Newlyweds

Angie and I have been married about nine months.  We've both been previously married, so although I guess we're still technically newlyweds, we've also both had some marriage experience.

We just celebrated Valentine's Day, adapted it to our new blended family of dogs and cats and children, pregnancies and autism.  And in advance I think we agreed not to buy gifts, just go out to dinner and spend time together.  And this was a LITTLE different...a bit of a babymoon (yeah, I'd never heard of it either), a bit of a celebration of a year since I'd proposed, a hint of Valentine's Day...so I got her a little something.  Very little.

No big deal, but she and I had looked at these illustrations by this artist she followed on instagram, Yaoyao Ma Van As, and they were really cute.  It was mostly this woman and her dog doing different things.  She has a neat style though, and so we looked through the instagram feed and she told me which ones she liked and I told her which ones I preferred.

Here's the illustrator and her work, for reference:
https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/yaoyaomva/

I'm getting forgetful.  These days if I don't strike while the iron's hot, or put a reminder in my phone, I'm forgetting.  So I bought a couple prints from the website and a couple frames from Amazon, and when they arrived I hid them in my special hiding place that I cannot reveal here lest it no longer be special.  Or hidden.  It wasn't a big expediture, just something I thought she'd like.

I'm a pretty good husband, I think.  Mostly.  There are times, however, that I nitpick.  And I recognize (after the fact mostly but sometimes as it's happening) that I'm doing it, but in the moment I'm helpless to stop myself.  I try to learn from it, try to recognize how petty it is, and stop doing it before the NEXT conversation, but sometimes it just bubbles up anyway.

Some past examples:  Paper towel roll tears off the wrong direction on the vertical rod, vegetable peeler belongs in a different drawer, toilet lid shut sounds like it's slamming, and many many more.  I'm not saying I'm constantly peppering her with these things.  I'm honestly not.  But I see old married couples do this all the time, and as a bystander it annoys me, so I KNOW I need to chill the fuck out about it.  Also, for the most part I think I'm pretty good about recognizing it and apologizing for making a big deal out of nothing and trying to do better.

And on Angie's side, she typically hears my ridiculous "complaint" and does whatever unimportant thing I took issue with "my" way because she really doesn't give a shit, and one way is just as good as another so what's the harm?  And honestly thank god for her and for that, because it would be super easy for her to be pissed about it and then we'd be arguing about the least important shit and I'd have to apologize.  And I'd hate to let our streak of *checks notes* two years and five months without an argument go to waste.  From her perspective, she's been living alone long enough that she isn't concerned with things like "making too much noise closing a toilet lid".  So she says she recognizes not every habit adapts perfectly to living with three other humans, her dog and a cat.

So we've lived together for 11 months, and I'm getting used to her habits and she's getting used to mine.  And if you're worried that perhaps Angie is getting steamrolled in this relationship, bullied into doing things the Jim Walter way, please don't.  Angie holds her own just fine. 

I got her two inexpensive prints for Valentine's Day and we had dinner together and spend the night downtown and explored Lawrenceville the next day and it was so much fun.  And Angie wasn't caught flat-footed by my gifts despite my springing them on her at the last minute.  Not to be outdone, I had my own gift to unwrap on Valentine's Day.

A soft close toilet seat.

Marriage and Special Needs Kids

Day 29 is "The effect of special needs kids on marriage".  Because this is a serious topic, and because it's one of the last two, I considered making it the last topic...but my big facebook autism support group's share day is on Wednesday, and because this is something lots of them can relate to...I'm posting it today instead. 

On our 12th anniversary I posted something specifically about the effects of autism on marriage, and I'm not going to read that three year old post again, but it's here if you'd like to read it...Anniversary Dates and Divorce Rates.

I think since the time I posted that someone came out with some study(ies) or other that showed the effect was "bad", but I didn't read the study and it doesn't change my own experience anyway.

So here, in a nutshell, is what I think:  There are reasons, legitimate reasons, to get a divorce.  There are reasons that people get divorces that seem less legitimate. 

So let me set aside what I would consider the legitimate reasons to divorce, like abuse, for example.  I want all the legitimate reasons for divorce over in this corner over here *points to corner*.  I'm not talking about those.

Also, let me say, that if you feel there is NO legitimate reason for divorce EVER...I'm setting that in the corner as well.  I don't want to debate the sanctity of Marriage with you.  But you're a dumbass if you think there is NO reason why a divorce is legitimately the right thing to do.  But I'm not debating it...dumbass.

What we're left with are all the wrong reasons to get a divorce.  Whatever those might be.  People are selfish, and if you decide, selfishly, that you want to exchange the old worn out wife for the new younger model for no reason other than she's aging (even as you yourself age) and aging is yucky...that would be a good example. 

