 What can that miscommunication look like and why does it happen? Oh my gosh, for so many reasons, Thomas, right? So the first... There's a lot of things, yeah. I've got a list of things to go through. So I'll tell you some of the big ones from my marriage that I didn't understand. So first of all, I am extremely emotional. So whenever I cried or whenever I shared more than one thing with my ex, I flooded him and the flooding led to a shutdown on his part. So what I learned in my next relationships is to bring up one topic or issue at a time if I could prepare my partner ahead of time. Because of course, I have a type and now I pretty much date mostly autistic men or neurodivergent men, right? I know someone else like that, yeah. There's something that I'm really, really attracted to about a lot of neurodivergent men. They're amazing. So the flooding piece, knowing that sometimes what I needed to do was send a text or an email and say, these are some of the things that are really affecting me right now or that I'd like to talk to you about when would be a good time. Because I did that after we divorced and the conversations we had after that were so different than the conversations we had in our marriage. Because number one, it gave him time to really think about how to address those issues. I wasn't super emotional and flooding him because I had time to think about what I wanted to say and I could be more concise and specific, which I learned I am or I wasn't in my marriage concise or specific at all, right? So those are important. And then those are really, really big things. The flooding, being emotional, not being concise and specific and giving your partner the space and the time to really think through the topics that you want to talk about. I think that's really, really critical. I suppose there's some aspects to that that I could probably tease out a little bit, I think. Go for it. Yeah. I think there's definitely in terms of that kind of prepping people before having a very serious or perhaps negative or controversial. Controversial? What are you saying? Yeah, just a controversy. Now, what am I saying? My brain is very foggy today. You'll have to be very understanding. That's okay. Yes. So a confrontation, that's what I'm trying to go for. A confrontation, okay. I think there's definitely an aspect of, you know, we talk a lot about transitions and I think even in terms of socializing, understanding like or having time to ease into a social transition is quite important for me and I think for a lot of people. I think when, you know, I'm looking back at times in my life where, you know, someone's been upset about something and they've kind of just come at me with this, as you said, kind of like a flood of emotions. It's very overwhelming because I'm not in the headspace where I'm like, okay, right, we're talking about something. And also, as you said, you know, having time to think about things, it's really important when you are quite a lexifimer, can you struggle to identify and understand your own emotions in the moment specifically. So having some time to really like understand how you feel about certain things and what you want to say I think can be really important. I think as well, it can sometimes be a bit anxiety-provoking when someone's like, oh, right, we're going to talk about this at some point. But I think in every single case that someone has done that with me, it tends to be a lot more easy. You know, I think there's probably another element to miscommunication that might come more from the autistic side of things, which can be things around like PDA, pathological demand avoidance, which, you know, it's very apparent when we're younger, but when we get into adulthood, it's a little bit different and whenever there is kind of expectations put on us to speak or we're, you know, thinking about some expectations that someone's going to have for us in a relationship, it can often be quite difficult not to kind of shut down and stuff in those kind of situations. Like it's kind of like a defence mechanism sometimes when someone is saying, right, this is what I need from you and expectations are like a very core part of why PDA occurs when we have someone who puts expectations on us. That's the main thing. It's not about being difficult or being like aggressive or single-minded or anything. There's a motorbike gone by. It can be very noisy at this road. But I think that that's also another thing and I feel like the situations where I've had the most productive conversations which do kind of touch on perhaps negative things is when there is kind of an air of slow pacing to the conversation or, you know... Totally, absolutely. And I was guilty of telling off. I was guilty of rushing conversations. I was guilty of not understanding my ex's need for transitions and all the things that you said. Also the issue of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. Say that three times fast. So I didn't understand that my ex, when he came home from work, what he needed was time alone to decompress. And that might be in front of a computer. It might be in front of a TV. It might be sitting alone at the dinner table eating his dinner by himself. And the thing is, Thomas, I took that personally. So if I had understood that those were things he needed in order for us to have a conversation we could have avoided so much miscommunication, right? So if you know that you are in a neurodiverse relationship and you know that one or both of you is autistic or neurodivergent I think one of the most important things is to understand what your needs are and what you want in a relationship and to be able to communicate that with kindness and compassion with your partner rather than doing it, which this is the way I did it often. I didn't know we were a neurodiverse couple. I was a screamer. You know, I grew up in a house where we screamed and that's how I got my ex-husband's attention. Oh my gosh, I can't imagine the dysregulation in his nervous system. Every time I opened my mouth he didn't know if I was going to scream if I was going to speak to him with kindness, love and compassion. I can't even imagine how that must have felt to him. So I think that miscommunication comes a lot of times from not understanding what each partner needs because if you can communicate that to your partner then if they care about you, especially if they love you, they're