 Good day and welcome back to the 4TOD podcast with your host, Mr Thomas Henley, of course. How are you doing today? Today I've got a very, very special episode for you people out there. We're going to be talking about dating and relationships as a neurodivergent. We're going to be talking, well myself particularly, I'm going to be talking from the more autistic side of things and my guest Mona is going to be speaking more broadly about the challenges of dating as neurodivergent, some of the miscommunications that can happen, some of the challenges and positives to longer term relationships in terms of life milestones and managing daily life, as well as how you can spot and avoid potential unhealthy relationships and round it all up with a lovely kind of look into the kind of qualities and mentalities that you need for a successful relationship. I'm very excited for this episode because I feel like there is definitely a need for a lot more content, a lot more awareness, education, anything you want to call around dating and relationships for autistic people. It is something that a lot of people want out of life and we know from just looking at the statistics around social isolation that it is a really big issue that needs to be talked about at least. I'm going to introduce my guest from the neurodivergent love podcast, Mona Kay. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic Thomas and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Definitely. I think when we last had our pre-interview chat we were talking about doing a podcast swap. I think this week it's going to be on mine and the next week it's going to be on yours. It's going to be cool. Absolutely. Yes, it will. You said that you've done quite a lot of podcasts in your time. Would you like to talk a little bit about your podcast and maybe give us an overall introduction into who you are and what you do? Sure. I'd love to. I was married for 30 years. We were together for 32 and we didn't find out until our 29th year of marriage that we were a neurodiverse couple. I found out about this because a dear friend of mine was dating somebody who she'd met on Facebook and she said, there's something different about him. I'm like, how so? Is he different? As she started sharing all this information, I'm like, oh my gosh, that's my husband. That's my husband. That's my husband. We had been separated for almost two years at that time, Thomas. I approached my husband at the time and I screamed at him that I thought he was having a meltdown and I thought he had Asperger's. That was the term I knew at that time. That was the wrong way to approach somebody who you think might be neurodivergent. And then he actually at my pushing went and got an assessment or what was supposedly an assessment and the doctor, the therapist said to him, yeah, you're probably on the spectrum, but so what? And so he came back and he told me that and I said, well, that's important for us to know because now all that conflict we've had, the different perspectives we've had on things, all the challenges we had during our marriage makes sense. If we look at them through a neurological lens, now we get to transform our marriage, but he did not want to do the work. I did. And about nine months after that, we divorced and I took two solid years to really work on getting to know myself better, what role I played in the end of our marriage and really going through a healing process. And then I decided to start the neurodiverse love podcast. And that was in the middle of the pandemic, two and a half years ago. And I started it with that friend who told me about her boyfriend at the time. And we talked about our relationships and what we had learned. And now almost probably 135 to 140 episodes later, I'm still doing the podcast, absolutely love it. And I do support groups also for the neurotypical or allistic partners and for neurodiverse couples. That's really important. Yeah, I love it. I love it all. Yeah. And I'm a social worker, Thomas. So for those folks out there that are in the helping professions that didn't know they were autistic or neurodivergent, or that they were in a neurodiverse relationship, you are not alone because we don't learn about these things in school. And so we don't recognize why we're having the differences we're having. Yeah. Sure. Sure. And as I said, it's definitely something that is underrepresented in terms of the online content that you can see. And it's kind of crazy because there is a need for it. And a lot of people really heavily gravitate towards content that provides that stuff. I think it's very much like an unfilled niche within us, particularly within the Instagram communities. But also just in general, I think there's some YouTubers that might talk about dating and relationships, but no one that I've really come across. So it's definitely needed. It is so critically important because when I meet neurodiverse couples, they are oftentimes in so much pain from all the unintentional hurt they have caused each other. And then they understand that they have neurological differences. And I shared this with you, Thomas. I know I have a lot of ADHD traits. I don't know if I would get diagnosed because we know women, the whole DSM is really a challenge when it comes to women. That's a whole other podcast. But I know that I overwhelmed my ex-husband with all my ADHD traits that I didn't understand. I didn't know that side of me. And so I overwhelmed him. And then he created challenges because he didn't know about his neurodiversity either. Sure. And there is a common thread for a lot of people where if you have an undiagnosed or unaware neurodiversity, it can often present a lot of issues for people and it can often make them feel somewhat inadequate in lots of different areas in life. Yes, absolutely. In fact, Thomas, and this makes me feel bad every time I think about this, repeatedly my ex-husband would say to me, I cannot meet your expectations. I never feel like I'm good enough for you. And I hear this a lot from the autistic partners and the neurodiverse couples groups. And again, it's because we have different ways of doing everything, right? And we don't understand that the difference is what makes us unique. But if we accept the difference in ourselves and accept the difference in our partners and get to really understand why the differences occur, then we can build a better relationship or decide if the relationship we're in is the right relationship for us. But without that understanding, there can't be acceptance. There's actually a lot of anger and resentment and judgment without the understanding. Yeah. Very, very true. Well, I guess it would be probably apt to kick off and have a look at some of the questions that we've got. I think the place that would be good to start off with is talking about miscommunication, the miscommunication that can happen in neurodiverse relationships. For me, I'm kind of thinking just from my own personal experience more along the lines of autistic, autistic, or people who don't know what allistic means, just people who aren't autistic. But I know that you've also had some experience with the neurodiversity. So it would be interesting to hear a little bit more about that as well. So yeah, I mean, 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. Got a list of things to go through. So I'll tell you some of the big ones from my marriage and 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. 