I'm Tay with Mom on the Spectrum and this is my husband Scott. Today we are doing Part
1 of our Autism and Marriage series. Part 1, we're going to focus on communication,
meltdowns and expressing emotion. We'll also share what some of the awesome benefits are of being an
autistic person married to a neurotypical person, because I think there are a lot of really cool
elements to it that have been really great for us. I feel like I'm convincing you. "No, no."
Thanks for watching this video. If you're new to my channel, if you could hit that red SUBSCRIBE
button, that's the best way that you can support me so that I can continue making videos for you
because I love it! This is one that I've been really excited about making. Scott
is neurotypical. I am obviously not. So first off, why don't we tell them how we met? Okay.
He's my high school sweetheart and we've been together... this summer we'll have
been married 11 years. S: "Is that right? Just kidding. Yeah but we've known each oTther since
2005." I think we started dating in 2006. "16 years-ish. hat's so wild." I know we've been
together a long time. We're old. We were watching The Circle on Netflix...S: "Nobody knows who Lance
Bass is!" Nobody on the show knows who Lass Bass is. I'm like, I must be like 65 years old
now! How do you remember... like how did we first start talking? S: "So I used to go get breakfast
at our high school. The delicious meals they would serve in the cafeteria at public schools...
and I saw a flyer." T: Oh gosh. S: "Do you want me to tell the story?" T: I mean we're
not gonna get into it but you can... S: "There was a flyer for a group called... get ready...
it was called Hardcore Musicians for Christ,
and it piqued my interest. So I thought I would check it out." T: Because you're hardcore. S: "
Can you tell? I'm a hardcore person." T: So am I, so naturally I led that group. S: "So I went
to the group. I saw a very pretty girl leading songs on a guitar. It was super hardcore." T: On
my acoustic guitar. S: "Yeah. After attending the very intense Hardcore Musicians for Christ,
I basically started manipulating all of my friends to invite Taylor's friends to different outings
and events." T: And me. S: "And you, yes. And you... that was the goal so we could spend time
together. And it worked!" T: It worked! So we started dating when I was 16 and then he went
to TCU. Go frogs. And I followed him to TCU. Go frogs. S: "I mean you did... also there were lots
of incentives to go to TCU." T: Yeah, go frogs. We got married right after college. We have two kids.
They're adorable. They're also neuro... neuro... That word is so hard to say. S(in a funny voice):
"Neurodiverse." T: They're seven and four. So it's been almost a year since I got my official autism
diagnosis. How did you feel about me wanting to pursue an autism diagnosis? Like do you remember
the first time I told you, "hey I think I'm probably autistic?" S: "You had brought it up as
something that might fit your way of seeing the world and I was honestly kind of surprised
because I think prior to that, I wasn't really equipped in understanding autism. I think a lot
of my expectations of autism had to do more with stereotypes and things that are brought up and
featured in films and tv and things like that. I was kind of taken aback but I also had known that
prior to you exploring autism, you had different diagnoses like ADHD and highly sensitive and OCD
and how you felt like those were pieces of the puzzle but none of them seemed to completely
capture the way that you viewed the world. So I was definitely open to it but skeptical." T: I
was hesitant to share with you that I thought I was on the spectrum because, like you said,
I feel like... and I've shared this in another video, but I went through a lot of other diagnoses
before this so I felt like I was like, "hey babe I'm AHD... Have you heard of a highly sensitive
person? I think I'm OCD!" S: "Lots of books. Lots of lots of books and lots of articles
sent my way..." T: And I tell you everything but I remember I sat on this for a while because I
didn't... I didn't want to be the girl who cried "mental health diagnosis." S: "Do you think it
is because there's a stigma to it or do you think you were just..." T: That's a good question. Well
I think I've tried so hard for so long to find a way to explain my brain that I thought maybe I was
just always going to be grasping for something that never quite fit. So I think almost I was
kind of scared of like... oh this is just one more thing to research the crap out of, because
whenever I find something like this I latch onto it and I do all the research. So I think it was
more so I didn't want it to be another thing. I wanted to be really confident that this could help
explain a lot of the things that I was dealing with. So let's talk about some of those things.
