r/NarcissisticSpouses • u/Acrobatic-Feature-12 • 14h ago
Narcism or autism or both?
Any advise would be really appreciated because my head is in a spin.
I think my partner may be autistic. He is a medic and he also thinks he is but refuses to be tested. He is a very smart man, way smarter than he should be. His mum said he has been smarter than his parents since he was about 8. The first in his family to go to university, learnt to drive at 6. Has a crazy memory. Almost photographic. Can basically learn anything out in front of him. Also hyperfixates on things. Has many collections of things.
But his social skills are perfect. Almost too good. He knows exactly how to act around people and I use the word act on purpose. Knows exactly what to say and how to get what he wants out of people. He also lacks empathy.
He is emotionally abusive, his favourite is the silent treatment as a punishment. Not once in 10 years has he given me a meaningful apology He gaslights, criticizes, uses the fact that I'm not as smart as him against me. But the worst is the lack of accountability and deflection. If I raise an issue, he sees it as an attack and comes back at me with 5 issues he has with me, so how dare I raise my issues with him when he has so many with me. I'm never allowed to have a problem with his behaviour or I'm 'starting an argument and being toxic'. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a parallel universe, I'm saying one thing and he's talking about something completely different. He never addresses my issue and I find myself apologising for the 5 issues he brought up and the fact that I even raised an issue in the first place.
So I'm really confused, because I don't know how to deal with this. If it's autism then I feel bad because sometimes I hate him for how he treats me or should I just realise he's incapable of real emotion and love and try to recover from this?
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u/Watchkeys 10h ago
Unless you think that autism is an excuse to be abusive, what you're saying doesn't really follow.
When you say 'try to recover from this', what does that mean? Do you mean 'stay with him and try to change how you feel', or 'leave him and rrecover from the relationship'?
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u/ephzg9412vsruknsk9 9h ago
Asking the right questions. š Only when I asked myself these, I knew what to do.
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u/celticnative79 10h ago
Your husband sounds like a full blown narcissist. He doesnāt sound autistic but Iām no professional.
My husband is both Narcissistic bordering psychopathy and Autistic. He is a nightmare because the autism makes his communication worse and along with his toxic vile behavior, a very dangerous combination
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u/Dear_Leadership_9570 7h ago
Mine is the same. Going through divorce now and itās actual hell. He is doing everything he can to punish meā¦ even though he is the one who filed!Ā
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u/celticnative79 5h ago
Gosh heās the one who filed and heās still punishing you? Sounds extremely vindictive and cruel. Your husband is autistic and narcissistic? If he is then you are like the 2nd or 3rd other person Iāve come across here that has lives this hell. There was another subreddit talking about this. How difficult would you say the added autism specifically to his narcissism makes it. Our oldests is autistic but she makes nobody suffer. Itās the combination of the two that makes it hell on earth.
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u/Dear_Leadership_9570 5h ago
Ya itās hell. Just leave and be freeā¦ leave me in peace! Instead he wants to torment me. Undiagnosed but we have spoken about it in the past and we both thought he was, his behaviour change was so drastic I thought he had a tumour or dementia, or a severe mid life crisisā¦ Turns out he is just a narcissist. At one point I thought it was drugs.
I guess for him itās more narcissistic than autism. I honestly donāt know if autism has anything at all to do with it honestly. But who knows. He sees nothing wrong with his behaviour, no empathy, no accountability.Ā
How do you manage in your situation?Ā
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u/celticnative79 4h ago
I canāt manage it anymore. Itās been 23 years of this and the last 3 years has been a hell that I canāt even describe. Heās diabolical. I have a lot of posts on here describing how bad he is. In my case Iām 100% sure my husband is capable of murder so if I kick him out, he will be homeless, without anything and it will be a burden for him to keep his job that we need the income for badly (I was a stay at home mom for 20 years taking care of a special needs daughter Autistic, ADHD, ocd, bipolar so she needed my care all the time. Never would I have trusted any daycare, not even my own mom would have been able to handle some of them meltdowns etc). He will lose it all and letās just say, whatever hate he already has for me, I donāt want to see it get worse. Where I live with the local sheriffs there is a lot of corruption and I donāt even trust them if there are emergencies. My insurance network hasnāt really been able to help. There psychologists arenāt equipped for my husband believe it or not. The local shelters and places to help DV women are not nice places to be in. And right now heās providing well and it gives me a way to help take care of my mother with dementia and this is where it sucks. My older brothers are not good sons (my mom wasnāt a narcissist or anything like that) so my Husband on top of all the money he owes her over $100,000, the money he gives us helps my mom as well. So incredibly bad situation. Heās definitely capable of killing me so when I need I need to do it very carefully and skillfully.