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. 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. Yeah, well, yeah, just a controversy. Now, what am I saying? My brain is very foggy today. You'll have to be very understanding about it. Yes, so confrontation, that's what I'm trying to I think there's definitely an aspect of, we talk a lot about transitions and I think even in terms of socializing, understanding 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 I'm looking back at times in my life where 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, having time to think about things, it's really important when you are quite a lexophymic and you struggle to identify and understand your own emotions in the moment specifically. So having some time to really 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. 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 it's very apparent when we're younger, but when we get into adulthood, it's a little bit different. And whenever there is expectations put on us to speak or thinking about some expectations that someone's going to have for us in a relationship, it can often be quite difficult not to shut down and stuff in those situations. It's kind of like a defense mechanism sometimes when someone is saying, right, this is what I need from you. And the 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 aggressive or single-minded or anything. There's a motorbike gone by. It can be very noisy up this road. I think that that's also another thing. And I feel like the situations where I've had the most productive conversations, which do touch on perhaps negative things, is when there is an air of slow pacing to the conversation. Totally, absolutely. And I was guilty of telling off. I was guilty of rushing conversations. I was guilty of not understanding my acts as need for transitions. I mean, 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 what you need. Yeah. 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? So. Well, overall kind of the centers 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, right? And it isn't. And it isn't. Right. 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 I 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? Right? Again, judgment, not a compassionate kind of curious mind. I didn't know about, you know, 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 Happy Autistic Lady, where we were talking about a concept called habituation, which is basically like, it's best described in terms, like someone came up with the analogy of the snail about habituation. It's like, if you were to boop a snail, you know, usually it would kind of, it would go into a shell. And if it came back out and you booped it again, it would go back in its shell, back out, you booped it again, it would be like, hmm, maybe I shouldn't go back in my shell. It's not, you know, 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 a, in a, in public in town where there's lots of busy, busy stuff going on, lots of people, lots of noises, most people, they might be able to, well, they are able to kind of tune that out to some extent, whereby it kind of, it's kind of like isolating a voice, you know, 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. You know, 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, you know, 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. You know, 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, you know, painful to him. And I thought, oh my gosh, that's, you know- Is that something to do with volume or is that like the pitch or is that like- The pitch, I think it was the pitch and the volume. So imagine, you know, I took these things personal, you know, 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, you know, 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, but then he would just change location. Yeah. Yeah, you know, trying to be kind, but I didn't take it that well. So I think- Yeah, and then that 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 what are they trying to insinuate? I'm like- Yes. Yes, instead of asking, you know, what can we both do? Do I need to walk on this side when we're together? Do I need to talk to you in that ear because I didn't really understand the pain and sensory issues. Yeah. And I think, you know, there are so many miscommunications between neurodiverse couples because we don't necessarily understand ourselves, right? 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, for himself not to feel like he can't do things. Exactly. You know, 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 just felt like just being difficult for the sake of it. 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, you know, 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. You know, I've had a lot of situations where I have taken someone's words like very directly like it's we tend 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 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 autistic 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. Like, I think there's a really good example about, you know, if you go at 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, that's yeah, 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, like, yeah, I'm so anxious. And I just, my brain is all over the place. And I just can't do all of this. And, you know, people are like, oh my God, okay, okay, let's get, let's get you somewhere else. Let's get you quietly. Like there's, 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, 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. Like it's, I think it is a really, really big thing that, you know, even, even in relationships that I've had, it's something that people forget about, you know, it's it's, you know, that they'll forget that you don't necessarily always have that level of expression as well. You know, I talk a lot about emotional expression versus emotional explanations, you know, 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, 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, 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 like I'm at a red, which means I'm like 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, right? A yellow, you might be able to talk about one non-emotional, you know, not a deep subject for a short amount of time. And then green, I'm good to go. You know, I have a lot of spoons, I have enough energy or whatever. But 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 works. 