I wonder if anyone has been through something like this or know what the best outcome is?

In the past my husband, who is on the autism spectrum, was a perfectionist. He had anxiety but did not recognize it as such. He could find the smallest thing to complain about, if I (as a home wife) had not done something according to his priority list or by accident missed something.

He was also "hoovering" over my body and looks in ways that got to be too much for me.

All and all I ended up not feeling good enough and getting anxiety, as it was back then clear he was on one hand not satisfied with me how I was, while I did not have any complaints on him. As my feelings for him began to change, die out, I then had a shield against all this, I was fighting back. I was trying to make him realize that even if it was hard to believe, I was not the one with the problem here - he was.

As he has now changed my feelings for him has gone up, awoken, or a new birth of it. The problem with that is that I now stand without my shield, and I have began to have anxiety again, that my body, my appearance is not good enough for him, that things isn't just perfect by the time he gets home.

I have asked him before if maybe better we live in 2 different places but he always said that he did not want that. That he was sorry. That he knew he was the one with the problem (once he got to that realization). He would promise me again and again he had changed, only to fall back into old patterns again. He seem to have changed, for real.

About my appearance, weight, he now more often give me compliments. In the past it was as if he was trying to change me from all kinds of angles. On one hand worried about my health, but placing the importance on the looks.
I had gain some weight and to me that was just fine, but to him it wasn't. Again he succeeded in finding faults, faults in the home I did not see or care about and now on my body. I got so hurt I left him.

One of the things he then came up with during our split was him saying that I looked so pretty and it was killing him that he knew he was not even allowed to touch me, to give me a hug. I told him my weight was most likely the same if not more so I don't know what he was talking about, he had before said hurtful things to me (that caused me to leave him) to then make a U-turn like that. Another time he suddenly came up with the sentence that now my body type was his new taste. I asked him if he was seriously alright (again I could not understand the U-turn). Before it was all that "you have to watch it" that I could not gain more weight, that "I am not attracted to fat women", I asked him "I'm fat now?" and he said no, but that he was afraid "by the way you are going" I was going to be. Think I asked him What was his problem?
Another time he thought he came up with a great defense, this too during our separation, when he suddenly asked me if I could ever think of a single time he had ever rejected me in bed? That was it not he who would be rejected (but that he understood I was tired etc). I could not think of any time. He said "See - I've always been attracted to you". Some time later we decided to try again.

Thing is I have always felt his eyes on me, and that has not always been a good thing. I have felt it before when trying to eat something. I do not enjoy eating anything with him around me, as it reminds me of how it use to be.
It was that way too back in time when he thought I was too underweight and he was trying to make me eat more, so it has not only been him trying to make me not eat certain things he does not think are healthy enough (well they haven't been, I'll give him that but it has been my choice since I eat enough healthy as it is).

He thinks now that I have to simply go through this stage of anxiety and not escape but that he will prove meanwhile that he has changed and that he will not be on my case.

He says if he allows me more space then he is afraid he will loose me, or that I will run away from all this, and not face them straight forward. That he's sorry this is something he knows he is guilty of having done to me, but that he has changed.

Is he right about me simply having to expose myself to this always, or do I have to find my safe-areas where I am not triggered? Really want this not good enough, anxiety feelings to go away. It is so bizarre. i can see, tell the present him is not acting, saying stuff like that no more, but I have years of memories of him being less or more so, and too before the empty promises he had changed, but then he hadn't - he still had a problem with it.