So there are allllll sorts of selfish stupid reasons to get a divorce.  Getting a divorce because you can't handle the stresses of raising your own children is just one of them. 

My point is this:  IF your marriage fails, and IF you have special needs kids, THEN you need to understand that the person who walks away because of that is a douche.  And that special needs kids didn't lead to that divorce, selfishness did.

Having Lily in our lives has actually strengthened our partnership.  It requires that we communicate more.  It requires that I take a more active role as a parent.  Co-parenting is good for a marriage.  Sharing work around the house, whether that work be child-rearing or doing the laundry, is good for the marriage.  Because when I share the work with her, she's happier and doesn't resent me for leaving her responsible for everything while I hit the bar.

There's a weird sort of topic split here that I'm not really going to explore, but I'll point it out..."marriage/special needs" vs. "parenting/special needs", and I guess I'm going to just gloss over it and say that I feel like the two are very closely related.  When I'm a better parent I'm also a better husband, because the shared responsibility means less weight falls on her shoulders and leaves her more time to enjoy the family and our life together. 

Does having a special needs child make me a better husband?  Not directly, but the additional attention that Lily requires means that we have to communicate more, and it means that she can't do it all alone, which means I have to help out more.  More communication and more active helping out make me a better husband. 

I get that people get stressed out about their special needs kids, and I've said in the past that you can just cross out the word "special needs" and the sentence is still just as true.  But that stress isn't about the marriage necessarily, and making it about the marriage isn't justified. 

I reread like the last four paragraphs and they all say almost the same exact thing, but I'm too lazy to go up and edit it more succinctly.  My main point is that special needs kids don't REALLY impact your marriage in any way.  You love that person or you don't.  You're a partner to that person or you're not.  The circumstances that add stress to you life...aren't related to that partner (unless that person is the reason you're stressed, but that subject is over in the corner).  They're no less stressful, but they're misguided if they're aimed at your spouse.  If you have a good marriage, having special needs kids won't make it any better or any worse, but your reaction to the stresses of parenting might, if you take it out on your partner.

Big Timin' It VI - Childswork Guest Post

Today I'll be visiting Childswork-Childsplay.  It's a website devoted to "addressing the behavioral, social, and emotional needs of children."  They also have a section of their site for blogs.  That's where I'll be.  The topic is "Marriage with Special Needs Children."  I'll be replying to comments there, so please swing by, read it through, and give me a thumbs up...or down, or bless me with your marital/parenting insights!

Flush the sporns,
Jim

Anniversary Dates and Divorce Rates - Happy 12th Anniversary

I succeeded brilliantly before failing miserably as a husband this weekend.  Friday night I took my wife out to dinner for our anniversary.  We'd "skipped it" in favor of other pressing concerns with a rain-check-promise of a rescheduled date Friday.

First of all, it was a great dinner (the brilliant success).  The restaurant was nice, the server friendly and informed, and the food was wonderful.  Second, we talked each other's ears off, which is probably the best part of our dinners out; our ability to pick up the dropped conversations from the previous months of silent parent-censored snippets of adult conversations made impossible by the presence of intelligent, but innocent ears.  We handed each other cards.  I blogged about my selection criteria here:  http://yourfaceismyblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/last-week-was-our-my-wife-and-i-12th.html, and indicated that the heart and soul of the message contained within my card was that we've been putting each other on the back burner for all sorts of good reasons, but that we need to focus more on us.

We talked about that.  We talked about the idea that parents who raise children with special needs have higher divorce rates.  See how I typed that all out like it's a fact?  We both thought it was.  Not to change the subject (because it's certainly related to this blog) but it's not a fact.  It appears to be essentially a well-accepted (and reasonable, I think) urban legend. 

Before I set out to write this blog I decided I'd get the facts and figures "right" so I went to the census bureau. . . they don't handle it anymore.  I went to the page the census bureau directed me to. . . they don't handle it anymore either.  Eventually I found a "Study" (more like poll, really) done by Easter Seals that looked at the numbers.  They're hardly conclusive, or scientific (better discussions of its merits or lack thereof from a "study" perspective can be found here: 
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/what-are-the-divorce-rates-among-autism-families), but they're about all that's available to interested folks, curious about their marital futures.  They can be perused here (if you register with Easter Seals):  http://www.easterseals.com/site/PageServer?pagename=ntlc8_living_with_autism_study_home&s_src=autism_study&s_subsrc=blog.

