Today’s listener question comes from a partner in a neurodiverse couple, asking us to talk about navigating differences when one partner has neurological differences like Autism or ADHD, and the other is “neurotypical.”

Oh boy do we have thoughts and feelings about this! We end up spending a lot of time sharing how neurodiversity impacts our own lives, helping us discover that it’s not about one partner being different, but about accepting the reality that we’re different from each other. Inside of that, we find a lot of unspoken expectations, fears, and hurts, but…we also find a whole lot of amazing opportunities.

Quotes:

Are you expecting that what closeness feels like to you is the same as what it feels like to me?

We can't have unspoken expectations and think we're going to meet each other in the same place.

How do we have a conversation that’s less about “you’re different,” and more about “we’re different?

Not the same doesn't mean…rejection…it means not the same.



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Welcome to the Why Does My Partner podcast.

I'm Jules.

I'm Vicki.

And I'm Rebecca.

We're your hosts.

We're also couples therapists and messy humans bumbling

through our own relationships

every day.

We met at a training and our secret sauce is that we and our

partners became fast friends.

Between us we have more than 40 years of experience holding hard

relational questions with our clients.

We're going to bring those questions here.

And together we're going to take a stab at answering those questions.

This podcast is not a substitute for couples therapy.

If something you hear in this podcast stirs something deep within you about

your relationship, reach out to a

Welcome back, I'm Jules,

I'm Vicki, and I'm Rebecca.

And today's question comes from a listener who says, Hello, I am

in a neurodiverse relationship.

I'm diagnosed with ASD and ADHD and my partner is neurotypical.

Can you do a podcast addressing communication challenges

in relationships like ours?

My partner wants to work on our relationship by talking and talking

and needs physical affection all the time, whereas I do not.

Why does my partner take these differences personally?

Before we answer, I'd like to give the partner props that the partner

wants to work on the relationship at all.

I feel like a lot of our questions are, like, one wants to work on it

and one may not have that perception.

Like, we don't know that the other one does.

And so, awesome that there's a desire.

And just like, bummer that there's a difference between

the desires of the work, I mean.

Of how the work happens, not between the desires, right?

Yeah.

Because the person who's asking the question is also desiring to

make this better and different.

It's just how is different between these two folks.

Yeah.

That's a big, that's the big challenge, right?

Yeah.

Is that how am I processing information?

What feels too much for my system, what feels too much for your system,

it's, it's going to be different.

Right.

Because we're going to have, you know, especially in

neurotypical relationships or relationships where one partner is

neurotypical and the other is more, um.

is not, wait, what am I saying?

In a relationship where someone is neurotypical and

someone is more neurodiverse.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Um, what we're, what we're going to find in those relationships

is that there are just really different ways of perceiving, right?

Because like for somebody, um, Who has, like, like, there's, there's

something called, like, monotropism.

Have you heard of this?

Oh, definitely.

Monotropism is like, it's a form, it's, it's a way of getting, like, hyper

focus, focused and fixated on one thing.

Right?

Like, I don't know, um, perhaps, uh, keeping a pantry really organized.

But, um.

Okay.

That is also true.

Also, I don't hyper fixate on neurobiological interest of the moment.

I could spend, I could spend 20 hours in a single week.

No, no, I could, I could spend 20 hours in a single week.

Like.

Obsessively looking at research on hippocampal function in teeny tiny little

areas of like, what exactly are the cells in this area of the hippocampus?

How are they processing information and what information is coming to them?

And what is the anatomy of that?

Wait, who's talking to that part?

Where does that come from?

That's not,

Oh my gosh, that type of focus, that type of focus, right?

It like, it's a drive.

It gets you places.

It's amazing.

It's, it's like super.

And also, it means that there's caloric energy that's not going somewhere else.

Yes.

Oh my god.

I mean when I get into a space like that, I will like not answer emails all week.

I have no idea what anybody's saying.

I like put it down to be with my kid.

I put it down to like make dinner, but.

I'll procrastinate about all sorts of other things because I'll get into

the space of like, no, I cannot let this go until I understand what's

happening with the spatial orientation of this area of the hippocampus.

Right.

Wow.

Like that's like, that's what my brain does.

Totally.

I just always thought I just, I've honestly, so I've never been

diagnosed with anything cause I've never gone through an assessment.

Um, my husband and I actually keep talking about.

That because my daughter's recently gone through assessment and he's

like, Hey, would you be willing to go through an assessment?

Cause I think maybe there's some differences happening.

So I'm in the process of like figuring out when can I actually

make that happen and stuff?

Cause I'm, I'm accepting of that possibility.