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, 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. So 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, it's really apt saying that. I mean, that there is like the, I'm using apt a lot. I don't, I don't exactly know. I just like, it's like, I go through a list of words. I'm like, this word kind of works for me. This, this one for us apt a lot. That sounds good. I think it's, you know, you definitely highlighting an aspect that's very important that I think is often a an issue for allistic autistic relationships. And that's, 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 friends? And we're like, well, I just don't, I just don't feel able or, you know, I don't feel in the right headspace to go out. And quite often it's just because, you know, we spent the battery, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's gone. And I think that's, you know, even looking, looking at it in a wider scale, you know, sometimes, you know, for me, my, my ideal situation in a relationship is that I see my partner like three days a week, whereas like the other, 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, you know, as 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 like quickly that social battery can be drained, even just within the company of another person is quite important, you know, because you need to maintain your friendships, because, you know, if the relationship breaks down, then you don't have people to rely on that you've talked to, you've not, you're not maintaining those, 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, I need to talk to them at this point, and I have to plan in 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, you know, 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, I think as well, it is important, particularly when that person is not in a good place. And, you know, as you said, you really want to talk to them about something. I can draw wrong personal experiences that I've had recently. You know, 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 headspace. 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 like calling me multiple times. And I was like, like, I really just can't talk, you know, trying to put my boundaries in place. And it wasn't something that that that that person was, I guess, understanding about, like they took it as me just being difficult. And I think that that's kind of a common thread, I think, when people don't understand. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're just what you're trying to play this weird power move on me. And I'm like, no, like, it's not, it's not that. It's, I just literally, like, if you want me to process what you're saying, 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, there's any other kind of common mis, miscommunications that 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, that 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. He walked 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'd 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 does it 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 you kind of being 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. Yes, because 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 was 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 gotta 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, we're 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 McCalloth, 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? 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 by processing it very, very, very, very heavily. 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 I'm feeling those emotions very, very intensely and I'm like, oh my God, 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 it's the same with a lot of autistic people that I've met. When they're expressing something, they just speak about it and 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. Usually when people 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 saying, yeah, yeah, I get you. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. All stuff that stops you from processing exactly what that person's saying, especially for an autistic person. When you're trying to focus too much on that indirect 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, your listeners are going to do. How could you not? Right, you're going to hear. How could you not feel anything? How could you not 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 and struggle 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 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 handholding 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 conflict your partner with touch and you know, I think that's very important part of that. Yeah, 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 there's some of the sensory and social components can be like, yeah, you know, it'll be interesting to do a study what is like the paramedic and like the first responders kind of a cystic 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 and 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. I don't want to see anything. I don't want to see any blood or gore or dead 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 one of one of 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. You know, 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 it 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 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 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 by your partner and people not really believing you that you they're like that. I don't think that that's necessarily right because it's it's a lot to do with that there's that miscommunication. You know, on one side, you know, if the 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 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 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 get 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. 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, 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 where they're like, why don't you care about me? And all this emotion just comes out. And you're like, what, what is happening? Like, I didn't know you were not feeling okay. You know, so you have that kind of reactivity, just 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, it's very frightening. Sometimes just, just like, for us, you know, feeling like at any moment upon it could just tell us that, you know, we're not being a good partner and that we were not caring about our feelings. And I'm like, I can't remember a time when I, 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, you should have picked it 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's 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 looking, talking to other people, they feel the exact same thing. Like 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, you know, I ask when we have an emotional issue that we need to talk about or something that's pretty deep, and it's 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. You know, 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 overload, right? I didn't understand the routine 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 till 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 and judgment, right? Well, they made that kind of time to adjust to the new environment and to feel comfortable. Right. Right, right, right. And even like sitting on a plane for hours and not being able to get up and walk out, you know, and have your own quiet time. And what if there are our kids or babies crying on the plane or there's turbulence, you know, 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're of 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, talked about, managed and interpersonally 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's 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 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 of a business 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? You 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 and here's an education pamphlet. Are you going to have to read all the, memorize all of these and sign on the dotted line if you want a second date, right? 