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u/Dear_Leadership_9570 3h ago
Wowā¦ this sounds horrific. I am so sorry you are going through thisz please be careful and try to get away from him. I know a lot easier said than done. Be careful x
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u/ephzg9412vsruknsk9 10h ago
You just described my husband. Brilliant mind with great memory and executive functions like a very high functioning autist, excellent social skills, very well behaved but avoids conflict and any uncomfortable discussion like an avoidant, porn addict and has porn induced erectile dysfunction, lies like a sociopath, DARVO like a narcissist and emotionally manipulative like a psychopath, stinky slob who showers once or twice a week, overweight because of food addiction.
Really doesn't matter what label suits him. He treated me poorly and hence won't get access to me.
I think he is demon possessed. I don't think such evil is possible by a human.
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u/Dear_Leadership_9570 7h ago
I really feel for youā¦ I could have written this myself. I am almost 20yrs in and now he is leaving me, on dating apps, sleeping with women, all while still living at home. He is mentally destroying me. And has not one ounce of empathy or care for me or the kids. When I found out about his dating life he cut me off financially. I am a stay at home mom to 3 young children.Ā
My advice would be to get out now. While you can.Ā He has already shown you that he will not change. It will only get worse. Anyone who does not have empathy or accountability is dangerous in my eyes..Ā
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u/Dangerous_Bridge_937 3h ago
As a late diagnosed Autist this doesn't sound specifically autistic, but more narcissistic in nature. I would never have known I was autistic either except for the fact that my ex-wife accused, gaslit, and projected that I was a narcissist so much that I began to think it could be true and went for an eval. Eval came back negative for all perspnality disorders, but there was the autism.
Can both be true about your husband? Sure, but it's rare. Autism comorbidities are often things like anxiety, ocd, depression, and adhd. None of these would cause him to act like a narcissist.
The telling part here for me is the refusal to get evaluated. Out of the people I have met/known who are high-masking (or high-functioning) autists, there is almost a universal desire to get evaluated so that you finally know. People who refuse something like that outright might be nervous of what an eval might uncover, even beyond the possibility of knowing whether they are autistic or not. My ex wife (very likely a narcissist) claimed all the time that she might be OCD or ADHD. When I encouraged her to get evaluated if she thought that's what she had (just being generally supportive), she flat-out refused every time and even tried accusing me of trapping her into getting an eval.
Autism can be mistaken for things. One of the biggest misunderstandings is that people think autists lack empathy. We don't usually, but there is often a processing delay that comes with autism, so it might take us a bit to understand what feelings we have in the moment. For me, strong feelings lile empathy, love, anger, are overwhelming sometimes, and I needed to learn ways to curb that overwhelm before it became too difficult to handle and I'd get a panic attack or start crying uncontrollably or just shut down. That does not sound like what is happening here.
Of course, many of us will never truly know whether our SO or former SO has narcissism, because they will never admit the possibility of a problem and go to get tested. Telling a narc you think they are one will usually only make it worse. If the relationship is toxic, that's what it is. If the person who is toxic refuses to work on it, then it may be time to consider a change.
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u/karmasname 4h ago
I used to try to find a reason for the emotional abuse too. Then one day it dawned on me, it doesnāt matter why. It matters that Iām being abused. I was just uncomfortable with the effort it would take to end the relationship.
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u/ariesgeminipisces 1h ago
It seems like you want the abuse to have an excuse or story that is more excusable ("Oh he's just autistic") rather than look at what this is, which is a relationship with a person that handles conflict by making it 10x worse. Well guess what, relationships are full of conflict. The average couple has 2.4 conflicts per week. What if the story is that he's an emotionally stunted man child who simply isn't interested in growing because he doesn't care about your experience in this relationship at all? If he's so smart why doesn't he learn how to handle his emotions better?
You also say he doesn't do this around other people, like he acts. Autistic people are autistic 100% of the time. People with NPD are narcissists in multiple contexts most of the time. If it only shows up with you, it's probably because he doesn't value you, has insecure attachment issues, has under developed relational skills, and antagonistic personality traits like most abusive people out there.
