My Son Broke Up with His Girlfriend Because My Wife and I Argue A Lot

And he told the story at a Cub Scout banquet

We’re at a banquet for my son’s Cub Scout pack, and my son is asked to say a few words about me since it was his last year as a scout and I was a leader.

“Can you say a few words about your dad?” the MC asks him.

I did not prepare him for this moment. So this will be straight off his dome. Stream of consciousness. Freestyle. Improvisation. Shooting from the hip.

He walks up to the podium in his tan Cub Scout uniform, and I instantly regret I didn’t prepare him for this moment. But I realize it’s too late.

He stands in front of the microphone, leans forward, and looks out at twenty tables full of cub scouts, parents, siblings, grandparents — about 100 or more people — spread throughout a church banquet hall on a spring weeknight.

Stand up comic

He starts speaking with not any outward sign of nervousness. He exudes confidence like he is a stand-up comedian telling a funny story; in fact, I realize this is what he is doing as he holds and speaks into the microphone.

He is telling the story of when he broke up with his girlfriend — who wasn’t really his girlfriend — in his Sunday School class because his parents argue all the time, and he didn’t want to get married to her because they would argue and have kids who would get married and they’d argue with their spouses.

It’s a monologue he has recited around the house many times before deciding to end his friendship with the girl on whom he’s had a crush for five years.

(His five-year crush, by the way, is the most remarkable part of this story.)

I look over at my wife to see her reaction and, surprisingly, she is calm as our eleven-year-old son evokes pockets of laughter with his story about us before he rambles on awkwardly as his stand-up comedy routine needs polishing.

And my wife and I feel comfortable letting our son be himself and allowing others to see him for the outside-the-box kid on the autism spectrum that he is when not masking and then the MC interrupts his monologue to redirect him.

“Can you share a few thoughts about your dad as the scoutmaster?”

“He was the Scoutmaster.”

That’s it. Four words. No personal remarks about me as the leader of his pack. But that’s because I didn’t do my job to prepare him for this speaking moment.

And I kind of like the way he twisted the moment to provide a little comedy.

What about the girl?

As for the girl, he shared his feelings for her in a Christmas card when he was seven. It was an art project for a social skills group they belonged to for kids on the autism spectrum — and he’s talked about her at home ever since then.

He was supposed to write something like “Merry Christmas!” on his card, but what he scrawled on his friendship card was something a lot more amorous.

Now, he seems trapped in a loop in his head with his crush. He has talked incessantly about breaking up with her for weeks around the house, even though my wife and I explained that it wouldn’t make any sense to the girl.

We explained that a boy has to ask a girl out to be their girlfriend, and since he has never asked the girl to be his girlfriend — and why would he since he is too young to be dating? — she was not his girlfriend and she would be confused.

“Then I will end our friendship,” he said.

The kid was determined to break up with a girl that he wasn’t even dating, and no amount of logic presented by us could change his decision to do so.

What was the Grammy award-winning song by Will Smith? Parents Just Don’t Understand. We make our kids eat broccoli and do all kinds of other stuff.

The break-up

We stayed home from church for a few weeks because we were afraid of what he might do, but then we finally realized we could not stop him from saying or doing something while we were in church and he was in his fifth-grade class.

And he’d have to live with the consequences if he carried out his plan.

I came one Sunday to pick him up from his classroom. He was standing about 10 feet away from the girl. She sat at a table with two girls and her back was facing him, and I could tell the moment for the dreaded break-up had arrived.

His arms were pulled down in front of him with a defiant look on his face. Looking back at it now, it would make a great episode for a Disney tv show.

A woman in her 50s, a volunteer in his classroom, saw he was struggling to say something to the girl and, I could tell, she wanted to help him say it.

I knew it was only a matter of seconds before he began his “breakup” speech, and I had to give him a vaudeville hook and make a hasty retreat out the door.

“It’s over,” he said. “We’re finished!”

Before he could say anything else, I whisked him out the door, and we went to the car in the parking lot where his mom waited for us in our silver Camry.

The post-breakup story

Then, over the next few weeks, he talked endlessly about wanting to be her friend again, like she was one of his rotating special interests. Veggies Tales. The Muppets. The planets. Presidents. Angry Birds. Five Nights at Freddy’s.

But this obsession felt different. It is with a girl, not animated characters, and his interest has never waned; in fact, it has been grown stronger over time.

One afternoon, while he was watching the My Little Pony series on Netflix, I learned where his idea to end his friendship with his crush likely originated.

A red pony named Big Macintosh gets obsessed with breaking up with Sugar Belle, a pink female unicorn, whom he believes wants to break up with him.

Big Macintosh: “I know why you’re here.”

Sugar Belle: “You do?”

Big Macintosh: “But I have something to tell you first.”

Sugar Belle: “Oh, can I go first? I’m going to be … ”

Big Macintosh: “Stop!”

Sugar Belle: “Why don’t we tell each other on three? One, two …”

Big Macintosh: “It’s over.”

Sugar Belle: “What’s over?”

Big Macintosh: “You and me … it’s over … we’re breaking up.”

The dialogue was almost verbatim to what my son said to the girl or to the monologue my wife and I have heard him say many times around the house.

“Big Macintosh reminds me of someone I know,” I say

“You mean me?” he says.

“Yeah, and Sugar Belle reminds me of someone.”

He mentions the girl’s name.

“Now I see where you got the idea to break up with her.”

Before this story gets labeled as a “nice” story, I want to say what I took away from the story is how deep my son’s emotions for the girl were at age eleven.

There is a stereotype that autistic people are robots who don’t show empathy or lack feelings like others, yet this story shows my son’s depth of his feelings.

He was feeling protectiveness toward the girl he liked by not wanting to have a friendship if they were to get married and argue, and he had strong feelings about the effect my wife and I arguing has on him and a future relationship.

And it’s amazing to me he has liked the same for eight years. He’s 14 now and three years older and he still has strong feelings toward this girl.

So the next time you interact with an autistic person remember this “cute” story and how autistic people have the same or more feelings than others.

You just have to make them feel comfortable to let their feelings come out.

Thanks for reading my story.

Tagging some parent writers: Michael L Butler, KiKi Walter, Frank Priegue, Alexandra Christensen, Bridie Dillon, Sreese, Jane Kelley, Sarah J Clarke, The Sober Vegan Yogi, Klara Jane Holloway, Janet Meisel, and Susan Wheelock.

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