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. You did send them, yeah. 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, but now I would. I'm sorry. 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, sit 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? I'm 59. 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 diagnoses for adults. I mean, it could be even schizophrenia, you know, 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. And if someone's already part of the autistic community, they can talk to their partner about these things. It's not everyone now. And it's probably not, 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 you know, the autistic community. It definitely, it's there. I just wish that it was more accessible to people because, you know, I get a lot of people who come on to like my lives or they send me messages and they're like, Hey, this, this happened. It really helped me understand my partner and we've had conversations about and it's like, good, that is, 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, 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 going to be independent. I'm going to push them away. And I'm, you know, they're not when I'm going to talk over and develop things further and communicate about it is done. It's done. I'm not having it. I'm going to go find another one and it's going to be easy. 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 or 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. Some of them are like, and 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 that is, 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 such more such much more of such a like 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 like that, you know, because because it is it's a clash of an autistic and an all this allistic person and living and, you know, so that those differences are obviously going to show up a lot more. So I think definitely I can I can see why I am aware that we've been chatting for a while and we've 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. And sort of how to, I guess, the more kind of finding a partner and sort of the early stages of things if 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. What what do you know, all of that stuff. Yeah, I kind of started off raising it as a question and now it's not but do you got do you got why am I 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 natural thing that people have curiosity about. It's nothing that you can stop. It's just about not doing it. Right, right. But you know, it 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. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's... 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 an error? You bring up like an experience that I've had. 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 greatest social context of what was happening. And it goes so far even with flirting, you know? 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 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, cool, 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 very young. It was like, one time, age of 14, one time the 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 or whatever. So yeah, understanding flirting is, is elusive. In the dating context, but also, I think it's hard for a lot of people. Yeah. So this is 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. So understanding kind of, hate to use the word defining, but I'm going to use it for lack of a better term, defining what kind of relationship you're in, I think is the first major, maybe transition. And then if you decide that you're going to move in with each other, I can't tell you, excuse me, how many of the holistic or neuro typical partners who come to my support group are like, I, everything changed after we moved in with each other. Everything changed. We were either in a long distance relationship. We talked every night. We had this great connection when we would see each other. It was usually for a few days. You know, the sex was great. The conversation was great. We had so much fun that we moved in with each other. And I don't even recognize the person I'm with, right? And so being again, very clear about what you need. So do you need your own separate bedroom? Do you need your own separate office? Do you want to eat meals alone? Do you need time in the morning to have your coffee and read and whatever and how much time do you need? Again, you're not clear about those things yourself and you're not comfortable talking with your potential partner about those things. You're going to have a lot of conflict when you move in with each other. I guarantee you, right? So being clear about looking at what you need while you're living alone or if you're living with your parents or if you're living with a roommate. What is it? What is it that brings you peace and joy? Writing that down and communicating it with your partner for both partners, right? Because for me, I didn't communicate to my ex has been that eating meals together every night was so important. And in his family, they didn't do it. Hey, up. Just popping on to say thank you for listening to this podcast this far. If you could do me a real solid, please make sure to rate the podcast if you're in a podcasting streaming service and do all that like, subscribe, comment stuff on YouTube. Damn, even send a heart in the comments. If you don't feel like typing, make sure to check out my link tree, which is always down below in the description, or head over to my Instagram page at Thomas Henley UK for daily blogs, podcast updates, and weekly lives. This podcast is sponsored by my favorite noise canceling, noise reducing earbuds that you can adjust the volume on. Really, really great thing. They're called Debuts and you can find the affiliate link down in the description of this podcast for a 15% off discount. