ASD and bipolar marriage

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I very recently scored in the middle of the ASD range on four different self-tests, and my wife has been formally diagnosed bipolar most of her life. We are in our 60s. We were married in 2016, and almost didn't make it through 2017. Since then, we've gradually learned to do better at avoiding negative spirals. We still have all the same kinds of conflicts; they just don't get quite as extreme. But they are still very concerning to me.

I originally thought the main source of our marital issues was related to my wife's bipolarity, but as I am beginning to learn more about ASD, I realize that my ASD has also been a major factor. I live by explicit words, and she lives by what they call the social pragmatics of the conversation. To me, everything I say is always an implicit invitation to dialogue, but she doesn't hear that. She at times attributes attitudes to me about her that I find utterly horrifying. I try to tell her that, and she acts like I am trying to gaslight her.

Just the other day, we had our worst flare-up in quite a while, which ironically was triggered by my sharing with her my explorations about ASD. She listened to a passage I read aloud from Cynthia Kim's "Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate" on marital issues. She immediately identified with the description of how horrible an autistic person can seem to the non-autistic person. But then it became apparent that she was missing the crucial "seeming" part. To her, that's just how I am. She said I always try to justify myself (which is true, but only when I feel judged) and I was just using ASD as another "excuse". Then the conversation went completely sideways, into my latest sin and other things she was mad at me about months or years ago.

Here I am less concerned about the sideways part than how it started, with me trying to share my exploration of the possible effects of my ASD on our marriage, and how that was heard. Obviously all situations like this are very complex, and there is much that I am leaving out.

My dilemma is that I am hardwired to trust people by default; to say what I mean in an uncensored way; to be very concerned to really mean and to follow through on whatever I say; and to naively expect others to feel and do the same, and to engage in dialogue with me that focuses on clarifying the meaning of what we are actually saying, if there is any doubt about what we mean. My wife on the other hand has deep trust issues, and is always on the lookout for hidden hostility or deception, even (or especially) from me. Apparently, my unintended nonverbal signals often feel negative to her, when I don't think there is anything negative about her as a person in what I am feeling inside, or in the explicit words I am saying.

I fairly often feel compelled to question her words or actions, even though I choose to let many other things just go by. To me, the purpose of this is always to initiate a safe and open dialogue between people who love each other, not to attack her as a person, but that nuance always seems to get lost. She hears me as correcting her all the time, and apparently often not in a friendly way. She gets hurt and lashes out dramatically, and I get hurt and it stays with me for the next day or more.

I am hypersensitive to changes of plans, and to lack of early communication about changes of plans. Going out together in public on multiple errands is quite stressful and fatiguing for me at best. I try to get through it by trying to think of it as spending time with my wife instead. She's the opposite; jokes that she's "born to shop"; it gives her energy and stimulation. To me, errands in themselves are necessities to get over with as quickly as possible. I usually start feeling burnt out before we are done; I count the minutes till it will be time to go home; and anything that unexpectedly makes it longer at that point causes me major stress. So I don't enthusiastically greet her spontaneous suggestions to add another stop. She says it is selfish of me to squash her spontaneity, but to me I'm just expecting that we will stick to what we agreed to until we both agree to change it.

I want to somehow do more to help prevent these negative cycles from my side, recognizing that I can't change her. I'm sure this is a fairly common theme. Any comments welcome.

A common thread in Asperger's is oversharing. Just because you feel or think something does not mean you have to tell others about it.

When you shared your thoughts about an article you read, your wife latched on to that as a launching board for her internal thought processes, which involve discontent and resentment. She did not seem concerned about the intellectual aspects like you were or the insight that you thought would help the relationship. Instead she was completely satisfied in reliving the same drama and conflict patterns that have happened in the past. She is not looking for a solution like you are. Perhaps her solution is that you fall in and do things her way all of the time, or that the status quo be maintained. Some people actually prefer conflict and the feelings that it brings, it gives them a sense of vitality, power or meaning in their otherwise humdrum lives. It is a way to make themselves feel special and more like the people on TV that also engage in conflict.

Knowing that those feelings are there, it may be better not to stir the waters, but let them remain submerged. You may want to use other outlets for your thoughts and feelings such as online forums, prayer or a personal journal.

Thank you for the kind support. I'll look at those links.

