This was a difficult counselling session.

I noticed straight away that he was wearing a large chain and padlock. I wasn’t going to say anything, and then decided to anyway: “if that means what I think it means, then I wish somebody would buy me one too!”. He laughed “I know what you mean! No it doesn’t mean that, but I hope that one day somebody says but you a chain like this!” Bless him!

I told my counsellor about the deadline set by my husband and my (lack) of any real feeling about it.

I talked about how my emotional responses aren’t always what I (or anybody else might expect); for example, usually when I’m in the front of an ambulance , with my husband fighting for his life, I’m feeling excited to be in the front of an ambulance! This could be as ASD response.

I commented that when my mum died, I wasn’t struck with grief at that bet moment. However, I get struck still, and powerfully. My counsellor said that there are no rules for grief – it happens in its own way.

I’m concerned that I’m not feeling the way that I would expect about having to make a decision about my marriage. I think that I should feel distraught, but I’m not. My brain is seeing this as a logical problem to solve and if there are feelings, they are not where I can get to them.

The counsellor said that there’s nothingnwrong with my brain: it just works differently. I have to work with it rather that try to force it to work in ways that it’s not meant to. I have to stop grinding my mental gears and just accept that if it’s in a logical mood, then that’s fine. He’s great with working with what’s there.

It is annoying my emotions not running along a predictable route: if I felt the way I expected (ie distraught), then the answer would feel clearer to me: commit to my husband. But they don’t. I don’t have any strong feelings, and (ironically) that is upsetting! My husband, I am sure, would read something into that. I cannot.

The absence of feeling the expected feeling doesn’t mean that it’s not there, neither does it not mean that I do not want to be with my husband. It does mean that I cannot use my feelings as a guide because there are a few possible explanations for this apparent lack:

1. A feeling is there, but I cannot identify it.
2. There is no feeling because I do not want to be with my husband.
3. There is no feeling because I’m autistic and people in the spectrum often get unexpected emotional responses to situations.

My husband is far from convinced that I am ASD. Therefore he is unlikely to accept number 3. He might accept number 1 because I have been unable to identify emotions in the past. Whilst he would accept number 2, I feel that it’s not the answer I want to give. So there’s something there.

I do recognise that I feel very sad at the prospect of leaving my little sanctuary. And more than a little apprehensive about moving back into the house.

I love sleeping with my husband. I love having sex with my husband. He is very good at it. But we’ve only had sex a less than a handful of times in this last year – since I revealed my Dark Fantasies to him.

I told him that my husband has noticed that I seem to be dissociating from the old me. I think there’s something to that. I don’t wish to be associated with that person any more: he wasn’t kind of loving to my husband.

He said that I should stop being so hard on myself with the way I handled things in the past. I didn’t go straight for the big thing of control and shame, I started by begging him to not drink, to not go out, to stop. When those proper ways of expressing my distress failed, then I started with the other.

Said that I was beginning to reconnect with the little boy that I used to be – the life of books, classical music, my own company, that marked him out as different.

I am loving finding out about me. I need to be able to continue doing that. Can I do that if I move back into the house?

For the first time ever I have my own home. As far as it’s possible in a short-term rented apartment anyway. I need a space to call my own. We have a two bedroom house. There are a few options within the scope of the relationship:

1. Loft conversion: this would cost £25,000 to £30,000 (last time I looked), which would mean borrowing against the house. Again. Currently I am already paying the mortgage until I’m 67.
2. Garden room: replace the shed with a room in the garden just for me. This would cost somewhere under £10,000 – more than we can afford, but cheaper.
3. Buy two flats: curiously, my husband said something to that effect on the weekend. The flat I am living in at the moment I’d on the market for £155,000. The house is valued at about £270,000. There may be something we can do if we’re creative … and if he was serious.

We’ve not decided whether we are monogamous it not yet. We decided that, while we are separated, that we won’t have sex with anybody else. But what about when we’re back together? I need to know what’s possible here – or even if I want to!

Kink – I need to explore this part of myself a lot more. Just as with the old me, I have to integrate this part of myself into my whole. If I do not, then it will have power to act through my un/subconscious.

I have yet to start testosterone treatment. In until I have that in my blood, I don’t know what affect it will have on my emotional state. It indeed on my sexual appetites. This is a big unknown.

My counsellor pointed a few things out:

1. I have an operation, my husband has a meltdown and I’m unable to focus on my recovery.
2. I move into the flat, my husband has a meltdown and I spend a couple of weeks running about and unsure to focus on the trains that I moved.
3. My husband visits my flat, sees that I’m settling and happy, and pulls the rug from under me.

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. I do not think that he deliberately does anything that might harm or hurt me. The counsellor said “maybe not intentionally, but maybe unintentionally?”. I said that my husband says that I always think the worst of him. “Yes, but has there ever been reason to?” At the time he asked, I thought so, but I’m less certain now. Whatever way, I feel somewhat hobbled by this Catch 22.

I don’t feel any closer to making a decision. I feel like suddenly my husband and I need to talk and I need to completely remove the filters and just let it all flow. This might not get a good result.

I cried a little bit a number of times in that session. I

I appreciated that we went over time – and the hug at the end.