A friend approached me confidently about realtionship advice and its a tough thing to address. What better place than to ask Lemmy given the broad scope of culture and more genuine reactions here. We figure what can it hurt.
Background:
A couple in my friend group have been together for 3 or 4 years who really seem to love each other looking in from the outside, are having some tension.
The lady doesn’t input the same effort for planning life events, making any sort of weekend plans or after work activities. It’s always the guy picking all the slack up and managing problems. Budgeting and making sure everything is in order. He cooks, does the cleaning, and generally does the relationship thinking as a whole. That is not to say there isn’t some input from his partner, it seems she’s very indecisive from how he describes when making plans or any sort of choices like where to eat or what to do during a problem of any magnitude, almost stress outburst behaviour from her. Defensive type lashing out against him.
He wants to know some advices on how to rebalance the effort scale and to generally improve the dynamic as she seems to be shutting him out according to him. It’s always been imbalanced in effort since the beginning he said but they are good together. They want to make it work but the stress and tension is building to unhealthy levels from what I understand as in he’s ready to break up. They don’t fight really but there’s some definite underlying issues, when he tries to talk about it or anything emotional derived she says things like she doesn’t know, doesn’t know how to explain the way she feels at all and says her mind is sort of blank and that is how he describes most of their deep talks. He described to me that their communication as he’s a very involved communicator and she can go off and be unresponsive or completely not answer questions he asks like they don’t exist.
There’s tension between them she’s snappy more often than not and deals with severe depression/anxiety. Hates her job. Is always in a negative mindset. While he is usually more upbeat and postive not bubbly but hopeful.
I’ve seen him have hard days and be tense and snarky as well who hasnt had a rough day? To me it just isnt like her where she always generally has smart comments towards anything. She’s not what I would say is an uptight removed but almost anything can ruin her mood.
I’m likely missing some points here it’s not my relationship nor am I good at these things but I’m trying so be easy on me here. The only thing I can tell is they genuinely seem to love each other. Sex life is imbalanced he has a high drive and her very low as in can go months then sometimes 1 to 4 times a month. They did get hormone testing but everything appears normal. Worth noting he said she sleeps excessively like after work all through the night most days. They no longer talk as much or text during the day. Where that used to be more common. He did mention she has a male coworker she works with daily that they are fairly close he is unsure of in-fidelity but they meet for work at his apartment every morning apparently it’s easier since they share a work vehicle. I was told that he wanted to quit in a rush a few months ago and they had an argument because he was about to leave and she irrationally seemed to want to quit with him. At the very least their very emotionally tied. It may be nothing he said.
She told him she doesn’t feel any different in the relationship for the way she views them when asked.
But just doesn’t show attention anymore when he gets upset her response will be Boohoo or similar.
Personally I believe she’s burned out and has anxiety on top of horrible depression but I have no real clue how to address that for them. It’s such a personal topic.
Lemmy give them some of your best advices they used to be so full of life and laughter. Thank you all! If I missed anything or any specific questions just ask. We both are excited to see what comes of this.
Edit and UPDATE: They have started to talk again after being silent yesterday all day and have decided to take the week to each write a long and well thought out letter from each of sorts that address how their thinking individually, how they view each other, concerns to address, and ways to meet on level ground to try to form and maintain structure during times of stressful interactions rather than both going in defense and bring more hate into the relationship.
She said she wants to try to speak with her doctor about mental health problems including ADHD, anxiety, depression, and also wants to learn to take time to focus on activities that she derives happiness from or did before the shutdown aspect (art most likely is my understanding but only she knows I suppose) and to spend less time sleeping. They are going to remain talking throughout the week casually it seems and plan to swap letters and have an more formal discussion at the weeks end.
If I hear more, I will update this and keep the help and advice good or bad coming!
As someone who’s been going through what I believe to be autistic burnout for many years now, this third hand description of her behaviour feels very similar that what my own experience probably looks like from the outside.
Needing a lot of extra sleep is one of the symptoms. Depression, anxiety and being generally in a bad mood often also comes with burnout. She’s putting no effort into events or activities, possibly because she doesn’t want those activities or events in the first place due to the energy drain. Not knowing how you feel (and just bad interoception in general) is a very common trait of autism. You mentioned in a comment that she’s “quiet and shy”, which is another point towards the autism hypothesis.
Keep in mind that this is based on my own experience only. There isn’t enough information to know if your friend is going through the same thing or not. Assuming she is, the solution is probably to work on that interoception and figuring out how different activities/events affect your energy levels. There’s a good chance that if you had all your coping mechanisms figured out before entering the relationship, they don’t work anymore after because some things clash with the expectations of the relationship. For many of them, you probably wouldn’t even know they were coping mechanisms to begin with. They were things you just did because you prefer it that way and had no idea how bad things can get if you didn’t. So part of the work is in figuring out which of your habits are coping mechanisms.
I’m unsure in the autism aspect but I guess my thought of autism is more of the severe type. This should be diagnosed and handled by a medical professional to truly know. What are some coping mechanisms that work in general perhaps to try? I know everyone is different she is artistic I do know that.
Autism presents very differently from one person to the next. Most of the literature so far has been on young boys, so there’s a very poor understanding among most mental health professionals and the general population on how it looks in adult men, let alone women. On top of that, women tend to be much better at hiding it.
As for coping mechanisms, I can’t give specific examples since, as you say, everyone is different. This is especially true for autism since there’s such a wide range of special interests, sensory sensitivities/preferences, etc. that you can easily find two people where the good and bad categories are complete opposites. You’ll often hear advice such as “engage in your special interest” (assuming one exists), “stick to your comfort foods”, or “minimize masking”. These are very broad suggestions, but it’s the best we can give. There’s a lot of work involved in figuring out what that means for you. For sensory preferences, there are resources online that list different things to consider. Look up “sensory preferences checklist” to find them. For masking, you’ll have to learn what is and isn’t masking. That involves understanding how non-autistic people think, what they’re capable of doing without thinking, then comparing it against the amount of effort you put into doing the same thing. For example, neurotypicals don’t need to think about what facial expressions to make because their faces just naturally do the thing in accordance to their emotional state. If you find that you need to consciously think about what face to make based on how you feel, then that’s masking and would be a contributing factor to the constant exhaustion.
I did a little research for my own understanding and there’s a lot to this. It’s very personal preference of sorts. While I don’t think I have autism personally, I hate visual noise, clutter, things need to be symmetrical and slight OCD. So I think there is learning for everyone can be had!
I believe the coping mechanisms can be improved. Just because something doesn’t directly apply doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from the advice. I do exactly what you described above constantly. Having to think about what and how to react for facial expressions and body language. That is tiring mentally analyzing all the time. Like being stuck in a certain mode.
I emplore everyone to do a little research into some of the aspects you pointed out above to explore those topics. Whether your autistic or not these principles and strategies could help nearly anyone to dial in there focus and mind.