I am autistic and this describes exactly my experience with my ex-wife - extreme emotional dis-regulation, extreme avoidance of shame by any means, doubling down in increasingly bizarre excuses if called out and I was the best thing ever happened to her, until I wasn't maybe 8 years in.

Thing was, it wasn't all bad by any means, and I had come to accept her for who she was, but she couldn't.

In the end she decided to placate her internal ghosts and demons and bailed, rather than consider the real life people standing in front of her.

I wasn't the first, or even the second, in her life to experience this cycle.

I had made the mistake of thinking I would be different.