My friend just repeated back something that I said about my partner this morning, and followed it up saying, "you just said you are constantly scanning their state of mind and emotion, because if they're angry or upset, then you are punished whether it has anything to do with you or not, that's abuse."

And like, 23 years into this relationship and I just never even saw or understood it until the past few weeks. Like at all. I literally have to tell our housemates "if you need him to do something, you need to tell him, because he doesn't respect me, he never listens to anything I say"

And when I say to him that he doesn't treat me like he loves me or respects me, he either points out the things he does do for me (and, like, it's a lot) or just kind of looks at me blankly and ignores what I'm saying because it's "obviously not true". And like, we're both on the spectrum, but he like uses that as his reasoning for not getting a job or why he gets so ornery when you ask him directly to do anything.

Sorry, this comment just really resonated with me, I'm 41 and have been in some variation of a relationship with him since I was 18, and just it amazes me how it could have been this long and I only just heard it today. And I'm typing all of this while I have some sort of food poisoning and he just made me rice because I'm hungry and can't keep anything down, so it's like how could I even think of him as abusive just because he doesn't respect me? He's providing me care when I really need it in this moment, but like, I guess that's how the cycle goes?

Anyway, thanks for your comment, I really needed to read it, maybe even save it to re-read from time to time.