going to want to do that. But they're thinking you need what they need and you may be thinking that the same thing, vice versa, they never talked about it. Right, you've made assumptions and you know what happens when we make assumptions, right? If you assume you make an ass out of you and me, which isn't good, right? Well, we're all kind of the centres of our own universe, aren't we? So we all kind of believe that, oh, I'm experiencing this, I'm human. So it should be the exact same for every single person. And it isn't. And it isn't. Right. That's not that. So the other thing that I was not aware of was sensory sensitivities. Right, so if we were in a place where there was a lot of extraneous noise, I remember my ex telling me that he could not necessarily hear me or he could not necessarily hear conversation because he was focused on all of the noise around us. And as he got older, I think it got worse for him. And I couldn't understand that. I'm like, I'm sitting right next to you. Why can't you hear me? Again, judgment, not a compassionate kind of curious mind. Because I didn't know about our neurological differences. I think it's interesting, isn't it, with the sensory things. Because I came across a concept. I think I was talking to someone about it on a podcast. I think it was a happy autistic lady where we were talking about a concept called habituation. Which is basically, it's best described in terms, someone came up with the analogy of a snail about habituation. It's like, if you were to boop a snail, usually it would go into a shell. If it came back out and you booped it again, it would go back in its shell. If it came back out and you booped it again, it would be like, hmm, maybe I shouldn't go back in my shell. It's not a threat. And that's kind of the idea of habituation. Whereby things that occur very, very regularly and consistently, your brain kind of tunes them out as things. So if you were to translate that to perhaps the sensory environments, like going to a bar or being in public in town where there's lots of busy stuff going on, lots of people, lots of noises, most people they might be able to, they are able to kind of tune that out to some extent. Whereby it's kind of like isolating a voice when someone's talking to you. But when you're autistic or when you have sensory differences, sometimes it's a lot of the time it can be quite hard to tune that stuff out and actually focus on someone that's speaking to you. It's like your brain's being... It's like a roundabout and there's loads of traffic coming in from different parts of the roundabout rather than just one car going round and processing like you would do if you were having a conversation somewhere quite quiet. Yeah, and it can be overwhelming, but I didn't know that. I also discovered that when I used a certain tone to my voice, it literally caused pain for my ex-husband and he got special earbuds that were fitted just for his ears so that he wouldn't hear the things that were painful to him and I thought, oh my gosh, that's... Is that something to do with volume? Or is that like the pitch? I think it was the pitch and the volume. So imagine, I took these things personal. I took so much personally and I think that happens in every relationship, but I think in a neurodiverse relationship if you understand the underlying reason for the things you're taking personally, you can give your partner grace and hopefully you can accept the differences, but we didn't know. So can you imagine every time I sat next to him or stood next to him and I think it was on his right side, he would move because my voice, the pitch of my voice and maybe even how loud I was hurt his ear and at first he told me that then he would just change location. Trying to be kind, but I didn't take it that way. So I think... And then you get those non-verbal cues, you're like, oh, they're moving away when I sit down next to them. What are they trying to say? Or are they trying to insinuate? Yes, instead of asking, what can we both do? Do I need to walk on this side when we're together? Do I need to touch you in that ear because I didn't really understand the pain and the sensory issues. And I think there are so many miscommunications between neurodiverse couples because we don't necessarily understand ourselves, whether we're the holistic partner or the autistic partner. And I think the other thing that I realized is my ex probably was masking for the entire time we were together because he would say to me that he was going to do things and then not follow through. And I think a lot of times it was because he wanted to meet my needs or expectations. I don't think he ever wanted to disappoint me. Or for himself, not to feel like he can't do things. Exactly. There's neurotypical expectations. Exactly. And then when he didn't follow through and I became the nag or I became kind of annoying again or judgmental, it caused conflict. And so there was another miscommunication. If he wanted to do it, but he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to, I needed to create kind of emotional safety in our relationship, which I don't think that I did on a regular basis. So then he could say, I'm not sure I can do that, but I'm going to try. And this isn't what I can do right now. This is what I can commit to right now. Or I can't say yes. And I had to be okay with a no. And I think a lot of times I wasn't okay with the no because I didn't understand where the no came from because I didn't understand why he... I just kind of felt like just being difficult for the sake of it. Yes. Or why he could do something yesterday, but he couldn't do it a week later. The same task or request would be denied. And it might be because he was too overloaded, right? And I didn't know and he didn't understand why he couldn't always be consistent in something that could be very simple, like coming home at a certain time from work. So now I understand all those things, but it costs so many problems and miscommunication. I think, you know, there definitely is a kind of a glaring thing for me in terms of miscommunication, particularly between autistic and all those stick individuals is the indirect first direct communication. I've had a lot of situations where I have taken someone's words very directly, like it's... A lot of us tend to put a lot of weight on what people say to us. Like the actual words, like it's kind of... Best way