Help As a man, would you be ok with me as a wife?

[EmpressDean]

Hello. My whole life I've been afraid of marriage and children. Turns out I'm autistic female. I struggle very hard to cook meals for myself, or care for myself when I'm sick, or learn how to do a job. Basically I'm learning disabled but I'm functioning enough. I just suck really really bad. The expectations of a woman to be a wife-
Cook good, clean good, organized budget, organize mental load, and just handle childcare I struggle too much and my mind shuts down. I hate it. I wish there was medicine that can fix my bandwidth to do everything and learn how to cook really good and everything. I'm very behind.
So here's the question, knowing this, would you be okay with a woman like this being your wife?
There is a man who has shown interest in me but I'm afraid of being such a failure of a wife or mother, that I can't let myself date him. I honestly feel like a child.

 

[Dejected 55]

I can't speak to you specifically, because I don't know you... but to the concepts you bring up...

I'm a man. Once I moved out from my parents, I do everything myself. I cook, I clean, I do dishes (by hand or dishwasher), I do laundry, I take care of the yard, I shop for groceries, I plan for things, I schedule, I handle the finances... basically if it needs to happen in my life and in my home, I am the one who does it.

Presumably if I meet a woman, and she lives on her own, she is capable of doing most of these things as well... because how else would she be surviving? Maybe she doesn't cook, she just buys stuff already prepared. That's a modern convenience. Same can be said for housecleaning, maybe she hires someone. But the point is, there are lots of necessary things and she is taking care of them somehow for herself or she'd be having problems.

Now, she and I meet and at some point decide we like each other and move in together... maybe get married, who knows... but once we are living together there starts being less "my" and "her" stuff and more "our stuff" to handle. I like to cook, I don't need her to cook. Might be nice if we cooked together... and maybe we eat out or heat up microwave stuff sometimes... lots of ways to get the food in us. She doesn't need to do all the housecleaning because she's a woman... Again, I do all that shit myself. Be nice in a partnership to have help... divide and conquer. All the things we each had to do completely on our own, we can share now. Sharing can be doing the work together, alternating tasks, or dividing up stuff so I do things I like or am better at and she does things she likes or is better at.

There's no real reason, though, to automatically hold onto antiquated gender roles arbitrarily... So if there are things you are not good at or don't like to do... you find a partner who likes and is good at doing those things and that's how you divide stuff up in your partnership. Give and take... you each have less to go together than you have to do on your own.

Some people (not you) make it way more complicated than it has to be. I had a friend who did all the stuff himself... got married and suddenly expected his wife to do all the housework and cook even though she also had a full-time job. I remember saying to him "what the fuck dude" because I knew he was capable of doing it all and since they both worked full-time, it felt like dividing stuff equally made sense... but he tried to have traditional roles and their marriage didn't last because he was making problems where there didn't have to be any.

EDIT: unrelated... I rewatch Supernatural episodes all the time... so while I promise you I'm not flirting with you here... you'd get a lot of pre-credit for being a fan of that show in my book!

 

[AngelTear]

Marriage and children are optional but I'm assuming it's something you want? If I'm understanding correctly.

Your fears are perfectly understandable too. You can't just trust anybody to settle down with and on top of that child bearing/rearing is VERY hard on any woman (or man for the raising the kid(s) part but typically all the load for that goes onto the woman unfortunately.)

I will say your ideas of what a wife is seems outdated, rather, it should be a partnerships that does those things together not just you because you have the status of "wife"
Also, "the perfect wife" doesn't really exist in the sense that nothing and nobody is "perfect", it's really all subjective. On top of that wives and mothers burn out too, they burn out often and aren't as put together as they seem- they're still human after all.

I think you should look up stories about wives and mothers with autism and look and see how they live day to day and their love stories. Perhaps it will give more insight and help ease your anxieties. I wish you the best.

 

[itsgone2]

If he has shown interest see where it goes. Easy for me to say.
How did you wind up this way? Do you think it's the autism? I'm a man but feel similar to you in that I feel like I don't know how to do much stuff. My parents never forced much on me but still, I could have learned sooo much more in life.
As for now, similar to @Dejected 55 i know enough to get by living on my own but nothing like I should. So I wonder how much is environment vs just being limited from the autism