Thursday, March 6, 2014

Marital Sex Love and Affection and Couples with Autistic Children (or Marital Hygiene)

When I was in training with Peter Fleming, he presented on the topic of "Sex, Love and Affection" and its affect on couples.  The definitions of these 3 components of relationships is pretty simple:  Sex is....well you know that.  Love is the feeling of connection we have to one another.  The best definition of love that I have heard is the relationship I'm in that makes want to be the best "me" I can and the relationship that inspires me to grow and commit.  See Romeo and Juliet for a broader description.  Affection is the physical touch - non sexual - that we exchange as a way of comforting and being comforted physically.  It can be as gentle as a light touch on the shoulder or as strong as a deep embrace.  These are the components of a relationship that help it endure over time.

With one exception:  communication.  Yup, that same old boring topic that gets beat to death when discussing relationships.  But Fleming notes a significant aspect of communication in the weave of sex, love and affection.  He posits with great insight, I believe, that a relationship with strong communication can endure a lack of love, a lack of affection and even, gasp, a lack of sex.  How? Communication bridges the challenges that we face in the lack of sex, love and affection.  Surely, the early part of relationships include great amounts of all 3 of these components, as well as communication.  That's how lasting relationships are built. The absence of any of these aspects does not make for a relationship that can survive the vicissitudes of life.  Hard, direct, compassionate communication (these are not conflicting) is a requirement for relationships that are to survive, even if sex, love and affection are all present.  Can you imagine a relationship with these 3 components without a strong foundation of communication?  Hardly.

Consider, then, marriage in the context of a child with autism or any other special need.  Families under these pressures struggle just to make all the appointments needed.  There's medical doctors, mental health appointments, medication checks, special ed meetings, social skills groups, PT, OT, Speech, hippotherapy, athletic activities, all in the name of helping the child with special needs cope as much as possible with the realities of the world.  And this doesn't include any efforts on behalf of other children not to mention the needs we have individually to care for ones self.  And did I mention laundry?  Dinner?  Getting the dog to the vet?  How about getting the oil changed in the car?  What about working late on a special project?

How often do parents without special needs kids collapse into bed at night, the last thought on their mind being physical intimacy.  How much more-so, then, will this be the case for parents of children with special needs?

One of the barometers (but hardly the only one) that I measure couples by is their capacity to retain their intimate lives.  It's not uncommon for folks to say that they have to "schedule" private time together - most couples with children understand that.  It is also common for me to interview a couple about their kid/s and stumble on the lack of intimacy their relationship has maintained.  Couples who have sex every few months, once or twice a year or even less often acknowledge that this is the result of the slow wear and tear of the many challenges of being a parent presents to couples. Overwhelmingly this occurs without the benefit of the hard, honest communication that is needed in relationships.  More frequently it's just bad habit.  I might call it poor marital hygiene.  This can be true for couples with typical children, and couples with special needs children are even more vulnerable to this.  What often comes with this is a susceptibility to extra marital relationships.  They can be comparatively easy - if poisonous to the marriage.

Fleming teaches that "saying the hardest thing" is a sign of good communication.  Is there any better place than a marriage to communicate so actively?  I will propose that couples that have learned how to communicate (which includes listening) the hardest thing have really good marital hygiene, and can survive challenges to sex, love and affection that affects many couples through the years.