Re-Parenting My Man-Child Husband

I love my husband dearly, really I do. We’ve known each other for 36 years. We dated as teenagers and young adults, off and on, and then reconnected after 20 years apart. This time around it looks like it’ll stick. It’s been almost 10 years and we’re both still alive to tell the tale.

He’s warm and loving, super talented, and smart as a whip. He makes me laugh like nobody else in the world.

And he drives me batshit crazy! I raised 3 boys, largely by myself. They grew up into men. And now, I’m raising a 270-pound 52-year-old child in an adult costume.

Before you get all up in arms, calm the fu*k down. I’m not disparaging him. He knows it. I know it. And I’m writing this with his full support.

Somewhere along the way, he didn’t learn to adult. He also never really got a chance to be a kid.

He was, as a small child, just sort of there, an inconvenient thing his alcoholic, narcissistic, ice-cold mother had to feed and clothe. But hey, at least he was good for bringing in child support, right?

He was left to his own devices with little to no supervision aside from what his older sister was able to provide and spent much of his time alone in his room with his comic books.

His father was no prize either. His preferred methods of teaching his son how to be a man were intimidation, degrading comments, and sometimes physical abuse. That was when he wasn’t ignoring him because womanizing took up an awful lot of his time.

He didn’t fit his father’s mold of what a man should be. He’s sensitive and artistic. he’d rather swing a paintbrush than a hammer. You can just guess the kind of comments his father made.

So, my husband moved out when he was 17. He shared a house with a group of other guys. He wasn’t ready. He had no clue.

Fast forward to now and I seriously wonder how he survived all these years.

He’s a child pretending to be a man pretending to be a child. He understands grown-up things like paying bills. He gets that the rent has to be paid or we’ll be sitting out on the corner with all our stuff and a dog.

But other basic adult stuff, he doesn’t get at all. Things like we can’t just up and move across the country with no plan and no money saved just because he’s tired of it here. Or, why he can’t use my laptop all day long or go shopping because he feels like “buying stuff.”

In his mind, it’s fine to leave a big mess for me to clean up or to do something I’ve asked him not to do 700 times. It’s okay to demand his own large bag of chips because he doesn’t want to share. It’s okay to throw a fit because he doesn’t want to take the dog that he begged for out to pee.

He’s incredibly naive. I mean it’s as if he was just dropped off on this planet and has no idea how people act. I’m constantly having to go behind him, explaining that not everyone is honest, kind, or what they claim to be.

He’s getting better. In fact, he’s gotten a lot better! But holy crap!

We’re stuck between two worlds. I love his carefree child-like nature. It’s the wild abandon that makes his artwork so magical. If he likes making puppets in his spare time I don’t care, I’ll buy him the damn craft supplies. If he likes making silly videos, so be it.

I love that he’s so open with his emotions. When he loves he loves big!

But the fact is, he IS an adult and there has to be a balance. That’s what I’m trying to achieve. He’s come so far. There’s still a way to go. I’m not perfect. I often have to stop before I speak because he’s not a child, and mommy voice isn’t exactly appropriate in the circumstances. I’m not his mommy, I’m his wife.

I love and accept all of him, but having to teach a grown man basic adulting skills while nurturing the child he never got to be sometimes pisses me off. I’m not going to lie, it makes me madder than a wet hen! Not at him. At them, his parents.

I’ll just never understand some people. Why have children when you clearly don’t want them and aren’t prepared to properly care for them?

The whole point of raising children, at least in my mind, is to do the best you can to grow fully functioning humans who are at least, in some way, prepared for life.

They didn’t do that. So, now I have to. I have to finish the job they barely started. I resent them for it. Specifically, I resent them for all the pain and loneliness they caused my husband as a child. I resent them because they took a perfect little boy and messed him up like they had a handbook suited for the purpose.

But, I’ll finish their damn job. I’ll kiss all those hurts better. And I’ll do it all gladly every day for the rest of my life.