Posts Tagged ‘Autism and Marriage’
Date Your Spouse
My husband and I spend a lot of time together. But not quality time. He is throwing baseballs and I am doing dishes. He is folding laundry and I am washing a baby in the tub. We are together. But not really. We don’t actually talk. We just do. All the things. And then at the end of the night we are so tired we just sit in silence with the tv on mute. Four kids will do that to you. Tonight we are at a concert together and it…
Read More“How Would the Two of You Handle a Child With Special Needs?”
Jamie and I were to be married in the Lutheran faith and had to give up our precious weekend free time to attend a weekend of pre-marital counseling sessions. It was long and seemed completely unnecessary because we were madly in love. The class was centered on ‘deep’ questions that prompted discussion between couples. How would you handle a partner with an addiction? Or a partner who lies? A partner who gambles? The pastor told stories that seemed ridiculous. They were about a wife racking up hundreds of thousands of…
Read MoreThe Secret to a Long Marriage
I don’t know a lot about marriage. Even after 13 years I find it to be exasperating most of the time. It feels like work a lot. And I know it shouldn’t be. But with 4 kids, autism, an emotional 8 year old, sports, a toddler, work, and a baby…well, we could very well be speaking different languages most days. But this afternoon, watching my husband get in the pool with 15 rambunctious, crazy, insanely loud boys, I remembered exactly why I married this guy and will gladly spend the…
Read MoreA Love Note to My Wife
Autism is hard! Hard for the diagnosed individual, the siblings, the family and on a marriage. When we said “I do” we never expected to embark on an autism journey and we definitely didn’t envision the vows “in sickness and in health” would apply to our unborn child. Autism has challenged our marriage in ways we could never imagine and it has enriched our marriage in ways nothing else could. I could share some of the many autism moments, experiences, pitfalls, disappointments, lessons, achievements, challenges, and wins that got us…
Read MoreTo My Incredible Husband – I Thank God For You
A life partner or soulmate is a person who accepts you for exactly who you are without the desire to change or fix you. There is a deep and unspoken respect between both partners. Your strengths compliment theirs and you hold each other tightly during challenging times. The healthiest relationships are rooted in open and frequent communication. Following my first marriage, it took time for me to feel comfortable in my own skin and redefine what truly makes me happy. Although I burdened myself with the assumption that I’d be a single…
Read MoreMy Husband, We are Perfectly Imperfect
My Husband. I love him with all my heart. Every fiber of my being. I have loved him since I was 16 years old. I don’t really know anything else. And to be honest, sometimes I don’t even like him. We don’t see eye to eye on many things. We fight a lot. He doesn’t think the the things I think are important matter. At all. And frankly, it irritates me. Can’t he pretend to go along? He will humor me, but still, not happily. We have never had a…
Read MoreHappy Valentine’s Day to My Best Friend
My sweet husband, You and I have never been big Valentine’s people. Or gift givers really. Ever since we had kids we always say we will take a day together and go shopping and buy something for each other but it never happens. There’s never time. And well, this Valentine’s Day feels even less lovey than the others. For starters it feels like we have spent every minute together since last Valentine’s Day. That’s a lot of time together. It’s also -17 degrees outside right now which is making us…
Read MoreHe Stayed While I Loved Her More
The moment I laid my eyes on her, I knew she would alter my life in ways I had no ability to perceive just yet. It would have been impossible to know that her love would beckon me to pour myself into her all day, every day for years at the risk of losing my husband. I was already in love with her, and we had just met. My husband, Greg, was the whole package. From the beginning, I knew he was out of my league, but that didn’t scare…
Read MoreHow Having an Autistic Child Affected My Marriage
To say our son was a challenging baby is an understatement. He didn’t sleep through the night for four years. We functioned in a constant state of exhaustion. He screamed most of his infancy. He struggled to eat. He struggled to poop. He was never content. He had never ending severe ear infections and multiple tubal surgeries. He missed milestones. He was even misdiagnosed a few times. Because of his delays and no real diagnosis the medical debt from therapy started piling onto the credit cards. Money got tight. And…
Read MoreI Blamed Autism for My Divorce
I am sitting here in my living room, feet up in a recliner, drinking a much-needed cup of coffee. One kiddo is off to school and one is at daycare and my house is finally quiet. I know I should get up and start my work day but I am distracted. I have been staring at the stack of my divorce papers for 15 minutes. I find a bit of irony in the fact that they are covered with our autistic son’s ‘treasures’. A few chewed up family pictures, an…
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