Leave Me Alone!

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard this over the last twenty years, I’d be retired in a beach front home on Maui with all my kids in their own beach homes nearby.

Not honestly sure where I’d picture my hubby, lol.

Steve insists that he wants to be married and have a family. But he lets his parents scold him regularly for allowing me to ‘control him’. They don't want him to share with any of us. They say, "Hurry and get it all before anyone else comes."

He doesn’t like to break for meals with us if he’s working on a project. If he’s walking into the house and I call “dinner”, he wanders off and doesn’t appear at the table until we are nearly finished eating. And acts surprised that we didn't wait for him.

He resents any sort of input when he is working on chores around the house or yard. He is animate about doing things ‘his way’. Including using cold water and his fingers to wash dishes, setting bowls into the dishwasher up against the back of a plate, refusing to use the weedeater along the side of our property that is on a private road until the neighbors complain (to me of course) about the drooping grasses and overgrown brush.

He wants his piles of books and magazines right next to his recliner where they are easy for him to reach. Regardless of how high the piles get, or how hard it is to dust or vacuum around them. And heaven forbid that someone move them!

He wants to watch his adult comedy shows late into the night at full volume because he is the head of the house.

He wants to come and go as he pleases with no notices or explanations whatsoever as he is a ‘grownup’ and not subjected to ‘rules’.

He wants to be left alone to pursue his interests and hobbies without the ‘interruptions’ of having to answer his cell phone, attend family functions, interact with visitors or our kids, take the dogs out regularly, or have to do regular household chores.

Looking passed his exterior physical features, I think I see a nine year old.

Perhaps Aspergers Syndrome is simply stunted emotional growth. The self-absorption, the lack of empathy towards others, the inability to ‘get’ social cues, the resistance to rules and authority.

If you think about it, these are all things that are common in infants, toddlers and young children. As kids grow and mature, they begin develop social skills. Their single focus-ness on themselves broadens as they become more and more aware of the world, and its inhabitants, around them.

At times my sweet husband acts exactly like a big baby.

Perhaps he’s right!