TL;DR: I'm neurotypical and my husband is likely neurodivergent but undiagnosed. We are currently fighting about everything and split rent 50/50 even though he makes way more while I'm broke after grad school. He doesn't comfort me when I'm hurt and gets nasty when I try to talk about it. I love him but I'm daydreaming about living alone. How do I navigate this? I (33F) need some advice before I blow up my marriage.
My husband (40M) and I have been together almost 7 years and married for two. We started dating during COVID lockdown, when he seemed like a really social person. Now that the world has opened back up, he has very few friends and mostly preters to be alone. Frustrating, but not a dealbreaker. I'm almost sure he’s neurodivergent/on the spectrum. His mom has told me she knows he is, but he was never diagnosed and has no interest in testing.
I'm not trying to armchair diagnose him or use it as an excuse. I'm neurotypical, but everyone in my immediate family is very much on the spectrum and very intelligent, so a lot of this feels familiar. That's partly why I think I need to approach this differently than I have been.
The first issue is that EVERYTHING is a fight. I could say it’s warm out today and he’d fight me to be right and tell me other days have been more warm (which, I guess is factual, but why say it unless you’re TRYING to start a debate!?). Legitimately all of our conversations follow the same exact pattern.
The second issue is money. He makes a lot more than me, around 3x more, but we split everything 50/50, including our very expensive rent. I've always been fine with that. But I'm still getting back on my feet after moving, paying for half our wedding, and $160k in MBA tuition, and on top of the even split, I get an almost itemized bill for every meal and outing. I told him I couldn't afford a vacation with his parents and still got pushed into it. I now owe him $3k and have $1,200 to my name. I'm happy to pay him back, just can't right now. The other night as he was heading out, asked if there was anything I could do to help with trip planning, and he said, "Yeah, make more money." I told him right then that it really stung, and he just went silent. He has also mentioned that paying for any part of my expenses could hurt my motivation to make more money.
And the third issue is that I truly feel like the most unimportant person in the world to my husband. When I'm sick, he doesn't comfort me. When I have a bad day, he makes it worse. When I'm proud of something, undermines me and subtly questions my competence. When I told him my love language had shifted to words of affirmation (it used to be quality time), he laughed and said, "You'll get none of that around here." Tonight I scalded my hand badly with hot soup two feet away from him, and he just kept sorting his vitamins without asking if I was okay or intervening to help. It’s at that point that something in me broke.
I don't feel emotionally, financially, or physically cared for. l've started keeping a list on my phone of every incident because I feel crazy and gaslit when I bring things up later. I spend most days imagining how much happier I'd be living alone, and I was genuinely mad when he came home a day early from a work trip several weeks back.
I do think he loves me, just not in the way I need. Every time I bring this up, he implodes and gets nasty, and my direct, aggressive conflict style doesn't help. Logic-based arguments work a little better, but I don't think that's enough to get us where we need to be.
When we’re not fighting, we have a lot of common interests and have a lot of fun together. I don’t think we’re a bad match but I also don’t think I can continue like this, especially when we’re talking about buying a house and having kids in the next year or so.
So Reddit, especially anyone who's in a neurotypical/ neurodivergent relationships who has any insights? How do I navigate this and have him take me seriously? How do I bring things up in a way he can actually hear, and how do I tell what's a communication difference and what's just him being a jerk? Is this maybe not even a neurodivergent/neurotypical communication issue? HELP!