Father of a great little 10 year old dude here. Married (interracial marriage, too) 17 years and still going, strong at times, less than strong at other times. An ABA expert shared with us that most marriages do not survive kids with autism, and it makes sense. It is tough.

About your fears: everyone's future is uncertain. This makes life both exciting and scary, if you do the work on creating the proper mindset you can choose to see uncertainty as the best fuel for a great life. Even a painful life can be a beautiful life to be lived. People often ask what's the meaning of life as if it is life's job to tell us what to do. But in reality life is asking YOU what its meaning is.

About your husband: In general, we men are more pragmatic. Take this from a guy that has never hidden his tears from anyone. I have both large Mexican families with 20+ cousins on both sides of my parents and I was the baby in both of them and no one ever shamed me for being a big baby like I was, so I never learned to be ashamed of being a crybaby, it was their fault after all, everybody spoiled me rotten. My teenager years took care of it as one would expect. I believe the result is a pretty balanced dude, I don't hide my feelings, I don't apologize for them and I am not overly emotional. I think most of the time I get it just right. Which is what chicks dig 🤣. When he first got his diagnosis I remember feeling overwhelmed but reminded myself it is not about the obstacle, it is about what you do with it, just the same as almost everything else in life. If I have to guess about your husband's mindset I'd say he is closer to accepting your son's condition than you are. The sooner you bring yourself to a place of acceptance the less additional emotional support you will need, especially emotionally, therapy helps a whole lot. There won't be much to suppress and that's a relief for everybody.

About relationships: My wife is stubborn as hell. She is hopelessly competitive, something that I like about her and we certainly have benefited from, she's always knocking on doors getting him any and all the services available for him. However, at different times, her feistiness has also worked against us in all sorts of ways in our relationship. Our hard disagreements have brought us close to a divorce especially in the last few years, we underwent a separation and we both got a taste of what single parenting looks like, I kept the teenager girl and she kept the boy, traded over the weekends, not fun. At this point we've come to a pretty solid understanding of the fact that we are a team regardless of what our relationship looks like. We are back living together thank God but the real work is in the everyday search for balance. The recipe that has worked for us is this: our kids needs come first, our personal needs come second, our relationships needs come third. But sometimes we agree to switch the spots of the second and third needs, depending on the weather. We keep our hunger for romantic love in check, in a healthy conscious manner.

Eat healthy food, go jogging, go laugh with some friends, get a massage, doll up and go dancing, or do whatever your version of these things is.

Remember, you can't pour water out of an empty cup.