My husband is like a child

Post Reply New Topic

Thanks for sharing this, it did help me to understand a little better. We are pretty determined to find a solution, even if it kills us (it feels like it might!! !!).

It is common knowledge that women mature faster than men. It is also common knowledge that people with AS is more immature in SOME aspects, but more mature in others. And having AS doesnt mean much, because every people with AS is different. That said... I am married to an Aspie and I handle all responsibilities by myself in our marriage. Sometimes I feel the weight is too heavy, but I knew what I was getting into when I decided to marry him. I am not saying that you should carry with all the weight all the time. You can talk to him and give him responsibilities, but you should be aware that he will probably fail, that it will probably lead to a fight when he does, and that it will require a fair amount of time until he gets used to that new responsibility and can do it without failing (helping him develop a good method to remind his new responsibilities would be a great idea). But you have to be aware that it will require a lot of effort from your part. Thats why I decided to carry all myself and vent from time to time. It is easier for me. I also treat my husband like he is my child from time to time.

It sounds like you care about each other alot, and I hope you will be able to come to a sane compromise on these issues. Speaking as an adult with AS, how it has affected my relationships is this:

When I didn't know I had it, I tried to do all the normal wife things. Take care of my stepchild, clean the house, cook, attend college and work part time. I started with great intentions, but no matter what, it always lead to burn out. I could do well at school but the house work would start to fall apart. I would take care of the child, but I didn't have the energy to keep the house nice or cook. I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried, but in the end my ex was always telling me how I needed to try harder, not be lazy, not be selfish (because I had to take a very long nap to recharge, etc), not to be so controlling about finances (I had to keep the bank accounts because we would have been on the street because my ex could not handle money, it would get spent frivolously).

What I realized from my experiences is that I can't go into a relationship with an agreement that I will do more than I, with my energy and issues, can do. And that might either mean that I am not going to be able to be a full 50% partner in a future relationship because of the help I will need just to have a clean, sane life, or that I will not agree to be in a relationship because I can't reasonably expect myself to meet their expectations over a long period of time. IF i try to, I get burnt out and things come to a halt because I am overwhelmed, sick, and also mad at myself for not being able to do what any other adult seems to be able to do (keep house, work, cook, clean, maintain a relationship etc).

With that said, everyone has strengths and everyone has weaknesses, have you and your husband honestly inventoried your personal strengths and weaknesses? And there will be tasks that have to be done that neither of you prefer to do, but it is a matter of who can get them done even though they hate doing it. (I hate doing the dishes, but I will do it if I dont have to cook).

Maybe he could watch tv and play with the baby while you take up a chore that needs doing?
Babies and Aspies can be difficult, children are very tiring, even if you love them so very much.

On the issue of things you have asked him to do that he says he will do and then fails to do.
I am guilty of this at times, despite my best intentions. I honestly forget, or rather, get distracted by a trail of small things that I end up so far away from my task that I never getback to the original task. Nagging doesn't help because if I am absorbed in a relaxing distraction, it just irritates me and makes me feel aversion to the chore because it broke my chain of thought. Transitions are hard even for adult aspies, so it is hard to stop one task and start another. Sometimes if I need to get myself to do something if I plan it out, and lay out all the tools I need to finish it, I can trick myself into getting it done because once I do get started, if it is laid out, I will be able to work on it longer than I planned. With that said, many times I have left things undone that "killed the grass" so to speak. Other times my family gets frustrated with me too quickly about leaving a project unfinished. They call it my "abandoned" project and end up finishing it themselves even though, I had only stopped it because I had the wrong length of staples, and it had only been 3 days and I had every intention of getting the correct staples and finishing it myself. But they didn't wait.

Good luck to you, hope you get some advice here or elsewhere.

Thanks for the insight. Do you think that maybe if I just focused on trying to help him to learn one new responsibility over a long period of time might yield better results? From what I understand, he truly does want to be a responsible adult, to the best of his ability. We both seem to want this.