to describe it is kind of like we take it as it would be written in a book or written in a piece of text rather than the different aspects of the tone and the delivery and the emotions and the facial expressions and the body language that accompany that, which, you know, a lot of allistic individuals may use a lot of. And then on the flip side, a lot of direct communication that we use kind of goes unheard because the level of like emotional or tonality changes doesn't indicate that it's necessarily as important as we are saying it. I think there's a really good example about, you know, if you go out to someone and say in this kind of tone, you know, I'm feeling 90% of my capacity at the moment. I'm very anxious and I'm going to have a meltdown. You say it like that and they kind of just say, oh, do you need any help with that? And it's like, yeah, probably. And it's communicated in a way that I'm like, I'm being very clear about what exactly is happening, but nobody's reacting in that way. Whereas if I was to go, oh my God, I'm so stressed, I'm so anxious and my brain is all over the place and I just can't do all of this. And people are like, oh my God, okay, okay, let's get you somewhere else. Let's get you quietly. I think from both sides, it can often feel like neither one is really getting across what they're wanting to get across because the holistic individual isn't taking the direct communication as seriously as they should. And the autistic person is perhaps not picking up on exactly what the indirect communication means in terms of what they say. I think it is a really, really big thing that even in relationships that I've had, it's something that people forget about. They'll forget that you don't necessarily always have that level of expression as well. I talk a lot about emotional expression versus emotional explanations. Emotional explanation being explaining, describing feelings, saying that I'm feeling this way because of this and it makes me feel like this. And it's very serious or it's not too bad. Whereas emotional expression is the way that you deliver it. There's kind of extra indirect aspects to how we're saying things. I love that, Thomas. I absolutely love that in the neurodiverse couple support groups that I facilitate. One of the things that I suggest to couples is to use either red, yellow, and green like cards or just the words. I'm at a red, which means I'm at a 10. I'm going to explode. I cannot talk to you. And just to be able to either use a card or say the word. A yellow, you might be able to talk about one non-emotional, not a deep subject for a short amount of time. And then green, I'm good to go. I have enough spoons. I have enough energy or whatever. I think when we're dysregulated, I think this goes for any couple. But I think it's really challenging in a neurodiverse relationship. When I have a pressing issue that I want to talk to my husband or my partner about, and they're at red, which could, you could use numbers if that's easier for you. And maybe they're at a 10 or a minus 10. Percentages, whatever it is. When your partner shares that with you, you need to respect their boundaries. Because that's a boundary. That is, if you go into a conversation with me when I'm in this place, you are no longer respecting my boundaries. And I will either explode and melt down possibly, or I'm going to shut down. And it could be for days, right? And I would notice that for me and my ex-husband, he would shut down. And sometimes I wouldn't really hear from him for days. And then he'd come back to me after he had processed and he had done what he needed to do to decompress. And sometimes he would literally use the exact words that I had said to him when I had overwhelmed him, right? When he was at a 10. He might have heard what I said, but he wasn't able to process it until he was able to process it. So finding the tools that you can use with your partner when either one of you are at a 10 or are about to explode versus at, you know, green or one, then you can be able to communicate and hear each other. Because you can listen. But you may not hear each other. I think it's really apt saying that. I mean, there is like the... I'm using apt a lot. I don't exactly know. I just like, I go through a list of words. I'm like, this word kind of works for me. This one, if I use apt a lot, that sounds good. Okay. I think it's... You know, you're definitely highlighting an aspect that's very important that I think is often an issue for allistic autistic relationships. And that's the social battery. And I don't think that a lot of partners of autistic people are really aware of perhaps how much of their social battery that being around someone for like a day or like a weekend can actually eat up like our social battery. And we get told like, why don't you go out? Why don't you go and see in friends? And we're like, well, I just don't feel able or I don't feel in the right headspace to go out. And quite often it's just because we spent the battery. It's gone. And I think that's... Even looking at it in a wider scale, sometimes for me, my ideal situation in a relationship is that I see my partner like three days a week, whereas the other days I'm kind of on my own doing my own thing. And that seems to be a good balance for me. But we will talk about kind of like the milestones and stuff and sort of managing daily life. But I think having an appreciation for just how quickly that social battery can be drained even just within the company of another person is quite important because you need to maintain your friendships because if the relationship breaks down, then you don't have people to rely on that you've talked to. You're not maintaining those really close connections which are quite important. And you're always feeling like you're not doing enough. You're not engaging enough with them. You're not seeing them enough. And so there's always the kind of that pressure that you're like, all right, I need to talk to them now. At this point and after planning this amount and it does start to, I think when someone's very adamant that you see them a lot more, it can really just break down a lot of areas of your life even if it's stuff like work or let alone friendships. And there's, I think as well, it is important particularly when that person is not in a good place and as you said, you really want to talk to them about something. I can draw on