Sections within this post
- What are these blog posts about?
- Introduction
- Others versus self
- Money versus possessions
- Enough versus excess
- Logic versus feeling
- 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
‘Similar but different’ is a series on the blog that centres around the Venn diagram of mine and my husband’s relationship - especially our traits, morals, and values. Whilst most people in any sort of relationship / friendship with another person will share similarities and differences with the other, a cisgender marriage made of opposing neurotypes takes that another step further. Posts in this series will focus on aspects of our relationship - where we meet in the middle, and where we agree to disagree.
For this post in particular, I will be focusing on our priorities - which aspects of our lives are our main focuses? Do our differences in these come from our polarising neurotypes, or other reasons?
To reduce the need to constantly refer to ‘my husband’, I will shorthand him to ‘Hub’.
Others versus self
Let’s start with the first notable difference in our priorities - the natural inclination to focus on others, or yourself. Hub is in the former camp and I am in the latter.
There are numerous examples and occasions throughout our relationship that exemplify this. For instance, Hub is constantly thinking of me and our pet cat before himself. This is reflected in one of Hub’s key behaviours - he will go without, in order to preserve us, whether that’s our health, financial security, or happiness. He is selfless in that manner.
In my case, I am naturally selfish. I have discussed this on the blog before - especially before I was diagnosed as autistic. Having been an only child all my life, fiercely independent, introverted, and self-sufficient, I chalked up all this preservation of self to my upbringing and lack of siblings. Subconsciously (and consciously), the world revolved around me and my needs. Nowadays, I am still like this, much to my detriment, but with more self-awareness as a result of conflicts with Hub, my perpetual loneliness, and the gaping holes formed from where others came into my life, but just as quickly left.
All this is to say that, of course Hub takes care of himself and puts his own needs first where needed, and vice versa - I am not always 100% selfish, 100% of the time. There are many aspects of our relationship where I do need to think of others before myself, and a prime example of that is when it comes to family.
A place where we meet in the middle, with Hub more so than me, is our family values. Our long relationship and subsequent marriage has meant that we have merged families together. We spend a considerable amount of time with both sides of in-laws, all of whom are pretty much on the same wavelength - the places we have been brought up in and visited, general socio-economic status, humour, and pastimes. In harrowing moments of grief, I have put aside my innate selfishness to ensure that family is doing OK - of course, that sounds like the bare minimum anyone could do, but it shows that whether my defaulted selfishness is due to autism, upbringing, or both, it can be shut away to help those in need around me.
Source: Pexels
Money versus possessions
As I write this post and think about examples of our priorities, each one I have come up with is so interlinked with the others. For instance, our focus on others or self also trickles down to our polarised behaviours with money and materialism.
Anybody that could come round to our home could figure out instantly who is a saver, and who is a spender, based on the lack of or mass of possessions owned by each of us. Ever since becoming an adult and earning a wage, I have always ‘burned a hole in my pocket’ when it comes to money. I had mentally earmarked at least one thing each week to spend my Saturday part-time wage on when I was in my late-teens, often spending it before even earning it as debt to my parents. As an adult, this is now a constant thing nearly every day and something I really have to work on. Our home is a shrine to my special interests, materialism, hoarding, and collecting habits - trinkets and crafts are everywhere.
Hub, on the other hand, is not tight-fisted in any way, but will again, go without to ensure financial security in the case that a ‘what if’ scenario becomes a reality. Simple maths and evidence of the state of our home shows that he lives within his means and always has a surplus and savings by the end of each month.
A glaring disparity, and something that not many would be comfortable admitting, is that I am the breadwinner - the cisgender woman in the relationship. This means nothing in terms of our financial statuses though - we are arguably equal in that, as a result of my earning and spending more, and Hub earning less but saving much more.
Of course, I am fully aware about how unequal that appears, and it is something I am constantly having to work on, as it is a case where others must come before self, for our future security. Whilst I do struggle with spending and overconsumption, and am willing to admit that, I have never missed a bill - those are always covered before I end up indulging with the ‘disposable income’ left over. I have lost count of how many YouTube videos I have watched and books I have read on finance and overconsumption, and do have a budget spreadsheet - yet I still wind up breaking even or worse off each month.
Source: Pexels
Enough versus excess
Following on from the previous section, the ‘enough versus excess’ disparity in our priorities is not only abundantly clear just by looking at our home, but also our bodies.
I come from a family of ‘feeders’ - where most family members spend the day focusing on the next meal or snack. Since the rise of weight loss injections, this has a new term coined for it, namely ‘food noise’. This obsessive line of thinking and ‘food noise’ was sadly passed down to me and I have a hard time managing them. I equally struggle with food as much I struggle with spending - moderation is an alien concept for me. They are both always done in excess, and worsened with my emotions or mood.
I have a sweet tooth, especially for chocolate, but then have also been drawn to savoury ‘beige food’ since childhood. Even as an adult, I cannot stomach a salad, as crunchy / raw vegetables trigger my gag reflex instantly. This means that eating healthily, and as a vegetarian too, is quite difficult. My body weight has yo-yoed up and down for all my life, due to either being ‘all in’ on a spell of poor dietary habits and lack of exercise, or the opposite (eating in a calorie deficit and working out).
I also have food fixations - where I will eat the same thing over and over again and then suddenly get the ‘ick’ and no longer like it or pursue it. Sometimes, I end up liking the foods again, or never again. This is also unhelpful when the pool of food I can eat is limited as it is.
Conversely, Hub has the absolute polar opposite habits with regards to food. He is someone who would forget to eat, or only thinks about food when hunger strikes. For the most part, he cannot stand sweet foods, and eats until he is full and no more. He is very much in the ‘eat to live’ camp, rather than the ‘live to eat’ one that I am stuck in. He has maintained his body weight in the healthy BMI range for all his life - something that cannot be said for me. His food habits are so different to that of our respective families, that he is often questioned about his lack of interest in food and about why he doesn’t “eat more” (I can vouch that he does indeed eat enough and these remarks are unhelpful).
Source: Pexels
Logic versus feeling
Veering away from traditional autism stereotypes, I tend to think and behave based on feelings / emotions, whereas Hub takes a logical approach to aspects of his life. These differing tendencies could explain everything I have previously covered in this post - my detrimental behaviours are perhaps a result of the logical step coming after the emotional one, meaning impulsivity and instant gratification is my default.
Much to Hub’s frustration (I imagine), most of my issues could be helped or eased with being naturally logical. My inclination to avoid change means challenging my natural behaviours takes a lot of energy and so when I am doing my best to dumb down the feelings and impulsivity, I end up on the train to eventual burnout.
However, there is one key discussion point in our relationship, that I will eventually cover on this blog, where we are flipped - I am the logical one, Hub is the emotional one - and that is the idea of having children. If only I was as logical about everything else in life as I am about this particular topic…
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,