Thanks for all of your insight. Both my husband and I have AS by the way, but we're complete opposites so I don't have these issues. I do, however, have trouble comprehending his issues. This is helping a great deal though, hearing other peoples perspectives and experiences. Anyway...I think we're in the process of inventorying these strengths and weaknesses. Neither of us seem to have a very good sense of self, but we are setting aside time to figure out who we are, what we want, and what our limitations are. It's helping, but it's a slow, slow process. I think that's why my husband is constantly committing to responsibilities that he cannot live up to - he's in the process of learning that he cannot live up to them.



We've been trying to get into a routine like this over the last week or so. My husband has been coming home from work (he holds a job just fine because he's obsessed with his line of work), and than he takes the baby to the park or outside to play. This works for both of us because he wants to play, the baby want's to play, and I need to not be around the baby because as you said, children are very tiring. Hopefully we can make that a routine, because it seems to work for everyone.



This sounds just like what my husband describes when he tries to explain his behavior. He leaves "abandoned" projects all over the house. I believe him when he says that he plans on finishing them, but I'm not sure that I believe that he ever will, because I have literally never seen him finish one of them. I did make a rule that he's not allowed to start a new project until he's finished the last one...so now he just doesn't start or finish projects.

Thanks again for sharing, it really did help me to better understand what I'm dealing with here.

So...now that I've posted more details, do you guys think that I just need to accept that this is the way he is, and that it's the way he's always going to be? Or do you think it's just going to require a lot more patience on my part and trial and error in order to [slowly] help him to take on more responsibilities?

If anyone has any more suggestions on things I should try, I'd love to hear them. Even if you think they probably wouldn't work, you never know. My husband does want a solution just as much as I do, so he doesn't exactly see my attempts as nagging (although I'm sure he feels that way at times).

Thanks so much, by the way

Take a look at your finances and see if you can afford to hire some help to reduce the stress -- lawn care, housecleaning, handyman repair jobs, and even dinner prep studio (where you assemble meals to freeze) are all options to consider.

What would happen if you just stopped doing the things he's said he'd do and then subsequently didn't do?

I can relate to some of the issues in this topic. My girlfriend kicked me out last month. We lived together for 4 years. She had said in that time she has grown a lot but Im still the same. Some of the stuff I remember her complaining about me were messes I made. A lot of them came from just being clumsy and absent minded such as spilling stuff and getting water all over the sink in the bathroom. most the time Im not paying attention to what I do. Its hard to comprehend that most people are constantly aware of everything. I find I have to be conciously stressing out over paying attention to keep from being absent minded and breaking things. However I would still clean around the house and do chores. Honestly I would go through fazes if i were depressed where I simply wouldnt do anything but that was because I was depressed to where i just didnt care and nothing mattered. When I lived with her she would even nag me not to do chores because it would cause a bigger mess than what was there originally. My guess about your husband is that hes fed up with chores gone wrong and just quit caring. I know Im not him and dont really know what hes thinking but thats how Ive felt about chores. However I make myself snap out of it or things go to s**t. It is very irritating to watch people around you easily do what is a struggle for you and then nag about it.

Without wishing to turn this into a man bashing post, my husband has similar qualities to yours (he's an NT).

Joan Collins once said: "I've never yet met a man who could look after me. I don't need a husband. What I need is a wife."

and there is also another quote that I can't find from Joan, something about 'no man ever getting mentally older than 7 years old'.

My husband is also good at playing with the children, but anything to do with paperwork, phone calls (which I hate) and organisation he dumps on me. It's incredibly difficult for me because I feel like I'm the one who needs looking after, and instead I have two children and one adult child. It's not just that he can't do paperwork etc., it's also that he doesn't want to even try, and I've had to try putting my foot down as I go into overload with the amount of things I have to do. I take the view that the longer I keep doing things for him, the longer he will expect me to. It's a struggle to do this though. I always try to take on too much and when I see him doing things wrong, there are times I feel that I have no choice but to intervene and do it for him to save a catastrophic mistake.

I do think there is an element of wanting to be babied (like their mothers used to do) in most, if not all men though (having listened to what other women have said), it just depends on the degree of it.

Sorry I can't offer any useful advice, other than putting your foot down or sending him to some adult centre where they can help him with his independence.

Thanks, at the immediate moment, we can only really afford to hire someone to mow half of our lawn. I am trying to get used to the idea of possibly hiring a cleaning person in the future, and also wrap my mind around putting my son in day care for at least part of the day simply to get a break. 6 months ago, these things would have been un-thinkable to me because I didn't understand my own limitations.

