I have 21 years of personal experience with autism and marriage and a lifetime of experience with autism and close family relationships. I have been consulting and coaching neurotypical, non-autistic neurodivergent, and autistic individuals managing neurodiverse marriage and divorce since 2017.
I offer relationship services, divorce services, autistic parent coaching, and court expert witness services. I support my clients in whatever decisions they make -- staying married, getting divorced, or finding other suitable arrangements. I help them prevent expensive high-conflict neurodiverse divorces whenever possible, saving them a LOT of money in attorney fees along the way. And, whenever I can, I help autistic parents maintain positive relationships with children during and after divorce.
I have a master's in psychology from Harvard University where I conducted some of the first quantitative research on neurodiverse marriage in the world, receiving the Director's Thesis Award for my work. I am a trained and ICF-aligned coach and will make YOUR sessions about YOU.
I am neurotypical.
Get the benefits of my education and life experience for less than the cost of one restaurant meal for two!
Neurodiverse relationships can be very confusing. Comprehending YOURSELF and the ways autism affects YOU can make all the difference. Take this first step towards
making life changes that will bring YOU the
Connection and Ease that YOU deserve.
Vicki R.
Found her insights spot on. I gifted this course to 2 others before I even finished it. Refreshing thoughts. Focus is on you, the NT of the relationship with great ways to look at things from both sides. Been married to Autism for 45 years and found this course something I will review on a regular basis to support myself.
Katie G.
This is a MUST for anyone who has a partner with autism. No matter where you are in your relationship, even if your relationship has ended, this is for YOU! Anne’s knowledge, compassion, guidance is unparalleled and unprecedented. Thank you Anne.
Often neither partner knew about the autism when the relationship began.
What is neurodiverse marriage?
A neurodiverse intimate adult relationship is a relationship between a person with high-functioning autism and a typically developing, or “neurotypical,” person. Neurotypical people are people who don’t have autism or another developmental disorder. In a nutshell, high-functioning autism is autism (or ASD) without cognitive or language impairment.
Many people with high-functioning autism will marry and have successful careers.
Chances are that some of the high-level employees in your workplace have high-functioning autism. They can be doctors, surgeons, data analysts, financial analysts, IT professionals, programmers, physicists… you name it. Those who are able to find employment within their niche interests are often able to contribute unique skills to the workforce. And not all people with high-functioning autism in the workforce are in exceptionally high-level jobs. In most cases, their colleagues will not be aware that they have ASD. Your colleague in the next cubical could have ASD and you wouldn’t necessarily know it.
Autism has a genetic component and sometimes people with high-functioning autism aren’t themselves aware that they might be on the spectrum until a family member, usually a child, is diagnosed. In some families, one parent and one or more children have ASD.
High-functioning autism is easier to recognize in children than adults and until the last twenty years or so, most children with high-functioning autism went without the advantage of a diagnosis. These children used their intellect and their resourcefulness to develop compensatory strategies on their own. By the time they reached adulthood, those strategies masked the most obvious signs of ASD.
Often, neither they nor their current intimate partners knew about the autism when their intimate relationships began.
Intimate adult relationships between typically developing adults and adults on the autism spectrum are mixed relationships because the partners are neurologically dissimilar in a manner that affects their communication and social interactions. Intimate adult relationships are commonly accepted as the most important relationships of one’s lifetime and successful communication and social enjoyment are critical to adults’ satisfaction within them.
Currently partners in neurodiverse relationships have few resources to help them navigate their differing communication styles. There is more acknowledgment that neurodiverse relationships exist now than there was just a few years ago, but the professional world is still scrambling to figure out how to support individuals managing them.
Most of us have heard of mixed-orientation relationships and mixed-faith relationships and the difficulties that arise between partners who navigate these differences. It is less common to consider the friction that may occur when the incompatibility between partners is neurological.
My programs provide information, strategies, resources and support for typically developing members of mixed-neurological relationships and their partners.
I was working on a master's in psychology at Harvard University when I realized my husband of almost 20 years was autistic. I was shocked by how little was known about an issue that affected my own life so dramatically. So, I shifted my research interests to autism and marriage and was ultimately given the Director's Thesis Award for my work.
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anne@neurodiversemarriage.com
Text or Call: (617) 996-7239 (United States)