And like, sure, I'll get an assessment and find out, you know, what's, what's

happening and maybe more information about working with my brain in a way

that really works for our family.

And he is, he has ADHD and dyslexia and our daughter has It's for

different neurodiverse diagnoses.

So we have, we have quite a lot of that in our house.

And I think that does make it different though than this question.

It does.

Because everybody in

our home is neurodiverse.

Right.

In my home, it's a little bit more like there's, there's at least half of us

that are more neurodiverse than others.

But I actually, you know, now that I think about it, I think, I think everybody has

some kind of processing difference in my home, but they're all differences.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right?

And so it could be really easy to take it all personally, because we're all kind of

focused in and noticing different things.

And that's the piece about this, is that inside of having all of these differences,

we also carry a lot of expectations around, oh, it's You're saying this

right like around what what relationships are going to be or how people are

going to show up or how we work on our relationships or how much touch there

is or how much we talk about or Mm hmm

how people should function what should be easy

right and and we have ideas based on a lot of like neurotypical

models Or not even neurotypical models, Hollywood models, let's just call it that.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, where I, I should expect you to want to be close

to me in this particular way.

The way

that looks in Hallmark movies.

Yes.

It could be.

It could be.

Yeah.

It depends.

It depends on what we're wanting.

Some people want it to look like Hallmark movies and sometimes people want it to

look, you know, different than that.

More like a 1950s typical.

They want it to look like Don Traper, you know, to use

another Hollywood style example.

So, so there are plenty of people who have expectations going in about

how we're going to do this, how we're going to have repair conversations,

how we're going to be close.

What closeness even feels like to you should be what it feels like to me.

That's what we

go into.

But there's grief there, right?

Like we have to focus in on that grief because, because there is no one way,

like put any two people together and there's no, like if we can't have unspoken

expectations and think we're going to meet each other in the same place.

Exactly.

Cause different stuff is gonna, right.

That's a great

way to phrase it though.

Let's repeat that.

We can't have unspoken expectations and still, and still meet

each other at the same place.

Yeah.

Which is what I want.

I was about to say everyone wants, and then I realized I

can't speak for everyone else.

But I really do want that.

I want to not have to speak about it.

Of course you want that.

It would just magically happen.

It would be so much easier.

Right?

Of course you want that.

Yeah.

That's not a thing.

But of course you want that.

It's not a thing.

Thanks for reality.

But it makes sense.

It really does make sense that that's what's wanted.

Yeah.

Because it would take a lot less energy if we could be met in that way.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Well, it also, maybe this is just me and who knows what in my

history, um, that feels like love.

Mm hmm.

That like, it just magically happens and I don't have to ask for it or talk

about it.

Oh, for you, that's love Uhhuh , huh?

I think so.

Interesting.

But that was, that's new to me too right now.

So there's that.

Mm-Hmm.

. Jules: Mm-Hmm.

. Yeah.

And so if, if I have to ask for it, it's not love.

Or if I have to say what I need, it's not love.

it's not

as much love.

It's still love, but it's not as

much.

Right.

So there's an expectation built in around that, right?

Whereas like maybe, maybe I grew up in a home where the stuff inside

of me says, well, if we're talking a lot, if we're talking about

our relationship, that's love.

And if we're not talking about it, then that is not loving.

Right.

And for somebody else, it may be, if we have to talk about it

a lot, you're not seeing me as I need to be seen because I actually

don't want to talk about it a lot.

So you're not being loved.

And I'm not saying, um, that that's always the thought.

I'm just saying that it can be perceived that way.

And we're saying, we're saying, why is your partner taking it personally?

Well, my guess is the personal bit is something around this.

Yeah.

Like, Oh, there's a longing to have it be more similar than it is between

me about how you process information.

And rather than saying, you know what, that is not true for our marriage.

We have bigger differences than I was hoping for.

And that's just the truth of who I married.

And that's the truth of me.

And it's not, it's, it's not like, um, I want to be careful actually about

saying like, Oh, let's, I don't, I don't know what diagnosis I might come back

with, but let's say I come back and then my, it's not like I'm asking Adam,

Oh, could you accept me where I am?

I'm saying, could we all accept us where we are and that we process

this information differently because whatever's going on, like.

His ADHD is maybe different than how mine would show up,

right?

Because there's different kinds.

There's the kind that get more, um, more hyper.

And then there's kinds that get, that, that seem on the inside,

like they're less attentive.

Right?

Right.

But there's different, there's different kinds of foci, foci.

And so part of it is about what's happening for you.

How do you experience the world?