I am trying this with some things that don't absolutely need to be done, like buying his clothes (weekend clothes, not work clothes since he needs to look professional to keep his job). Over lots and lots of time, he did eventually buy 3 pairs of shorts. He needed me there to help him choose them, but he did take the initiative and decide on his own that he needed them, which is a baby step in the right direction. I think that this is a way to approach some things, but most of the areas of his life affect myself and/or my son too much so I can't exactly wait around for too long. It's even more difficult right now with this tactic because our house is on the market, so things need to be spotless.

Thanks, there's a lot of related information in this short paragraph. See, for me, in the exact same sense, I'm having trouble comprehending how people do not notice these things - but I really need to understand, because this is the exact behavior I'm trying to learn to live with. When there's water on the sink, etc. it gives me a lot of anxiety because it feel's like something's been added to my "to-do" list. Being that my "to-do" list includes so many tiny things, it constantly feel's like it's a mile long. Especially when the water (or whatever) is somewhere that can lead to a bigger issue (mold, etc.) if not taken care of right away. Anyway...I don't know if I'll ever truly understand this, but I am beginning to accept that he's not just making excuses and being lazy. Next, I'll just need to find some way to be completely okay with it.




Well, my husband doesn't get depressed, which is a blessing because he's always very pleasant to be around...but sometimes, when he does try to do chores, I wish he hadn't even tried. For example, he took the initiative to clean the kitchen while I was sleeping. I was thrilled! But after about an hour, I woke up and realized that he spent the entire time scrubbing the grease out of the stove vent thingy. The kitchen was just as dirty, and the vent wasn't even really clean, except there were grease blobs everywhere in addition to the kitchen being dirty. I think that's when I started realizing that he needs help doing chores, because if I was there, I could have informed him that they sell vent screen thingy's for cheap and that he can focus on the task at hand.



I don't get this impression. I really try very hard not to be naggy about this. I'm sure that he notices my disappointment at least though, which I'm sure doesn't feel good. I think I'm fairly encouraging when he does do something right, which might help him to keep caring about the things that he's doing wrong. I'm not sure exactly though, my perspective might be a little off being that my husband is such a mellow guy.



I know, I need to keep this in mind. I have the same kinds of issues with other simple things that I can't seem to do, but that my husband does with ease. I did take a moment to remind him of this fact last night when we were talking about all of these things. I think it made him feel better. What I really need to do is try to focus on the fact that my husband does these things with ease FOR ME without complaining. Maybe, when I'm cleaning up his water drips, for example, if I remind myself that he woke up at the crack of dawn with the baby because that's easy for him, but nearly impossible for me...it won't bother me so much

This is a stretch, but has your husband been evaluated for inattentitive ADD? Perhaps medication might help him stay on-task with his projects?

Here's a book I really like. It's really honest about the reasons men aren't doing their share, and has very practical advice on what can be done to motivate them. You'll obviously still have to modify some things to take into account how your AS husband differs from an NT husband.
The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework

This book has a chapter that explains to husband why they should help more around the house:
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert [Paperback]

Thanks! It's never occurred to anyone that he could have a form of ADD, but it's certainly worth looking into. I'm going to research this.

I'm pretty much your husband...

It's very hard to legitimately forget to do things, especially things you've promised to do. I've made a big effort to stop making as many promises, so that I didn't fall flat so much. That said, it's no excuse for doing nothing (or even next to nothing). I try to reliably make an effort to do the things my wife hates to do (kitchen, garbage/pets, grass/landscaping) but it still doesn't seem to add up. The only wiggle room I have is that I also bring in 90% of the income and all of the health benefits - so if I didn't, I'd be up the creek! I am almost thankful there are no kids yet since the whole thing would've been a lot more stressful.

All I mainly have to say is: if selling your house will take collective burdens away from your family and keep it together, it might be beneficial to do so.

Advantages of renting:
- less spaces to clean
- little or no exterior care
- cheaper utilities
- breakdowns/malfunctions are normally the landlord's responsibilities to fix, not yours
- less room for unfinished projects, more likely they won't start at all
- you fall on harder times, you terminate the lease (no foreclosure)