haven't told him anything, but i will probably tell him next time i see him. I'm not upset nor i blame him, because i understand that everyone deals with things differently. Now i need to understand if i can handle being involved with someone who withdrawals like this every time he's going through stress.

I really appreciate all of your replies, they've been very helpful in making sense of the thoughts in my spiralling mind!

The relationship does sound like a mismatch from your writing. There seems to be a lot of maintenance (on both sides) for a casual/nonprimary situation.

Hmmm, I'm not sure. It's been very intense since the beginning for both of us. It's been absolutely great until about a month ago. It's been a perfect match on so many levels like nothing i've experienced before. He's been going trough some tough stuff in the past month and he's reacted in a way i didn't expect. He's done nothing wrong, but i'm learning about the different ways his brain works, compared to mine. I have no previous experience with ASD, and for as much as i can tell, the ways he's different from what i'm used to, just make us a better match. The only "problem" being that when he gets too stressed he doesn't text for a few days. Now i've learned that and it doesn't have have anything to do with me/us, just him. I've now learned this about him and next time it may not affect me at all. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the goods are outweighing the bad by a mile. what i need to understand is if i'm ok with this part of him if it happens again. This is something i need to learn about myself, but i guess that's what life is. You keep going and learning about yourself.

I think i'm more worried about my reaction at this point because i didn't like it and i don't want to have it again.

I don't do/have primary relationships because they don't work for me, at the same time i wouldn't consider them casual either. And i don't think there has been a high level of "maintenance" from any side. May i ask you were you gather this from? I'm asking because i'm interested in other people perspectives on this. I think it's actually been very fluid with us just being ourselves a lot. Then something hurt me, but even then we've just kept going being ourselves.

He's going to continue to need to withdraw, and it doesn't seem like it's something you're okay with. You're angry he withdrew due to a family function, so you may not realize how much those functions can exhaust us.

Try researching a little about autistic shutdowns. He may not be able to keep up the level of reassurance you need. OTOH, if insecurity is driving your need for constant contact is there another way to relieve it?

Very good points. I will definitely research that. I think I'm usually quite rational about my feelings and i think this took me a bit unprepared because it was new. I don't have a need for constant contact as it's never been a problem before. I actually prefer not texting too often. But he was initiating contact every single day and then radio silence for a few days. This sudden change in pattern didn't make sense to my logic. But I guess my logic is not his logic...

I may not be ok with the withdrawals, it's definitely something i need to think about. I think it may be ok if i understood it more as i was really caught off guard!

Any more suggested reading would be much appreciated

You could try asking him to tell you if/when he needs to withdraw in the future. Him sending one quick message that he needs his space for a while sounds like a compromise.

You might want to get hold of Ashley Stanford’s book Asperger Syndrome and Long-Term Relationships. How I wish I had read this book before I met a man last year who seemed perfect for me. We seemed perfect for one another. We got on so well at first and the chemistry was amazing but things soon started to go wrong because of behaviour I just did not understand.

I should add that I don’t know that my friend definitely has AS. We are older and therefore the chances are he is undiagnosed.

Stanford’s book is about her husband who has AS and her quest to understand the condition and save their marriage. As I read it, my friend’s behaviour jumped off almost every page.

Stanford provides lots of strategies for making AS/NT relationships work. Too late for me, sadly.