personal experiences that I've had recently. My then partner kind of, I don't know, they really wanted me to talk to me and it's something that's happened maybe quite a few times and I haven't been in the right head space. I've needed one, two, three days just to kind of process and think about it. And it was in this situation, they rushed it, like they were calling me multiple times and I was like, I really just can't talk, trying to put my boundaries in place. And it wasn't something that that person was, I guess, understanding about. They took it as me just being difficult. And I think that's kind of a common thread, I think, when people don't particularly understand. Yeah. Oh, you're just trying to play this weird power move on me and I'm like, no, it's not that. I just literally, like if you want me to process what you're saying and you want to talk about it, I need to be in a good place. And, you know, I think, you know, there is something that I could probably touch on which is sort of related to that, which we could talk about in a different question. Do you think that there's any other kind of common miscommunications that can happen? Yeah, I think the emotional piece is really, really critical in a lot of the neurodiverse couples because what you talked about with not showing a lot of emotion when you are at your wit's end. The flat effects, the vocal and the notary. Yeah. And, like, you know, one of the reasons that I actually moved forward on filing for divorce was because I was in the emergency room. I thought I was having a heart attack. My ex and I were separated. We were hooked in and he didn't say hello. He didn't ask me how I was doing. He didn't, you know, hold my hand. He didn't give me a hug, nothing. And then a few minutes later, he screamed at me that he was going to divorce me the next week. Now I know, Thomas... That's not very like... But he was overwhelmed. That seems like very poor timing. Right. But he was overwhelmed. He'd never seen me so vulnerable, right? He'd never seen me in a situation like that. You know, we've been together 32 years and I might have woken him up out of sound sleep. So I was looking for that emotional connection and I was looking for that support because I was scared to death. I can't tell you how many couples have shared that a similar type thing happened like a dog died or a parent died or a sibling got diagnosed with a horrible disease like cancer. And then they've shared that with their neurodivergent partner and there was not the response they were looking for. And I think a lot of times, again, misunderstanding that the partner may not know exactly what to say because that particular experience has never happened to them before. They don't want to say the wrong thing, right? And so I think for those of us that aren't autistic when we're having those crises we need to be able to say to our partner what I need from you right now is for you to hold my hand. What I need from you right now is for you to sit here and sit next to me and just hold me while I cry. And I know sometimes that's hard to do when you're emotional but if my partner doesn't feel emotions the way I do or doesn't process them the way I do I'm going to see him as bad for that. I'm going to judge him when really he may be kind of scared and he doesn't know what to do. And I think that's what happened over and over again in my marriage so I literally had to say to my ex when I'm crying, when I'm upset the best thing that you can do is walk over to me and give me a hug. And so I know for some people it feels uncomfortable to ask for the emotional reciprocity or the emotional response you want but if you don't ask for it, right? If you don't ask for it there's no way for your partner to know. And I suppose in kind of looking at what we said earlier or thinking about what we said earlier about being in the center of the universe and thinking everyone works the same way that you do. Am I right in thinking that if they've been in that state that that's not something that they would want? Like they might want some a bit more distance and time to think about it. Right. When my ex-husband's mother died he cried for a few seconds and then that was it. And when his father died he didn't cry at all. Where I was an absolute mess when my parents died and I, Thomas, I didn't understand his reaction. I didn't understand his response. I thought he was cold. I thought he was stoic. I thought he was uncaring. And what I realize now is, oh my gosh he's probably feeling so much inside that he didn't know what he needed in the moment or how to express his emotions. And I can't remember exactly what happened but he probably spent a lot of time alone kind of processing his feelings. And I wanted him to talk to me. I wanted him to connect another miscommunication. Right? I took a personal. I thought things about him that weren't true. You know, I saw him through a negative lens. And I share all this and I try to be vulnerable and realize what I did wrong as well as what we did wrong is a couple because there are so many couples out there that are unintentionally hurting each other. And it has to stop. It has to stop because it's ending relationships. It's causing people to be physically and mentally not healthy and emotionally not healthy. And so that's why I say understanding what your needs are and what you want in a relationship and being clear about what boundaries you need it can be a game changer in a relationship. But you have to understand each partner has to understand themselves and feel like they can communicate that to their partner and that their partner is not going to judge them, right? Yeah, for having different needs. I think it's definitely something like I'm just kind of thinking about myself in those kind of situations. I had a podcast with autism from the inside. Paul McCallus, which I think you know. But we were talking about that and he brought up like a very sort of aspect of Alexa Fimea which I resonated with a lot and that's kind of being good in emergency situations. But not necessarily with the emotional component of it. It's like when we're in an emergency situation we're very helpful in terms of logic. How do we get over this? What you need to do, you know, grounding people but perhaps not the immediate emotional responses that a lot of people might have. And also I think that there is an aspect of specifically for myself