And here's what's happening for me and how I experience the world.

And here's what my needs are.

And how do we have a conversation about this that doesn't feel too much.

Right, and it's less about I accept you're different, more

about I accept we are different.

And by the way, I think neurodiverse couples

have a leg up here because they might need to talk about this.

And neuro, um, neurotypical couples where both people are more

neurotypical still have differences.

They just aren't really talking

about them.

I was just going to say that.

So not to minimize or change the question here, but like I finally realized and I

said it to Gabe literally yesterday that when I get overwhelmed and I, you guys

know this, I don't know if our audience does, when I get very overwhelmed and

unintegrated, my brain goes into shutdown.

And when he gets very overwhelmed, he goes in to fix it or figure it out.

Which can make him very awesome.

Like I do love that part and it drives him bonkers that my brain shuts down.

Like it is very, very challenging for him.

He's getting better at it.

And we articulate it now, Rebecca, like you're saying, we actually

have conversations now and sometimes he will look at me very

calmly and say, you can do this.

Stay with me.

Don't shut down.

And one time I looked at him very nicely and I said, no, I cannot.

So do I need to take a timeout?

Like, do I need to actually leave the room because I cannot engage right now.

My brain will not do it.

So it doesn't always have to be about neurodiversity.

That's just about, um, when we get too overwhelmed by something,

we function differently.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I,

I'm not, everyone's having

those conversations.

Yeah.

So I think it does require conversations.

I think it also, it really helps when the communication difficulties

are super, super normal.

And it helps to know a little bit about what you need to ask

for to support your own system.

And that may require some journaling and some reflection space and, and

even if you need, you know, somebody to bounce that off with going and seeing

somebody on your own a little bit of here's, here's the needs that I have.

And.

And then bringing that together and finding creative solutions.

So I'm thinking about a couple I actually just finished,

uh, doing an intensive with.

And this, in this situation, there was a need for, um, a really, really different

way of bringing up difficult stuff.

For one, the rejection sensitivity was so intense.

Um, that even bringing up that there was maybe a problem or maybe even a

difference in how they wanted something in the house to go was so bloody.

It was too much for them to be able to do a conversation, but they didn't

want to not have the conversation.

So face to face was problems.

They decided to write each other letters.

For the first, like, four to five exchanges back and forth before they

started bringing it into real time.

I love that.

Mm hmm.

And that actually helped because they could read it, freak

out, calm down, write back.

Mm hmm.

Right?

And the freak out was way less.

And if it was face to face, eye contact was too much and

the body language was too much.

So I'm just, I'm just noticing like, Ooh, we could get kind of creative with

how.

Yeah, we could get really creative with the how.

And I think that that's part of like really, uh, falling in

love with your neurodiversity.

And loving, like, what is so special about who you are and loving your

partner is that you start learning, really, how do, how do I attend to me?

What do I need to do?

Like, if I want to stay inside this conversation, are there things,

like, if I stim in certain ways, is that going to help me stay?

If I, um, you know, do I need to decompress and be alone for

a certain amount of time first?

Like, what are the things and how does that affect timing?

And how does that affect the grief of maybe, like, the way things are

different or the fact that maybe like touch doesn't feel so great for me or

it feels really good for you or we have, we have these differences and we need

to make spaces to grieve what's not the same and also trying to understand

not the same doesn't mean that we're necessarily moving towards rejection.

It means not the same.

Right.

Right.

And inside of some neurotypical spaces and even some really, I'm sorry, neurodiverse

spaces and also neurotypical spaces, uh, rejection is definitely something that I

think a lot of us are really sensitive to.

Mm hmm.

And so that might be playing into why.

Why we or our partners might be taking things personally is because

we're sensitive to this, this idea of, or something about rejection.

Mm hmm.

So it's a, it's a complex space you're entering into and what I'm

hearing you say, Rebecca, is, is.

Is, is a kind of map of the how to do the, what's the principle

underneath that's going to hold us.

And that's actually relatively simple.

It really is.

Which is, there is a big difference here.

Let's face that together.

And read what we need to, and also create what we need to, to answer this

truth about there being a difference

here.

Am I getting it?

You're totally getting it.

So that we can find us.

So that we can, right?

Because it's not about you or me.

It's about us.

Yeah.

Right?

And so we have to learn the other.

We have to learn the other.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Good place to land it for today.

Yeah.

I think so.

All right.

Take care of yourselves.

See y'all

soon.

Bye bye.

That wraps up this week's episode.

Join us again next week for another Why Does My Partner?

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Go to why does my partner.

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Take care of each other best you can.

See you next time.

Mhm.