 Good day and welcome back to the Asperger's Growth YouTube channel with your host, Mr. Thomas Henley. Today, I'm coming at you with another dating Q&A video, autistic dating Q&A video. I have to preface this video by saying that yesterday I recorded, I think about six or seven videos and I had some real issues with the camera not focusing or the videos getting cut off, so I had like a proper meltdown yesterday over it, it was really, really tough. I managed to get myself to the gym, so everything was alright, but it was still very difficult. So we're going for another take today, we're going for it, I think I've done this video about three times, so hopefully practice makes perfect, but if not, who knows. If you do want to have your question answered or your story answered, please pop it down in the comments and I will try and get on it for the next video, hopefully in one take this time. We have a neurotypical woman here who has written in, what can lived ones do when someone is so stuck in denial that they are pushing everyone out of their lives? That is the question. My husband is serving me divorce papers tomorrow and thinks I'm simply unhinged and abusive. I've learnt so much about autism and PDA, pathological demand avoidance, yet him pushing me out of my home and self-protecting, leaving me homeless and unemployed has been hard to understand. There are so many spouses like me that only wish they could help and yet are shut out or withdrawn from to the point at which they are discarded. It's like being tied to a chair and being forced to watch my husband drown, I have no idea what to do, he regrettably doesn't remember his own actions but only remembers my reactiveness before I understood what was going on. Then according to him, I was too nice and am labelling him by understanding he needs time and space. The survival rate at this point of denial is very low once things start to slow down and a person sees what they've chosen when not feeling well and truly concerned and yet have no way forward. Right, very very heavy topic on this one. I'm going to run with the assumption that all of this, I'm going to take this as face value, I realise that in the best scenario I would know what the relationship is like, know what the dynamic is like, know the husbands and also know you in this situation. So I'm just going off the assumption that everything in here is kind of true and is a true sort of overview of what's going on. And I think the issue in this situation is that you've done good, you've tried to learn a lot about autism and PDA, I hope that you've looked into the experiential side of things, not just the research papers and the blogs from different autism organisations, actual autistic people talking about their experiences which I'm pretty sure you have done. Considering the fact that you've come over to my channel. You know, going back to the issue here, I think in a lot of cases, in a lot of NT and D relationships, there are a multitude of different miscommunications and when a particular person being diagnosed or undiagnosed, suspected of being autistic etc, doesn't really know much about themselves and autism and how they interact with the world. Know more about how neurotypicals function and communicate and perceive and feel. We talk a lot about this concept called double empathy where it's quite hard for autistic people to empathise with neurotypicals and vice versa, so neurotypicals struggling to really understand and grasp what being autistic is about. And this is a real issue, if one side doesn't pick up the slack, it leads to a lot of annoyance and arguments and difficult conversations and when you're in a situation where communication is not open, it's not vulnerable and it's not with that sort of growth, a relationship growth mindset, it can lead to a lot of difficulties, a lot of emotions flying about everywhere as in this situation. I think it's, you know, it must be really hard for you. I don't know whether your husband, ex-husband was diagnosed autistic or whatever he knew about it, but I can imagine that it's quite hard for you in this situation, not only because he's decided to, you know, divorce, get a divorce, but also because you just seem to be struggling quite a bit and it seems like, I mean, at least from your perspective that it's a really bad idea for him and for you. I think that maybe this denial, this reactivity, this sort of statement of serving you divorce papers, I think the best way to put it is like this, we growing up as autistic people, we have a lot of experience with interactions with neurotypicals. Not so much, it's like, if you're 1% of the population or 2%, you're going to have more experience with the 99, 98%, whereas the opposite way around, some people don't even have experience of that 1%, 2%, and, you know, over time, for all the statistics that have been published around quality of life for autistic people and also the testimonials from a lot of autistic people have shown that we have a lot of early life childhood trauma and we develop a lot of coping mechanisms to try and overcome that. Obviously, there's something going on here, these bad experiences can sometimes manifest as negative defence mechanisms pushing people out, not feeling like you're really a part of society, putting on a mask for people around you, even your partner, even your family, things of that nature and it's only until a certain sticking point that, you know, we realise, okay, right, things are not going well, I need to understand more about myself on autism because of this horrible or difficult event that's happening and that may be the case if he hasn't looked into autism prior to this. Despite all the possible reasons for this kind of behaviour that I could try and think about, I think the most important thing is to address you, to address your reaction to this situation. The thing is, something that happens quite often in autistic NDNT relationships, autistic, non-autistic, is the non-autistic person tends to take on a little bit of a caring role in the relationship and it's not exactly a good thing. You know, clarity of communication and trying to understand where your perceptions and thoughts and feelings and ideas sort of clash due to that neurological difference. You know, it only gets you so far. I think at a certain point you have to think about the fact that this person is not a child, they're not a person that you need to care for in that way. So I would definitely say that I understand and it's important to go and try and process and understand situations, but really what you need to be doing is putting less focus on him and putting more focus on yourself. You know, you need to find somewhere to live, you need to try and find a job that suits you best or something to tide you over while you look for something better. Do some work on yourself, do hobbies, socialize. You need to take your husband as an independent adult. Don't make excuses for for being autistic. I mean, from the complexity of this situation, it doesn't seem like this everything in this would be a miscommunication. You know, at some point you've got to say, look, this other human being has wanted is wanting to divorce me, has kicked me out of their place. I'm homeless and unemployed. Would someone that I love and someone that I care for do that to me in an ideal world? Whether they're autistic or not? Probably not. They have they've made a statement around this that they don't want you to be a part of their life or in their life. And you need to respect that. And it may come it may come to a point where they realize just exactly how bad they've screwed up and come back and say, Hey, look, I'm really sorry and all of that. But for the time being, you know, you need to put that out of your head because this person has made a very negative decision towards yourself. Doesn't matter if they're autistic, they've made that decision as an independent adult. And you need to respect that fact. Don't wash over it with all the autism related things. You are in a relationship, you married someone who is autistic, but is also an adult. And you need to treat them that way. You know, I hope that I'm not coming across too aggressive in that way or too, too, like, oh, you do this. So you don't think about it like that. But I'm really trying to get the point across that you don't have to wash over or give autistic people a free pass if they are treating you badly. That is that is the main message here. I'm really sorry that this is a situation that you have to go through. And I wish I could fix it. I wish I could come in and try and look at all miscommunications. But you know, it just it just seems that this is his decision. And it may screw up his life and it may screw up your life for the time being. But you can you can still grow out of that. And he's made this assertion, you split apart, you need to go your own way and reassert yourself back into the world as you not as part of this partnership as you. That's what he wants. You respect that you go your own way. Apologies if any of this came across in the wrong way or came across in a strange way. I have recorded this video about three times already. But I hope that it's kept come across as clear as it did the first time. Brain's not really on it today. Communication skills and things of that nature, not not too on it today. But I hope you have enjoyed this video and I hope that you found this helpful. Maybe if someone else is going through a similar situation, maybe this this video has helped you in that. If you would like to be a part of the next video, you want me to answer your question or query or story, please post it down in the comments or go over to my Instagram page and DM me. It'll be Asperger's growth. And you know, if you if you if you don't have Instagram and you, you know, you don't don't want to comment on YouTube, send me an email. You can go through my website, ThomasHenley.co.uk. Send me an email there. I will try and go on it as soon as. And yeah, hope you've enjoyed this episode of dating an autistic Q&A. Really need to get that title right. Take care, much love, and I'll see you in another episode. Very, very soon. See you later, folks.