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of the podcast. That's all from me. So we are talking about sort of the transition into housing, living together, which is I think something that I relate to a lot because I think one of the issues that I have particularly in a lot of the relationships that I've had it is making the commitment and moving and living with somebody because I feel like it's, you know, when you're in those situations where you both have your own house and stuff, there's a little bit more of a kind of a boundary between that. And I have tried moving in with someone before it was kind of during COVID. And I think it was very difficult because the time that we did spend together outside of living together, you know, is a lot more broken up. Like there was times where we'd see each other and times where we wouldn't. And so when we moved in together, it was kind of the situation where I was, I felt like they were on top of me all the time and they were wanting to have the interaction that we would have like when we would see each other on a less frequent basis, which is not how social batteries work, you know, so there'd be a lot of situations where I like, right, okay, I need to be on my own. And they'd be like, are you okay in there? I'm like, yep, yeah, I'm good. I just need some time on my own and to focus on what I need to do. And I found that really difficult. And also, you know, it was it was a situation where we didn't have separate rooms to be in stuff. So that I think that was a difficulty. So I really relate to that aspect of life milestones and stuff. I think in other aspects of life milestones is children. Yes. Oh, that's a big one. I don't have any experience with that. And I have 26 years experience with that. So yeah, I think it's a big one. And you know, now that I think about it, the first apartment my ex husband and I moved into had two bedrooms. And I think having two bedrooms and we didn't, of course, we didn't know we were a nerdy verse couple at the time may have been a saving grace, because we made one a bedroom and we made one a studio for him. Because he was very creative and like to record. And so he could spend as much time as he needed to in there. And we set each other up for success without even knowing it, right? Which may have been a good thing, right? But then when we had our daughter, I have to tell you my ex when we were dating and getting serious, he said to me, Thomas, I don't want to have any children. And I think he knew himself better than he realized. And I said, Well, if you don't, then I'm not the right person for you. But in like a minute, he said, Oh, no, no, I'll have one. But we have to wait five years. So he gave himself that time, right? And I'm like, Okay, I can wait five years. Remember, we were like 21 years old, 22. So the five turned into nine years that we waited. And it was because he was never ready. And so I think for your listeners, it's really important to listen to your partner. If they say they don't want to have children, believe them, right? Don't pressure them into having children, right? So I think that's really important. And then think about what you can do to prepare if you both agree you're going to have children, you know, when is it going to be? And what can you do to prepare? Because there are going to be constant changes, literally minute by minute throughout your day. Any routine that you thought you had, and was important to your well-being is probably going to go out the door. And if you are not flexible with your routine, it's going to create conflict with your partner, right? So I do have to give my ex-husband credit because during the first few years of our daughter's life, he created a beautiful routine for her. And because he was able to do that, it was good for both of them. Now, I didn't have the same routine, right? But he regimented her maybe without even realizing it. So I think in the early years, having a partner who can kind of root nize what can be root nized, like feeding schedules and sleeping schedules and bathing schedules can be really helpful. But having that discussion is really critical, right? The other thing I think is a lot of times, you know, I babysat for years and years so I knew how to change a baby's diaper and how to bathe a baby and all that stuff, and my ex had never done all that. So to have that conversation ahead of time, like who's going to take on what responsibilities and how can we share them, who's going to wake up in the middle of the night when the baby is crying because that's going to happen every single night, maybe multiple times, who's going to feed the baby. And then you have to think about the sensory sensitivities too, because I have had neurodiverse couples talk about how one partner, usually it's the autistic partner, may have a sensitivity to water and splashing. And so they're not able to bathe the kids or it's very difficult and, you know, that sensory battery goes dead very quickly or gets filled up very quickly. The smells, the touch of things. Yeah. And babies pick up stuff and eat it and put it in their mouths and you don't know where it's been. So there's a lot of things that you cannot even prepare for but having a discussion about what you feel comfortable doing and what you are willing to learn how to do, I think is really important. Otherwise, you're going to be in a lot of conflict. So that's a big transition where, yeah, I hear a lot of couples talking about, and it's usually the allistic partner that says, I feel like I'm taking on too much responsibility. But if your partner has never babysat or they've never been with children before, you have an opportunity to teach them, right, rather than get angry at them, right? And maybe you take a parenting class together and you figure out together what you can each do that you feel comfortable with and where you may need your parents to come in or siblings or friends to help, whether it's with teaching or transitions. I mean, it does take a village to raise a child sometimes and it's okay to ask for help. So, yeah, having a child can change everything literally overnight, Thomas. Yeah. Yes. And create a lot of children. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. I think it is for a lot of people in general, but then if you're dealing with neurodiversity, there's just so many things that you can't prepare for. And I did a podcast with a woman who is autistic and she was eight months pregnant. And she talked about the pregnancy piece as an autistic woman and how that impacted her and how the healthcare system was not prepared to hear her needs and to hear the challenges she was having because of her neurotype. And that's a whole other podcast, probably. But that's important too for those folks that do choose to get pregnant, whether they're non-binary or female at birth, you have to have a healthcare team that understands what you need. So, children is a big one. And then, Thomas, another transition is as your children are in school, I know one of the things that I realized quickly was my ex went on one field trip and that field trip caused him so much stress because one of the little kids started running away from the group. He said, I will never go on a field trip again. I will never volunteer in the classroom. I will not have anything to do with other people's kids. And again, I didn't understand what was happening. And so, all that responsibility was on my shoulders, but I loved doing that. So, I didn't see it as a burden. But I think as your children get older and they have their own point of view and they