Day trip to Guildford

Political discussion

So far, on my week off, I’ve enjoyed time on my own. On Wednesday I asked the hubby whether he’d like to go to Guildford with me. The only reason for the suggestion was that we’d not been there before!

I apologised for the meltdown at the hospital on Monday, explaining that I was already very emotional before he spoke and that I wasn’t prepared for him to talk about anything deep. He feels gagged by me and when I am able to talk. More on that later…

I gave him the fudge and sugar dummy I bought on Hayling Island; he gave me a wonderful T shirt!

It took about one-hour-twenty to get there. We talked a bit about politics on the way. Usually, I avoid it because we can disagree on some things quite strongly and I am prone to a bit of black and white thinking. I worked hard to be less certain and more open – and we had a good talk about it. Even about the immigration riots – we broadly agreed on the causes as we saw them, yet deployed the wonton destruction and plundering: these are not people protesting, these are people wanting to undermine livelihoods and cause fear. These are modern Brown Shirts.

The husband talks

I have learnt that almost anytime that I see my husband that we are likely to talk. Well, he is likely to talk. Being prepared helps me cope with it. Today, I asked if I could keep notes while he talked.

Firstly, he said that I should consider role of low testosterone in my current state of anxiety and enhanced and unstable emotions. I agreed that it could be a factor in my increased inability to cope with my emotions. I have, however, suffered from shutdowns throughout our relationship.

Any time the husband talks about things, as my own feelings and responses grow and can overwhelm me, which mean that my emotions take over and and can eclipse what he is sharing – then it ceases to be about him and becomes about me. I find this a difficult rope to cross -it is easy to overbalance one way or the other: he can end up feeling that I am not listening or don’t understand when my response is muted (or non-existent), or the excess emotion I feel really does drown out his feelings.

Way back, at the very dawn of our relationship, he told me that when I cried when he was talking that he wanted to rescue me and that it took away from what he was saying. Somehow, I stopped crying when he spoke. I wish that I had found a better way to handle things when he talked: perhaps he would feel less ignored and more validated.

We have a big problem in our relationship in that we do not know what we are any more! When I say I love him, what does that mean? I wasn’t able to respond straight away and he said “that you can’t respond immediately speaks volumes”. Reflecting on that, if I can’t respond immediately its because I am thrown into the inner world trying to work out what he means by that, what he’s expressing. What do I feel about it? Which of my feelings is the right one? How do I express those feelings? Its an enormously complicated question. I get that it should be simple. The simple answer is that my heart aches for him; sometimes I cannot sleep for worry about him; that I hunger for his embrace; that I am so unhappy that I cannot make him happy; I am afraid that I am wrong for him; I am afraid that he is wrong for me; I am afraid that he wants something from me that I do not know how to give. This is an example of a question that I need to dismantle and think about. It is because of this question that I am living in a flat by myself.

He is getting worried about money. Its a strange reversal that he is the one that watches the bank now; I do not. He has asked me to pay more attention to the bank and not to leave it all to him. That I must do.

I wish I could remember the context, but he accused me of giving him a “blasé response” to something he gave. Essentially he said something and I gave him a practical answer, which wasn’t what was required (it seems). An emotional response was required. I know that I didn’t have one at that time. This is an ASD thing: inappropriate or unexpected emotional responses.

When I was making notes on my phone, he commented that I seem to get my phone out all the time. I do use it a lot: it is an essential tool for me. I think this is something we need to talk about: acceptable phone use! Seriously, I can’t work it out, nevertheless it is important: I feel that it is an invasion when I am with somebody and they have their phone on going “ping” every few seconds and then they are responding while I wait. I don’t do that – but I do like to look things up and check things. I’ll be doing it all through a TV series or film – partly because I’m probably more interested in what the various actors, directors, etc have been in than the thing I am supposed to be watching.

My husband has not been very good with maintaining his boundaries. I have been appalling with respecting them; I think, at least in part, that I take them literally and am troubled when I encounter something not explicitly covered or that appears exceptional. I think the answer here is: when in doubt, don’t!

He noted that I kept going to the loo and wondered whether that was part of the ASD thing. I said party: toilets tend to be the quietest room in a building, and the café was very noisy (it was actually doing my head in).

He has said that we need to talk about things before I return to the house fulltime, otherwise we will go back to exactly the way that we were: neither of us wants that.

I only have a few months in this flat before we go bust.

I talk

We strolled up and down the high street and down the various lanes, only popping into the odd shop. We had a bite to eat and then wandered some more. We eventually stopped for a coffee in a mall.

Note to self: you hate shopping malls. You always have. The noise and the light threaten to give you a migraine every single time. Do not go into them.

I’d asked him if he would like me to share the things that I have been working on with my counsellor for the doctor that suggest to me that I may have an autism condition. He is adamant that I do not have a diagnosis. I may have some elements, but everybody does he says. My contention is that only ASD people have such a large cluster. Mine is broad, but not deep in all places; ASD tends to have a spikey profile for all the people with the condition.

He says that I want him to agree with me. That is true.

I say “does it matter whether I have a diagnosis if the techniques used to manage it work?” he says “yes” because I expect him to change his behaviour to fit in with it. That is true.

I have said that I want to discuss why I think I may qualify for an ASD diagnosis, which he said that he’d listen to provided I was willing to hear his objections. It’s going to be difficult, but it has to be done.

The husband told a mutual friend that I thought I was ASD. She thought it was most unlikely. She has known me for about fifteen years and has worked with autistic and special needs children. She doesn’t think that I have ASD. She thought her own son did and he went for an assessment and was diagnosed as not having ASD. I have never met him, but from this friend’s description of her son, I think that they are mistaken.

Chips and a cuddle

The drive back to Southampton was long and boring. It was simultaneously raining and too bright. I found it a bit more stressful than the journey there. We didn’t talk too much on the way home, but there wasn’t any kind of unpleasant atmosphere.

I had suggested that we get some fish and chips on the way back. So I got us a bag between us. then I walked the dog.

To finish the day we snuggled on the sofa watching a film about Kenneth Williams.

For the first time in a long time I was sad to leave the house and come back to the flat.