Physical positions and distance, asking to think of it?

I'm in this marriage where been told by others, experts, I have to say what I want and be specific, and not how I use to be.

My husband is on the autism spectrum (God how many times have I written that by now?) and so from what I have been told there could be a dilemma over some social cues.

I am more sensitive right now than my usual (which says a lot, LOL) and I don't know how to or if to bring this up with him (without tears showing).

It is that how I think he relates to the physical, where he has confused me, and made me insecure in the past.

Before we got together I could see women show interest in him, it was that kind of atmosphere and before that he use to hang with a group of friends and it was mixed with females and males.

I could tell that he was being kind, gracious, but it was as if he did not quite connect with any of them, and I could tell if and when one of them wanted to hug him or show some kind of physical tenderness towards him that he would in a sort of gentleman way move a little slight off but there would still be that physical interaction there. I would watch this from a distance. He was not belonging to me at the time so at most I was sort of amused.

I know now that to him lots of faces gets mixed up with one another, he can't tell people apart. There has been times I can tell he is trying to pretend he recognize, knows so and so. He doesn't. He does not want to offend, so he goes along with it.

One time, and I am sorry I know I have complained about this before, at a work function I thought a female colleague of his was standing too close and in a too dominant posture. She also gave me a look of glott. He did not even look at me. I stood there waiting. I then left. In my opinion he should have reacted that a female is taking the liberty to place herself, her body, like that.
I know, I don't want to sound righteous here, but I know if a male colleague of mine would have stood in the same manner - she stood - my alert system would have gone off and I would have most likely even reacted before it was to even get that close. I would have taken steps back or said something. If people overall gets too close to me I either take steps back, or chair back, I create distance or I can say "could you, please…?" or something similar.

What has made me insecure, and signaled to me that I was some second less of value of a partner, woman to him, was him before insisting on treating me more like a friend than his actual girlfriend, fiance, wife, when around other people. Except for when he would walk with me there, then he would hold my hand. If and when I would before reach out to him, physically, he would one time, at this big, noisy restaurant with his family and friends, take me aside to sharply tell me to not touch him(!). That just shot right through. I was shocked. I was afraid actually. This was someone else to me. He looked at me as if I should be ashamed of myself. He only considered his own situation, feelings. Not at all that I was nervous to be there, this was a strange city to me, I did not know them. He if anyone should have been the relaxed one, the one where I could lean for support, may it have been emotional support. But also physical. I later learned he was not himself, how i knew of him, around his own family, and that he had social anxiety. Again - I was the garbage can. The one you can snarl at. I think we fought for 3 days after that. I would tell him then if he was such an expert on this that he would reach out to touch me when he felt it was appropriate then. I think now that was a ridiculous agreement to make. And that I completely took his needs before my own. However at the time I felt I would never ever reach out to him again, as that had hurt me, when that had been his response of rejection. From that moment on we would be like friends, like parents. It was only suddenly if we were going to a nightclub when he chose to upgrade and was touching me, as now he apparently wanted to show "she's mine". Or else guys would come up, he thought. I thought he was too much and told him to just be the way he always was with me with other people, and now in reverse told him to not fake it, that I knew he was not comfortable showing me any type of physical tenderness around other people but only in the privacy of our home or in the car or holding my hand while walking among strangers. I knew that now. So he could just stop it. One time he got distraught outside a nightclub and told me to please wait, and told me that he couldn't take it no more if we went in there, and that he was afraid he was going to loose me, that I would be gone in there.

From his own description it has not been the way he has signaled to me. To him he has seen it as if we are so good together, we are almost "superior" in our relationship, that he did not want to glott that to family, friends. And he said he would hate it when others did that so he assumed how other people would feel about this. Too I realized one of his parents would be against family members showing physical tenderness.

One of the reasons I gave him in the past when I felt I had to terminate the relationship, it was too unhealthy for me, and as he insisted to know why, one of the reasons was that I told him that I wanted to feel that my partner knew how to validate me and our relationship, physically, with or without other people around. That I did not want to be cut loose. That I did not want to be afraid and knowing I was not allowed to even reach out and touch my own husband. That it was an unbelievable feeling of rejection, and in public, that he would maybe react to me doing that, and that this was why I had not done it in years because I could not relive that sort of shock, hurt. And the reason I did not want him to do it to me was because I knew he was faking it. That he did not really want to touch me in front of others. But that I knew now that I truly missed having that in a relationship, and that I did not want to live the rest of my life like this. That I thought it was an important message to give, as a mom too, that showing physical tenderness towards another is something beautiful and natural and something to strengthen the "us". That these rules were killing a lot for me. He set in to change and at first it felt fake and imposed and I was so close to telling him to lay it off, but he kept at it to it then to feel more and more natural, around others. It was one time when I dared to reach for him, and when I did he immediately reacted in a positive way.