need more from you, being clear about who is going to take what responsibilities and which are really important to share, like we would share homework assistance and that kind of stuff. I'm just thinking about myself personally because for a good portion of my life up until this point, I don't really want kids. I have enough kind of on my plate with my mental health and things that I'm doing at the moment, which I feel would be exacerbated. I still find just the concept of living with another person quite difficult. I think it's something that I'm a lot more open to. I don't think it's something that I would want to do for a while of have kids, but I'm also, if I was to have kids, I think it would be ideal for me if I could get a stable income and perhaps have less responsibilities in that area that perhaps I could manage that. But again, it's the communication aspect of that. It's because some people might be like, yeah, I'd love to take care of the kids more and you can work more. That would be a situation where I'd be like, hmm, might be a bit more open to it. It's just definitely it's not something that I feel I can handle at this time in my life. But it is something to think about, definitely. Yeah. And isn't that great that you can be that honest with yourself? I mean, my daughter, she's your age. She does not want to have children. She is absolutely 100% certain about that. And her girlfriend doesn't either. So they're both in agreement on that. So if you have a partner who wants to have children and you're pretty adamant, you don't, of course, that could be a deal breaker, right? So that's something you need to discuss before you move in with each other or you start talking about... Not on the first date, though. Right. On the first date. Maybe. Do you want kids? Do you go get married? Well, you know what? I mean, I think people are discussing those things up front, maybe not on the first date, but the third or fourth date because seriously, why waste your time with somebody if that particular issue you are on opposite ends of the spectrum? If you don't want to have kids and they do, even though you're getting along well, you're having a good time, I don't think it's fair to expect that you would change your mind down the road because it's something that they really want. I don't know that my ex husband should have had kids. I mean, not that he wasn't a good father in the beginning of our daughter's life, but I think it took him off his career trajectory. I do think it affected other areas of his mental and emotional health. And it affected mine. I had postpartum depression for two years. So you never know. You never know what's going to happen. And you never know what kind of child you're going to have, right? You never know if your child's going to have any kind of physical disabilities or developmental disabilities or if our daughter had colic for seven months. She literally cried every night at seven o'clock nonstop for several hours. It was very challenging. So you can't prepare for that stuff, Thomas. So I think another major transition, too, is extended family issues. So I've heard, especially for older couples in their 40s and beyond, where there may be a family member, a parent who needs assistance. And so that may take you away from your relationship or the children or what have you. Or there might be some monetary needs that the parents might have. And dealing with that, that could be a major challenge in a relationship. So I think most couples experience the empty nest syndrome, which happens when your children grow up and they either go to college or they move out on their own. And I think for a lot of neurodiverse couples, that becomes a time when they realize major, major, major differences that had kind of been covered up because they were both working, they were taking care of the kids, or one of them had more responsibility for the kids, whatever. And then they look at each other. The focus is all on the kids, isn't it? It's not about, it's kind of a self-sacrificing kind of thing. And with that also comes your needs. Yes, yes. Personally, I suppose when it all kind of goes away again, it's, it's illuminated. It's a bit more kind of to the surface. Yes, yes. It's about the practical looking after the kids and making sure they're safe and making sure they, you know, teaching them. And I can imagine that, yeah. Yeah. I see a lot of neurodiverse couples. And I'm sure a lot of couples in general that get to that point and they haven't really nurtured their relationship at the level they needed to, or they haven't really sought to understand each other's needs and wants and dreams. And, you know, so the relationship may end if they're not able to recommit to each other. So, yeah. What other milestones might you want to talk about? Those are the big ones that I can think of. I think that those are some good ones, definitely. I think it would be, it'd be apt. As I said before, I think it would be good to maybe have you on another time to talk about sort of the more dating aspects of things. Sure. Because I am aware that we have been chatting for a while. It's about half past midnight in the UK. It's late for you. For me, so it is, it's a late one. Yeah. I've been nibbling away at the food that I have at the side. Yeah, it's very late for you. Is there anything else that you wanted to wrap up with? Yeah, definitely. I think the last one that I think is really important. I think we could probably talk a bit more briefly on which is, you know, it's kind of a round up to everything. What kind of qualities have you identified or mentalities that you need to have a successful autistic or holistic relationship? The first one is you have to understand yourself. You have to be self-aware. Yes. And if you are not, I think- Self-awareness is important. It is number one. You know, how can you explain to your partner what you need if you don't know yourself? And I have had several guests on the Neurodiverse Live podcast who've talked about internal family systems. And I think it is such a wonderful therapeutic model to use for neurodivergent folks because I think there are so many folks who have been masking their entire lives and they don't even know who they are and they don't know what ways they have been not authentic, you know, that they haven't been true to themselves. So I think that self-awareness is number one. And then to be able to communicate clearly and concisely, which Mona was not good at in her marriage, what it is that you need and you want. And what I would say to your audience is you are not going to get all your needs or wants met in your romantic relationship. It is not going to happen. So understanding that some of those needs and wants are going to be met through work or some kind of volunteering, they're going to be met through friends, through family, through other outside relationships is really critical, right? And then I think understanding what your non-negotiables are. And for me, those are different than boundaries. So your non-negotiables, like for me a non-negotiable Thomas is, you cheat on me, I'm done. I'm done with the relationship, right? And so I have to define what