Neurodiverse Couples Counseling: A Guide for the Perplexed (Part II)
Tuesday, June 3, 2025.
How Love Is Expressed—and Missed—in Neurodiverse Relationships
By now, you know that neurodiverse couples therapy isn’t just "regular therapy, but slower."
You’ve gotten the memo that misattunement might be neurological, not psychological. You’re recently stopped mislabeling shutdowns as stonewalling or self-absorption. Excellent.
Now we enter the emotional terrain where love is deeply felt—but not always recognized.
“He Doesn’t Love Me” vs. “I Fixed the Sink”: Lost in Translation
In many ND/NT relationships, especially those involving autism or ADHD, what one partner experiences as love looks absolutely nothing like what the other partner interprets as love.
One partner might say:
“He never tells me how he feels. He doesn’t ask how I’m doing. I feel completely alone.”
Meanwhile, the other is confused:
“But I vacuumed. I made her coffee. I don’t talk because I don’t want to make it worse.”
This mismatch is not about attachment style. It’s about communication architecture—a full-scale difference in how love, stress, and emotional presence are encoded and decoded.
Misaligned Love Languages? More Like Different Operating Systems
The wildly popular “5 Love Languages” model (Chapman, 1995) presumes a shared neurotypical context: the idea that words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch are legible to both parties.
But in ND/NT pairings:
A neurodivergent partner may show love by solving problems rather than offering validation.
Touch might be aversive or dysregulated, not because of trauma or rejection, but because of sensory overload.
"Quality time" might mean parallel play (coexisting without talking), rather than conversation.
“I didn’t know he was saying ‘I love you’ by organizing my calendar. It just felt like he was controlling me.”
— NT partner in therapy
Your job as therapist? Translate without judgment.
Masking, Meltdowns, and the Myth of Maturity
Neurodivergent clients often enter therapy with battle fatigue. Years of masking have taught them that expressing themselves openly results in misunderstanding—or worse, shame.
This shows up in couples therapy as:
Shutdowns (often mistaken for contempt or disinterest)
Meltdowns (mistaken for overreaction or volatility)
Withdrawal (mistaken for passive-aggression)
The NT partner might say: “She shuts down whenever I bring something up.”
But the ND partner feels: “You’re throwing words at me faster than I can think. I’m drowning.”
Therapists must teach pacing and normalize recovery time and delayed emotional processing—often in silence.
Processing time is not stonewalling. It’s buffering.
Sex, Sensory Profiles, and Scripts That Don't Fit
In traditional couples therapy, sexual dissatisfaction often gets framed around mismatched desire or intimacy blocks.
In neurodiverse relationships, the story is messier:
Sensory sensitivities may make certain touch unbearable.
Predictability in sex scripts can feel safe for one partner and boring to the other.
Emotional intimacy may not be the gateway to sexual intimacy—task focus or shared interest might be.
And then there’s Demand Avoidance (often seen in PDA profiles of autism), where the expectation of sex makes it physiologically impossible to relax or feel desire.
“I love her. But when she says, ‘Can we be close tonight?’ I shut down instantly. It’s not her. It’s my wiring.”
What’s needed isn’t just communication—it’s a redesign of sexual expectations and rituals.
Emotional Labor and the Exhausted NT Partner
Neurotypical partners often come into therapy deeply burnt out, feeling like emotional translators, regulation coaches, and caretakers.
They might say:
“I feel like I’m the one managing everything. I’m always adjusting to him. He doesn’t even notice when I’m upset unless I spell it out.”
This is not a sign that the ND partner doesn’t care—it’s a sign that cues are being missed, not because of malice, but because those cues don’t register.
But therapists must not allow this reality to turn into pathology. NT partners need:
Permission to grieve
Strategies for asking clearly (without resentment)
Rebalanced expectations that remove shame from both parties
Creating New Rituals of Connection
Neurodiverse couples need rituals that are:
Explicit
Low-pressure
Mutually regulated
Examples:
Scheduled “silent mornings” with coffee and puzzles (parallel presence)
Shared Google Docs for emotional check-ins
Tactile tokens for affection (e.g., trading a small object instead of verbal “I love you”)
Predictable, repeatable sexual routines with opt-in variations
Well trained therapists can help cneurodivergent couples invent a culture that honors both parties—not force one into the mold of the other.
Final Thought: Love Is Not Less, It’s Just Different
The heartbreak in many ND/NT couples isn’t that they don’t love each other.
It’s that they’ve been taught to fear they’re unlovable because of how they love.
Your job isn’t to fix them.
It’s to reveal the deep love already present—and help them learn how to speak it in each other’s dialects.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Chapman, G. (1995). The five love languages: How to express heartfelt commitment to your mate. Moody Publishers.
Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008
Koven, N. S., & Thomas, W. (2010). Mapping facets of alexithymia in healthy individuals: A multidimensional perspective. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(2), 116–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.03.019
García, M., & Hall, S. S. (2021). The relationship experiences of autistic adults: A systematic review. Autism, 25(8), 2151–2166. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211002099
Swenson, S. (2020). What is neurodiverse couples counseling? Retrieved from https://www.sarahswenson.org