Do you ever think you've hurt your partner's social life?

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Sometimes my wife mentions that women she's known for a long time are doing things together for example going on Girls' Trips or to spas and she feels left out. She may seem more aware since being diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's Disease however this is not really a new thing. The reality was that she never really acquired a close-knit possé of girlfriends like a lot of women, but nevertheless I believe if I were neurotypical we would have made close friends with other couples (not that we're completely friendless) and as time went on, her personal network would have developed as well as ours as a couple.

Although she has always refused to take me seriously whenever I suggest such a thing, I can't help feeling bad about it. Has anyone else ever felt the same way?

Hmm...maybe that ties into the "imprisonment aspect" of marriage?

Perhaps

Maybe neither of you are that gregarious so are well matched? Married couples sometimes end up a bit reclusive. Quite often wives have richer social lives and husbands rely on their wives for their own social life, wives arrange gatherings etc. Your case is swapped around but you've not done the wife thing either.
I've been someone's only proper friend before, or as their partner am their primary means of socialising. But I myself have the other friends, I've not held them back but they've relied on me more than I'd like them to.

Well to be clear, I've had only one male best friend in my life. He was gay but not physically attracted to me, and I am 100% straight (to a degree that might nowadays be seen as unhealthy). Also when we met, I was 22 and he was only 16 (which would have been considered an inappropriately large age gap for a heterosexual relationship) and I think he and I were more like boyfriends than "bros". So I basically have no male best friends, and I tend not to bond with the husbands of my wife's friends — I may have a cordial relationship with them but I don't find myself being invited to their poker nights or going on fishing trips with them.

My wife and I joined a gourmet club decades ago which is still active although the members are now almost all pensioners. So as my wife is now experiencing a degree of cognitive impairment, I have had to take more initiative regarding attendance at functions, and recently (last spring perhaps) I sent an annoyed e-mail to somebody complaining that I was not on the distribution of an announcement (my wife had gotten it but not acted on it) and apparently the tone of this response was thought inappropriate by some people. Somebody apparently then told my wife about this, that they were unhappy about that e-mail and that people in the group were saying that I'm autistic (I am basically not "officially" autistic IRL). I can't help thinking that my wife would have more friends, female or otherwise, and a more active social life, had she married someone else. That was the point of my post.

I guess this is why some married people should just stay single so they can have 100% guaranteed freedom!! !

I'm NOT at all saying that the OP's wife regrets getting married to him but you cannot deny the possibility?

I have also noticed that many couples currently in a marriage are reclusive ESPECIALLY couples with children but you also have the married people who are community-focused and go to local events

My girlfriend had more of a social life when she lived with her parents. She was social with her family but she was also very active in their small town church. She lived alone for a while before we moved in together & she spent a bit of that time staying with her parents because she hated being alone due to depression & anxiety. She was kind of planning to move back in with her parents or moving in with her sister but hated those ideas. Cass would like to go out & do various things but she needs someone to lead her into things. Whereas I don't mind doing things but I usually don't majorly want to(except for eating out) & I need directing to do things & Cass is not good at directing me. Neither of us have friends to go out & do things with. Cass has looked into churches some but hates the idea of being involved with a big one due to social anxiety. She wants the feel of being in a small community group like she had when she was living with her parents. Her religious beliefs are kind of all over the place so she could probably handle most any kind or religion if the group was was small & nice. She does spend a few days & nights visiting different family members every month but finds it very draining because her family insists things need to be on their terms & Cass hates them being upset. I do not blame myself for her not having a social life but I do think she would have more of a social life if I was different & could lead her into things. Perhaps I should try googling unoffical religions & also support groups in Vermont to see what small groups might be around

^well, most young married couples are actively raising children which is VERY time-consuming so of course this results in them becoming reclusive

The marriage lifestyle is NOT for everyone and I truly believe some people are better off completely abandoning the goal altogether and just resigning themselves to a single independant life!! !

It's far easier, cheaper & safer in the long run

No chance of becoming imprisoned within your own circumstances since you are free to do whatever the hell you want!

The only reason I am moving forward with getting married is because I have found a good man (David) but I think marriage is overrated

No but our social lives hurt our love lives. She doesn't like some of my friends. I don't mind her friends but I feel excluded when all conversations in her social group happen in Chinese.

But it would be wrong for me to tell them not to use their language. Sometimes I just look at my phone. One time I refused to go on a trip to Queensland because of that problem. My family and another Chinese family. I refused to go. Because I didn't want 4 days of being alone while people talk over me in Chinese. Better to be alone for real than endure that.

Probably, but it's hard to say for certain since most of the women I've dated weren't exactly social butterflies.

Some people (including many autists) spend their entire lives mostly maintaining a social life through their close friends.

A person who fits that description, who's dating an autist who fits that description probably isn't really having their social life hurt by their autistic partner, at least not substantially, so long as the autist partner isn't regularly committing major faux pas or engaging in antisocial rhetoric and behaviour.

If you're part of a heterosexual couple, and you don't vibe with the male member of other couples your partner knows, then you may not be invited on couples' vacations etc. that your partner might otherwise enjoy.

Agreed, but I'm mostly describing people who didn't have other couples they knew for that situation to present itself.

The girlfriend preemptively didn't vibe with one or more female (or male) members of that circle in the first place, so to speak.

This post is predicated on the expectation that if you're HF and partnered, then your partner is probably NT although probably not super popular or gregarious or they wouldn't be with someone like you. My longest relationship before being married was with an autistic person (although at the time people just spoke of her as "weird" because autism wasn't in the popular vocabulary). That experience was entirely different, plus the social milieu was very bohemian.

I remember there was a girl who was attracted to me when we were both 17 and we snogged a couple of times, but she couldn't understand why we weren't hanging out with my "crowd". When I didn't have an answer, she totally lost interest.

@ The thread title.

Yes, all the time. It has created a lot of misunderstandings between me and my partner.

no i don't think so, ofcourse there is always something
he'd go out lots-all the time, i don't mind-at all
maybe its the other way- or maybe not as i haven't much of that,


i don't like the dragging up and in, of all these newage creeps (snake-oil salespersons)
specially that i found out that to all them im just an under-human
(or possibly; not-accessible to cult mindedness/followership and enthousiasm to pretend things) (faith over works dilemma and the mythical thinking thing)

mind you in these landscapes(dutch), the alts are always backgrounded in former further reformed ligues (and eh, the party for animals and ostentatious vega & emphathism, is sprung from further further reformed like 7days adv, fyi, (and not forget big-chemical alliance here))



Emphathy is like a disease; it is the emphasis of ecstasy, the
ecstasy of showing off. It’s showing oneself with an emphy-
sema under one’s skin, the chicken pox of an emphatic child-
hood, the black and blue swelling of self emphasis that pushes
on the insides of our cellular tissues, and blows, trying to burst
outwards. Emphatists are emphanomaniacs, megalomaniacs
of emphasis, and elephantism-sick – in love with their own gi-
gantism, their feet as big as an elephant’s, and a telephone
grafted into their brains, to be tuned on telemphatic waves, the
telepathic waves of emphasis.

totally oftopic
again

An NT understanding of a relationship isn't usually the same of that of an ND. I have had to adjust to her view or I might lose her. I don't mind changing in that way. She is worth it.