when someone's telling me something that's fairly emotional and raw or open or vulnerable. I feel that I don't engage as much. My way of respecting or understanding is that is by processing it very, very, very, very heavily. I don't, you know, I look off into the distance. I kind of focus in on exactly what they're saying and try to think about what it means for them, what I would feel in that situation. And while I'm doing all of that I'm just kind of a bit more stone face and I'm just kind of like looking off into the distance. And it's, you know, I'm feeling those emotions very, very intensely and I'm like, oh my God, like. But it doesn't necessarily appear that way on the outside. It could just look like I'm not really listening and I'm just kind of not contributing, not trying to help them and, you know, so it's, and it's the same with a lot of autistic people that I've met. It's like, you know, they, when they're expressing something they just speak about it and they just, they don't necessarily have that aspect of getting upset or getting emotional. They may get emotional upset later on when they kind of process those emotions and what those events mean to them. But in the moment it's very much like this, I'm a sponge and I'm just absorbing what's happening, what they're saying and how they're feeling. So I feel like sometimes that can be miscommunicated. Absolutely. Usually when people like think of people who are really listening to them they make eye contacts much more than usual and they make the faces and they're like asking questions and they're, they say, yeah, yeah, I get you. Yeah. Yeah. And stuff like that. All stuff that stops you from processing exactly what that person's saying for, especially for an autistic person. Right. When you're trying to focus too much on that in direct communication you're not really sitting with what people are saying. So it's interesting that kind of dynamic, you know. And it's a major miscommunication. It might be one of the most serious ones because when I'm looking for that emotional reciprocity and I'm looking for you to shake your head and I'm looking for you to go, uh-huh, I hear you, I understand, or I hear that must have been difficult and I'm looking for validation and I'm looking for some feedback and you're not giving it to me and I don't know you're autistic or I don't know you're neurodivergent or I know nothing about neurodiversity. I'm judging you. Yeah. And I know, you know, you're listening. How could you not? Right. You're getting here. Can you not feel anything? How could you not? I validate what I'm saying. Exactly. So here's one of the things that I say to couples. I say when you're having a conversation with each other and you know what you need from your partner, ask for it. So if you need validation, you can say, I'm going to share what happened at work and I need your validation, meaning I need you to say, I understand that sounds like it was really hard for you and you can even come up with a few sentences that can be used, you know, repeatedly. Or I just need you to listen and I just need you to hold my hand with me while I talk, you know, while I word vomit, right? Or I need you to help me come up with a solution because your brain works differently than mine. And when you can ask for what you need while you're having that conversation, then you set your partner up for success. I didn't do that. So every conversation we had, you know, I might be looking for different things, but I wasn't clear and concise about what I needed and wanted because I don't even know if I knew half the time, right? So I think definitely like the snuggling, the snuggling and the hand holding and the kind of aspects where you don't have to like look at each other and you can just kind of get that, that validation through touch is also, I think, something that works quite well because you don't necessarily have to think about all those indirect things. You can just kind of sit there and listen and comfort your partner with touch and you know, I think that's a very important part. I agree with that, definitely. Yeah, and the emergency response piece, Thomas, I'm 100% in agreement with you. I think a lot of folks who are like first responders in law enforcement in the military. I know, I know many of them. It's a perfect fit, right? It's a perfect fit. To some degree, I think some of the sensory and social components can be like, you know, it'll be interesting to do a study. What is like the paramedic and like the first responders kind of a narcissistic somatism? Because that could be something that, you know, I definitely see myself in that situation. If I see someone hurt or I see someone not in a good place, I'm always like, damn, like I'm going for it. Yeah. And my ex was the same way. Yeah, like we would see somebody who was hurt or an accident and he would stop and possibly see if there's anything we could do or whatever. I would be like, keep going, keep going. I don't want to see anything. I don't want to see any blood or gourd and people keep going. I can't do this because I would get overwhelming like anxiety from seeing people hurt. I could not. I felt too much. Yeah. He was able to kind of remove himself from it and just act in the emergency situation in the best way possible. Unless it was me, he could do it with our daughter, but he didn't do it well with me. Yeah. So it's interesting. I think that the last thing that I would really like to talk about, which is I think I would probably say another one of the biggest ones is stuff to do with cognitive empathy. And I've talked about this before and there's been a lot of autistic people who have come back to me and say, oh, I understand these situations. Don't tell me that I don't understand these aspects. But it's very well researched and a lot of autistic people do tend to lack this aspect of cognitive empathy in the context of an allistic individual. In the context of autism, it's not an issue because you don't need to have that aspect of it because it's sort of, you know, it's understood anyway. But in terms of like picking up on signals that you're in direct signals that you're trying to drop to them or certain behavioral differences that you do in order to communicate how you're feeling, anything that's not explicitly characterizable as an emotion. Like if you're crying, obviously we know that you're upset. If you're becoming quiet and