I went through the first 28 years of my life as a shadow in the world; never having any real friends, a virgin, a computer programmer, and living with excruciating social anxiety. I dealt with it by escaping to on-line universes such as Everquest and World of Warcraft. The real world, a total mystery to me, span around me in an indecipherable blur.
Then I moved out of my parents house and started looking after myself better, my confidence improved... slightly.
It was around this time I found these forums. They helped me discover that I was not alone, and although I did not actively partake in the community, I found that people were already asking the questions I sought the answers to. In particular the subject of on-line dating fascinated me. It wasn't something I had considered before but after giving it a shot my life changed forever. Thank God; it needed changing so very very badly.
Having absolutely zero confidence and experience with women, I created an online dating profile explaining that I have terrible social anxiety and no experience with women. To my utter joy and disbelief, I got an explosion of interest (I am not a great looker at all). It was brilliant. I highly recommend it lol. It really changed my perception of the world and women.
Online dating eliminated pretty much all the roadblocks I had before: I had no way of meeting women, had no skills in communicating with women (or men come to think of it), and didn't look like Brad Pitt.
And so on this online dating site with literally thousands of suitable partners I was messaged by my first, and only love of my life, a beautiful woman, who was slightly odd (but I wasn't to find that out until much later). I proposed 3 months later. I discovered eating out as a couple, sharing moments, cuddling on the sofa, exploring the world together, doing all the things couples do. I discovered sex. Woohoo... finally, thank you Jesus!
So what was strange about my wife? My wife suffered from regular non-epileptic seizures, which to me - knowing nothing about epilepsy - seemed exactly like epilepsy. I didn't mind at all, and would regularly have to care for her regular fits, sometimes she would injure herself and we'd have to go to the hospital. It was scary sometimes but I was perfectly happy, I'd finally found a beautiful woman and finally a friend to share my life with.
She was desperate to get married, so after 3 months of seeing each other I proposed. She didn't waste any time organising the wedding, and 5 months later (she is an amazing planner), we tied the knot, very expensively I might add, but worth it. There was concern that she would fit at the wedding, but she didn't.
6 months into the marriage and my life was pretty much the normal life I had so desperately dreamed of for 28 years. One day my wife was having a seizure on the bed, convulsing violently, eyes rolled all the way back, total lack of muscle control. As she was fitting, I whispered into her ear "I love you, it's going to be alright, it's going to be alright".
Later that night she admitted, all of the seizures were faked.
Woah? What the hell. No wonder the doctors were skeptical, but it was so convincing! I even recorded the seizures to show to the skeptical doctors, but although they didn't outright call her a liar, my improving knowledge of body language told me they didn't seem believe her at all. It might have been because she was getting about £280 every 4 weeks in disability benefits for these "seizures".
"Why, why?" I asked her. "For sympathy, I like the sympathy.", she replied.
Oookay. Thanks for telling me AFTER we got married that you're a fruitcake, but hey, I'm not perfect so we can let this slide. (I am sometimes unfortunately blunt with my words but I never actually put it quite like that). We didn't really talk about it, it was obviously a very awkward and strange thing. But to my shame I would sometimes bring it up in arguments (that we rarely had).
So the seizures stopped. Forever. I looked at the pragmatic side of things; she had suddenly lost a debilitating illness. But I discovered that she was in general quite a dishonest person. She would inspect my Facebook, read my private messages between family members, inspect all my things, spy on me. That's fine, I had no life until I met this woman, the most she's going to find is that I'm actually a really uninteresting person with no skeletons.
It made it a little hard to trust her. She was prone to extreme bursts of emotion, she was very, very sensitive. I think she may have been borderline personality disorder, one minute I was a saint, the next minute I was satan himself; arisen from hell to leave an unwashed plate in the bedroom, or forget to leave the toilet seat down. I was ok with this, and to my knowledge (And yes I have extremely limited knowledge) a lot of women are like this (but not all obviously).
During our relationship I learned about women (or this woman at least), the hard way. It took a long time to learn that I cannot simply be totally honest about everything (which is what films about relationships had taught me) and that I have to tell many, many white lies. I couldn't simply say "I don't care if you lose weight, but maybe if you're so concerned about it you shouldn't eat cake every night".
My logical and blunt, poorly practised persuasion skills meant conversation with me often went down like a ton of bricks. I have learned, very, very slowly, that my 28 years of social seclusion have not prepared me for relationships. Men and women are not the same, women should be lied to in all instances where they might perceive the truth as an insult. I may sound like I have no clue about women, and I probably don't, but I thought I did a fairly ok job in the relationship.
We had a baby girl. That was awesome, fatherhood was fantastic. For three weeks then she left me.
She tells me she has been diagnosed with post natal depression, and that she wants a divorce. She has also told me she was borderline. It doesn't matter though, she still wants a divorce because I am not a nice person. I am questioning that, but how would I know? I think I am good, I want to be good, but maybe I am a bad person? I pay my child support, she lives back at home with her "perfect" family, and I get to see my daughter once a week.
And so here I am again, just over 2 years later. I am absolutely, utterly devastated that the one person I thought I would share the rest of my life with, has gone. The opportunity to be a full-time dad has been robbed from me. All the great things about being in a relationship have been robbed from me, and my confidence, has shrank to nothing again. I am once again the pathetic nobody I was before, and soon to be a divorcee. Emotions people learn to deal with in their teens, and I'm 31 and have never experienced betrayal or rejection (because I was so scared of failure before, I would never try).
Do I regret any of it? The only thing I regret was that I could have been more understanding of my wife, and while I don't think I was a bad husband, I had to accept that this was a woman with issues, and if I wanted to keep her I should have done literally everything she asked for. I felt that the relationship was very one way, I was giving her all my affection; I supported her; she never had to work. I think she wants a more perfect man. Not a nerd. She wants someone better than me, and she will probably find someone.
It f*****g hurts. She was so controlling of me, I wasn't allowed to do anything by myself. She hated it when I wanted to sleep early because I'd had a long day. But I loved her, and it's hard to let go. My shame was that on two maybe three occasions shouted at her in frustration - for when she went totally irrational and over the top. This is a lesson, if I'm ever ever going to find someone else, I have learned in a very difficult way. When I'm angry, I am extremely logical and emotionless. Never violent, never a threat, and not out of control - but this is my main failure of my relationship. She had more than enough cause for blame, but even though I thought she was much worse a wife than I was a husband, I would never dreamed of leaving her.
But despite all of that I feel that my life is more lived now, I have lived. Suddenly all the concerns normal people have make a little bit more sense to me. I have a beautiful baby daughter (when my wife lets me see her), and I have learned new things, seen new places and no longer feel like the elephant man.
I still have excruciating social anxiety and there's no way I could ever pick up a woman in a bar, but something has changed in me. I feel that by taking a chance with online dating, (EXTREMELY SCARY IF YOU'VE NEVER DATED BTW - Make sure you put in your profile that you're extremely shy or something to that effect, so that your date is prepared for it). And enjoy it.
Thank you Wrongplanet for inspiring me to achieve my dreams, even though it all kind of went wrong. I have a foolish dream that my wife will give in to all the pleas, the letters, the desperate knocks on the door to speak to me and not divorce me, but she is adamant. She told me she fell out of love with me, then discovered she was pregnant, but I can't help suspect that the money she earns from the state to replace the disability she is no longer entitled to has something to do with it. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I will never know what she was actually thinking.
27 Dec 2012, 5:19 pm
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, note the lessons learned and move on: living with this sort of toxic insanity is not the price we have to pay for being on the spectrum.
