Communication Problems

[rightkindofme]

My husband is autistic. He misses subtle little cues. Mostly I handle this by responding to things with all the subtlety of an anvil to the head. He's thrilled that I will pretty much write scripts for him to follow to be supportive.

But right now he feels like he is drowning and not getting support. One of the main ways he feels "supported" and loved is for me to have a lot of sex with him. I have not been feeling it lately. That means we are down to 5-7 times a month.

Sunday night...

I'm not sure that I get to say I am 8 years post rape any more. :( I did not consent. I did not want it. I was mostly asleep. It wasn't comfortable and it wasn't fun.

I told him today that I didn't want it and I was very upset. I didn't sleep Sunday night after it happened so I slept through Monday.

We are supposed to have "date" time right now and I can't be in a room with him.

I feel really upset and I feel like I can't talk about it in the places I normally process my feelings.

I feel so bad.

 

[shandemonium]

you do NOT owe anyone sex because it makes them feel "supported"... plain and simple.

This was rape and please get away from this horrible man and get him out of your life ASAP. :cry:

I don't know waht to say but I am sending my love and support your way.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

This is awful. I'm so, so sorry. Can you get to a safe place? Please get to a safe place …. you deserve better.

 

[rightkindofme]

I don't know what to say either. I'm probably not going to up and leave.

I feel so lost.

 

[Weemie]

i am autistic too and that is not an excuse to rape anyone. it is a disservice to autistic people anywhere to say we don't know what consent is because autism isn't an indicator of intelligence and if he is using that as an excuse i, a certified autistic individual, am here to say that is 10000000% bullshit. you do not ever need to feel guilty because you can acknowledge that he is abusing you. autism doesn't prevent people from being manipulative or abusive in any way.

 

[rightkindofme]

I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to say that autism is an excuse to rape.

 

[Weemie]

I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to say that autism is an excuse to rape.

no, no. i didn't mean it like that, no offence was ever taken. just trying to bring home the point, please don't trap yourself into feeling pity or sympathy for him, or ever think he just doesn't know better.

abusers are calculated as f*ck man and they use all this shit to their advantage and i guarantee he knows exactly what is up.

you do not owe him a thing and you have every right to feel unsafe and hurt over this. he's gonna pressure you with it, i know it, just like he tries to pressure you with sex. just try and stay woke. :)

if you ever want to talk i'm around mate.

i'm sorry if you felt bad if you felt bad- but that wasn't at all why i said it and i'm not tryin' to derail this thread at all. you have every right. 100000%.

 

[Friday]

So... Devil's advocate here...

That's pretty much my favorite way to be woken up, ever. Also love the half dozy half dreamy sex thing. ((Not that awake sex isn't fantastic, it is, there are just a whole lot of different kinds of sex.))

It's something I've learned to ask people, before hand, but it's also something I've never been told "no" to. The opposite. After, (Well aren't you delightful, best alarm clock ever, let's do that more often) or before. In fact, over in parenting forums it's one of the ways recommended to restart a flagging sex life due to outright exhaustion. Get a few hours sleep, then jump his bones. Get your bodies used to being together again after being showered & rested a few hours... And it won't seem like such an impossible task as when one is a hot mess with sleep deprivation and spit up in your hair.

Is there anything wrong with not liking dream-sex? Hell no. Absolutely nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

All areas of sex are personal preference.

I don't know your husband, I don't know you or your relationship, I don't know if you've ever had the discussion of 'absolutely no sex if I'm asleep or half asleep'.

In sexual-trauma-land it's a common thing. Both the rule & the convo. That's where I learned about the no-dream-sex rule. Had never heard of it (outside of matching up preferences), and had never slept with anyone who had it. Outside of sexual-trauma-land it's a pretty commonplace (wanted/accepted/desired) thing.

 

[rightkindofme]

You get why this is a fuzzy topic. We've had a lot of "dream sex". It has been a common thing in our relationship. Mostly it goes over fine and I have fun.

I say I'm not sure how to feel about it because we have an established dynamic where initiating sex is fine and I need to say "no". But this time I wasn't awake enough to say no. And I didn't want it.

So I feel really guilty. Because this is a gray area. This is not cut and dried rape. We have over a decade of history of sleep-sex. He has reason to suspect it might be ok. But we haven't done much of it lately because I've been feeling twitchy and anxious.

He thought I "gave signals" that I was interested. I get the impression that in my sleep my hand twitched near his genitals. I wasn't trying to initiate.

It's complicated. It's not clearly rape. But I feel really awful.

 

[Pencil]

I have simply given up sex as I tend to feel terribly violated afterwards, even if I initiated / begged / jumped the other person's bones. So I really get that feeling of having been violated in a totally murky, nebulous, nonsensical way. There is obviously something else going on here, and your husband is even more clueless than you are. Might it have anything to do with the fact that you seem to be taking care of him emotionally - all the time? Who takes care of your needs? And what are your current needs? Do you know? Do you know why you don't feel like having sex with him at the moment?

Btw, I don't see your husband as 'guilty'.

 

[rightkindofme]

I feel murky. I feel icki and unloved more than I feel raped. I feel like he was an inconsiderate lover. I feel like he was selfish and short sighted.

I've been raped a lot. I'm not sure if this is me trying to excuse things or if I just genuinely see it as different.

Things in my relationship with my husband have always been complicated. We have a long history of heavily negotiated non-consent scenes. (We do bdsm together. Sometimes we do scenes that go long past what I would really agree to for my own "benefit" because we want to do specific trust exercises. I am *never* harmed and I think these scenes are sexually hawt so don't go worrying for my health. I did this with many partners before him. That's not the problem.)

The problem is he and I are running very low on reserves for taking care of one another. He *does* do things to take care of my needs. He helps me process. He cooks me breakfast. He will drop what he is doing to support me *if I ask*. Guess how good I am about asking?

I don't ask much lately because he is very overwhelmed by life. He's looking for a job and the stress is eating him alive.

I genuinely believe he screwed up. But I don't know how big of a screw up. I don't know what it means to me. I don't know what reparations will help me feel better. I don't know what kind of acknowledgment I need.

I get really mad at him because when I tell him about intense things he floods and stops talking. Only when I tell him intense things that sound like criticisms of his behavior. For the rest of his life you can't stop the torrent of words. So when he gets silent.... I kinda flip out. I get angry and I feel violent and I just can't be in the room with him.

I "know" he is listening. But when he goes from being someone who actively talks to me about things to being a silent lump it feels like rejection. It feels like he isn't listening. It feels like I want to bash his face in.

I don't hit! We don't have the kind of relationship where I hit him at all! So these impulses are just you know... kind of amorphous.

I feel sick to my stomach.

 

[Pencil]

So do you feel he went from caretaker to abuser? In a kind of clumsy way without meaning to? From your side to 'theirs'? Do you feel betrayed? I'm just brainstorming here, so forgive me if I'm off the mark. It's just that I get the feeling that there is something huge going on for you at a subliminal level. And what is happening might even have very little to do with your past, and more with current needs or desires or ambitions. Perhaps it has to more with the future. I suspect what happened was more a catalyst than a real violation (and I don't mean on a sexual level alone). I somehow feel that that it is more an emotional violation than a sexual one. But still I get the feeling that he violated something that it not conscious at the moment, and is really struggling to come to the surface.

Or it might be something from the past that is less well processed that you thought it was.

Perhaps I'm talking crap.