I notice with a child that this child too can stand too close and lots of times when I have turned around I have almost and too have done so by accident bumped in with the child. This is OK though. I have carefully tried to say something like you get risked being bumped into, but I've always after I've said that given the child a hug.

I do not want the whole parent-child relationship type of thing between me and my husband. Had it been someone who is not autistic and can misread, not saying everyone who is autistic has this particular issue, I would not say anything. Then I would be positive he knew the rules of this and broke them knowingly and I would be out, I would not take it. But should I tell him to please think of what distance is appropriate? To me that sounds as if I am jealous and insecure, and as if I am a parent then to my own equal partner? I just know if I ever get to watch something like that ever again - and he is not reacting - that the hurt will show up, and I don't want to be hurt no more. I'm afraid to be hurt anymore. I don't think I can take it. I want to feel safe that he knows this. I will else then think if he is doing this on purpose, flirting with danger, and maybe hiding behind that he can excuse himself saying he's autistic (worse scenario here, this is the side of the suspicious).

What has been difficult for me to understand and which frankly makes me angry, insults me, is how it could have been so fine by him by allowing these other women to get that close to him - but when I would reach out for his hand - he rejected me so sharply, so unexpected. I did not do half what these other women did. I only reached out to hold his hand, that was it. I may have touched him ever so slightly on his upper arm at the restaurant as we sat down with the rest but it was only then a sign of tenderness. I was before then so used to him and I being comfortable with one another, physically speaking before. I had no idea.

I regret it so much that I did not just walk out of the restaurant. Again I thought about not creating a scene, what kind of impression this would make on his family and friends. He had the keys to the car. He had the keys to the hotel. I was in this strange city. I did not know where to go. I think i was in shock. But it was so humiliating to go back there, sit down with the rest, and pretend as if everything was just fine. For all I know they might have wondered why he even took me aside to begin with and may have seen his stern, sharp expression when he told me off. It was just so humiliating but I think my emotions caught up with me afterwards. He would later apologize and say it was his fault and that I was right in the way I reasoned but that has still not taken this memory away. I was not to know how he would react in the future. He never told me he had social anxiety. Had to figure that out.

[lostsoul13]

This can be disheartening- but that parent child relationship doesn’t work same with the saviour dynamics…

We all go through trouble all enter reincarnation- you have to suffer the same in the long run of things - you might get one easy life of reincarnating death ect but it soon catch’s up with you the processing at the districts..

Thank you. I have not seen him do it again. I have made him more aware, cautious before as I made this huge complaint about him, if we go out and/or hang with other people, couples, friends etc in the past, that huge complaint - I had not done it before nor after, not even a little bit - seemed to have effected him. These days he usually take me aside at one point or another during these times and ask me If he has behaved the right way? I feel sorry for him then. He never does anything wrong these days that make me insecure, like before.

But before that - it was all Mr Cool and Mr Defense-Guy. Others could say something, but not I.

Then it is the harsh truth: Because my husband has been so comfortable with his female work colleague he has not minded that she would stand so close to him and to me how she stood, in that dominant way. On the cost of hurting my feelings. But then him back then blaming that on me then, me being too sensitive. Who comes first here? His "Work-Wife?" or Me, his actual wife? Still he took himself in defense and he took her in defense as well, and tried to make it all about me being so very sensitive.

I just felt nothing after that. Nothing. Wild horses couldn't bring me to revisit his work at those so called functions of his, even as he pleaded I would go. I think he had it in his mind he would do it right this time but I simply did not wish to revisit a place with the same people in it, her being there, and going through a similar thing without him seeing it from my perspective.

I would deliberately cut him off my work functions, work situations as well. He was not welcomed. I would rather have it that way than for me to do to him what he did to me.

He has been used to being dominated by his narcissistic parent and I think that could be why he has learned surviving skills on how to avoid getting into anything with someone dominant. Those who are dominant have a problem with their attitude towards other people, there is something wrong with them. One has to work on boundaries even more so because dominant people try to act as if they are not even there.