you're giving shorter sentences and you know, you kind of have a bit more of a lower vocal tonality, we may be able to say, you know, what's happening like you're acting differently. But a lot of people, when you do that, they say they're okay. And they're like, oh, okay, direct communication. You must be okay then, great. You know, and so you have that situation where I think there's a concept that I'm not totally on board with it, but like the idea of like the Cassandra syndrome that's talked about a lot, you know, that feeling unemotionally heard by your partner and people not really believing you that they're like that. I don't think that that's necessarily right because it's a lot to do with that miscommunication. You know, on one side, if the autistic person is really hyper aware of that, they will be asking you all the time if there's any differences to the communication that the indirect communication that seems to be coming across. And on the other side, the person will feel like, oh, hey, actually, they don't care about how we feel. And they don't pick up on this stuff and they're just kind of brushing it off even though I'm making it obvious to them. No, they're not. If you communicate directly, that's always going to cancel out that feeling of, you know, what's up because of the indirect stuff. So you get a lot of situations where people are like, oh, they don't care about me. They care about me in these ways. And I say, you know, have you told them that you're feeling a certain way? No, no, I haven't. They should just read my mind. But I think that's something that even a lot of just neurotypical relationships struggle with to a certain degree. It's just a lot more heightened. And it's kind of like if you have situations where that person is trying to communicate indirectly very subtly over a long period of time, it comes to a breaking point with like, why don't you care about me? And all this emotion just comes out and you're like, what is happening? I didn't know you were not feeling okay. So you have that kind of reactivity just off the block and it kind of, it feels like it just comes out of nowhere at all. It just comes out of nowhere. And it's very frightening sometimes just like for us, feeling like at any moment a partner could just tell us that we're not being a good partner and that we were not caring about our feelings. I'm like, I can't remember a time when I didn't. You didn't say that you were feeling that way. And I'm like, well, I didn't need to say that I didn't. I picked up like, you know, so you have situations like that. Yeah, where you're flying on the wall of my marriage for 30 years, that's exactly what happened. That's exactly what happened, Thomas. And you know, so the Cassandra syndrome was coined by Maxine Aston. And I think that if we kind of take it apart, like we peel the onion a little bit, I think it's about misunderstanding. I think it's about miscommunication. I think it's about not being clear what we each want to need. I think it's about having different perspectives and not respecting each other's perspectives. I think it's about so many things that we didn't understand when Cassandra syndrome was coined as a term. It's a very pathologizing thing that's very medical model kind of autism is the problem. And looking on my relationships and talking to other people, they feel the exact same thing. They don't feel like what they're communicating is being heard because it's not, you don't have those indirect aspects to it and the other person doesn't understand. So I would agree with you there. The miscommunication is definitely the core of that kind of thing. Yeah, and the double empathy piece, right? Because there are so many couples that don't have empathy for each other's way of doing things or way of communicating. And so there's that constant judgment. I mean, that's what happened over and over again in my marriage. And thank goodness that I learned about neurodiversity because I would have kept making the same mistakes in every relationship thereafter, right? If you don't know better, how can you do better, right? So now, I ask when we have an emotional issue that we need to talk about or something that's pretty deep and is going to take more than a five-minute conversation, where's the best way for me to approach you so that we can have that conversation when we're both in a good place? I would have never done that in my marriage, ever. Another area that we didn't talk about is like vacations. I know a lot of the vacations that we went on, oh my gosh, there were lots of arguments and fights of anger, right? Because I didn't understand... The routine. I didn't understand the overload, right? I didn't understand the routine changes. New places. The changes in routine, new places, new beds, new bathroom, new everything. And again, I don't think my ex understood what he needed. And oftentimes, he would end up sleeping until two, three, four o'clock in the afternoon on vacation. I'm like, I've already been out for six hours and you're still in bed, right? So here's another place where we had repeated conflict. And here you are spending money, Thomas. You're going on vacation thinking you're going to be able to wind down and enjoy yourselves. And then because you don't understand each other's needs, there's conflict in judgment, right? Well, it made that kind of time to adjust to the new environment and to feel comfortable. Right, right, right. And even like sitting on a plane for hours and not being able to get up and walk out and have your own quiet time and what if there are kids or babies crying on the plane or there's turbulence. All those things that we don't take into consideration can be really challenging. So I think the Cassandra syndrome is something that a lot of folks feel comfortable talking about if they're the holistic or neurotypical partner, but I don't think the double empathy piece is something that enough people are talking about, right? And I think it's critical. Any relationships, you need that sense of compromise and that's the same with... I think that's even more important in neurodiverse relationships. There are so many things that you can bring to the relationship when you have a different neurotype, different perspectives, different ways of viewing things and tackling problems that are in their lives. And obviously there are those things that need to be understood first and