Aaaaahhh Aspie dh!!!

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-07-2003
Aaaaahhh Aspie dh!!!
4
Tue, 11-21-2006 - 7:33pm

I never know how much to be mad at dh and how much to take a deep breath and say "he's doing the best he can, considering he has AS (undiagnosed)." We've got 30 people coming for Thanksgiving (well, 30 total, including us, so we've got 24 people coming), with 12 of them staying at our house. We don't have a huge house, so every corner will be used (kids sleeping on floors), which means EVERY corner needs to be cleaned. It is a monumental task to even keep one room cleaned up with my family, let alone the whole house. In the last week I've spent three days at the hospital with dd (various GI problems). Not only did that put me behind in my regular cleaning, but whenever dh is in charge of the kids, the house gets even more destroyed. DH was supposed to have this whole week off work, but his boss made him go in to work yesterday. Then, he had to go in this a.m., which turned into all day. He came home today and announced that he HAS TO work tomorrow, too. It turns out he had an AS moment and even tho' his boss told him he could still have tomorrow off work, he insisted he had to be there or she'd get in trouble (letting him off work on a day she wasn't letting other people off work; she's neurotic, agreed with his logic, and now he can't get the day off back). SO, we've got people coming in to town starting tomorrow night, the house is a COMPLETE wreck, and I don't have dh around to help clean or help distract kids from messing the house while I clean. Aaaaaargh!!! I am so mad at him, but I just don't know how much to hold him accountable. Unfortunately this kind of thing happens all the time, and even though he knows he's upset me, and he now belatedly understands the impact this has on me, tomorrow he'll turn around and do the same exact kind of thing. I guess I should go clean now, instead of griping. sigh

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-03-2004
Wed, 11-22-2006 - 5:32am

At this point, I would hire a cleaning person, and hand Dh the bill!

Sara

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-07-2003
Fri, 11-24-2006 - 12:34am

Unfortunately dh wouldn't mind if I hired cleaning help -- but we can't afford it. DH is happy to let me spend all the money in the world, whether we have any money or not. I'm the one who suffers the consequences, though. He just doesn't have a sense of impact and is happy to run up more and more debt. DH ended up coming home 1/2 day early. I guess he "got it" enough to explain stuff to his boss -- how she'd approved time off then took it all back -- so he came home early to help. We cleaned and cleaned. Eventually, we just ran out of time. (Part of the problem is we had a big area rug in the living room which we had to shampoo before moving to our bedroom, then put in a new area rug -- well, carpet remnant. It took a fair amount of time to move all the furniture around in both rooms to get the rugs in/out.) The family's all being nice about what mess is left, and they pitched in to help with the mess they could help with (kitchen stuff, ignored messy bedrooms they're sleeping in). SIL got up early to help with cooking, so that was nice (I'd done a lot of it ahead and frozen it, but there was still some stuff left, like the turkey). Also, even tho' we don't have a huge home, the biggest rooms are the country kitchen and the living room which are semi-open to each other, so there was plenty of room to have multiple bodies helping, and we could all participate in the conversation. One sister ended up staying at her in-laws, so we only had 24 people instead of 30 which probably helped make things slightly calmer at the house. Another sister has kids who are on the spectrum somewhere (her dh is probably, too), so we both understand if the kids only eat cashew nuts for T-dinner and then need a quiet corner by themselves. We ended up having quite a nice T-day. That by itself is much to be thankful for!

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 11-24-2006 - 3:46pm

It sounds like things have been working out, even if it is not what you planned.

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-05-2005
Fri, 11-24-2006 - 10:55pm

Wow, I can't imagine how frustrating that must be, to have an aspie dh must require a lot of patience.

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