My daughter and I love the TV series "Once Upon A Time". We love it because it's whimsical, and it takes all of the fairy tale characters and weaves their stories together into something everyone can relate to. Snow White isn't perfect, and the Evil Queen has some good hidden deep down inside. In the end, in spite of all their magical powers and true love, they're all just people who change and evolve over time.
The end of season four saw the casting of a dreadful curse called "Shattered Sight". The Snow Queen, out of hurt and anger, a desire for revenge and love and also because of her own twisted personality, cast an evil spell called "The Curse of Shattered Sight". It engulfed the entire town and caused everyone to see the worst in each other. People began to fight. They hurled insults, they broke things, and things just got uglier and uglier.
Sometimes, if you're not careful, you can become a victim of "shattered sight" in your own marriage. This is especially true if you have a child with autism or one or both of you deals with adult ad/hd. While the divorce rate for couples with an autistic child is about the same as couples who have "normal" children, the stress levels within that marriage are certainly higher. This can be due to a number of factors, but in my humble opinion, the prevailing factor would be that the special needs child requires much more attention and flexibility than other children. This impacts the search for caregivers if parents want a night out, and it also impacts the attention the parents pay to each other. Parenting a special needs child is exhausting. At the end of the day is difficult to have any kind of energy or to even want to "court" your spouse. You just got done with a two hour temper tantrum. You don't want to know how another person's day was.
The other factor, adult ad/hd, is actually much more lethal to a marriage. People with ad/hd experience divorce rates at twice the norm for couples who don't deal with it (Melissa Orlov, The Ad/Hd Effect on Marriage). This is especially true if the ad/hd is undiagnosed or the person who suffers from it won't admit that it's a factor in marital problems. These problems occur mainly because of misunderstandings. The ad/hd spouse doesn't understand the frustration that his/her non-ad/hd spouse exhibits on an almost daily basis. The non-ad/hd spouse doesn't understand how his/her spouse's brain works, why they forget things, why sex is not a big deal to them, why they sometimes over-react in a tense or angry situation, and so forth. Soon this series of mis-communications develops into a an ever-widening gulf of resentment and avoidance. At that point it's easy to view one's spouse in the worst light possible, to criticize, to judge, and to assume that the spouse doesn't care or want to understand. Pretty soon any tender or sweet feelings you may have had toward your spouse evaporate, and there's not a lot left to work with.
So what's the cure for these types of issues? In the case of autism, it's helpful to understand that all parents who receive this diagnosis for their child do go through a basic three step grieving process (Stage Theory Cycle, Gargiulo). Upon receiving the diagnosis that their child has a disability, often in the profound sense, parents will experience a sense of shock and denial accompanied by grief and depression. This is followed by guilt, anger, shame, or just ambivalence. The final stage is acceptance and adaptation. The problem is that two parents will go through this cycle, but they will not experience it in the same way or experience it "together". They may often find themselves hopping back and forth between feelings, and some never reach the third stage at all. (Metcalf and Gargiulo, Teaching in Today's Inclusive Classrooms, p170) The best thing that parents can do, upon learning that they have a child with a disability, is to recognize that they will adapt to and understand the situation best if they agree, then and there, that they will handle it as a team. This means respecting each other's feelings and frustrations, even when they're not shared by the other party. It means recognizing that the adaptation must take place together, and that the two of them are each other's best support group. Sadly, this isn't always the case and many parents find themselves floating on the sea of autism alone, when they should have been swimming together all along.
In the case of ad/hd, I cannot stress enough how important it is for the non-ad/hd spouse to educate him/herself about this condition. It's more than not paying attention. There are a variety of factors and complications that accompany ad/hd. According to Dr. Daniel Amen who founded the Amen Clinic, there are also several sub-types of ad/hd. On the flip side of that coin, the ad/hd spouse must recognize that the condition does have a profound impact on marriage. Making an effort to understand the non-ad/hd spouse and why they react a certain way to these factors will go a long way toward mending hurt feelings. In either case, a monumental effort is required in order for the marriage to work. The non-ad/hd spouse should refrain from criticism. The ad/hd spouse should recognize that his/her partner is probably doing the best they can and may not understand everything the partner is going through.
In conclusion, the easy way out is to not deal with the problems in a marriage. The easy way is to blame, to make excuses, to refuse to take responsibility, and to see the other person as their worst self. The easy way out is to hide mistakes, to drift away, to stop communicating. The hard way, and the best way, is to dig your heels in and refuse defeat. In some cases, this may not be possible. My hope is that someone reading this will be uplifted and inspired to get the help they need. Curses can be broken. But sometimes it takes a village.
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