Essentially the numbers suggest that not only are divorce rates of parents of children with autism, asperger's or PDD NOS not the staggering 80% number bandied about in popular media. . . they're actually lower than the rates of parents without special needs kids straight across the board.  The arguments above-linked about reasons why the study may be biased are good ones, but I'll suggest to you that my opinion is that parents of kids with autism are probably about as likely to get divorces as parents of kids without autism, or for that matter, childless couples.  People get divorced for all kinds of reasons, and sometimes people who are bound for divorce have autistic kids, but that doesn't mean autism was the reason they divorced.

It's not in my immediate plans to divorce  my wife.  Relax, it's not in any plans I have.  She's pretty awesome.  So why all the talk about divorce?  Because in general, people think that the parents of autistic kids are bound for it.  Both my wife and I agree, however, that our relative closeness now is not autism driven. 

We have a mantra that we repeat whenever we're giving each other a hard time about what we have or have not gotten accomplished at home when the other person's out taking care of the chauffeuring duties, or attending mandatory meetings or whatever.  It's something we remember from the marital encounter classes that the Catholic church horse-whipped us into attending encouraged us to attend prior to having a priest preside over our ceremony.  It was essentially this:  Marriage is not a balance book.  You have to give your all to the relationship, not try to keep things "even".  If your spouse screws up, that's not your license to even things up by doing something stupid.  If you go above and beyond, that doesn't mean you use that as leverage to get your spouse to even things up.  Sometimes you're too tired to do much of anything, so you don't, and that's okay, provided when you get your energy back you pull your weight, do your part, do what you can.   

I thought a lot about the message to my wife before scrawling it in the card I gave her.  I thought maybe we should earmark a day every month as our time together.  Maybe it's dinner, maybe it's a movie, maybe it's just brunch or a trip to the bar for a drink.  Whatever it was, I intimated that perhaps we weren't giving our all to the relationship, diverting our resources instead to other important things without scratching out a defensive barrier and saying this is our time.  But these aren't autism-specific marital goals, they're just marital goals.  Everyone's lives are chaotic and busy and autism doesn't in any way change my beliefs of what comprises a 'healthy' marriage.

So, fresh from our fantastic supper out, and renewed in my commitment to my wife and our marriage and to time spent together with her, I promptly ditched her and didn't see her again until Sunday night (miserable failure).  And although I got a lot of work done (grocery shopping, picking up Lily's replacement frames, starting the laundry, etc), and although I had fun (a Pirate game with Emma and friends, a night out with my father to celebrate another belated event), we completely abandoned each other in favor of other priorities.  Again.

I try to do my part at home.  As I was texting the items that I was taking care of to my wife, ticking them off one by one, she texted back "husband of the year!"  I understand what a boon it is to come home expecting to have to take care of a dozen things and finding all of them done (because I'm typically the recipient of that pleasant surprise), and I further get that maybe not a lot of husbands tackle some of that stuff,  but you can't be "husband of the year" if you don't ever actually see your wife.  The things I did "for her" while she was gone were parenting things. . . not husband things.  They were things that a good dad would do.  I think that parents of children with autism and parents of children without autism need to remember that it was the marriage (or partnership) that made them parents in the first place, and remember to spend some time on maintaining that marriage (or partnership).  I married my wife before I knew what autism was (at least in anything other than a Rainman sort of way.  I married her before we had kids.  Parenting, has become a part of our lives.  But my relationship with my wife, though it's changed with the children in it, is not dependant upon the children.  It's dependant on the two of us.

Raising an autistic child can be stressful, but so is raising any child.  I don't like to imagine the sort of man who would point to his autistic child as the reason his marriage failed anymore than I would want to associate with the sort of man who points to his neurotypical child as the reason his marriage failed.  Marriages fail.  They fail for all sorts of reasons good and bad. 

While it's not particularly constructive to speculate about what our family would be like without Lily's autism in it, I suggest that perhaps (my wife brought this up at dinner) our family is stronger because of her autism.  And don't mistake the message.  I'm not saying that her autism is a blessing.  It isn't.  Are we stressed out?  Absolutely!  But also perhaps more focused, more aware our children and each other, less inclined to take little things for granted, more inclined to fight for our kids' rights. 

Every day I think back on my day with the kids and think of all the things I could have done better:  Involved myself more, yelled less, got up off the couch and played ball more or swung the kids more, or played peek-a-boo more.  I think of all the things I could have done better and then I go out and try to do them the next day.  I beat myself up a little because the kids are so important to me and I really want to be the best dad I can be.  

What I probably haven't done enough of is thinking back on my day with my wife and imagining the things I could be doing better with her, then going out the next day and doing them.  You raise your children to leave you.  Your goal is to get them to the point where they can leave you behind and go it alone successfully.  Your goal in marriage is stay together. 

Happy 12th Anniversary, Baby!