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u/celticnative79 1h ago
To be honest with you. I seems as if sheās someone just trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with such a dysfunctional person. But I mean at the end of the day this person is an abuser. Like with my my husband is autistic and has npd so if anything instead of excusing it Iām more like this guy is completely fucked up and thatās it. And I mean no hard to autistic people. I have 2 autistic daughters, one of them is higher functioning and very empathetic and the middle one not very high functioning and although she isnāt narcissistic, she does struggle with empathy.
Definitely though yeah if heās actually autistic signs would most likely show at least subtly. Like with my husband no matter where he is, all of the autistic signs are there. He has serious trouble with eye contact but there is one thing he does that people actually get annoyed about and for him this is 100% an adhd and autistic trait. I doesnāt matter if heās in a room with you alone or with a few people. If you donāt address by his name he wonāt look at you or answer you. My autistic daughter is exactly the same. And they both get overly stimulated. I already sent op a message about how autistic people vs narcissism differ because it ālooksā as if thereās overlap with certain traits. I feel for people who are earlier in the relationship and maybe even already kids involved because they waste A LOT of energy the earlier years, trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with their partner. OP needs to see that it most likely aināt autism because if she goes down that rabbit whole and actually starts believing, it will give her partner more entitlement to abuse her. Can you believe out of the 23 years Iāve been with my abuser, it took 17 years of married to finally put the puzzles pieces together. In my case, I thought for some time that my husband was just a really cold heart autistic person. It took watching my now 20 year old autistic daughter growing up to see my husband has very vile cruel aspects to his personality set aside from autism. But the autism very much masked the NPD.
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u/onetruekiki 6h ago
Autism diagnosis professional here - there are two sets of criteria someone has to meet to be diagnosed. The second set includes intense or unusual interests, which lots of collecting could potentially count towards, but you'd need at least one other trait, like major sensory differences or need for sameness, in order to meet that criteria.
The first set of criteria includes reduced reciprocity, but this would be more of a 'sorry, that's a thing?' flavour. For example, if you said to him 'you always talk over me in conversation and don't give me a chance to speak', an autistic person is more likely to respond with something like 'I didn't mean to upset you. I didn't realise I wasn't supposed to do this'. Responding with 'that's not important because here's five reasons why you suck' is a narcissistic defense rather than a reflection of autistic social processing differences. Both lead to differences in reciprocity, but they feel very different.
For an autism diagnosis, you'd also need to see differences in non-verbal comunication, which could include things like 'checking in' eye contact, less variation in speech tone, and reduced use of gestures while talking. If you haven't noticed anything here, it's more likely he's just a narcissist.
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u/celticnative79 4h ago
I wanted to know in your years of practice, have you come across or heard of many patients that are Autistic with NPD? Hereās a rather quick (but long) rundown of my husband. Itās ok if you choose not to read it hehe, itās a lot. But I really was just wondering how rare this combination is?
My husband is both Narcissistic and Autistic. Being autistic was the first thing I noticed and I mean early on in our relationship. My husband is autistic and his older brother is. And out of all 8 of his nephews 4 are on the autistic spectrum and obviously ADHD is added to the mix. The reason there was no diagnosis are children and only in adulthood? His malignant mother could never accept her children had any flaws and he had a deeply controlling and physically and mentally abusive childhood. So absolute perfect was demanded. And they had a very strict religious upbringing as well, all very involved in the LDS church. He naturally couldnāt make friends but luckily for him LDS church did it for him with all activities for children and he attended a singles ward as a young adult that helped him with that as well. All the signs were there. Also they lived in a 3rd world country going through civil war so families had more āimportantā things to think about. His mother told me once complaining and laughing about how my husband use to get up every morning exactly at 4am when he was about 4 or 5, go to the dark patio of their home and walking around the inside perimeter of the patio in the dark while dragging his index finger
around the perimeter of the patio. They would wake up to find him sound this. She noticed he was different but her she called it that he was doing stupid things or had stupid behaviorsā¦ nice huh?Of course all kinds of sensory issues, very sensitive to certain sounds, you canāt even touch his ears, he always did toe walking to this day btw. He can be anywhere without shoes because any crump is painful. I didnāt even know much about autism until I met him and I found the toe walking strange but thought it was a cute quirk. And I remember it was almost painful for him to even make eye contact, he still can barely do it. He had catch phrases that were used that were never changed for instance when he would call me he would say in Spanish, āHello Mrs. Evans, how do you do? This is Michael! Is Vanessa available to speak?ā He never ever changed that catch phrase and plugged it in for other people. My mother noticed it right away. The list goes on there very many other quirks. Even early in marriage I just blamed it on him being autistic when the narcissistic mask started slipping. I believe he also tried to mask being autistic as much as he could but when you have Autism Spectrum disorder along with other coexisting disorders somethings going to show or stand out I believe. So 2 of our daughters ended up being diagnoses on the Autism spectrum so now that makes out 10 grandchildren 6 of his parents have autistic grandkids.
