Handling arguments and getting our marriage back on track [28F/28M]

My wife and I have been together for about 5 years, married for 2.

We have been running into issues where, when I make any kind of mistake, my wife becomes extremely upset. However, she doesn’t tell me she’s upset until it’s too late.

For example, we are painting my wife’s office (which is in our spare bedroom). I work 8-5 on weekdays, so I can’t help out until 5pm, and my wife is disabled, so she has to wait on me to do certain things.

Yesterday, after finishing work, I realized we didn’t have dinner plans, so we took a break from prepping the room to be painted and put together a short grocery list and a plan for dinner, and I went to the store. This was my idea and my wife seemed receptive to it.

When I got home from the store, I found my wife enraged that I had gone to the store instead of helping to get the room painted. It turns out, she actually thought this was a terrible idea, but either did not realize in time (because it all happened pretty quickly), or did not tell me.

My wife and I are both autistic, and something I am still learning to work with is that my wife is extremely sensitive to plan/schedule changes. I derailed our plan by making a trip out to the store and this left my wife distraught. On the other hand, I am extremely loose with scheduling, and my plan was simply to ensure we ate a good dinner and then got back to work, and if that meant we stayed up late, then so be it.

This turned into an hours-long argument about my wife feeling like she has no control over the situation or my actions, like she can’t stop me from suddenly being overcome by this notion that I NEED to go to the store right now. I’m not sure what to do about this, because from my perspective, I raised the idea and she didn’t object to it at all until after I’d already done it. Was it a short-sighted plan that didn’t take into account her needs regarding not having last-second changes to our plan? Absolutely. But I didn’t catch it.

This happens frequently. I will do something that she disagrees with, but she isn’t capable of telling me in the moment. After it happens, she is upset both that I didn’t consider her enough, and that she didn’t stop me. I apologize for my part in it, but these situations are extremely triggering for her and it seems to inevitably derail our entire day once it happens, as neither of us can pull her back out of these feelings.

I understand my wife’s frustration in these situations, but I am doing the best I can, and I fully intend to take her feelings into consideration, but I slip sometimes. When I slip, it feels like there’s nothing I can do or say to bring us back. Nothing I try works. It feels like my only option is to behave perfectly and never slip up, but this isn’t possible.

tl;dr: My wife and I have major trouble addressing problems in our relationship when they occur and we’re not sure how to continue. I cannot calm my wife down when I’ve done something wrong.