In Part 1 of this series about how to navigate unbalanced relationships when one of you is autistic or has adult ADHD, I told Tara and Bryce’s story and published my letter to Tara. You can read their story and my response to Tara here.
After reading my response to Tara, my partner Jeffrey Rediger wanted to respond to Bryce, man to man. So here are Jeff’s words- for Bryce and any other neurodivergent or adult ADHD partners who might struggle to show up relationally.
Dear Brother,
Neurodivergent guy to neurodivergent guy, it’s possible the way our brains are different than others explains the way we treat our women and their needs. It’s also very possible we’ve both had a lot of indoctrination into the way guys are supposed to be. I think that, for men, the opportunity in all of this is to begin to let ourselves have feelings and begin to deal with the traumas we probably don’t even recognize we’ve had. If we stop telling ourselves to just buck up, if we learn to recognize and navigate the world of our own feelings, we can begin to experience the warmth and possibilities of love and connection, which is a massive reward, much more so than what we might get at work. We’ve been taught to settle for being a provider and making money, and we’ve been missing out on opportunities to share meaningful connections with others. But to enjoy those rewards, it means giving up a lot of indoctrination about what it means to be a man and that we need to go it alone, like a lone wolf.
It takes a lot of deprogramming for a guy to realize it’s okay to have feelings, that there are intrinsic rewards for starting to let yourself face and deal with whatever happened in the past that made you believe feelings weren’t safe for boys and men. I know you might feel inadequate if your therapist said this was hopeless and your wife keeps criticizing you, and that might make you just want to dive even more deeply into work. I get that. It makes sense. But to learn what it means to share love equally with other human beings, rather than just lasering in on performing, achieving, and being a provider is such a different way of being in the world than how men have typically been taught.
This starts with learning to understand your wife’s needs and letting yourself be vulnerable, attaching to her in a way that she can actually feel seen, validated, and loved. This means that you’re going to have to give yourself permission to have feelings yourself and deal with your own issues around trauma and attachment. It’s a ton of work, but it’s very rewarding work if you’re up for trying it. I don’t know what happened in marriage therapy, but I seriously doubt your marriage is hopeless.
You’ve probably heard, “Happy wife, happy life.” I know you have autism and ADHD, and I know that makes relationships harder than for neurotypical people. But with all due respect, neurodivergence isn’t an excuse for not showing up equally in your relationships and not prioritizing meeting your partner’s needs as much as you expect her to meet yours. It’s not easy, but lots of neurodivergent people find a way to develop more secure attachments and have more reciprocal relationships. It just takes a lot of treatment, not only treating any relational traumas, but also taking responsibility for educating yourself and practicing new relating skills that you might not master instantly.
If you want your marriage to improve, which you must, because you were noble in your willingness to go to marriage counseling, you might need to stretch yourself, to extend yourself towards her, to stop experiencing her needs as a bore or a burden, to stop thinking your needs are more important than hers. This might feel uncomfortable at first, especially if you’ve been indoctrinated into believing women are the ones who are supposed to nurture relationships and do all the emotional labor, more so than men.
With all due respect, that indoctrination is bullshit. Men and women both bear the burden of nurturing relationships and meeting each other’s needs.
There’s so much to all this re-learning. It’s quite possible that you don’t even know what your own real needs and feelings really are. And that your wife has been trying to read you for years, trying to figure out what you need and desire, perhaps wearing herself out, trying to do that for you. Ultimately, this will burn her out and both of you will lose out on what you both really want and need- real connection. The only real solution is for you to come to know your own feelings and needs. This will allow you to recognize and then care for her needs. You can’t give to her what you don’t know how to give to yourself and your own young parts.
If you can’t extend yourself more to meet her needs, then consider letting your wife get her needs met elsewhere. If she starts to pull back a bit, don’t punish her for being less available to meet your needs if you’re not up for making yourself more available for hers. If you’re going to keep prioritizing work, just know there will consequences and she may not be as available to give you the nurturing care you’ve come to expect. You might even celebrate her healthy behaviors if she puts less pressure on you and finds more joy outside the home. Just know that, regardless of whether you balance the relationship by showing up for her more or whether it balances itself because she pulls back from the codependent overgiving, the relationship will be healthier because of more equality.
When Relationship Equality Is Hard Because Of Disabilities
I’m sure it’s not just partners of neurodivergent folks or those with ADHD who feel the pain of an unbalanced relationship. When one person has a significant mental illness, like bipolar disorder, a dissociative disorder, or schizophrenia, for example, it can make the mentally ill one very self-absorbed and anyone trying to love and support that person might wind up throwing their own needs under the bus. Especially as we grow older, one person might develop a physical disability that requires one person to extend towards meeting another’s needs in an unequal way. That’s just how long term relationships wind up sometimes, and it’s not anyone’s fault.
Either way, it’s too much pressure to expect any couple to meet each other’s needs in a vacuum. It takes a village, and I’d offer the same advice to caregivers as I did to Tara.
Most of all, if you’re in the caregiving role like Tara is, be kind to yourself. It’s a noble thing to try to love someone through being differently-abled, and it’s not Bryce’s or Jeff’s fault if they’re struggling with a brain and nervous system that function differently. Neurodivergence and adult ADHD symptoms, especially if they’re the result of developmental trauma, don’t always look like disabilities. So you might find it harder to get empathy from others. These folks can be highly intelligent, successful, wealthy, accomplished, physically fit, and savant-level talented. It’s almost easier to get empathy from others if your partner has cancer or Parkinson’s.
If you resonate with Tara’s story, please consider joining us for HEALING THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS, where our students will learn more about unbalanced relationships and how to rebalance unequal relationships. These students will also be the first to learn The Six Steps From Fawning To Freedom, as a preview of the book that won’t come out until Spring 2026.
We start January 4 on Zoom, so please join us to start the New Year out relationally.
