Well I don’t think we would still be together if it wasn’t for our faith to put it bluntly. If it wasn’t for the fact that as a Christian I believe that when you marry somebody you are married for life. I would have copped out a long time ago if I hadn’t believed that. And I can well understand the breakdown of relationships when one partner has Asperger's because I can well understand the strain that that puts some people under because you go into a marriage and you have certain expectations. They are not demands, but they are just normal expectations of what you are going to gain from it and if those expectations don’t materialise then it is a big upheaval adjusting to that and finding your way to work round that.
I know it is something that not a lot of people have managed to do I believe. You know, I mean sometimes it is just very simple things that end up being the last straw. Things like it took quite a few years to convince Richard that he should bath more than once every three weeks for example and I still haven’t convinced him that when he has worn his trousers for three days he needs to put them in the wash not back on the hanger.
It is a completely different way of seeing things that isn’t amenable to what you perceive as logic. And you just have to find ways to work round those things sometimes. You think well…. But that is on top of the – well he just doesn’t listen to me anyway situations [laughs]. You know, it is not a matter of he doesn’t listen to me when I am upset so much as it is a constant ongoing, he just appears not to listen to me in the sense of hearing what I have to say and responding and interacting over it on anything. Well at times it certainly seems like that. So without believing that once I had married him, that was it, it was for life, I would have walked out. So I do believe that my faith in God and my place here in this marriage is one of the reasons why we are still together.
