We went for pizza before our counselling session. Great pizza, but there was an atmosphere between us. I guess we both felt that we wanted to keep this for our session.

When we went into the counselling room, I noticed a bowl of crystals of various shapes. Roxy said that I could hold one, so I picked a rose quartz and spent the whole session scratching myself with it and enjoying the texture. It did help a little.

Roxy asked how the week had been. The silence grew uncomfortable, until I said “shit” and went on to recount the week since our last session. There was one big problem with my recollection: my husband had talked last night and I had very little memory of what was said – it was a surprise discussion and I’d had no time to get my head into the right space. The whole time I was fighting shutdown.

Something I was surprised to learn was that my question on Friday of “can’t you leave bigger pauses?” (referring to him saying that he was leaving space for me to think and react, when they were still not long enough for my brain) actually came out as an exasperated outburst, so maybe it make a bit more sense why hubby stomped off.

The bulk of our counselling session was about communication and control. My husband feels that I am controlling because I refuse to talk two days in a row, because I like to know the days we are going to talk, because I don’t like talks to go on too long, because I like pauses and opportunities to think. He doesn’t see them as my needs.

This presents a challenge. What can I change? I found that enormously frustrating because I have never managed to change any of that in the past: these needs feel completely baked into my DNA.

He did piss me off at one point by saying that I’d self-diagnosed as ASD and things had gotten worse afterwards. I think that I felt upset because accepting my neuro-divergence has meant that I am much more aware of how my brain responds to things, and this genuinely does help me and how the denial of my ND has made me miserable – and impossible to be around. For me, the discovery has been a liberating experience as I investigated and learnt to love my ASD self. I guess I’ve now named many of the things that my husband had found intolerable and they are “in the room”.

Roxy would sometimes ask me whether I could hear how angry my husband was. I could. He was saying how much I had shamed him over the years.

I have. But I also know when that was and why. Not good behaviour, but I also know that it stopped in 2013 when I went into Al Anon, the recovery fellowship for friends and families of alcoholics. He did accept that there has been some changes at that time.

However, we circled back to communication. Can I ever give him what he needs? I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty hopeless. However, he has been telling me a lot of problems; Roxy asked if I could change. I thought for a moment, agreed asked my husband “change to what?”. He seemed upset by that: I suppose that it was answering a question with a question.

I feel that I want concrete things, rather than vague statements – what would make him happy? What does he mean when he says “you are controlling” when I ask for consideration for my communication limitations?

So, I asked him whether he could create a shopping list of changes. I need concrete statements of “please do x” or “please don’t do y”. My attempts to solve the problems in my own brain really haven’t worked.

He talked about my 10 o’clock getting ready for bed routine. At 10, I go to bed to read for thirty minutes before sleep. He said that there was no point having a conversation later in the evening because I’d be twitching for bed.

Roxanne looked at me and asked whether, if we were in the middle of a conversation, I could put off going to bed a bit.

At this point I became quite distressed and I explained that leading up to 10, my brain is saying “you need to be in bed; you have work tomorrow”. Any talking that we are doing, or (back in the day when we had weekend sex) sex we were engaged in, my brain would be losing focus on the talking or the shagging and instead would be nagging me about getting to bed in order to get to for work.

I could feel the frustration and I was nearly crying with it.

I said that we could try it, but I cannot stop my brain doing this and my husband is sure to notice and comment on it.

I could see his frustration. I still don’t know where we are at or whether there is any way through.

This fell fragile and far from revolved. I am mentally and emotionally exhausted. And I am feeling hopeless for our future.