Ugh the polycule drama.

Last week went out to dinner and then drinks at a bar for my gf’s birthday. My bf and I started talking about music. I have the kind of autism where I am hyper-aware of social cues and I am constantly manually controlling my facial expressions and tone. So as the conversation got more heated I talked fast, but stayed with a calm smile and an even tone. He said some stuff that I felt was attacking my opinions as being invalid, but I know that he can “be abrasive” at timed as he likes to say, so I let it go and stayed calm and just stated my opinions and reasoning without attacking or invalidating his. He got more and more upset and eventually stepped outside to cool down. When he did, my gf (his wife) said “You didn’t do anything wrong, he just gets passionate and needs a moment to cool down”. And then they and I had a small discussion about how they are working on not being responsible for other people’s feelings, implying that I should not feel responsible for his feelings. I responded that I have heard that before ans it can be good advice sometimes, I think that part of being in a relationship with another person and having emotional connection means that you can’t just dismiss your partner’s feelings. They thought about it for a moment, started to get up and seemed torn with whether to go to him or stay with me, and I told them they should go tk their husband. He eventually came back and we had an awkward hour or two before going home.

I didn’t sleep for 2 nights afterwards, ruminating on the incident. I felt bad because it didn’t work out how I wanted. I felt an urge to apologize just to try to make him feel better, but when I analyzed what I said and did I could not find anything that I felt warranted an apology. And apologizing when you do not mean it, just to assuage someone else, is unhealthy.

I spent all of last week thinking about it. I asked my wife for feedback, but she was too drunk to remember what happened clearly. I talked to my therapist, and I was actually proud of myself for remaining calm and standing up for myself.

Yesterday was regularly scheduled polycule check-in meeting. Of course, everything was entirely my fault. I lashed out at him put of nowhere and kept attacking. He talked with his wife (my gf) afterwards and they both agreed that is what happened (my gf did not look at me, but laid down and stared at the ceiling the whole time that he spoke). He also brought up an old argument we had 2 years ago about the color magenta… Where once again I stayed calm and merely stated my case while he got upset ans tried to argue, and he eventually shut down when his wife looked it up on the internet and showed him he was wrong.

I pointed out that I never actually said anything that attacked him but apologized if my tone waa too strong. I pointed out that he and I have had very similar polite conversations about nearly the exact same subject just last month. I pointed out that I normally dislike heated conversations, but he has said repeatedly that he enjoys them and wants to have them, so I was trying to stay and engage instead of de-escalating like I would with most people. He refused to listen to any of it. He refused to acknolwdge how he attacked my opinions and got abrasive. He went on a long rant about how he is trying to learn about my opinions and have conversations… Basically repeating back to me exactly what I told him that night, but in a patronizing way as if it were spme concept I didn’t understand. He said he feels aa though I would have treated the conversation much differently if it were with his wife than him, and he wanted me to think about why. I told him it’s because he attacked my opinions, he has consistently gotten upset when I don’t like things that he does, and cited examples, but he just dismissed all of that and inferred that I have some toxic male competitive energy. Which is ridiculous- I don’t even believe in gender, and I don’t have this aissue with anyone else. I basically spent the last 5 months friendzoning his wife tl try to work on my relationship with him, to the point where his wife complained ans asked for the two of us to try to develop our relationship more a couple weeks ago. I wonder if it might be more than a coincidence that within a couple of weeks of that change he is back to arguing with me again. He’s the one who talks all the time about how he can “be abrasive” and how his ADHD leads to emotional dysregulation, yet he doesn’t see how that is the wedge being driven between is. He acts like he can just admit he can be an asshole sometimes, shrug it off, and then it’s my fault when that causes problems.

I have never had these issues with anyone in my life before he gets into arguments like this with other people all the time. He got into one at a party we were at just a few days ago. And yet somehow i’m the problem. Talking to him is like a brick wall. He’s read a lot of psychology books and becomes an armchair psych, trying to diagnose me with Generalized Anxiety Disorder ADHD, insomnia, and OCD even after I literally just got a psych evaluation a few months ago that came back with only autism.

I didn’t get any sleep again last night. I’m grateful for therapy today. I’m exhausted. Autistically burnt out. My wife is burnt out too. I don’t know what more I can do.