also to be communicated about, talks about managed and interpersonal over a long period of time. It's not like you say it once and it's completely embedded for the rest of the time. There's been a lot of circumstances where people have understood that I make a lot of content about autism and people have understood that I work this way and this is just how I am and I'm not going to magically change and switch and there are some things that you need to meet me on and I understand there's some ways that I need to meet you on as well. And I'm not necessarily... It is a compromise. I mean, with any relationship it's kind of like a... It's somewhat of a loose idea of a contract in certain circumstances. You are getting something from the other person, you are giving something to that person as well. It's a bit businessy to think of it like that but I think it's definitely worth highlighting. Yeah, because imagine if you got into a relationship and you could be honest about these are the five things that I want you to know about me, right? That are really critical, right? Maybe something regarding the emotional piece, maybe something regarding the sensory piece, maybe something regarding taking trips and transitions and change, maybe something regarding how you process and communicate or like to communicate. What if you could share those things after the first date? Don't share them on the first date, right? I don't want to spill all this information on the first date because you might scare somebody away but maybe like the third or the fourth? This and this and here's the form of an education pamphlet. Are you going to have to read all the, memorize all of these? Yeah, and sign on the dotted line if you want a second date, right? Yeah. But imagine if you knew those things about yourself and you could communicate them in a kind, compassionate way to your potential partner, right? So that's one of the reasons I created the neurodiverse love conversation cards and I don't remember if I said them. I think I said them. So those are 52 questions. I wish my ex-husband and I had asked each other early on in our relationship because if we had understood how the other needed or processed all those topics, oh my gosh, we would have avoided so much conflict and so much judgment, so much. And I think we don't even know the right questions to ask each other oftentimes, you know? Sure, sure. What do you need when you're transitioning from work to home? I wouldn't think to ask that of my ex-husband. A buffer time, please. An hour or two to decompress and then we can chat. There you go. Right. Yeah. So but it's not that kind of romanticized mainstream idea of how relationships have run. It's like, oh, your husband returns from a day of work and you're like, oh, hi honey, the dinner's already set down. Let's have a conversation and have a meal and all this stuff and then let's do this and that. And it's like, oh my God, Jesus, that's a lot to do after you've burnt yourself out from a day of work. Right. And imagine if neurodiverse couples understood that at the beginning of their relationship, right? And Thomas, you're a lot younger than me, right? You're 559. You're my daughter's age. And so your generation is coming into the dating world knowing so much about neurodiversity, which we didn't when I was dating. My ex and I, we started dating at 21. We married at 23. There was no such diagnosis as autism spectrum disorder. Autism was something that you saw in children, right? And there were other diagnosis for adults. I mean, it could be even schizophrenia. There was anxiety and depression and all these other things that we didn't know autism in adults. And now your generation and the generations that come after you have this knowledge and you can have these conversations with your partner and you can say, I want to understand how your brain is wired. I want to understand what makes you work well in a relationship. I would have never said that. I think you definitely, you're definitely right on that part. There is the knowledge out there. I just, I wish that it was more of a mainstream conversation because that's where that's the relationships that people need that in. If someone's already part of the autistic community, they can talk to their partner about these things. It's not everyone now. Might not even be a majority of autistic people who have that. And then talking about relationships and dating, that's also very niche within a niche of the autistic community. It definitely, it's there. I just wish that it was more accessible to people because I get a lot of people who come on to like my lives or they send me messages and they're like, hey, this happened. It really helped me understand my partner and we've had conversations about it. It's like, good, that is brilliant. But not a lot of people, you know, would perhaps search for things like that and find stuff around that. And perhaps they don't even know that they're diagnosed or not. I would also say that there are additional issues with dating nowadays, which I think probably would make the process very, very complex and difficult. You can imagine situations where people are kind of have this phone and they can swipe and they can find people and if something, my new happens in the relationship, they're like, oh, this is like a power thing and I'm gonna be independent, I'm gonna push them away and when I'm gonna talk it over and develop things further and communicate about it, it's done. I'm not having it, I'm gonna go find another one and it's gonna be easy. Yeah. I totally can relate. I actually did an episode on, I think, I think we called it something like, am I dating somebody who's autistic around the spectrum? And I think that, remember I'm 59, right? So a lot of the men that are on the dating apps, what's interesting is they're in IT, they're engineers, they're in finance and many of them, when you go out on a date with them, you talk to them, this is a generalization so I hope your listeners will see it as that. I'm just putting this out there. Many of them ended their relationship or multiple relationships and oftentimes it's marriages. I can't tell you how many men I've gone out with and I've talked to you who've been in two or three marriages, remember they're my age or older and they're trying to figure out how to get this right. They do not know that they're neurodivergent. They do not know that they're