Communication for us, like obviously we're doing pretty well... we've been together for a long time
now, like 15 years. So before the diagnosis, how do you feel like our communication was affected
by me being autistic? S: "Something that would pop up frequently would be when I'd be hanging
out with friends, Taylor would ask me like, "Hey what time do you think you're going to be home?"
I would kind of communicate in abstract terms like, "a little while later..." I think something
that I didn't realize was creating a lot of tension is that speaking in roundabout terms
or even abstractions oftentimes would cause a lot of stress. And so it wasn't necessarily
when I would be home, it was the uncertainty of not knowing. So now I think we've gotten a lot
better in communicating with each other before an event happens like, "Hey before I leave to go hang
out with my friends, what do you need from me"? And then specifically communicating, "I am leaving
here at 11 o'clock. I'm leaving now." Things like that. We would still talk about those things but
there was never any type of explicit articulation of... this is what is going to happen. It's
mentioned clearly in concrete terms to where you know what's happening." T: And I feel like,
also with communication whenever we do argue I am an extremely delayed processor. Whenever we
have an argument, I actually think there might be like some elements of selective mutism, because I
have words that I want to say but I can't say, so we'll have an argument... S: "And I'm going
to solve it in the moment if there's tension." T: Yes, he's like... S: "My mind says, let's
sit down now." T: And I'm like... completely silent. I am processing everything, like I'm
present and I'm hearing everything he says and I'm experiencing a lot internally. But on the surface,
I mean, I think it's pretty fair to say I'm just like (motions to imply "expressionless"). S: "Yeah
I think early in our marriage when we got into fights I would tell you, "Yell at me!
Say something!"" T: He's like, "Say anything. Just say something, express frustration." S: "And
that was really hard. I think when you're in a disagreement, there's this sense that you want
to have resistance. You almost want kind of a passionate, yeah feedback, and what I was
getting felt more like you were disinterested." T: And in the moment I don't even feel like I could
communicate that. It's not that I'm disinterested, it's that I'm putting all this together in my
head. So you know, I'd come back hours later, the next morning and have all of this stuff to say and
it would be really frustrating because he had kind of moved out of the moment and out of processing
it and I was just stepping into processing it. I know that's kind of an issue whenever we do argue,
but now like you said, it's not that much has changed, it's just that you have a little bit more
understanding of where I'm coming from and I can even just say, you know, "Right now I feel like
I'm having some kind of meltdown or shut down. I don't have anything to say about this right
now." S: "That doesn't necessarily make it easier on me, but it definitely helps me understand the
situation and to have a lot more grace for it, and realizing like okay I need to step aside from
this for a minute while you process and we can engage with later on, because we always come back
to it." T: Yeah yeah it's definitely been really helpful in understanding that. I think part of it
for me too... there's alexithymia...(Alexa chirps in background) in there which... oh my gosh...
S: "Alexa, stop!" T: A little bit of it is alexithymia. (Alexa chirps again). S: "I'm
gonna unplug it." T: Alexithymia is the inability to name emotions, to know what you're feeling.
I think for me that's really hard, too, because whenever we're arguing I experience anger really
differently. It doesn't really come through as an emotion. It comes through as maybe... my my
psychologist is helping me. She showed me this thermal imaging map of emotions and it was kind
of like... I don't want to be stereotypical, but "machine coming to life" when I saw like,
oh when this part of your body... when your chest is feeling warm and tingly, that's anger. I kind
of was able to put these emotions on different things that I felt in my body, so I'm learning how
to express emotion but most of the time I think what's frustrating, like him saying, "be mad,
be angry"... it's like I knew that I was, but it came through, more so, as a way of "being" rather
than like something that I was feeling. S: "Talk about that more...what do you mean by a "way of
being?"" T: It's like I have these experiences that I can't necessarily put into words,
and maybe if you're on the spectrum listening to this you might resonate with what I'm saying.
