In etiquette 101, it is known that you shouldn't talk about your sex life in public or to strangers when you're married... It is disrespectful to your union and embarrassing to your spouse...but there is a problem... what if there is a topic that has been "hush hush" for a while and needs to be talked about? I guess, what the hell, I will be the martyr then...
Ok..here goes...( deep breath)
There have been conflicting reports about the divorce rate among families with children on the autistic spectrum... For a while it was said to be an astounding 80% but after some new research, according to Dr. Brian Freedman who is the clinical director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, in an interview with Web MD he is quoted to say.
''There really weren't any significant differences in terms of family structure when you consider children with autism and those without. In fact what we found is that children with autism remained with both biological or adoptive parents 64% of the time, compared with children in families without autism, who remained [with both biological or adoptive parents] 65% of the time. That debunks the myth of an 80% divorce rate,"
Let me just say this. Whether it is 80%, 60% or 20%, the bottom line is autism causes strain on your marriage..period... and similar to infidelity which is not a tangible pain that you could heal from by popping a pill, this
Autism, the thief who steals your child in the night as I call it, is one if the diagnoses that does more damage to the the mom rather than the dad, in my opinion, because we are the ones who carry this beautiful child for 9 plus months, and because of ALLLLL the conflicting reasoning, speculations, probable causes which have not been concrete, we blame ourselves for a longggg time.... Our dream for our children vanishes and in an instant we have to create other expectations and dreams for our kids in our head that is not typical of the "normal" society. It feels like you are in a cult, a universe that only exists in the autism society, almost extra terrestrial like.. But it goes further, and this is where sex comes into the equation.
When our child, in my case children become diagnosed, the grief is so unbearable that intercourse goes into hibernation..Maybe the first night or week, you just want to have the most passionate sex with your spouse because you are both in shock after getting the bad news, and need to release that pain together, but when it eventually sinks in, something changes.
After Brandon, my second son was diagnosed just one year after my first son Dylan was diagnosed, I immediately began to make these associations.
Sex-->Pregnancy-->Beautiful Child--> Autism....
..No where in there does love, passion, desire come in to play anymore.. It becomes a chore, it causes anxiety, fear and phobia... your parts do not work anymore and you don't want to be touched...
NOW.....
If your spouse is in denial about the diagnosis and does not pitch in to help care for your child, is not supportive and does not acknowledge your pain, that adds extra strain on your desire to become intimate you feel like you are in this all alone. You want to blame someone, you don't know whether it's genetic so your mind plays games and the resentment forces you to wonder whether HE may have caused it on his side of the genetics pool. It causes friction, animosity and that takes an added toll on your relationship and marriage. These are some of the contributions that lead to the increased divorce rate in families with autism...
I went through all those phases and stages and thankfully my marriage has been able to withstand the storm.. IT is not perfect of course, but we are still here fighting.. In my next post, I will tell you little things that we have done to make this marriage work, however, I am still working on the sex part.....hehehehe
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