autistic. But when I tell them that I have a podcast called Neurodiverse Love, they're like, what is that about? And I tell them. Yeah, they don't know what neurodiverse means. And some of them are like, I have to explain what neurodiverse means and I can't tell you. I probably had a half a dozen men listen to the podcast and say, I think I'm autistic. So I'm like, and these are men in their 50s and 60s. I think it's really underrated. Just like, I think it's good to think about the experiences that we have, but with relationships, it's much more of such an emotional investment and it's such more of like a time spent with another person that if you have experiences which are similar in terms of relationship, I feel like that's very compelling evidence. Because it is, it's a clash of an autistic and an allistic person and living. So those differences are obviously going to show up a lot more. So I think definitely I can see why. I am aware that we've been chatting for a while and we've only kind of gone with the first question that I was going to ask. I think it would be really good to have you back on another point to talk about perhaps the more dating side of things. Okay, anytime. And sort of how to, I guess, the more kind of finding a partner and sort of the early stages of things that would be okay. Absolutely. But I'd love to talk a little bit about kind of the challenges or the positives to neurodivergent relationships but also about like life milestones. Things like moving in together, holidays as you mentioned a little bit about getting married, engagements, what that means. All of that stuff. I kind of started off phrasing it as a question and now it's not but do you get what I'm asking? Yeah, absolutely. So I think there are major milestones that occur as your relationship moves on, right? So the first one might be that you're monogamous or that you're dating only each other or you're dating maybe two people or whatever, right? There's something happening that you're more committed to each other. And so being clear about what that looks like because one person, I remember my ex saying because you thought about cheating during our marriage as far as I'm concerned, you cheated. I didn't understand that logic. Really? Yeah, I didn't understand that logic but then I had one of my... It's a natural thing that people have curiosity about. It's nothing that you can stop. It's just about not doing it. Right, but you know what was so interesting, Thomas, one of my autistic co-hosts when I shared that with her, she says I understand where he was coming from because it hurt him just as much to know that I was thinking about cheating or at least this is what she thought as if I had done it. It was like for him, there wasn't a differentiation and so I think being clear about what monogamy means if you're in a relationship with somebody who is a different neuro type because is monogamy that you can't sleep with anybody else, like have sex with anybody else or that you can kiss other people, right? So being clear about what the definition is. So those boundaries. As I said, it's like a contract, isn't it? With two adults consenting to a relationship, you don't have to follow all of the things that the mainstream is telling you that you need to do. You just need to both be agreeing to it. Right, because then the guy I fell in love with after my divorce, he said to me, he didn't consider cheating unless he slept with the person. So kissing somebody going out on dates wasn't cheating. Okay, we need to understand that, right? So that's the first milestone that could literally break the relationship, right? You cheated on me, no I didn't, right? Did I hit it there? You bring up like an experience that I've had. Okay. Well, I've never cheated on anyone or anything like that, but I have been in a lot of situations where I didn't understand that the situation was a date or it was something akin to a date or the conversations that we're having were akin to not a conversation with a friend. And that's because I didn't really understand the greater social context of what was happening. And it goes so far even with flirting, you know? I don't really, and to be honest, it is a very misunderstood idea that flirting is just very easily characterizable. It is to a certain extent, it's very explicit when you are making like sexual references and things of that nature. But for the majority of situations, sometimes for some people, just having an interest and talking to someone or if still talking to someone, if they put their hand on your shoulder and perhaps like tap your leg or like, you know, so it's very grey that area. And I think that there has been times in my life where I've understood my relationship with someone as a friend, but then, you know, looking back, it didn't really seem like that was how that went, but I didn't flirt with them, I didn't confess my love, I didn't kiss them, I didn't do anything. But, you know, I did go and have a drink with them or something like a, you know, very much on their side, the person that I went for a drink with, they might be like, oh, this is a date that's happening. But it's not in my head and I'm like, I'm not going for a day, I'm going for a drink with a friend and, you know, it's not really understanding the other person's intentions with me. Yeah. So sometimes I think it's best just to ask, you know, is this a date or are we just going as friends in that particular situation if you're going out with somebody that you could potentially be in a relationship with? I was very young. I was like, well, one time, age of 14, one time the age of, age of 18, 19. I got you, I got you. My ex talked about those kind of situations in middle school too, where these girls had crutches on him and he didn't know and he didn't know what to do. Yeah. And he looks back and it just, when you see it through a different lens, you're like, oh my gosh, I could have had that girl, whatever. Oh yeah. Understanding flirting is elusive. It is really important. In the dating context, but also... I think it's hard for a lot of people. Yeah. Because it's individual, isn't it, to the person as well, isn't it? Because it's not like this easily understood concept. There's no playbook. There's no, you know, dictionary or encyclopedia of different ways to flirt because everybody does it differently, right? Yeah. I think that that's hard for a lot of people.