cheating is, right? Yeah, you're the same. But that's a non-negotiable. Or you do drugs of a particular type. That's not okay. You need to go for help and we need to work through that. So those might be my non-negotiables. But boundaries are also really important in any relationship, but they may look different in a neurodiverse relationship. So one of the boundaries that I made sure I communicated to my partner after I was divorced, my new partner, was if you scream at me, I will leave the room. I will either go for a car ride, right? Or I will go into the other room and I will close the door. And when you're calm, then feel free to either text me or call me or come into the room. But I will not engage in a screaming match with you. And I will not be yelled at, right? So I had to be clear about what I was going to do, because you can't change anybody else, right? And then I think, you know, understanding what your dreams are for the future is really, really critical. And figuring out if you have compatible dreams. And if you can support your partner in achieving those dreams that they have, if they're not compatible, that's okay. But can you support your partner? Like you said, maybe you would consider being the primary person who is taking care of the children, right? You know, raising the children. And you might have a partner who really, really wanted a career. I'm sorry. The officer way that they would take care of the children and you would work. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So if you both want, you know, careers, and neither one of you wants to stay home with the children, then, you know, can you both get to a point in your careers where you could hire somebody to take care of the children, right? If one of you isn't a very social person, and on the weekends, you just want to stay home and kind of chill, and your partner wants to travel, is there a happy medium, right? So if one of you really likes going to family events, and the other, the anxiety going to family events is just overwhelming and just shuts you down, how can you kind of meet in the middle? And if you can't, can you agree that this is something where you're going to do things differently? But if you don't share what your dreams are, you know, at the beginning of the relationship when you're getting serious, like some of the core dreams, I think that you might think you're going the same direction, but you're not necessarily going in the same direction, and that can cause conflict. And then I think the last thing is understanding each other's core values. You know, so for me, a lot of people don't even know that they don't know what their meaning is in life or their purpose, like nobody thinks about it. But it's such an integral part is like trying to find what your value and meaning is through the external things that you do, rather than thinking about it and mulling over like, what do I value in myself and other people and the work that I do and the relationships that I have, you know, it's really important. It is so important. And I'm not just talking about values in general, I'm talking about the core values, kind of like the non-negotiables are the things that I will not put up with. My core values are the things that I absolutely want in my partner. Like for me, integrity is a core value. If you say you're going to do something, do it, follow through. If you can't, please let me know at least 24 hours in advance. Now, that may be hard for some people, right? That was a conflict that my ex and I had often. It's a hard thing for a lot of people in the modern dating world. Yeah, right. Right. So you can imagine that could cause conflict, but you know, there are people out there that have a similar core value. And you can go online and you can Google a list of core values and you can maybe pick the top five that are of importance to you. And at some point as your relationship is moving forward, you can share those things. And Thomas, I would highly encourage folks to listen to the Neurodiverse Love podcast because I have interviewed, I want to say close to 75. It could be even more than that. I've interviewed therapists and coaches. Some are autistic. Some are neurodivergent in other ways. And some are some are allistic. Some are neurotypical. So I have the whole gamut. I've interviewed couples who have gotten to the brink of divorce and then found out they were a neurodiverse couple and began to transform their relationship or their marriage. And so hearing other people's stories and the ways in which they approach things can be so helpful. And that's what I try to do. I try to share that information with the world so that fewer people end up hurting each other really. And I'm not even talking about physical hurt. I'm talking about emotional and spiritual and mental pain. Because that can be so much worse sometimes because it takes much longer oftentimes to heal. Yeah. That's a good list. I will add some of my own to that list. Please. I'd say that important traits in people that you meet that I've noticed have been good is that they're open-minded. Yes. So if they are willing to listen to your experiences, take on board, try and think about how it might be for you. That's obviously going to be a great thing in any relationship but very important for neurodiverse relationship. If they're closed-minded, it's not going to work. They're going to have some idea of how the relationship needs to go and how you need to interact and it's just not going to work. It could work but I think it's highly doubtful. I think the kind of the mentalities out of things. If someone doesn't have a growth mindset with things, that's also going to be really tough because you need to do a lot of growth in relationships like this and also a lot of learning and adapting and probably a lot more than most relationships, I would say. And having this mentality of, you take me as I am and all of this kind of, if you don't do this and this and this in a relationship, then it's over and it's not a, you could say that people have a lot of non-negotiables. Yeah. And I was one of those people. They're not necessarily like these really cool things but it's just, it's very kind of narrow-minded and they're not willing to admit when they're wrong and they're not willing to admit where things are miscommunications and not willing to kind of grow and you need to grow. Growth does not stop after you reach the age of 25 when your brain's developed fully. It's after that as well, definitely. I think that's what a lot of people get wrong. But I think as well, patience is definitely a virtue in relationships like this, from both parties. Because as we said, miscommunications, they do happen. And even if you're like myself and you know a lot about autism or like yourself, if the other person is perhaps not like that and things become inflamed and things become reactive and things become very emotionally peaking that could not be in another circumstance, then that can sometimes end things, which I think that's something. I think also someone who has more of an independent mind as well, I would say. Because I think the issue that I've found, particularly in