Josh, neurodivergent: Something that I think anyone who knows me could agree on is that I take things very, very literally. I think you have to laugh and find the humor in everything, and this is certainly no exception. I can think of so many examples, but a few stand out.
My wife and I were sitting on the floor of our first home with the dogs. It was late spring 2017 and it was really nice out. She asked the dogs if they wanted a little brother or sister. (Spoiler alert: she wasn't referring to a puppy.) Fast forward a bit and Kelly was in Italy on a trip for a few weeks. Everything she did, I always tried to do something special for her to come home to based on something she had said in passing. So I adopted our dog, Berk. Kelly was livid and I was completely blindsided by it. I had based my idea off of what she had said to the dogs months before. It didn’t take Berk long at all to win her over, but we fought a lot about it. I would have never considered that asking the dogs about a sibling meant us having a child as she did, because the dog's sibling would obviously be a dog. I think this might have been the moment when how literal I am really became obvious to Kelly, but I’ve always been like this.
The day Kelly met the new dog. She was obviously furious. Another example is how much difficulty I had with how Kelly speaks. She uses both a lot of words and made them flowery, or at least did when we got together and early in our relationship. I was always confused by things she said; the phrase “soul-crushing” comes to mind immediately. I remember when she used it and thinking about how to rate “soul-crushing” on a scale of 1 to 10. How much would having your soul crushed hurt? How does that compare to other things? Having absolutely no idea, I assumed it must be about the worst and then was even more confused that whatever she had used it regarding couldn’t be the worst. The entire thing was illogical to me.
Growing up I read a ton. I was always reading comic books, Dungeons & Dragons books, or something. I tend to pronounce words as they are spelled, and generally speaking I learned a huge bulk of my vocabulary without ever hearing it spoken. I can’t imagine how I could exist without spell check as I always really struggled with English. I am creative and love to write and tell stories, so it makes it a little more funny. I know Kelly delights in how I butcher words.
I answer questions literally and directly. If you ask me something you don’t want to hear the answer to, you probably shouldn’t ask. I also don’t answer questions that aren’t phrased as such. If you make a statement I rarely will respond much. If you ask a question, I of course would. It's when people ask questions as a statement that I get lost. Another similar example is when I gained some weight I said I had gotten fat and that started a whole argument. My body fat had literally gone up, so I couldn’t possibly understand why this bothered anyone. Whether it was by much wasn’t relevant, it had increased and therefore I had truly gotten fat. I had gone from X to Y percentage of body fat and couldn’t wrap my head around how others would involve feelings and worth to it.
I think being literal isn’t always a bad thing. Sure, socially it can be problematic, but has made me very science-oriented and factual. I think the lack of bs is also refreshing to some, or at least I’ve been told.
What we wish we'd known: If we had known ourselves and our own communication styles better, we could have avoided a lot of conflict early on.
Kelly, neurotypical: It should be known that when Josh surprised me with the new dog in 2017, we already had three dogs. Three. Berk was dog number four. Ridiculous.
We had been together almost four years at that point (married for two), so you'd think I would have understood his literal-mindedness by then, but I didn't. The dog incident was very enlightening.
Josh isn't kidding when he says that we fought about Berk. I was very angry that Josh would have made such a commitment without consulting me, so I bulldozed the whole thing and definitely didn't pause to appreciate the gesture. Now that I understand the way Josh thinks, I feel especially terrible about the way I reacted. Luckily, Berk won me over very quickly.
In retrospect, I didn't do a great job of expressing appreciation for Josh' gestures and surprises for me early in our marriage. I was too busy being angry that he didn't do what I wanted or expected, like sweep me off my feet for a huge hug when he greeted me in the airport after I was gone for several weeks in Italy. That certainly contributed to my anger when I came home to an unexpected (and unwanted, expensive) gesture the size of a large dog.
I'm very grateful for Josh' diagnosis, because now I see him more clearly and I can appreciate the way he shows his love for me, rather than fixating on the aspects of our life that aren't the way I expected.
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