I’m angry all of the time, and I was told last night by my wife that it could end our relationship.
We’ve been married for 11 years, and we have an autistic 6 year old. My wife has ADHD, anxiety, and self diagnosed herself with autism.
I am the primary caregiving parent. It’s a struggle. I get to experience all of the good things, but I also get to deal with all of the trouble. And adjusting his behavior has been very difficult. So I handle the same problems over and over and over. I’m burnt out, I yell a lot, and I need some goddamned help. Mostly what I get is lectured at for yelling.
I keep trying to communicate to her that I need some help, but I’m not getting it. Recently, she’s started asking when I’m in the middle of angrily dealing with yet another incident what help I need. So I’m supposed to slam the breaks on what I’m doing and tell her how to fix a problem I’m already working on. What I needed was for her to be in front of the problem What I needed was to not be the one to have to get up and deal with the issue. What I need is to not have to tell her what to do, but for her to handle some of this stuff. What I need is to not be the only one in the room 90% of the time. All of this is apparently an unreasonable ask. I’m moving too quickly, I’m there before she has had time to process (if she’s even in the room). I’m not letting her help.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to communicate this in a way I haven’t already. I can’t just sit and ignore the kid until she decides to move. I’m lost and angry, and it sucks.
5 comments
What are you doing to better manage your emotions and improve communication with your spouse? What is your wife doing to manage her conditions? Have you considered individual or marriage counseling?
You sit down and tell her the help you need in those situations now. Generalizations like I need help is a roll of the dice. If you know what you actually need then you tell her. If you dont know what you need other than help then you sit down and figure it out. Most people in those situations do not want anything their partner thinks is helpful they want the thing they will find helpful. Identifying and communicating that is important. If you have a list of things you want done and she washes dishes but you want her to handle bath time she is doing something but you are not going to be happy about it are you? If you specifically ask her to do bathtime and she does the dishes then thats a different conversation on why she wanted to do the dishes. Outside of that there seems to be a lot of resentment that needs to be untangled in individual therapy and couples therapy.
Maybe you need respite care or to hire a PCA.
You could also use some strategies from Autism internet modules.
You need a break as soon as humanly possible and I say this as someone who has experienced burnout from being the primary caregiver to a child on the spectrum. If you were to leave the two of them alone do you trust your wife to respond to your son’s needs? It sounds like your wife doesn’t know how to respond, is incapable or using weaponized incompetence and that she acknowledges that by saying to hire help.
Do you have resources or respite care in your area? Is it possible to find a professional to teach your wife (or shame her if she’s being intentionally neglectful) to effectively parent your son? If you live in a college area you may be able to find students studying education or child psychology for their masters or phd that are willing to babysit to supplement their income at a rate lower than institutional caregivers while still possessing the skills needed for you to be able to comfortably relax while your son is not in your care. I know that doesn’t help with your wife’s ability to functionally parent but I think the priority right now is you staving off the breakdown that the amount of pressure you’re under can lead to.
I am so sorry you are dealing with all of this! Are you a SAHD? Can you access s counselor to help you process and make some tAngible changes? and your wife probably also needs to go to individual counseling to work on herself being able to engage with your child. It sounds to me like you’re basically a single parent to a special-needs child.
With your wife, having ADHD and anxiety and possibly autism, your son probably does trigger her a lot but that’s not an excuse. She is an adult she needs to get therapy or some thing to help her cope with being a parent.