Kate McNulty
speaker
226 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2021
last heard Jun 2021
Kate McNulty’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
This came up for me because as I did more reading and listening about being autistic, one theme that was persistent, especially in the mental health arena, was spouses who married or partnered with autistic people and joined this kind of chorus of complaint.
Like there was this sort of stigmatizing of the autistic partner and a way that neurotypical
partners felt like they were making sacrifices, or they were burdened with an autistic partner, or it was just very difficult to be with somebody who was autistic.
And I just thought, wow, somebody needs to step up and send out a different message, because I think that's really doing a disservice to not only the autistic people, but anybody in the relationship like that, that
there's probably a lot being missed.
So, as I saw more couples and did more thinking and reading about this, I certainly came to find that there are many traits that autistic people have that are just misperceived or misinterpreted by their neurotypical partners.
And so,
Anybody who can help shed some light on that, I thought, well, that will be a good service to offer.
So because I've been seeing couples for most of the last 20 years, so I was able to sort of represent the autistic point of view, but also write the book as an experienced couples therapist.
One that comes up so very frequently is a spouse who will say, my partner is not affectionate enough.
I don't know what they're feeling.
They don't talk to me.
So, those kinds of patterns are things that I think neurotypical people are operating out of a limited kind of framework about what affection looks like and how it gets expressed.
And they're thinking in conventional ways that might involve romantic gestures or getting flowers or kind of unexpected, spontaneous, seductive behaviors, things like that.
And so...
Just helping people see that your autistic partner may be doing really kind things for you or considerations or just wanting to offer a kind of steadiness to you in your life that goes unrecognized.
Yeah, I think part of what happens at the beginning of any relationship, of course, is infatuation blinds us all.
That's the way we're made.
So, you know, people get, they fall in love with one another and they later get a fuller picture of who the other person is.
But I think too, like characteristic of the relationships that I was writing about
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