Mamma's recent relationship, is that people don't really understand the relationship from an outsider's perspective. They have this idea of how neurotypicals should communicate with each other and what a relationship should look like, what that person should do for you, everything. And so when you listen so much to outside influence of people who don't understand what autism is or they don't understand like the intricacies of it and the relationship and the communication style that that person has with you, then I think that that can often be really difficult. And it's a hard thing because on the one side it is important to have those connections and to talk about it with other people. Because in a lot of relationships, perhaps some of the more toxic related ones, people do try and isolate you from your friends and family. That's obviously not good. So it's a careful balance. I think just having an awareness that things are different and people may have reactions to it that to them seem completely justified, but to you it may not be the case. So I would say that that's probably definitely quite a big one. You know, just being able to remember that that person is different and all the rules don't necessarily apply to everything. Yeah, and I think being curious because when I found out... Curious was going to be my next one. I wish we had both been curious throughout our marriage. The last whatever nine months when I found out we were a neurodiverse couple, Thomas I couldn't get my hands on enough books and YouTube videos and everything I could find. Because I wanted to know, I wanted to understand what did I do wrong? What did he do wrong? What could we do better? How could we transform things? So if you don't have a curious mindset, you're going to judge. You're going to get angry, right? You're going to be quick to react rather than respond. And communication I think would be the last one. Big direct communicator. Yes. And you know what? I want to add one other and it's something I talk about in the couples groups is being able to repair after conflict. Because one of the things that happened often in my marriage is my ex would just want to sweep it under the rug because it was easier. And I know a lot of people do that, but those conflicts kept coming up. So there are a lot of great books out there on conflict resolution. There's one by Jason Gaddis, G-A-D-D-I-S, and I forget the title. I don't have it here in front of me, but you can Google it. That's excellent. It's one of the best books I've read on that. So if you are afraid of conflict and you're not willing to repair after there's been conflict, that's going to be a challenge in your relationship. Yeah. I think we've got some good ones there. So I think it'd be good to kind of try and wrap things up a wee bit. Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to sleep. Would you like to give anyone some links? I know you mentioned about the Neurodiverse Love Podcast, which I highly recommend you check that out. Are there any other places that people can find your work or anything that you'd like to highlight that you've done? Yeah, it's all Neurodiverse Love. So you can go to my website at NeurodiverseLove.com. I've got lots of books and resources on there, a lot of information. You can also buy the Neurodiverse Love conversation cards by going to my website. They're now only available as a digital download. They're only $11 and there's 52 cards. I'm coming up with a workbook that goes with the cards and that'll be for sale probably in the next few months. And then you can also find me on Instagram at Neurodiverse underscore love. And people can email me if they want to ask questions or chat and that email is NeurodiverseLove, the number for the letter you at gmail.com. So it's pretty easy. NeurodiverseLove will get you to me. Awesome. And if there are any couples out there that are having challenges and they'd like to join one of the Neurodiverse Couple's support groups that I do, it's $199 and we meet weekly for four weeks. So it's not a big investment and you get to meet other Neurodiverse Couples. And then I created the Neurodiverse Love GPS guidebook that I give everybody for free. I don't sell that. Awesome. Awesome. So you're very, very established with things. I need to take some notes about setting up my own business. Anything I can do to help Thomas, I'm happy to. Happy to. That would be very, very much appreciated. Thank you. Cool. Well, if you have enjoyed this episode of the 40-odd podcast, make sure to like it if you're on YouTube. Give it a rating. It doesn't have to be anything fancy if it's just a star rating or perhaps your favorite part of this episode. Just how you feel about me. Stick that in a comment and a rating over on podcasting streaming services. And if you want to get notified, get updated, make sure to subscribe on YouTube and follow on some of the podcasting streaming services like Spotify, Apple, stuff like that. And if you want to check out more of the stuff that I do, my Instagram is at ThomasHenleyUK. You can find daily blogs over there. There's videos. I also do weekly lives over on YouTube and Instagram. So if any of that piques your interest, head down into the description, click on my link tree. You'll find the sponsor of this podcast episode, D-Bods, as well as my own merchandise. If you want to go, check those out. And yeah. So, Mona, do you have your song of the day? Yes. My song of the day is The Way We Were. The Way We Were. Yes, by Barbara Streisand. Yes, I remember you mentioning about it. Yeah. Awesome. Stick that in the playlist. Awesome stuff. I just wanted to thank you because this has been a phenomenal conversation and I really hope it's going to be helpful to a lot of folks out there. Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to coming and chatting as a guest on your podcast sometime, some point. Yeah. Should be really good. You can tell that I'm a bit tired because my speech aprex here is coming through quite a bit. I would be exhausted if I were on your time. Yeah. It's on the grind. There you go. All that kind of stuff. You said you had one last question. Yeah, yeah. I was just going to ask, Mona, have you enjoyed your 40-oughty experience, which you've already answered for me? Yeah. It's been wonderful. And I just have to thank you for all the amazing work that you do. I've listened to a lot of your podcasts or shows, and I just think that you are helping so many people out there. And I hope you continue to do the work for the rest of your life because we need more people understanding different neuro types. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for that. I greatly appreciate it. And I would definitely be checking out your pod. I'll be going through some of the cards that you sent me having a look at those. Awesome. May not be using them for the time being, but once I get into a relationship sometime in the future when I feel like it, I will definitely have a look at those. Awesome. So yeah, thank you very much for listening to the 40-oughty podcast today. I hope you've enjoyed it. And I'll see you next week in another episode of the 40-oughty podcast. See you later, guys.