Awkward Silence

It’s late afternoon, and I am sitting in the exit row of a flight headed for my aunt and uncle’s wedding anniversary party. For the last several weeks I have fought on and off with my partner. Frustrated and confused I boarded the flight. I sat on the plane between two attractive people. At first I was quiet and kept to myself. The cabin was dark and it was fairly silent for an afternoon flight, unusually quiet. We departed 45 minutes late and it was uncomfortably hot inside the plane.

I had been texting with my partner and my anxiety began to grow. My last text was “please go get your medicine”. He said he would have one of the kids drive him. He had been stood up by a friend for dinner and was just too exhausted to go to the pharmacy himself. I tried to debate and rationalize with my mind, yet it wouldn’t stop. Every worse-case scenario ran through my mind like water through cupped hands. I had taken my adderall and yet I still spiraled. “I want this to stop!” I said to myself. “Why won’t it stop?” I realized that maybe I could talk to the woman sitting next to me. I casually introduced myself and she herself. We chitchatted about going to California, talked a little bit about our kids, and the conversation ended just about a smoothly as it had begun. She ordered her snack and I attempted to read my book, play cards, and even tried to step into the world of Angry Birds.

Alas, I thought, I am sitting between two attractive people who clearly would rather chew their arms off than talk to me. Why was that? What is wrong with me? I began to think about the girl who has been running the show in my mind. What part of me is so different or ugly that it was difficult to talk to me? I slowed down and began to listen to the girl talking in my mind. I told her that no matter what happened we would be ok. “Yah maybe” she pessimistically responded. I gently told her that there was nothing she could do and we would be ok no matter what. She sort of quieted. And then another part showed up. What about his medicine? If he had gone to dinner he wouldn’t have been able to pick it up. What on god’s green earth was wrong with me?

Hidden traumas

The truth is that nothing is wrong with me. I have been injured and he has been injured. There is the problem. Our friendship is decades long— 3 decades in fact. We have late partners and ex-partners and baggage. We have childhoods that impacted us in all sorts of ways. We long for each other and yet we both feel pushed away. We both long to be seen and heard and the more we talk, the more hurt we uncover.

There is no one is this world I want to spend my life with more than my partner. He is tall and handsome and smart and funny and goofy and probably one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known. The part of this story that is imperative to be told is we both have ADHD and he has Autism. This often causes us to unintentionally hurt each other’s feelings. People who have ADHD often struggle with Rejection Sensitivity and that partner in this relationship is me. Coupled with my partner’s ADHD and Autism, that sensitivity makes a perfect storm for hurt feelings and worry. I don’t believe there is a mean bone in my partner’s body. Not one! Over the course of his life he has helped more people move, buy food, market businesses, design art for websites, grew his own food and given away more than he has kept. Even more than giving away his precious garden vegetables he has been a champion for the underdog everywhere he goes. If there is a hurting colleague at work— most of them are younger by more than two decades— he plays surrogate dad. He loves in acts of service. You need help— he is there. Most of his colleagues adore him. He should be adored. He is selfless in many ways. I know I adore him. Sometimes I forget he has Autism. Sometimes he forgets I have ADHD.

Sometimes, forgetting causes injury.

Sometimes my ADHD gets in the way and his blunt, mask-down, efficient approach rubs up against my ADHD. I am sure he loves me on most days. There some days that we find ourselves fighting over pushing each other away when this is the last thing we want to do to each other. More than ever, we want to know that we are enough, we aren’t too much, that the monsters lurking under our surfaces are not who we really are. There is no easy fix to this problem.

ADHD is hard. Autism even harder.

We both feel like we are different... and not in a good way. It is the kind of different that is like having broccoli in your teeth or your skirt stuck in your underwear and no one will tell you.

I know I am different. I experience the world differently. He knows that he is different and experiences the world even more differently.

There are times I can look in his eyes and see the 10-year-old boy in trouble and he has no idea why. Sometimes I don’t see that boy and that is when we get deep in the mud. He wants to be loved and cherished— just like every other neurotypical human. He just cherishes so differently than me. He is not complex. He is simple. Don’t confuse simplicity with a lack of intelligence. That is just not true.

When we do best, we look for the good in each other. We reach for each other often. We text message several times a day, carpool when we can, we actively see the other’s strivings. We express gratitude for one another, we joke with each other and we remember that both of us are neurodiverse— just differently neurodiverse. We do better when we take time to really listen to each other. When I say really listen, I mean stop, slow down, and pay attention to the words we each say. We clarify what the words mean. We are curious about how we each think and feel. We use feeling words and own what we can. Probably the times we do best is when we attempt to see things through each other’s perspective. When we lose sight of another possible perspective, it often ends in hurt feelings.

I recently had a conversation with my Aunt who has been married for 54 years about what kept their marriage strong. Her advice, once again simple, “hug each other LOTS!” To my dear partner I want hug you for the rest of our lives!

If you’re reading or listening to this and your partner is nearby, go find them and hug them.