The particular incident I mentioned seemed to be over by later the next day. What works with my wife to heal from these things is broadly on the "kiss and make up" spectrum. I have to suppress my own very strong urges to want to talk through everything in detail, because that is usually just not productive (brings the same stuff back up again, without reflective detachment). Instead, I learned from the way her oldest son deals with her in such moments, which is just to come back fresh making no reference to what went before, and initiate normal-for-us positive interaction about some lighter subject. After she gets over her initial reaction, she responds well to that.

My big lesson was NOT to keep stirring the pot by trying to have the kind of dialogue that is my own natural go-to, but just to let go of my own baggage as quickly as I can (which with my perseverative thinking is not as quickly as I'd like), and approach her in a positive way as if it never happened. Then later, she may volunteer some brief verbal acknowledgement.

In between, she has many sunny moments. She is a wonderfully warm human being when she is feeling good.

Usually when she is not sunny, she is still generally stable, just a bit withdrawn and inclined to make cynical remarks that I try not to let get under my skin. She has mobility issues, so I typically bring her food and what not, which provides nice opportunities for small demonstrations of affection.

Another challenge for me has been learning to live with her extreme changeability and inconsistency, when I put such an extremely high value on consistency, and tend to moralize it. I have the same basic view of the world and of her even when I am extremely stressed and needing to withdraw. Her view of the world and me changes radically depending on how she is feeling. I've had to learn to accept that that is part of her.

I've read that black-and-white thinking is often a characteristic of ASD. I think I sometimes have tunnel vision and I definitely have excessive persistence, but I have always highly valued subtlety, nuance, context, and multiple complementary interpretations (just with high consistency!). To me, that is what a high-fidelity view looks like. My wife and I have talked about this; she consciously identifies with a black-and-white perspective, and will assert that that is just how the world is. She literally has said more than once that there is no such thing as shades of gray (I tell her I see millions of colors, which she doesn't relate to at all). She does respond to situational and other differences, but does so by shifting to a different perspective, rather than integrating.

The other big lesson has been that time heals. No matter how bad things seem in the moment, if I can just ride out the storm, it will get better, and she will come back to her sunnier self. I just have to believe that, but it has become easier to do so, because I've now seen it over and over.

Back when we were having much more extreme issues in 2017, I tried to get her to agree to some form of joint counseling or therapy, but she refused. I dealt with it by some individual counseling, and attending a NAMI-sponsored class for family and spouses. (My wife is extremely private to paranoid about her therapy and medical records, no doubt partly because her previous husband repeatedly made false manipulative use of her bipolar condition in efforts to convince authorities that he was defending himself when he beat her. In 2017 I saw her have three full-on psychotic episodes, yelling uncontrollably and generally being totally out of control, but never once did she show any sign of violence toward me, so I completely believe her account of her previous marriage. Her three grown sons also corroborate.)

I worry a bit that in my response here I'm dwelling too much on her as I used to do, rather than on how my ASD-related characteristics may trigger her in the first place. That is what I am really trying to focus on.

I've been sort of hoping that since it was never possible to have the kind of dialogue with her about her condition and responses to me that I have wanted, maybe it would be more possible to have a dialogue about my condition and my responses to her. But this may be unrealistic, as the incident I started with suggests. I'm not sure; I haven't given up yet, but I'm aware that it may not be possible, and I may need to just continue with the coping strategies I mentioned above.

Again, thank you so much for responding.

When we first got together, I had the naive hope that sufficient experience of my ultra-trustworthy self and all my positive reinforcement would eventually overcome her trust issues. That has not worked nearly as well as I had hoped, although I believe it has made a difference.

One big thing I am now taking much more seriously is her frequent complaints about my facial expressions, tone of voice, and similar matters. Before, I always focused on all my explicit words and explicit kind actions, and would be utterly bewildered when she would attribute negative attitudes to me that contradicted all of that. But I guess like many people, she is more inclined to believe her interpretations of my expressions and tone over what I from my point of view "actually" say and do.

I also recently read that bipolar people are especially likely to react negatively to people they see as inconsistent. There is deep irony in this, since I tend to be obsessed with consistency. But apparently there is large inconsistency between what I deliberately say and do, and what many people perceive of my expressions, tone, and other social pragmatics, of which I am largely unconscious.