If you have alexithymia maybe this is just like... neurotypical people can't really understand what
it's like to like not feel something. It's like... now I'm starting to learn, you know,
when my chest is shaky and my hands are shaky, like I know, "oh that's anger!" I have to feed
off of my body cues in order to understand what emotion I'm feeling rather than registering it
as like "I'm angry." And I think, along with that, something that has been frustrating is that I just
have like, blank expressions sometimes. It'll seem like I'm totally disinterested in something
but really I'm just processing. I've used this image before in another video of a duck sitting
on a pond. It looks like nothing is really happening, but under the surface the feet are
just like working really hard. Sometimes it can appear that I'm really cold. S:
"Yeah yeah. And I think even when we do have disagreements I can pick up on things when you are
upset, but oftentimes I don't know if it's something that happened with us or with something
else." T: So what would you say... what are some of the signs that I am upset? How are you able to
pick up on the fact that I'm in a different head space? S: "You definitely
shut down." T: So what does that look like? S: "It looks like a lack of eye contact, a lack of
physical touch, a lack of communication. Even your texts are really terse. They're like one word,
two words. Your eyes are more downcast. You won't look up." T: And I think in my experience,
what I'm starting to realize too, whenever this is happening, for me what happens is it's almost like
my field of vision just completely blurs and I'm not even focusing on anything. It's like I'm 100%
in my mind. I don't even register anything. He's told me before, sometimes he'll be talking to me,
or the kids will say something to me and it's like, you know, it's like screaming
into a void or something. So I have no idea that anybody's talking to me. S: " Even just like a
conversation... if I was trying to engage you in like a conversation about something that happened
at work. When you're going through those shutdowns it's just... it's just not there. What I would do
prior to your diagnosis is I would take those things really personally. That's something that
the diagnosis really unlocked for me that gave me a lot more grace for myself and understanding.
I'm not messing things up or doing things wrong. I'm coming up against the way your brain
interprets and processes the world and that that was a very freeing thing. I think what's
great about a situation like this is that almost built in to the way we interact with each other
is a sense of grace." T: I would say one of our greatest strengths is our communication. We've
both studied communication. We both studied how to express our needs, our opinions and our emotions.
And I think that continual kind of betterment of ourselves and our ability to speak for ourselves
I think has made all the difference in the world, not just with our relationship...with
how we interact with our friends and our family and at work. So I think that skill is something
that we wouldn't have if we didn't have to rely on that in order to understand each other so well.
There have been a lot of really great elements that I think have strengthened our marriage and I
feel really lucky to be married to this guy. Just learning my brain better I really I really believe
each of our brains is like a fingerprint. It's so unique and each of us experiences the world
completely differently, so it gives me a lot of grace, not just for neurodiverse people but
neurotypical people. I mean what even is neurotypical? I think neurodiversity is a
gift. I think it's super challenging but if you do find yourself experiencing frustrations with
relationships just know that you're not alone and that there are a lot of great resources.
I'll post some in the description that have been really helpful for me. My favorite author
on autistic relationships is Maxine Aston. Her books have been awesome. So I think, you know,
there's definitely been so many challenges and we're still learning and we still have a long way
to go. I'm just really grateful that I have you. S: "Well, thank you." Let me know in the comments
what kind of relationship tips you have if you are in a neurodiverse marriage or partnership and/or
what has not worked so well. So if you have some tips for things to avoid or strategies
that haven't worked, that would be great to know as well. S: "I could I could make a video
about that." T: Uh-oh! Okay so we have some more videos coming from... Dad ...Off the Spectrum?
Alright...but... S (chimes in): "DOTS! Dad off The Spectrum! Sorry..."
Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video!
Bye.