Sections within this post
- What are these blog posts about?
- Introduction
- From “hello, no I’m not, are you?” to borrowing each other’s media
- Keeping the lights on at the coffee shop
- ‘Date’ in the big city
- Making it (Facebook) official
- Until next time…
‘Husband off the Spectrum’ posts are based around our relationship with each other. Any posts by my husband as a guest writer will be clearly stated, otherwise they are by me.
Introduction
Following straight on from the previous part of this tiny blog series, I had just messaged my future husband on Facebook, completely out of the blue having never even spoken to him once in person. The icebreaker was akin to small talk, but it got the ball rolling: “hey, sorry for the random question but are you still taking English?”.
Now is the time to share…
From “hello, no I’m not, are you?” to borrowing each other’s media
As you may have guessed, my future husband responded with the quote in the title of this section. My joy was that he responded with an open question - whether it was from politeness, or that he wanted to keep the conversation going, both possibilities were positive ‘wins’. He was really easy to talk to, not just because it was a virtual chat, but I got the impression he was on the same wavelength as me. He was my new fixation - I awaited his response to messages, checking my Facebook account all the time for a notification. I ensured that if we hit a wall in the conversation, I would keep it going, and he also did the same - again, a win for me in that he must be interested in me somewhat, even as friends.
Our first in-person meet up was seemingly transactional, but full of purpose - I was to lend him a CD of a band we had discussed on Facebook Messenger, and I was to borrow his copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 for Xbox 360. I had got an Xbox 360 for the Christmas near the time of us first talking, as something to help me fill the time void of being single again, but to also make me more interesting and more of a ‘gamer’ than from just playing The Sims 3 (light-heartedly joking here - I have always been interested in video games, and during this time, Xbox consoles were becoming commonplace in my friendship and family circle).
I never got round to playing the game (I did complete it a few years later, though), nor did he listen to the CD - but we had to meet up again at least once to give the items back… so I asked if he wanted to meet up for coffee - to ‘hang out’ and do the reverse item swap.
Source: Pexels
Keeping the lights on at the coffee shop
We first properly hung out in our hometown’s centre at a weekend, where there are a number of coffee shops and other retail provisions. We greeted with a hug and he ordered an espresso (expecting an americano-sized drink) and felt silly at his ordering blunder, but I didn’t mind or really notice at all. At the time, I was lucky to have got an iPhone 3G ‘cheap’ from someone who had upgraded their phone, and we played Call of Duty: Zombies on it and drank pretend ‘beer’ from it (an app called iPint) - the height of mobile phone technology at the time and super popular. He thought I was ‘wealthy’ for having an iPhone - I never was nor have been, it was a heavily-discounted hand-me-down.
Tuesdays became the day we would meet up and walk to a coffee shop in our hometown once our college day ended. We would while away the hours talking in the same coffee shop, right up until the closing time when the baristas were putting chairs on the tables around us and sweeping (looking back, I feel bad on the staff for keeping them working for longer, but we did take the hint and make a move eventually). We would then walk and talk for the long distance to our respective homes. If romance was never going to be on the cards, we at least had built a solid friendship - our backgrounds and upbringings, morals and values were similar, as with interests and humour. We just clicked, and whether he knew it or not, I definitely liked him more than as a friend.
Before even knowing that I was autistic and my husband coming to his own conclusion that he is not (plus he scored low on the AQ50), we were both quiet, introverted, stayed out of trouble and kept our heads down for study. We may be different in neurodiversity, but we overlapped strongly in our personality traits.
Source: Pexels
‘Date’ in the big city
We met up one weekend to head to the nearest big city - for a long day out together, rather than a few hours in a coffee shop. We tried on silly hats in the shops, bought a couple of things with our ‘pocket money’ and had a McDonalds meal for dinner. I enjoyed the day, but spent it with unease and impatience - I was planning to tell my future husband that I ‘liked’ him ‘romantically’. As the day got closer to the end, and we were heading back to our individual homes, I got even more antsy and kept laughing to try and hide the fact I was on edge.
After dancing around the matter in my head and through the force of time pressure (we were getting close to my house), I finally blurted it out - ‘I like you’. My future husband was flattered, accepting, and happy at what I had said, but wanted us to ‘take things slowly’ and to ‘get to know me more’ before we became exclusive or romantically involved. I was rattled by impatience in that my (then-undiagnosed) autistic hyperfixation was not getting the desired outcome immediately, but it was not a flat-out ‘no’, so I was glad that we still kept meeting up after that and I hadn’t ruined everything completely with my brutal honesty and rush for a relationship together.
Source: Pexels
Making it (Facebook) official
The Tuesday-meet-ups carried on for a few weeks more - and we took a detour one night, as to stay out together longer. We went to a local park and sat on the swings, and moved to a bench. It was freezing but it was one of the only ways we could have had any privacy or alone time without family members pestering us. We huddled up in the cold, and I noticed my future husband was acting how I was before blurting out that I liked him - antsy, and like something was on his mind. My hunch was correct, and after some stuttering, he asked if I would be his girlfriend - and the rest is history.
From that point onwards, we then set our relationship statuses on Facebook as ‘in a relationship with [me / husband’s name]’ to the delight of our family and friends who thought this was obviously a long time coming (well, not really a long time but a few months in the making). My future husband even took a year out of study so that we could start university together - his hunch that we were a safe bet was that strong. I was his first and only love / girlfriend, but was ‘worth the wait’ in his words.
Since that moment on the bench, we have had our ups and downs, trials and tribulations, loved and lost… but we have never had a single break in our relationship since then, and have been joined at the hip ever since. Our relationship is now in its teenage years, just like we were when we met.
Source: Pexels
Thank you very much for reading this blog post. I appreciate you spending time here on my corner of the internet. Hopefully you got something out of reading the essay above.
Stay tuned for upcoming posts and be the first to read them by following me on the social media links, in the menu bar, to know exactly when new posts are published.
Until next time,
