But there are times when we don’t understand why our partner isn’t meeting our needs. And that can happen a lot in neurodiverse relationships. If one person is neurotypical and the other person has ADHD. Or one person has ADHD and the other person has Autism. It can be really frustrating because the needs are there and they’re not being met. And it’s really hard to understand why. And what to do about it. And we might jump to some conclusions, like they’re not listening, they don’t care, they’re just not trying hard enough, my needs don’t matter to them.

A lot of us try to explain our needs harder or expect the person to try to meet them harder, and we know at work and at school that that doesn’t work. It’s usually not about lack of effort.

Relationship accommodations are a great way to kinda bridge that gap.

ADHD and Autism Relationship Accommodations — How to Get Your Needs Met

So, one of the things to also bear in mind with this is that the impairments that exist in terms of relationships or even in broader sense with folks both on the spectrum and with ADHD is that our impairments can often be invisible.

We’ve been socialized to try and speak neurotypical, but we’re not good at it.

A lot of relationship-difficulties for folks who are neurodiverse come from misunderstandings of intent. Misunderstandings of action. Or feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. Often because we come from an entire lifetime of literally not being accepted for who we are.

ADHD and Autism Relationship Accommodations — How to Get Your Needs Met

Further reading,