Q&A: "Is it realistic to want a feeling of warmth, comfort, ease, affection with your autistic partner?"

A neurotypical partner asks about signs of emotional reciprocity

This is one of the most common questions I hear. The neurotypical partner feels a lack of reciprocity regarding signs of emotional connection. She (for the sake of this post) does everything she can think of to show her autistic partner how much she cares about him: she notices small changes, senses his moods, remembers details about what he said previously, asks him how things are going, shows concern for his wellbeing, feels his pain when something goes wrong, expresses her concern both orally and with her body language, considers him when making decisions, does her best to anticipate his needs…

and yet…

she feels as if she doesn’t get anything back from her partner that helps her feel emotionally connected to him. At best, she feels unseen. At worst, rejected.

What’s going on?

In a neurodiverse relationship, the needs of the partners are different. It is essential to recognize this and to understand what the differences mean.

Many autistic individuals tell me they are perfectly content knowing their partners are in the house with them, whether they’re watching a movie together or even on different floors engaged in unrelated activities. They get comfort from the predictability of the relationship. They don’t need (or want) constant reassurance.

They also tell me that they realize their partner’s emotional needs are different and that they cannot figure out what to do or say to meet them - or even to recognize and understand them. They don’t know what their partners need from them that they’re not giving them, and they don’t understand their partner’s frustration. They also don’t understand why their partners seem to keep prodding them to articulate feelings or needs that they simply don’t have.

On more than one occasion, I’ve heard an autistic person tell his partner a version of

I would’t be here if I didn’t love you!

or

What do you want me to say?

or

I can’t believe you let that bother you.

None of these comments help a neurotypical partner feel seen and more often than not, they can make her feel worse.

What does she need?

She needs to have her emotions acknowledged. She doesn’t need her partner to feel her feelings or even to have the same reaction to things that she has. She just needs to feel as if her partner sees that something has affected her and then she needs to feel that her feelings are important to him. She needs to know he understands that feeling close to him is important to her and that the way she feels close to him is by sensing that he is emotionally engaged with her. She also values spontaneity: she tells him she loves him out of the blue and craves hearing the same thing from him once in a while.

So what does the autistic partner do when feeling blind to everything in that paragraph?

Ask.

It won’t feel the same to the neurotypical partner as an intuitive response to her needs would feel, but it will let her know he is aware that she has needs and that he is making a conscious effort to acknowledge and respect them, even though they may be nothing like his own. He must believe her when she describes her feelings, however, and he must believe her when she tells him what is important to her and why. She is the expert on her own emotions, just as he is the expert on his own.

Here’s the question I suggest:

This seems important to you. Do you want me to listen, to say something, or to hug you?

What she wants and needs is to feel connected. While the two neurotypes have different ways of experiencing and expressing connection, they can come together in a conversation that begins with this sentence.

It is an acknowledgement and also a recognition.

This will help. It won’t fill all the neurotypical partner’s needs, though, since what she is describing is most often sensed intuitively and responded to intuitively between partners, a legitimate expectation of hers which is based in her deeply-rooted sense of neurotypical norms. It’s just that this expectation is seldom met by an autistic partner, whose expectations are based on what it is like to be autistic. Conversely, the neurotypical partner is likely not meeting the autistic partner’s needs if she pushes him to respond spontaneously to hers. It is no one’s fault.

This challenge is a feature of the neurodiverse relationship: her frustration at her unmet needs and at not understanding why he doesn’t feel the same way she does, and his frustration at not being able to perceive or understand her needs and not feeling respected for not having the same needs himself.

Finding peace with this challenge by understanding it with mutual compassion requires embracing the reality that the expectations of both partners are based in their own neurotype’s needs, and that these needs are not aligned. A neurodiverse couple must forge its own path by acknowledging and accommodating their differences. It’s certainly not easy, but it is possible.