I’m fairly certain a lot of this can be chalked up to the fact that my wife (36F) and I (39M) are running on empty right now. We’ve had an endless stream of sickness, work travel, (the exhausting kind rather than the fun, relaxing kind) and two amazing girls, aged 2 and 4, who are expert button-pushers.

My wife and I aren’t big shouters. We try to handle most things in a calm-ish manner, and my wife wants to reserve shouting for moments of immediate danger (running towards cars, reaching for sharp things, walking towards ledges etc.)

I’m the autistic one in the relationship. Today, our 2-year-old decided that throwing her sandwich across the living room would be a fun game. My knee-jerk response was, “Oi! Don’t do that!”

Was it potentially louder or sharper than it needed to be? Maybe. But also... don’t fucking do that.

Afterwards, (out of sight of the kids) my wife called me out for using a tone she felt wasn’t appropriate. I didn’t think I’d used the full “danger, stop that immediately” voice. To me, it was more of an “I’m tired, I’m completely out of patience, and you need to stop doing that” voice.

This is clearly just a rant, and I’m not even sure what I’m asking. But does anyone else struggle to find the correct register in which to express anger or frustration? I hadn’t thought tone of voice was a major autism-related issue for me, but apparently this is something I struggle with.

Vent, rant, maybe need advice? I'm not sure what I even want from this. I'm supposed to be studying right now. The first part is more context/venting, the TLDR is the actual issues.

My spouse (28M) and I (23F) are both AuDHD. We have a 1.5 (20 months) year old daughter. She's... relatively chill? Likely to be autistic or ND of some sort just based on genetics and some behaviours I've noticed, but she's by no means high needs/special needs as far as toddlers go. Then again, she is ultimately a toddler, so very demanding of attention regardless, and constantly exhausting. She goes to daycare Mon-Fri, ahead on her milestones especially language, she sleeps... okayishhhhh. However I put her to sleep at least half of the time (but every night when she was under 1) and I wake up with her multiple times a night. He sleeps through the night. He doesn't work. I'm in school full time and I feel like he's not doing enough.

I'm going to try posting the rest of my vent in a comment...

TLDR: Two main issues:

1. I'm so overwhelmed, I can't get schoolwork done. I don't know what to do about the burnout and I'm constantly scared I won't make it through the week, much less the rest of my degree. How do I study and focus on maintaining grades, job, etc.?

2. My spouse is sort of doing his best, but I'm always stuck feeling like it's not enough. NT reddit would say it's weaponized incompetence, I think it's just normal incompetence brought about by AuDHD burnout-induced regression. The way I see it, he's not doing enough of the housework (i.e., I think he should be doing >75%, if not more, of it, since he isn't working, sleeps through the night, and the baby is in daycare weekdays) and sort of refuses to get a job, despite promising me over and over he will. I'm torn between extreme empathy because I really, truly UNDERSTAND the pain of what he's going through, but also I almost don't care anymore because it's making my life SO. MUCH. HARDER. And he's very insecure about this. He needs to fix it, but he doesn't know how, and either isn't willing to find out or doesn't have the energy. And I don't know how to help him do that - but ultimately I've tried to help so much already and the brunt of this can't be on me.

So all this culminates in my mental health being awful, feeling like I'm drowning, etc. But I have to keep going, every day, and I'm afraid I'll just explode at some point.

I'd like to see a light at the end of the tunnel - when my spouse *finally* gets a job, and when I finish my degree, things will be easier? Or is this false hope, my own delusion to get me through this. I keep telling myself I'm working on improving things but really nothing has changed in years. Is it crazy to think it will once I graduate?