Reply to How do you “emotionally support” a woman?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What does a man need to do to not be served divorced papers? If he is a good father, he helps around the house, he is not an alcoholic and isn’t physically and mentally abusive, what else does he need to do to keep his wife happy?

Specifically, what exactly do women mean when they complain that their husbands are not  “emotionally supportive”?

How do you show “emotional support”?
I’m getting divorced because my soon to be ex wife said that we grew apart because I was not emotionally supportive. I never dismissed her when she came to me with things that were bothering her at work or with her girlfriend, every time she got into a fight with her mom I was there to support her, when she came home stressed from work and was crying I supported her and I even helped her change career and get a better job.

[/quote]

After reading your initial post and all the replies, OP, my only takeaway is that you sound like my DH, who was diagnosed with autism in his late 30s. Like you, he is baffled by my reaction to his lack of emotional intelligence, and is constantly seeking out a magic checklist of sorts. Sometimes a therapist or I will try to be more prescriptive with him, but then I see him just going through the rote motions 1-2x and then slacking off and getting frustrated because I wasn’t somehow permanently satisfied by 2 days of attempted emotional engagement.

If you really think your relationship can be boiled down to stuff like not being an alcoholic and helping out, and are concerned that you might be served papers, and can’t see all the stuff in between those two steps, you might be facing a situation caused by neurodiversity. You should seek out the advice of a therapist and get an adult neurological work up to help you understand how your brain works vs. your wife’s.[/quote]

Why did you marry this guy? Did you not realize this was a problem before he got diagnosed? I have some sympathy for the women who marry some guy with ADHD, which starts to show as life gets more hectic. But it's not like someone suddenly comes to lack emotional intelligence.

I always suspect that there are women out there who wanted the wedding and the kids but then get sick of the marriage once they've gotten what they wanted. You might be one of those.[/quote]

I'm not the PP you're responding to, but even I know that people on the spectrum can put a lot of effort into hiding it [b]in the beginning of a relationship[/b].  [/quote]

But she married the guy, presumably after some extended period of getting to know him. If she didn't get to know him ahead of time, then that's even more ridiculous. And if she didn't get to know him well enough before marriage to know that he isn't emotionally supportive, then that's on her, too. I don't know how old OP is or what her background is, and maybe that explains the decision to get into a long term familial relationship (presumably involving or intending to involve having children) with someone who is so unsatisfying to her.[/quote]

NP.  Get over yourself.  Do you have any life experience at all?  The life you lead before you get married and have children is very different than what comes before.

My DH does not have ASD and I would consider him emotionally supportive.  However, in times of crisis, such as when our daughter was diagnosed with a rare condition or his mother died his response can be very muted and weirdly passive.  Then when something else happens like the dog needs to be put down, he has a total meltdown.

I don’t consider this offensive or upsetting but it is definitely unpredictable and only reactions that I witnessed after many years of marriage.  I can definitely understand how it can be difficult to figure out what is going on emotionally with a prospective spouse.  You cannot always “vet” a person and people are not predictable sometimes.  And most people getting married are youngish still and don’t have that much life experience.[/quote]

What you're describing with your DH are one-off reactions "in times of crisis." What the PP was describing is her DH's apparently constant lack of emotional support due to his autism. It makes sense that you might not have encountered events before marriage that would make your DH act in a way you don't like. It's impossible to imagine that PP never had reason to realize her husband is a dud emotionally. More likely is that she wanted to get married and have kids and was willing to overlook in furtherance of those goals, and that now that she's accomplished that, she's changed her mind about it all. Seems unfair to her DH, frankly.[/quote]

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