Autism is quite complex, and is caused by not only environmental factors, but inherited ones as well. Despite that, it’s estimated that autism is around 60 to 90% heritable.
So if your partner had autism, would you be worried about your potential children having it too, and would that make you hesitate to build a future with them?
This 28-year-old woman has been with her 29-year-old boyfriend for close to 10 years, and she’s been waiting for him to propose for what feels like forever.
Any time she suspects her boyfriend is about to pull out a ring and get down on one knee, she’s wrong. It never, ever happens, and she hasn’t understood why he’s been so weird about it.
“I just found out through a friend that my partner has been putting off proposing for so long because he isn’t sure if he wants to have kids with me, because I have a lot of family members with autism,” she explained.
“He is worried that our children will be autistic. I have high-functioning autism. I have many family members with autism, a few of [whom] are not as high-functioning as [I am].”
“I approached him about it, and he says it’s true. I’m absolutely stunned by this. First of all, if we had a child like me, would it really be so terrible? And secondly, I feel like he’s been stringing me along all these years with no explanation why!”
She’s left feeling angry and miserable to finally know the truth about why her boyfriend has been dragging his feet about making her his wife.
Well, he’s had a whole decade to decide if she’s the one for him and if he can live with a potentially autistic child. That is more than enough time to know what to do or not.
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I wonder if he’s just keeping her around as a placeholder while he tries to secure a better partner than her. Even if he isn’t doing that, the point is, he means more to her than she does to him.
Otherwise, he would have unquestionably proposed, or tried to explore genetic testing, if the hang-up really is what their children could turn out like.
If her boyfriend is telling her to her face that he’s not positive he wants to commit to her at all, that means it’s never, ever going to happen.
It’s unfortunate that he wasn’t honest with her about this, but felt the need to tell a friend instead. That’s not fair, but the good news is she’s still young enough to start over and find a man who won’t be worried about this.
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