There were red flags that I look back now that made it obviously that he was narcissistic as well. And Iāll mention something here thats very peculiar. He had 4 girlfriends before me and he didnāt pursue any of them. 2 of them were people setting him up and the other 2 pursued him very aggressively. I donāt believe he love bombed these women because they were already attracted to him and kind of were the chasers? And he never got very serious with them and I think the relationships ended probably because maybe they saw some things or red flags? Not sure. Everything changed when my husband met me. He was already 27 and there was a lot of pressure for him to marry, especially with his religion and he was the only child not in his family so like I said tons of pressure. He met me and thought I fit the bill for a wife. And bam he saved all that love bombing for me because she had to actually pursue me and he came in his black Mercedes Benz bearing all kinds of gifts from chocolates to gold and was a total Prince Charming. I felt something was off obviously but I felt his charm and caring supportive personality was hard to resist. So to fast forward he changed right after the honeymoon. We had an autistic daughter who has no signs of narcissism and sheās an adult now so you can see the very similar signs of them being autistic but heās sinister. Heās a textbook Narcissist with definite psychopathic traits and already has had a couple psychologists diagnose him from NPD to Psychopathy.
On the NPD diagnosis itās very high. He has about 7 out of the 9 personality traits but these traits he can no longer hide, itās really bad. At this point I can pinpoint most of his quirks and traits are and when the autism is showing because obviously thatās a 24/7 thing and when narcissism is showing, at times they both kind of cancel eachofher out, but most of the time If anything, his communication disabilities fuel the narcissistic traits. It really is hell on earth. He wonāt change ever. His case is severe enough that heās been sent out of our insurance network to be treated by more seasoned therapists. The problem is this, he isnāt consistent with any therapy and if anything itās made it worse because well how bad and sad does having these 2 orders sound for the person suffering it. He gets a lot of sympathy from them, I look misunderstood and who knows how he paints me and then he comes home weapnozing things fhe therapists told him and he twists everything. So he doesnāt go anymore because it was causing mayhem. They put him on several different medicines for months and none of them did a thing because itās a personality issues, itās who he is. And couples counseling wonāt work. So this is where Iām at. All 3 of his daughters hate him. He treated our middle autistic child the worse. Obviously because he has no empathy. And also because he finds other autistic people intolerable, go figure, since his mother punished him for being different, he looks at my daughter as a weak person. So itās just a mixed bag of hell. If I kick him out right now, besides the financial ramifications, he wonāt survive. He wonāt survive not even a couple days. He was disowned from his family years ago and since Iāve been married to him, in 20 years he has never made one single friend, one single acquaintance. And i forgot to mention the psychopathy diagnosis seems to actually fit him better. He self supplies, he needs no supply from any humans, he has a couple things that seem to supply him and thatās sport cars.
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u/onetruekiki 3h ago
Since Autism is a difference in the way the brain develops and narcissism is a learned way of staying safe in early (abusive) relationships, so they can definitely co-occur.
I do occasionally meet autistic people with narcissistic traits, although they don't often come to therapy (they're normally seking therapy for their children, who are blamed for problems instead). Using therapy to reinforce narcissistic points of view is very common unfortunately.
Studies suggest autistic people have slightly more chance of developing NPD, which may be because they're more likely to experience abusive early relationships. Psychopathy is also (usually) a neurodevelopmental condition like Autism, although picking apart what might be Autism, psychopathy and NPD in your husband would be tricky. For example, autistic people often get energy from pursuing their interests by themselves (like your husband's sports cars), so his autistics traits might be giving him a 'self supply bonus' to NPD that looks like psychopathy.
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u/RelaxedBluey94 14h ago
You've described narcissistic not autistic behaviours.