marcia
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If someone’s gotten in, would you share here the link? I always fear I’ve got it wrong and that’s why I’m in the waiting room. Thanks!
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Agree these feel phony, or maybe it’s hollow, ungrounded, not landing or connecting with anything meaningful. At least when a Why is added, that’s data I might be able to act on again.
I’d welcome seeing the list too, mostly because if I could warehouse the useful phrases to neurotypicals in my brain I could try them all out in a lab-like experiment to see which feel a little more natural. And, when I hear one I’ll not be quite so thrown off.
The phrase that throws me off most, especially when coming from someone without the context of my odd life is, “How are you?” or “How are you really?” which both cause me to a. actually check in with myself on how I’m doing (which may unravel the compartmentalizing I’ve carefully done that day not to attend to how I feel) or some days make me question if the person means something general and I’m focusing on specifics or something visa versa.
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Hand raised with empathy too. I only wish I also had useful suggestions.
My dad was in a nursing home for the last few years of his life after hydrocephalus left him too unstable for my mom to be able to take care of him. He’d been nice for a few decades prior (not his M.O. when I was a kid) and in those last years he was back to being a belligerent shit and was that way up until the time he couldn’t talk anymore. The most healthy part about it was my mom learned to live without him in a slow step-by-step way rather than the “here today, gone tomorrow” way. It seemed healthier at least from us watching.
She’s still an energizer-bunny type at 85, who does all the things she couldn’t w/my dad for years, obsessed with crossword puzzles so her mind doesn’t go as quickly as her mom’s did. She’s newly very social, wanting to experience every drop of life left, believing that other old ladies who still can get out have interests and know places she doesn’t know about so the answer to every ask is Yes. She’s admittedly a little exhausting when we’re around her. Yet it’s also so inspiring. She’s been clear that the day she can’t drive anymore she wants to be put in a home where women don’t put on lipstick just to go to lunch and there are always movies and things to do.
My MIL is the real pisser. She’s a textbook narcissist who was put into assisted living when a UTI wiped away all of her capacity to mask so we got to see the real Skelator underneath and she was no longer able to care for herself. While my husband thought she’d go back to her sweet (passive-aggressive) self, once we had heard how she truly felt about everything, we couldn’t stop seeing it so she wasn’t trying to hide it all the time. 3+ years later, she still pleads with him to let her live with him, yet he’s wrecked after just going to see her for a few hours.
What’s next or how to be supportive depends on who they are in old age. Many old autistics shed their camouflaging because they realize “if not now, never” so we get to see people we’ve not really known before. In my mom’s case, that’s for the better. For others, ugh.
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Since writing earlier I found an NYT article that puts into context what I’ve been wondering.
“I don’t think anyone would encourage people to stay in a marriage that is really making them miserable,” says Linda J. Waite, a University of Chicago sociologist and an author of the study. “But try harder to make it better.” Even if marital problems seem small, Waite says, the data suggest it’s wise to intervene early and try to resolve them. “If you learn to how to manage disagreement early,” she says, “then you can avoid the decline in marital happiness that follows from the drip, drip of negative interactions.”
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And published in Fortune this week:
“Divorce can have a surprisingly positive effect on performance at work, study finds: ‘I’ve been able to have a clear mind.’
Over a third of respondents in a study said going through a divorce had a positive impact on their performance at work.”
If autistic women are the only women in the workforce, this study was squarely focused on us.
(The Fortune piece is a paid article yet the study its from can be found here. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/peps.12547)
Several free news outlets have also published stories about the research.
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Finding this both hilarious and insightful.
What about narcissistic men who are fastidious about keeping their eyebrows trimmed?!
My husband’s personality is fairly classic, “Child of a narcissistic parent” behaviors which leads him to follow all the rules laid out for him, including keeping body hair carefully managed. Ha.
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I grew up in a family where my dad screamed, and when I’d start crying, he’d send me to my room so I weigh heavy on the “flight” end of the scale, never on the “fight” side, and only recently I’ve been learning to freeze so I can deescelate or at least be part of the interaction rather than avoid it.
