Paddy McGuinness says raising children with autism has strained his marriage

Paddy McGuinness has said it's a "wonder" he and his wife Christine are still together.

The comedian and presenter said that raising children with autism has put a strain on his marriage due to the extra pressure on their relationship. Paddy and Christine have two five-year-old twins with autism and another two-year-old daughter also showing early symptoms of the condition. Paddy told John Bishop on In Conversation With that it's been "very, very difficult" raising children with special needs. He said:

“Some days it’s a wonder how we’re still together, me and Christine, because you can’t sort of do the normal things that you would as a couple. "I can count on one hand the amount of times we’ve been on a night out together, because you can’t just have a babysitter. You can’t just say ‘I’ll drop ’em off at me relatives to look after’ ’cos it’s not like that.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj92u8hFkZ9/?hl=en&taken-by=mcguinness.paddy The Take Me Out presenter said that he spent a lot of time working to deal with the situation, leaving his wife to look after the children by herself. He claims that he felt a need to "provide for them" rather than staying home, but that this also made him depressed. He said:

"Christine, as a mother, couldn’t bear to be away from ’em. And so that’s where we were different straight away. “And then with the autism, for me, the more I saw it and the more they had really bad days, I’d get so down, you know, I’d be like, depression and different things would wash over me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkuUxFVFKH3/?hl=en&taken-by=mcguinness.paddy

“Christine, she’s just fantastic. She helps me ’cos she looks at things differently… I love the kids to bits and I do stuff with ’em, and they amaze me and I start seeing it from how Christine sees it."

Christine spoke publicly recently about the couple's marital issues saying that things had been "difficult" between them. This followed Paddy being spotted going for drinks with Nicole Appleton earlier this year.