I think when he and I met, we had one thing in common: 2 dominant parents who had not taught us where our boundaries needed to be at. I had to relearn that, and in the process I could recognize where he was (still) going wrong with all this. but back in the day when we met - we were the same. He would be right about that later on. He would say I had changed. Not him. But I needed him to change too. Then again there was always this part of me that my dominant mother knew she could never take from me. I remember as a child watching how she would take that last part of someone, make them inferior. Even as a child I remember thinking "you won't do that to me". This because I could see how it amputates someone, their very soul. What it does to them further down the road. She was oblivious to that. She just cared about having control and being right and that made her feel safe. Instead of me being drawn more to her, being helpless like some, after she had taken that last part of them, i got to be even more independent. In other ways I suspect I still need work from the damage of having a dominant parent. One of the things I try not to do, but often realize too late, is that I do not need to explain myself always. To not try to meet someone more than half the way. To just stand there in the middle, no more, no less. I still think I need work on, but what you can't see you can't do nothing about, and in some ways I think I am still half asleep about it, but I try to see, to listen to my own signals.

So maybe to me it has been a replay - first his dominant (narcissistic) parent, then on to the dominant female co-worker. And him not reacting. Wonderful. I have joked with him and said I did not know he was into dominatrix, he has said very funny, ha ha (not). From his own description this female co worker has gotten into trouble with most other people at the firm, and he can say before in a proud way that he does not have any issues, not before with his (narcissistic, dominant) parent, and not with the dominatrix either, it seems. I have told him the only reason he does not is because they know he is whipped. He is whipped. Mr Cool = Whipped. How about that? Who would have guessed? I've told him I do not only want a specific part of him to stand up, I want the total him to stand up. He has to recognize these signs, guard his boundaries, and make it his priority if he wants me in his life as his wife, and want me to trust him, to keep those boundaries. We can't have different set of boundaries here. This is not OK. Not by me it ain't. I don't have any patience for it no more. But I have always waited for him. I have waited for him to get it on his own. To want to get it. Not because I have said so. Not because of me. But because of how he would want to treat me, how his heart wanted me to be treated. Then i know it is true - when it comes from his within. Not because he thinks Ok this is one of my jealous wife's rules and I better act as if I think she is right and do this even if I think it is silly. I want him to want to, on his own. Only then it is true. Only then I am safe in his arms. Not before.

I know there is still a part of me that is on the "look out" because trusting him makes me more vulnerable, inferior, and I am not yet 100% sure he gets it now, completely. Time and more experience will tell, and me trying to be positive of the outcome. There is still this part of me holding back, but bit by bit I hope I will not have to do so anymore and become more and more loused up about it.

I have read that some people who are autistic have difficulty putting themselves in someone else's shoes. I have learned with him that do to him what he has done to me works wonder. Then he knows what it feels like. I did it when he made his narcissistic parent's rule be his rule to present to me and our family. I did the same to him. He could not then blame his parent, as this was his own very rule he had copied. Then finally he got it. To me he could not see it so well when he was being manipulated which placed me in an even more vulnerable position with him as my so called husband, the one who was suppose to keep the door shut.

It has been obvious to me that he has considered himself, and he has thought everyone else is to themselves, that he can not before we even get there maybe think OK how will this look from my wife's perspective, what kind of situation is she in, now that I am to take her with me to this thing (What it now may be). I have always been just by myself, alone, even if he was seated next to me. And I knew it. I knew I would only get my true husband back once we were back home. This other guy was nobody I could count on. Might as well have been a stranger.

These days he does. He has said so himself that I was right, that he did not think about me like that if we were to visit his family or go to a work function of his or what it now was. That he needed to be more considerate, and that now he really tries to think about that, not just about himself. That he did not know why but the thought had not struck him before.

I know he was rocky there for a while after the autism diagnose. It was hard for him to realize that it was not me or others that were too sensitive, it was him that was not sensitive. That his brain could not read off the faces, emotions, as well as others could. That it was him that could not read off some social cues, not that it was me who cared too much about such "nonsense". I think his Mr Cool Image had worked well for him when he was younger, and people would just think it was rebel-alike, but still a charming attitude. Then as he is now getting older the Mr Cool image seem more out of place, out of date, as immature. High time to put Mr Cool in the grave. Had we not had the fights, the arguments, the therapy I think he would have continued having the issues he was having that were normal to him and the ones he tried to hide. So in the end it was all for the best. He's gotten the help he needed. He's stronger now. Just feel like I got pretty bruised up (mentally) along the way before he got to that stage.

I will never forget the time, and I have mentioned it before, why he would insist to looking at my face or a child's face so much, this while driving, and him still thinking he was in control. He has said afterwards he felt so lousy. He wanted to compensate the fact that he knew now he could not read off the faces so well and him then thinking that meant he would miss important cues from his own child. This why I could see him very much trying to look at a child, nod, and so on, because he did not want the child to feel disconnected from him, and that he was desperate to be able to read off as much as he could, so he could keep that bond.