My husband grew up in a family where fighting was his mother’s way of getting attention and feeling loved. They fight to this day and while he says he hates it, I suspect he believes it’s something they need. After 3 years of living with her pre-pandemic, their fighting made me feel like I was being eaten alive, and I saw my kid wanting to flee the house or our family, definately wanting away from his grandmother and oftentimes his dad.
Once my MIL wasn’t in the house with us anymore, my husband seemed to crave that sort of engagement (maybe he had before she lived with us too), and said he didn’t *feel* I was prioritizing him if I wasn’t yelling or crying so I found ways to provide extreme emotion even if I was forcing myself to do so. Afterwards I felt both exhausted and manipulative, masking who I was in a way that was totally new to me and resentful for feeling like I needed to do that too.
I appreciate you all being willing to talk about big emotions in this way in your marriage as I haven’t before tried to think through all of the feels.
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Fascinating article, @jean Thank you for sharing it! This line jumped out at me. “…my social impairment makes it difficult for me to see when a boundary is being violated.” Like the author, I can see it in others yet crappy at recognizing when it’s being done in time to establish a healthier way to be. And candidly I’m not even sure if I did notice it I’d know how to adjust and establish or hold a boundary.
Recently I was asked why I didn’t tell off a long-ago friend who made fun of my very-different-than-her life choices. I felt I’d been slammed against a wall by her words and laughter yet chose to leave rather than tell her how much her words hurt. In the times I’ve attempted to do that I get so tongue tied and overwhelmed I end up feeling even worse so I choose to “flight.”
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Yes, that, Rachel. It’s what my org calls the waiting room: where people hang out until being let in. This is feeling unlikely to take off today. =(
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Thanks for confirming. It’s the closest to FOMO I get, fear that I’ve used the wrong link and will miss you wonderful people.
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I have, still getting the “waiting” msg. =(
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Thinking I might print this out on little slips of paper I can keep in my wallet that hand out and then walk away (at least for a little period of time). So perfectly worded, @gordana Thank you.
“When I feel I am close to a meltdown I need to remove myself from the situation quickly and take a few minutes of silence. It’s the only way to prevent the meltdown from happening. Unfortunately most people can’t understand that, so I need to communicate in advance that if I tell them I’m getting overwhelmed I only need them to stay away and everything will be fine. I don’t think there is a way around it without explaining we are autistic and what’s normal to them is very abnormal to us (and vice versa).”
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So hard, right?! Sorry to hear you and anyone else is going through something similar!
He’s unraveling, as best I can tell, for several reasons.
He feels responsible for his mom and feels he’s not being responsible by being so far from us. It’s a stand-up comedy routine in the making of mental health decline when we live a life ruled by others’ “shoulds.” I should take care of her, I should be with my family, I should figure out a way to do both but because I can’t, I should wind up my fear.
As he watches her mental decline he’s also worried about his own, probably from googling late at night, learning what she’s dealing with is often hereditary, and somehow he thought his family biology was immune. Surprise! In other words: Fear, again.
Overall, he’s a glass-is-half-empty sort. I’m a glass-half-fuller, and for almost half of his life I’ve been there to comfort him through the doubts and listen to the freakouts, likely with a “are you almost done?” look on my face so he knows eventually he’ll need to wrap it up. Ha! He now has them alone and doesn’t have the tools to put the fears into perspective. Even a recent suggestion, “we could use some therapy help when we’re together again” landed badly because something so obvious to me was overshadowed by his fear.
Of the things you asked, I do believe he values what I’ve done, prioritizing the kid and my health. While he also values that I’ve been able to set up a household on my own, that leads to fear he’s not needed. Ugh.
He doesn’t side with his mom, per se, yet she pulls more of his strings than he’ll ever be able to see. So many traits he believes are “just who I am” are straight out of the “children of narcissists” playbook. Fear and avoiding shame haunt him every day, and in turn are inescapable no matter how far we are apart. Somedays our long long conversations seem to make a difference. Other times, not so much.
Hope that helps.
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Dang I want a “like button” @valerie and @minami ! Thank you.
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Ooh, I’ve never understood the sleeves! This makes so much sense.